Crying over Spilt Chemicals Wednesday, Jan 31 2007

*whining alert* 

This is an extremely tiring week due to all the alternate tutorials, labs and practicals occuring in the same week. I gotta wake up at 0530 from Monday to Thursday, 0730 on Friday and Saturday, and 0630 on Sunday. My school days ends at 1800, 1700, 1600, 1900, 1400. This sucks for a college timetable.

Today saw us having lessons from 0800 to 1700 straight, with only a short period to break for lunch. We had our first super sian seven-hour laboratory session.

I screwed it up. Knew it wasn’t a good sign when jeffrey, xinli and my compound refuse to react under the right conditions, which already made us a lot slower than all the rest.

When we finally got the right compound, we rushed through everything, and all was well until I placed my product’s flask under rotatory evaporator (some machine that rotates a flask clamped onto it and sucks out the solvent.) I forgot to turn on the vacuum and left it alone while I got ready to clean up my fume hood. The next moment I saw my friend running towards me shouting “disaster”. The flask had fallen off the machine’s clamp because the vacuum wasn’t turned on, and all my hard work (chemicals) spilt into the sink!!!

Luckily the TA (who was visibly angry) merely asked me to wash and setup the machine again, and at my request, allowed me to re-do the experiment. The sian thing is, I have to repeat the whole procedure next wednesday, AGAIN!

So bloody tired now but still have so many overdue tutorials and that biochem lecture to watch on webcast today which I had to skip because of the stupid lab. I don’t even want to think of how I am going to repeat this whole damn thing again. lol..

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Set the Fire to the Third Bar Friday, Jan 26 2007

I find the map and draw a straight line
Over rivers, farms, and state lines
The distance from here to where you’d be
It’s only finger-lengths that I see
I touch the place where I’d find your face
My finger in creases of distant dark places

I hang my coat up in the first bar
There is no peace that I’ve found so far
The laughter penetrates my silence
As drunken men find flaws in science

Their words mostly noises
Ghosts with just voices
Your words in my memory
Are like music to me

I’m miles from where you are,
I lay down on the cold gound
I, I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms

After I have travelled so far
We’d set the fire to the third bar
We’d share each other like an island
Until exhausted, close our eyelids
And dreaming, pick up from
The last place we left off
Your soft skin is weeping
A joy you can’t keep in

I’m miles from where you are,
I lay down on the cold gound
And I, I pray that something picks me up
and sets me down in your warm arms

And miles from where you are,
I lay down on the cold gound
and I, I pray that something picks me up
and sets me down in your warm arms

i think this is, like, the best snow patrol song ever!!

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The true magic amongst magicians Friday, Jan 26 2007

Bringing a dead fly to life. Pulling out a dove’s head in front of everyone and putting it back (without harming the dove). Levitation. Mind reading. Twisting of arm 360 degrees. Making two Kings change to two Aces…

Just a few of the magic tricks which everyone in the profession knows of but anyone else is totally ignorant. That is, until a brave soul broke the magician’s oath and published a tv series revealing all the above secrets.

Thanks to the boom of Youtube-type websites, such secrets are even more accessible to the public than before. And if you watch them you’d realise the ideas are at times a little deceptive, but mostly ingenuous and impressive. In fact, I tried one of the tricks on Kelvin today and it worked. I’m on my way to becoming a street magician hahaha j/k.

The sad thing is, for producing such a controversial program, that guy received death threats and was subsequently boycotted by the magician’s association. But I personally feel that while it is true that magicians should generally refrain from revealing its tricks (to retain the entertainment factor), I don’t think this program will make magic any less appealing to the audience.

I used to buy magic packs. I have in my house several trick decks, including my all-time favourite Svengali deck, and equipment that can enable me to do various simple tricks like pulling out a handkerchief from my bare hands, turning a small die into a big one, and inserting a pen through a napkin which later becomes a rose. But unfortunately I never performed them even when friends visit. Magic isn’t just about the ideas behind it; it is the art of carrying yourself and making the other party believe that makes magic so impressive and “wow”. I may know how it works but I can’t do it convincingly. Even just now when I was doing it to Kelvin immediately after that I realised my lines could have been more fine tuned and the trick would have been carried out even more smoothly.

So even after knowing how David Blaine can decapitate a dove and reverse the process, I am not less impressed by what he has done. This art is not something everyone can do, and will be the true skill that will truly be exclusive amongst the professional magicians.

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Clubbing Friday, Jan 26 2007

Club hopped 10 times literally! Went to The Clinic @ Clarke Quay followed by all the 9 “clubs” in St. James Power House. We even wanted to go Music UNderground but decided against it when we realised it wasn’t playing our favourite techno songs..

Since a few months ago, I’ve been sporadically receiving SMSes from unknown sources and keep getting free entry passes to places like MoS and the CLinic, but always deleted them because I had to study, Sunday got church etc. Today it’s the exact opposite. I skipped school today just to go home and sleep for clubbing at night. To be honest I have been feeling a little sianzed because I have missed another perfect opportunity to go overseas, yet again, due to my passivity. So I figured it’s just the perfect chance to go out and drink and be distracted for a while, heh!

The Clinic actually sounds a bit weird; a visit to its homepage will reveal that it is a stylish hospital-themed club, with wheelchair chairs, syringe shots (which can be found in OO anyway), and nurses as waitresses. but we saw none of these when we went. the wheelchairs can only be found in the restaurant part of the club which was closed by the time we reached. we didn’t order shots and the waitresses only dressed up as nurses on certain nights. So in the end it’s just an ordinary club as small as the now-defunct Rush.

We left almost immediately after finishing our complementary drink to go to St James. St James is more interesting, because it has 9 clubs, as mentioned above. We had fun alternating between various clubs which technically is still called hopping although the truth is we only paid $12 for access to every place. Most of the places are rather disappointing and empty. There is a latin place which I presume will be a favourite for expatriates. There are outdoor chillout areas (which serves fantastic chicken wings and cajun fries), and there is even a ktv pub. The trademark place, however, is a club called “Dragonfly”, which is really a danceclub featuring 80s retro music, like those you heard in mambo. We were happy at first, only to realise the crowd was a bit too old for us. They were predominantly 30-40 something working people, and they displayed nothing resembling the “mambo culture” we always see in Zouk and OO. We were outcasted… and were wondering why these people enjoy this place, until the canto performers came on stage.

We had sultry female dancers and singers, and 2 male singers, and all of them took turns to perform, belting out Chinese / Cantonese songs ranging from old school 80s pop to Jay Chou’s Qian Li Zhi Wai to Jolin Tsai’s famous dance numbers. It was quite a treat for us until they took a break, and back to the mambo music. After realising that all the rest of the crowd did were awkward pelvic thrusts and “hands up in the air” all the way, we decided that the place was not for us (at least at our current age) and left.

In all, quite an interesting experience though it just goes to show that quality is way better than quantity. The best clubbing experiences I had were either in Wednesday zouk, or Saturday double-o followed by Rush (just one hop). Sad to say I will never experience the latter again.

Well.. back to study mood tomorrow!

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Wasted Chances..? Wednesday, Jan 24 2007

Before Sem 2 started, I received an invitation to apply for a French double degree programme. At that point of time, I was thinking, I would need to drop my life science programme, and that I would be required to learn French which would be uber-tough, so I did not apply at all.

Now, I realised that the few of my friends in chem eng whom I interact the most (sans those from the life science programme) applied, and passed the interview. They will be spending year 3 and year 4 in France, studying engineering. The drawback is they will be taking French , plus advanced maths and physics from now on since the French’s sciences are damn powerful.

Now then I realised it is actually a very good opportunity, and as usual, I have wasted it. ALthough the chances are pretty low (only 25 in the whole school), at least I could have tried. And if my friends can get in, maybe there is a small chance that I can too. But I didn’t even apply; I deleted the invitation almost immediately!

Lol I wonder when will I be proactive and actually start doing stuff. There is a bright side to not giving this programme a shot though. Firstly, I get to continue with the life science track (which is what I am interested in). Secondly, the spaces are so limited I probably wouldn’t get in anyway. Thirdly, I gotta learn French and spend 2 years in a French university – I will suffer greatly.

I talked to joshua, and I guess he’s right as we can’t really compare ourselves with others if not we’ll feel so inferior and lose the drive to study totally (which was what I felt this morning). I guess an overseas study experience can come after I graduate, if I do well enough. All is not lost heh.

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The most productive day I had in 2007 (so far..) Sunday, Jan 21 2007

As stated in the title, today is possibly one of the most productive days I have had in ages. Went for Sunday school in the morning before service, and upon reaching home in the afternoon, instead of taking a very tempting nap, I worked on my protein lab report and read up on differential equations to the point that I actually understood what the notes were saying.

The ktv outing began with a really unpleasant experience. A guy was masturbating while looking at me in the urinal. Disgusted, I went to the cubicle and closed the door. Anyway, a bunch of us prev med guys (actually, made up of mostly EX-prev med guys ) met up for terry and jeff’s birthday at a ktv place in Chinatown. Amazingly, we managed to book the same room as we did the previous time we went there. However, the crowd is somewhat a little different this time. I guess it’s really quite fun to momentarily forget myself and just be happy before a hectic week ahead. Left earlier than the rest at around 10 p.m., because of an 8 a.m. school day tomorrow.

Sigh, to have four 8 a.m. days a week.. really sucks.

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Save the cheerleader… Save the world! Tuesday, Jan 16 2007

I think many have already heard of this really cool new drama series called “Heroes”, about a group of random people (mostly in USA) discovering they have superpowers all of a sudden, and by some twist of fate, many of their lives become intertwined in one another.

You have someone who can teleport and stop time, someone who’s a less hairy and more chio version of wolverine, someone who can foretell the future, someone who can fix machinery at a glance, someone with superhuman strength, someone who can fly, someone who can mimic superheroes in close proximity, someone who can read people’s minds, someone who can erase memories, and someone who can steal others powers by removing their brains(villain of the show). COOL RIGHT?! And my bet is that there will still be more heroes to come.

It’s a bit like x-man, but probably scripted in a more “down-to-earth-ish” manner, with less fanfare to boast. but it’s still a pretty neat show, though i have been limiting myself to a great extent, after realising how behind i am in my studies.

Two rather bad things happened today. I was at the bus stop in the morning and stupidly waited for 20 minutes before my 52 arrived, and it was then i discovered my ezlink card was not with me. After retracing what I did the day before, I remembered the same bus being too crowded and I had no chance of putting my card back into my wallet, so I slipped it into my front pocket instead. It wasn’t there when I checked, however, so chances are it dropped out of my pocket somewhere along the journey. This may seem minor, but losing my ezlink means I have to spend $5 a day travelling to and fro, until my new ezlink card is made. And even so, I have to put in an additional $60 or so for the registration and bus concession, which amounts up to about $100. All because of a careless mistake. BLEAH.

The second bad thing was, well, I realised how behind I am in my studies. The CN1111 tutorial today had like 50% of the whole class answering all the questions that i couldn’t do. and my attitude needs some fine-tuning as well: I was 15 minutes late (with oon yong, and it was an overcrowded class so one can imagine how everyone stared at me when i accidentally muttered “what the ****, so many people?!”) , I scribbled down my workings on the worksheet itself while the rest used foolscap paper and I didn’t finish the tutorial.

I should also start getting used to 4/5 hour intervals between lessons. As usual, I couldn’t study anything in the library, as I spent most of my time sleeping and reading up books on the connections between morality and religion.

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Flu again. Saturday, Jan 13 2007

At home on a Saturday night. Phin peng (ex-school and nee soon campmate) called me, asking me to go and play mahjong with them until morning, and promised that there will be alcohol. It sounded very tempting, but I hardened briefly and told him “I’m sorry man, tomorrow morning I got church.”

Almost as soon as I hung up, I backed down and texted him that usually I could go to church in the afternoon but because tomorrow I have tuition as well so I just could not make it tonight. Some discipline I have, huh!

This is harder than I thought. I wanted to stop going drinking on Saturday nights and I thought I could do it because there’s still Wednesday mambo to make up for it. LOL. And besides school has started and I really don’t want to screw this sem up ,though I haven’t touched anything since the start of the year.

But when yh told me that they are going back to the states the following Monday, my heart kept itching to go. That, and I’m also afraid that no one will ever jio me on Saturday night again (which is already taking place these days), which means I will have to be at home on every single Saturday night, and that is quite a painful and lonely thought. I may be the “stay home and watch youtube” kinda person but seriously it really sucks to be indoors on sat nights! And I’m also not being needy because I know this WILL happen. It has happened to a few guys I know in church who have stopped hanging out with their friends on weekends. The fact that phin peng and I don’t meet up that often and that it’s his first time calling me since tennis last yr makes me want to go even more. C’mon man, it’s mahjong and alcohol with friends, how fun is that!

Turns out, I have a flu, and I guess I can’t go tomorrow morning either. Gosh, I’m such a sickly person. I gotta start exercising regularly soon.

Sigh, I’m still so distant from the person I want to be. And I’m not even trying to change!

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A new avenue for all my whinings Friday, Jan 12 2007

Haha… I’ve been wanting to leave blogger for quite some time. In fact I had a Google spaces blog (which contains my favourite list of books, movies, songs), a myspace blog and created this wordpress blog a few months ago but had trouble importing my past posts from blogger.

Then, when I found that there is nothing much for me to do at home today apart from studying, I decided to do some major shifting with my blog. With the help of richie (thanks hon!) I managed to import everything, although not without bugs, as both of us already realised that the past entries are all repeated 8 times. Looking back at my past entries, they are really embarrassingly emo (then again I was a sadder person in the past), but it’s actually for this reason I would not like to lose them – it’s kinda masochistically funny to view them again. Also , I have been blogging since 2002, quite an amazing feat imho!

Ok, back to watching “Friends” on tudou.

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116841286762222636 Wednesday, Jan 10 2007

school has started.

my schedule can not be any more screwed up. three of the days see me taking 4 hr breaks in between lessons, and the modules i’m taking seem to perpetually clash with one another. chemistry, life science and engineering modules dont come down well together. i have 30 available slots of Critical Thinking to choose from and 29 of them clash! some choice i have, huh!

after spending hours of planning and appealing, i could get a decent schedule. there is a slight problem though cuz a life science lecture and chemistry lab take place concurrently every wednesday. and no one save for the few of us idiots takes these two modules together. this means i have to skip the life science lecture for the lab. and for us taking such weird core mods, there is a “secret” life science webcast available for us to view at home so that we can catch up, and we are not supposed to tell the other students for fear that they will also skip the lectures. can it BE any more messed up? lol.

at the peak of my boredom i started surfing the net hoping to find free streaming comedies to watch. and i found a china version of youtube > www.tudou.com. china = unregulated (think baidu) i love china!

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