Brr… Cold, Cold Days!!!

Lately it has been so cold in Uni. It doesn’t help that most of the time I’m in the lounge, it starts to pour like there’s no tomorrow… twice this week, I was stuck in Uni unable to go out for lunch. The first time around, I had to resort to buying cafeteria food then hurrying to find a nice warm and dry lecture theatre to dine. The cafeteria was full to the brim with students, you see... the second time around, i braved the rain and walked to Medan to have my lunch with nick, hong, alex and mei ling. luckily, i had "my" jacket with me. with the hood up, and the jacket covering me up to my thighs, i was very dry when i reached Medan.

when working in the lounge, it can get so cold my fingers turn blue. to remedy the situation, what i do is i try to drink more water i brought from home and fill my bottle nearly full of the hot water in the gym. i would then have my make shift hot water bottle!!! ain't i a genius?! hahah! luckily, i have my jacket with me most of the time, or i think i would have turned into a frozen popsicle! nick's lips turned blue today from the cold. freaky... i rue the day he goes to some snowy place. i think i'd have fun keeping his lips pink! :P

i have officially handed up my first two assignments of the semester!!! woot! both of which i tried to complete in the student lounge with frozen fingers as i hammered away on my keyboard... jacket or no, it was freaking cold! i think the thermostat has konged out! i'm surprised if the temperature in the room was less than 16 degrees celcius! and that is too cold for me without my lunch to metabolise into heat! ok, technically, heat is a by-product... but then let's not get all antsy about it eh? :D

speaking of bugs, i have officially sucessfully stained my first set of Drosophila Krupple mutation egg! woot! it was so pretty! the bands are lovely! i haven't taken my pictures from the student drive though... muct get around to doing it! while we were waiting for our stains to be done, we (ok, mainly me) started to "analyse" a parasetic insect that sucks sap for a living (not aphids). come to think of it, i remind me of those little kids that pull the wings off flies to see if they'll survive. cruel, but i was curious whether it would stain with the same reagents we used to stain the eggs. obviously not... but worth the shot. i'm so freaking evil...

Tropical Aquatic Biology Trip

i love uni for this... the trips, the great chances to see things and learn things that really matter to you. like this subject that i'm taking. i love learning about nature. i try adopting a rational and logical approach when dealing with things like conservation and protection of the environment we live in. i took a few pictures of the places we went this short trip. the trip was some 2 weeks back but then i haven't had the time to upload the pics to my laptop since my stooooooopid usb ports have decided to die on me last minute... sigh! anyways, i have them here!!! :)

this is the first place we went to. it's a old tin mine lake in kelana jaya. as you can see, the lake is really polluted with all the rubbish that people staying around here throw into the lake. it's been cleaned up so there are basically more living things and less rubbish. we managed to get quite alot of little bugs and snails. we were mainly on a quest for the creepy crawlies but then a few little fish got caught in our nets and sample jars. sadly for the cute ickle fishies, they had to be subjected to alcohol poisoning... in super huge quantities.. :S

our next stop was at a peat swamp pool beside the road. i think that's where i picked up a few bugs... anyway, we found loads of super cool bugs there! this included dragonfly larvae, mayfly and damselfly larvae, cute little flies (that i have been yet to identify...) and sadly, another ickle fishie that was hiding under the root i pulled up. sigh! and yes, this ickle fishie died an alcoholic's death... the plant that was hiding the ickle fishie is the same as the one in the picture i have below. it's not a good picture and i did not do it justice cos i couldn't wade out into the swamp... (and i don't want to le!)luckily for any other little fishes that were at the next site we were at, there was a relatively fast flowing body of water. said body of water was a drain that was used to drain the water out of the peat swamp. there however, as beautiful the shade was, stank to high heavens. my lecturer not so subtly mentioned that there, the locals do their toilet... not the best thing to tell your student when she has to put her hands into the water to collect water samples... i was really grossed out...
anyhow, the bad thing about these trips is if you don't be careful, you end up having to pay a doctor's fee... as in my case. i think i picked up a stomach bug (bacterial infection) and ended up having diarrhoea at least twice a day. hahah! anyhow, by the time i went to the doc, i had already started to heal by myself and the doc decided that i didn't need to have such a long course of antibiotics.

the last place we went was FRIM. had to do sampling at the river.i caught a crab there!!! so super cute! and two shrimp! hahah! there were alot of other things, but alas, another ickle fishie. sigh!!! FRIMis beautiful in its own way. though i think there are waaay too many people there. i was hoping to see monkeys and a few birds but due to the high number of visitors there, most of the wildlife shy away. luckily for us, the site we sampled from was further upstream, with much less rubbish.

oh well, it goes without saying i had fun. we were all tired and really smelly at the end! we reached back at uni at around 6.30 and i had dinner with nick and his folks before nick sent me home. anyway, here's some of the pics i took of us having fun on the bus. :)


Chris and Kate laughing about a picture Darren took

Yvonne and I (Kim's hand in the background)



The guys posing (or trying to)

Kate beating herself up for letting us take her pic while she sang! hahah!

How Slooooow Are You?

i take pride in myself being able to react to situations quickly to adapt and figure a way out of messes. like how a pout is wonderful when you find you really have no one to eat with during lunch and your boyfriend has eaten... but then i took this reaction test that has ultimately put me to utter shame... hahah! i was a utter slow poke in the first few tries! try this.

initially, i got a average reaction time of 0.301 then 0.291... oh well. nick got an average of 0.203... hahah! see, he's a sharp one that guy... i wonder how derek would fare... hahah!

anyway, i've been feeling sluggish as of late, so maybe when i'm all perked up, i'll try it again! ahhaha! but then this kind of reaction time can't really predict much. when it boils down to if you're being threatened and you adrenaline is coarsing through your veins, your senses heightened, you'll be moving faster and using alot more energy than you could ever imagine. maybe to get the best workout, one should get an adrenaline rush... makes you burn much more... maybe i should scare the shit out of myself before going to the gym...

Things Working People Do At Lunch to Ang Mohs...

daddy dear has openned my eyes to the really cruel world of practical pranks adults pull on each other... not as cruel as some of the ones that my friends and i pull, but mean anyhow.

My dad and his colleagues went to a dai chau near his wor place and ordered a stewed pork dish. knowing our chinese food, it looked messy and the meat barely recognisable as pork. there's a ang moh guy that works with my dad so he joined them for lunch. as they start to eat, my dad and his colleagues start taking the vegetables that have loads of the sauce in them, the ang moh however, he attacked the meat. noticing this, he asked my dad why they weren't eating the meat.

my dad, with a very straight face answered, "well, this meat here, is fermented frog. we don't eat it. it's cooked as a stew for the taste,"

it didn't help that the rest of the group began adding things like how to ferment the frog, how to prepare the frog... all that rubbish.

the poor ang moh, to this day, boasts of having eaten fermented frog. i dread the day that someone tells him what a fool he is... ahha!

Are We Babarians?

today, we went to Ecopark to watch 88 lions dance. it was hot, sweaty and for me, terribly infuriating. there was this long speech from S'gor's minister and then only did the lions dance. the lion dance was short and brief but nice. there were 88 so hard to coordinate all of them. there were 2 dragons thrown into the mix too. the funny thing was that tonight, there were bats flying overhead catching the moths that were attracted to the spotlights in the park the stage was at. i'm not sure if anyone was divebombed with guano, but some of them may actually deserve it. overall, nothing all that spectacular, but it was nice enough. the infuriating bit comes next...

the picture on your right was taken when the crowd had slowed down. this was after i finished my meal... we had a 'free' buffet dinner whereby everyone decided it was an oppurtunity to pig out and eat as much as possible, take as many bottles of water (free ma) as possible and finish said bottles of water to fill it with the juice provided. Malaysia in a nutshell? pushing, shoving, greedy, pigs. year of the boar, i know, but we're civilised! please, take what you can eat and don't shove me as i'm walking back to my table carrying a bowl of soup and a bun (an adult... can you imagine?!). most of the people there were chinese, which means the need for mountains of free food is high (regardless of whether they can eat it or not!)...

another thing, please ppl, if you want to eat, please be a little more civilised. the ladle for the potatoes are meant to stay there, not be shoved deep in the bowels of the fried eggs then placed 'responsibly' back into the potatoes! i seriously don't think that people would enjoy finding eggy potatoes when they wanted them plain. oh and by the way, use the thongs to pick up the bread, not your fingers if you intend to examine the piece and put it down. it's freaking unsanitary.

not only that, please la, i know you want to see the lion dance, but so do we. don't go shoving here and there with your fucking sweaty body just to get to the front. ma hai, i waited in the crowd too le. if you want to see, come early, dickhead, don't play 'pushing' with my brother and me. i hate sweat, so i'll freaking snarl at you. not only that, please don't send your kids pushing a path for you. they're not freaking moses parting the throng of people that, just like you, want to watch the damn event.

*i realise i sound juvenile in both sentence structure and rants, but i'm seriously pissed off with m'sian attitudes of kiasu-ness. we call s'poreans kiasu, yet we act just the same. one of the reasons i hate free buffets.