The gateway into my life

Long time no blog

2006-10-19T22:28:00.000+01:00

Firstly a quick catch up:

Summer was fun!! Went backpacking around Eurpose - Slovenia, Croatia, Italy and Switzeland (via Bosnia and France as well). See Xiyus blog for more detail, Sophie/Xiyus zoto galleries for pics! (will add the links later)

Nothing else happened during summer worth mentioning... oh perphaps this - i now have 6 lovely cordoryas! My tanks is looking a lot better. Oh oh oh i also brought new plants and re-aquascaped my tank, it was full of algae due to negligence during exam period and FYP.... tut tut me. Its looking slightly better but still a bit sparse.... i gave up and resorted to using an anti-algae chemical.... oh well all my fish seemed fine. :) Still needs alotta work.

Started masters at Imperial - environmental technology.... pretty intensive. First week 5 full days (9-5:30/6). Second week was slightly better, 2 arvos off. Now on third week. The lectures are ok.... its very broad though.... economics suck! Law is only slightly better... ecology is obviosuly fine! lol, well just! i still feel like i should be doing extra reading for it seeing as thats the area i am most likely to score highly....

Tonight had policy seminar on oil pollution.... it was one of the only lectures i truely enjoyed!! In the previous two weeks i was wondering whether i chose the right course (esp with the wide topics of lectures), what i wanted to do afterwards, etc etc.... well that was until today. I was also asked by my personal tutor what area am i interested in and any ideas on what i would like to do for project... my reply was not sure, i couldnt even describe my area of interest! I am hoping this course will help.... but so far project ideas - oil pollution or something on fisheries and pollution. Oh well still plenty of time to think....

After all policy seminars there is a social session - to ask questions and have free wine! Decided to stay for 5-10 mins... ended up staying for 40! Needed to get home to work.... oh well need to be off, that presentation isnt gonna do itself! lol.

Elk

2006-07-11T23:51:00.000+01:00

Xi the alcoholic's "Happy place". Her favourite bar.

I left the house late, around 10-15 mins. I was STILL playing FFTA 5 mins after i was planning on leaving the house. I blame that on Princess! She kept telling me Esuna doesnt cure Charm! It does! Thats what i used.... in the end i couldnt test it, it took far too long to try and charm the enemy... boo them! Thinking i would be late again, i need not have worried, i was first there!!! Then Xi arrived next, also on time..... seeing no one we decided to head off to Elk... actually Xi seemed rearing to start drinking!!

Bonnie, Anna, Karen, Xiao and Bernard arrived later. Cocktails and nibbles.... the mountain of nachos, really is a mountain and well worth the price! The cumberland sausages with honey were delicious! Next time i go will def have those again! I had vanilla tulep (or something)... it was rather bitter. Then had a jug of vodka mango something or another.... that was more to my tastes.

Arunon, Xi and i watched Pirates of the Carribean. Great fun film... just wished i saw the first one!

Alexandra Palace

2006-07-08T21:06:00.000+01:00

Talking to Anna on MSN a few nights ago it appeared that no one was interested in going and would likely have to cancel!! Then yesterday Sophie asks am i still going, my answer "yes if more people are interested". She and Bonnie might be. But only if Xi was going. Xi was only going if Bonnie was going, who was only going if Xi was going. Huh? yes exactly what i thought! After mucho organising, it was settled, everyone was going!

Victoria trains werent running becuase of an accident. So had to take a replacement bus service. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry, and getting impatient after the third bus came, filled up and left. By that time i was at the front of the queue, but got kinda crushed getting on! Impatient ppl!! After txting Anna to say i would be late, being stuck in traffic and being half asleep i kinda drfited off.... so it was lucky that Anna phoned me at just the right moment. We arrived at Finsbury park just after she phoned me.... she asked me where i was, it was then that i noticed a lot of ppl were alighting, and asked the person sitting next to mewhere we were.... otherwise i would have stayed on the bus!! Hahaha, what is with Anna and phoning me at just the right time? It brings me back to the dreaded exam period where she managed to wake me up with a phone call the morning of ISB exam!

Anna was the only one of us on time.... Xi soph and Bonnie were even more late than i was!!! After getting an ice cream and sitting chatting on the hill, we couldnt be bothered to explore the area. I have to say, it wasnt very easy to find places to go, no sign posts or anything!! Accoring to an online London guide:

"Alexandra Palace Park! Set in nearly 200 acres of parkland, the views across London are stunning.

Discover the peace and tranquillity of the conservation area - a diverse habitat of wooded parkland, wild scrubland, a pond and meadow. For the energetic amongst you, there’s a wide selection of activities including a pitch and putt course, ice-rink, boating lake, children’s fun park, animal park, skate park and walking trails throughout the parkland."

But saying that we couldnt see how to get to the conservation area, or even the walking trails! Soph et al came up from one side of the hill and Anna and i from the other.... so we ended up sitting and chatting. Xi did her usual "spying" aka "street photography". yes a strange and rather distrubing hobby.......

"Pride", Cinema, Cinema

2006-07-01T20:30:00.000+01:00

Yesterday while at Marvs place, Yung said she wanted to go to the gay pride parade which was on tomorrow..... with nothing planned we decided to go. Anna pulled out - she had a haircut and so did Xiyu, was too hungover! We agreed to meet at topshop. We all ended up arriving at different times, Marv was late, i was even later! Being a busy crowded place, it was almost impossible to find each other so we all ended up watching it separately. I think i would have enjoyed it more being in the company of ppl i knew. I suppose my fault for being late! I wish i took photos... it was an intersting parade nevertheless.

Phone call from Marv saying he was hungry... so we went to Burger King. Yung meet us there later. Their cookies and cream ice cream are muy bien!! By the time we finisehd eating the parade had finished. Marv needed to head into uni and to gym..... and would meet us later for dinner etc. Yung and I decided to see a movie - went to Fulham Broadway and saw X-men 3. Great film, even if their scientific factcs werent quite right - kindly pointed out by Yung during the movie! It didnt matter about being too quiet... afterall there was only 3 people watching the film, yes including Yung and i!! After phoning around Marv was on his way, Anna was also coming, Xi - still hung over! How much did she drink the night before?!?!? Went to Sainsburys to buy dinner. Sandwiches was easy to pick out.... then snacks/dessert.... Anna seemed to want EVERYTHING!!! We ended up with pringles, some rolls covered with choc and filled with cream (cant remeber name, but oh so nice!!!). We ended up seeing the lake house. Great storyline. Dispite it being a last minute choice, it was well worth seeing.

Results Day

2006-06-30T23:36:00.000+01:00

Today started off with waking up late, and meeting Xi for lunch at uni. I got there slightly early.... Xi says she will be there shortly... so i decide to wait on the wire benches.... should have gone into comp rooms! There was delays on tube..... i ended up with a numb bum i waited so long! Missed NHM lunctime so Xi got sandwiches from M&S, chicken and bacon! Yummy! Had lunch on Queens lawn with Bonnie and Yung yung who also got there early/had viva.

Then it was off to comp rooms..... being the keen people we are, well we DID get to uni really early.... we were the first people at SCR. Spent time looking at possible IC branded gifts from union shop.

They made us wait until around 6pm before handing out pieces of paper with who got what degree class. Got a 2:1.... i thought i would be happy if i got at least a 2:1.... but i am not. Its probably becasue of the sheer amount of people who managed to get 2:1.... a hell of a lot... more than i expected. More people got first than 2:2!!! Yeah so considering all that i was dissapointed.... 2:1 is good, but it doesnt feel like much of an achievement when so many people also managed to get it. I could throw excuses around - i was ill around exam time, blah blah blah.... why didnt i do more further reading? Why didnt i get better questions so i could have at least got a borderline and got a viva? Why? Why? WHY? Past few days all i have been doing is thinking about the exams.... what could have been.... not healthy.... i blame it partly on the heat, not being able to sleep, so have more time to think.... *sigh* Its done and dusted! So stop thinking! STOP!!

Spent time chatting with Marv, yung yung, Dan..... Marv, yung and i were the last people to leave!!!! Went to visit Chin. Then headed to Marvs place..... pretty close to uni, no idea why he needs a bike! Saw photos of us in first year! Gosh was i fat then!!! My cheeks were bulging with flab!! When asked by Marv whether i was suprised by the pic... i wasnt. I remember back in first year i saw photos of myself from a year ago.... i was A LOT bigger then.... that pic DID scare me...... Pictures of results day are on my zoto gallery. They are pretty bad quality, i couldnt work out why? The camera they looked ok, on lappie.... rubbish!! After complaining about indoor pics always looking bad, Xi suggested changing white balance... i took some photos indoors and they were much clearer!! Doh! To be honest, i think someone has mentioned WB to me before.... it might even have been Xi!! I need to take photos more frequently so i dont forget these small things... also had a lot of red eye!! Didnt use the red eye function... it shoulfnt be too complicated to correct on photoshop... my only problem is blurry photos so hard to zoom into the eye and "mask" only the pupil.....

Tomorrow......

2006-06-29T14:04:00.000+01:00

....... need i say more??

What have i been up to since last blogged? Nothing, absoluelty nothing. I am suppose to be sorting out my summer and beyond... yes the scary future... but cant. Dont know what i want to do. No idea where to start! I thought i wanted to do ET.... but i think PPEP let me down, probs my worst grade. So is it such a good idea to do a course related to something you arent good at? Although saying that there will be people from all sorts of degrees doing ET. *sigh* Do i want to go into environmental or genetics/molecular stuff? Too many decisions!! Someone decide for me! :D

What i have done is get sucked into getting a zoto account. http://wink.zoto.com/ It took me quite a few hours to edit my kew gardens photos.... perphaps i will edit/add my s'pore ones as well, although most of them arent good.

Catch up

2006-06-24T12:38:00.000+01:00

Just a quick time line of what i have been up to since last blogged:

Thursday 15th - FYP hand in, didnt sleep a wink the night before.....

Friday 16th - Had a mock viva. It went reasonably well, i learnt alot esp about the error bars and it got me thinking. Also went to high st ken to try and hire out a suit with Rochelle who needed some last minute things for a party in the evening. Moss Bros had suits in stock and wasnt as busy as the one on oxford st. so managed to get a suit that fit.... unfort. i had two in the changing room and ended up somehow no idea how, to take the wrong one with me!! Hahaha that one was too big! The suit and the trousers..... sigh. oh well. Will be more prepared next time! I did try the previous sat. BUT moss bros was too busy, Debenhams dont stock their hire suits and they want atleast 2 weeks, Burtons had no one in suit hire for 2 hours..... seeing as it was the last weekend before handing in FYP report i gave up fairly quickly! Shirt and tie were pretty easy to find.... shoes on the other hand! Hahaha impossible. I went alone to oxford street later and found out no where had shoes smaller than size 6!!! Poo!

Sat 17
After getting up early and phoning around i realised that central was not the place to find shoes that will fit me.... in the end local shop had one!!! Bah! If only i looked there in the first place, would have saved close to 5 hours!!! Shopping is such a waste of time!!

Evening was the ball... and while trying on my trousers it dawned on me i took the bigger pair... the jacket didnt fit properly either!! Too late by then, so had to wear it!! Had dinner at [url=www.wodka.co.uk/]Wodka[/url] - a fancy polish resturant. Muy caro!! The typical small portions at ridiculous prices.... my cod really wasnt filling at all!!

THe ball was fun, loved the chocolate fountain! Mixing marshmellows, strawberries in white choc .... yum!! Shoalin monks also performed... wish i could do that! Missed the fire breathing horse!! Fine a robotic horse, but it would have been cool nevertheless.... too bad i left to get my last tube at 12 ish (left at 11:45). Wish i stayed until 4/5 am when the ball officially finished! Then caught the first tube home at 6am instead! Hahahaha! Also regret not taking many pics!!

Sun 18th. Dumpling Day
Felt really ill in the morning, like i had a cold coming on.... so txted anna to say i wasnt going to her house anymore. After much sleeping and waking up, i felt strangely better.... and it was then that Anna decides to phone me and see how i was... i didnt sound ill at all! After much guilt tripping blah blah blah i had no choice but to go!!! On my way went to Sains to buy chicken drumsticks. I thought i would be one of the last to arrive... in fact i was 4th there! Great timing i have to say... Marv and suzi came 10 mins later... then the eating began! Felt lazy and bad that we were eating while Anna, Xiao and Karen were cooking! hahha oh well the food was really nice... i think i sat at the table eating for most of the evening. Then moved inside to help... well maybe not help, but distrub marv, suzi and anna making no idea what its called (dough mixed with spring onions). Actually Marv wasnt helping... he was making a mess and playing with the dough! I even have pics to prove it!! Hahaha. Koren V France match was on... so we had half the group watching that and the other half in the kitchen.... poo football! Boring! Much eating, talking and fun had.... again not many pics taken by me!!!

Monday - Weds Spent trying to prepare for viva. I ended up reading the first part of gene cloning, didnt end up having time to re-read journals i citied. Too much to read too little time! Luckily the viva went ok, i thought the q's i could have prepared for i did. Luckily the one question they asked about the journals i cities i could rember fairly well!!! Phew! It was Steve cooks wood burial trial one. They asked questions about methods (things i expected and prepared well). They asked about how IPTG would work - grr i forgot how the Lac operon worked... i got it half right!! I couldnt remeber annas project for when they asked me about extensions! Poo! I felt like i was promoted here, there and everywhere... i dont know whether that is good or bad... but i suppose at least i was thinking and able to answer their questions at the end. No more thinking and worrying..... all will be revealed on friday 30th..... My viva was at 9:30 in a way i was glad i got it over and done with....

After we went to Prince Regeant.... ANOTHER expensive fancy place - wine bar!! We did want to go to Gloucester arms but no space!!! Had their lunch offer - 2 course meal for set price... had cheese salad (mozeralla with tomotao and something else) then rosot - too much cheese!!! hahaha. Small portions and muy caro (why does this sound oh so familiar???). After alot of book signing, talking and picture taking - i didnt take many pics, AGAIN! Bah!

After headed off to find Lamb, but he wasnt there! Must have gone home already!! Had pics taken with Dr Williams. Then dropped pressie off at reception to put in Lambs pigeon hole. After Anna and I went to comp room to wait for Xi to finish at NHM to go to union.... she ended up ditching us for drinks with other friend(s)... poo her! Should have gone to union first, would have caught soph et al for 10-30 mins before they left.... oh well.

Friday 23rd ~5:30am

Woke up to some noise, beeping of some sort.... looked at my alarm clock still groggy... i hit the buzzer for snooze... then realised the time!?! It COULDNT possible to that? So i ignored it and went back to asleep (or tried to). It was then that i thought about my mobile.... yes it was a txt. It was from Jac telling me that she couldnt come to Kew anymore because of pebbles in her shoes?!?! and having trouble walking 0_o. This is not like Jac. Thanks to the distrubance i wasnt able to go back to sleep.... i never am able to!! *Sigh* THe hours dragged on until i decided to get up around 8am. Then off to Kew gardens. Meet Xi at S. Ken we waited ages for the tube to Richmond... then two were due to come one after the other 1 minute apart! Luckily it did.... Anna ended up phoning when we were just past West Kensington... she was on her way to Hammersmith.... she ended up getting on the Richmone tube behind us!! Hahaha! Strange!

We were expecting the price of tickets to be around £6... they were £8 (concession)... under 17s were free.... i wished i tried to pass for 16 yrs old, esp with the rip off prices of food......After much walking, phototaking and plant browsing we stopped for a break for lunch (Delicate Pooey Pink Princess had been complaining and asking about food for quite a long time......) Went to Orangey Restaurant... boy was it expensive! £3.50 for a baguette and it wasnt even a giant one! Measly filled... luckily i brought my own sandwiches!! Forogt water though.... so paid £1.40 for a bottle 0_o. What we wanted was ice cream to cool us down..... Xi paid the ridiculous 1.5 for tiny pot.... she got ripped off, plain and simple! No matter how they sugar coat it with "5* award winning blah blah". Well the next place we went to was a smaller eating outlet.... they had baguettes for 3.25 and sandwiches for half the price!!! 0_0.

Delicate Pooey Pink Princess also complained about sitting in the sun for too long.... headaches... then complained when the sun went away - too cold! Just no pleasing some people!

Time flew quickly... after taking over 100 photos and walking what felt like miles it was time to go home... with someone rushing us becuase they had another engagment.

2006-05-23T00:26:00.000+01:00

You Are 34% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well.
In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?

More quizzing fun!

2006-05-21T21:25:00.000+01:00

You Should Learn Japanese

You're cutting edge, and you are ready to delve into wacky Japanese culture.
From Engrish to eating contests, you're born to be a crazy gaijin. Saiko!

What Language Should You Learn?

Your Birthdate: May 18

You are a cohesive force - able to bring many people together for a common cause.
You tend to excel in work situations, but you also facilitate a lot of social gatherings too.
Beyond being a good leader, you are good at inspiring others.
You also keep your powerful emotions in check - you know when to emote and when to repress.

Your strength: Emotional maturity beyond your years

Your weakness: Wearing yourself down with too many responsibilities

Your power color: Crimson red

Your power symbol: Snowflake

Your power month: September

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

You Are 40% Boyish and 60% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch.
Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes.
You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them.
You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

How Boyish or Girlish Are You?

You Are 31% Vain

Okay, so you're slightly vain from time to time, but you're not superficial at all.
You are realistic. You know that looks matter. You just try to make them matter less.

How Vain Are You?

Your Observation Skills Get A D

You know that you remembered to put on underwear today...
But really, that's about it!

How Observant Are You?

You Are 17 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe.

13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world.

20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences.

30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more!

40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

Birthday 2 days in a row!

2006-05-20T20:17:00.000+01:00

In comp room after day at lab (see FYP blog), was sitting next to yung. I cant remember the exact convo, all i remeber is her asking me what i was doing tonight, and to tell Xiao that she cant make it to my birthday thing tonight! Well i already worked it out by then anyway, although when i told her that i wasnt suppose to know Yung did look a bit red/embrassed!! Anna came in later and when i told her Yung said she couldnt make it tonight, she seemed a bit shocked but recovered quickly by saying "oh i didnt realise Xiao had invited Yung along, so it looks like it will just be Us too, Karen and Xiao". Huh? Wasnt the reason we were seeing the 9pm showing so we could wait for the Silwoodians??? I was sure u mentioned they were coming when you asked me about friday during that one lunchtime (monday i think). And i decided not to say anything about what Yung told me....... didnt want to spoil the good acting!

Then set off for Piccadilly Circus - yes just Anna and I. When we got there Anna asked me whether i was hungry and what i wanted to eat. I said wasnt too bothered, anything. Anna said oh Xiao and karen will be waiting in the queue for tickets (because they werent able to book them beforehand). Anna suggests Chinese and asks me which restuarant, guess what i reply with? Yes thats right not bothered! :D. (I wonder what would have happened if i suggested Mexican, or something else... Anna said i wouldnt have because i am too predictable -.-). Getting to the resturant guess who was there? The whole bio crew! Well minus Sophie who was late and Marv/Yung who couldnt make it. Had alot too eat, muy bien meal. The best parts were the Ho Fun and the cake! Love fresh fruit and cream cakes! Had too big a portion.... couldnt help myself too nice!!

(Other things which gave it away - Xiyu saying she was coming from Silwood early on friday. Anna asking me on the way home on thurs what i wanted to do for my b'day, (my answer being dont know! lol), then telling me to keep the whole weekend free, and then asking me whether i would be in comp room after labs tomorrow and reminding me about tomorrows "cinema outing". At the time it seemed like Anna was trying to lead the convo in a certain direction in a short space of time (seeing as she was going to the gym and i was heading to tube station).... Ok i dont usually think this much, just my mind been constantly alert since i saw that email.... opps! That was when i worked it must be fri.)

Thank you to Bio crew for the work and thought gone into the planning of the party! And sorry it turned out to be not so much a surprise..... One "lie" i did buy was my present not being brought yet! It seemed believeable at the time.... there was three parts to my present.... first was a selection of dried moss/lichen from xi! The moss/lichen were in vials in a petri dish sealed inside with the ever useful parafilm. Got a preserved cricket in IMS from Jac. Both looked way cool!!They are sitting on my desk atm. My main present was something everyone needs - and the gullible me really thought it was instant noodles! 0_o It was actually a watch from fossil. After that it was 10pm + decided to go to Trocadero and played on Time crisis, i was really bad, usually hate shoot em ups, but playing in a full screen in the acrades for some reason seems more appealing. :S Afterwards it was a 7 person car racing. I was 5th for most of the race until Xi caused a massive crash up ahead, where i overtook and became third, then managed to get 2nd place, until like metres from the finishing line where Anna hits me from behind into the grass and overtakes me! Nooooo! lol. Last train at 12:30 so head towards exit, but Princess wanted a go on the dance mat game.... and somehow i ended up on as well..... yes a trip to Troch cant be complete without me missing all the beats!! lol. Yeah i am that bad, perphaps i should practice more.... get it on PS2! Think Xiao wanted a go and Anna defiantly wanted another go, seeing as she played on easy mode for me.... no time! In the end i missed my last train back - well the man wasnt sure what the last tube on Victoria line was, so i decided not to risk it seeing as Xiao/Jac and Chin offered me to crash at their places.... in the end it was Xiao/Jacs. Had to wake up their housemate to let me sleep on their floor..... felt so embrassed and troublesome! Distrubed Jac while she was trying to edit her photos.... i didnt realise she took so many photos that night - not her usual amount but too many were of me! something like 10/30! And i realised my laugh makes me look insane! Show too many teeth! Me cutting the cake was just embrassing! Anna is quite bossy!

Slept at like 3am, i ended up getting up at 9:30 after getting up at 8:00 and 8:30... cant really sleep in someone else place..... and am like that on first few days of residential trips etc. Oh well at least i managed to read 5 journals, some i skimmed and werent that useful... their house just has that sort of want to study environement, perphaps its becasue most of their housemates were still revising for exams..... Marv ended up calling asking Jac and Xiao for lunch, i got invited along too.... went to Bugis street. Had muy bien lunch which felt more like a dinner! A three course meal - soup, main course (i had pork with vegetables) and ice cream!!. Then decided to head home, it was after 3pm!!!! Late!

Havent done much today, *sigh* esp seeing as the day started off so productively! After those two big meals i couldnt manage much of dinner!!

Bah!

2006-05-07T12:44:00.000+01:00

Stoopid weight/mass question!

You Passed 8th Grade Science

Congratulations, you got 7/8 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Science?

-.-

2006-05-07T12:43:00.000+01:00

Bah!

People Envy Your Generosity

You're a giving soul, and you'd do almost anything for those you love. And they'd do anything for you!
People may envy how giving you are, but more than anything, they envy those you open your heart to.

What Do People Envy About You?

Remind me....

2006-05-07T12:40:00.000+01:00

... to NEVER have botox! Botox the deadly poison produced by Clostridium botulinum. Scary!

Your Deadly Sins

Pride: 60%

Sloth: 60%

Envy: 40%

Gluttony: 20%

Greed: 20%

Lust: 20%

Wrath: 20%

Chance You'll Go to Hell: 34%

You will die from faulty botox injection.

How Sinful Are You?

What is your Perfect Major?

2006-05-04T19:53:00.000+01:00

I am surprised maths didnt turn up higher! Looks like i did the right degree!

You scored as Biology. You should be a Biology major! You are passionate about the sciences, and you enjoy studying cell growth and evolutionary concepts which enable living organisms to survive. Pursue that!

Biology

83%

Anthropology

75%

Engineering

67%

Psychology

58%

Chemistry

58%

Sociology

42%

Mathematics

42%

Philosophy

42%

English

33%

Dance

17%

Journalism

17%

Theater

17%

Art

17%

Linguistics

What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3)
created with QuizFarm.com

FYP

2006-05-03T00:03:00.000+01:00

I have decided to start my very own FYP blog to keep a record of all the fun i am having with GST! Lets hope it wont be too stressful!!

Long weekend......

2006-05-02T23:36:00.000+01:00

..... is over in a blink of an eye. What have i done, nothing jsut been relaxing with comp games, anime, and no work! Well read a few journals. I seem to have ANOTHER cold! Thats 2 in 2 weeks, grr, stoopid frail old mans body! Going into uni tomorrow to really get a move on with those 11 fun filled journals. Yay!

My fish tank is annoying me as well! Brought 3 angels and 6 guppies on sunday, 2 angels and 1 guppy died within 24 hrs! Grr perphaps i should have changed the water BEFORE i brought the fish.... hmm that might have been a better idea. All my plants are being suffocated by the alage, no matter how much i scrub the leaves (takes FOREVER!) they always come back by the next time i get home! Bah, perphaps i should give the hobby up until i can be in camb more often.....

Stoopid Track works.....

2006-04-29T18:59:00.000+01:00

.... meant that it took me 2.5 hours to get into cambridge rather than 1.5 hours.... oh well i wasnt in any hurry! Lol, feel like i have so much time atm! It made the journal more interesting, read over 1 journal in that time, the rest was spent staring into space.... and contemplating... yes on the exams! I dont know why but i keep torturing myself. Always going through my answers, what i missed out, what i could have and should have put in.... sigh. I jsut want to forget about it. Poo poo poo.

Genetics

2006-04-29T13:18:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was the last of my exams, genetics, which SHOULD have been the easiest, no extra reading needed, Lamb likes giving high marks.... a combination of bad questions and my brain being slow and interpreting slow meant that my best two topics i couldnt do! I LOVED the question about wrights inbreeding coefficient - EVERYTHING was easy... apart from the begininng part, how to derive the formulae.... i KNEW how to derive the other one, but couldnt work out this one! AND i wasted 10-20 mins figuring it out! Grr so annoyed with that! The other topic o liked was twin studies, it didnt come to me from the way the question was asked! I decided to lay off that question because i couldnt think of different ways of comparing pig and human genetic studies! Boo! I couldnt quite remebr the speimen genotpyes for regression, the medical genetics question (my best topic) i could only write a paragraph for some of the conditions and each part was worth the same and the last question i did was hybrid vigour...i think i muddled it up with interspecific crossing! Grr! So all in all all the questions i did sucked! So thats a C if i am lucky......

Went to Union for drinks... unfort it was PACKED! So went to nearby pub for Frulies. Muy bien. Spent some time at Jacs/Xiaos.... i MUST have been tired couldnt score more than 200 on the bomb game! Sophies steak house was full and wouldnt have space for our massive 11 people and we would have to wait far too long, so it was a nice leisurely walk to fulham broadway. And dinner at Nandos. Nice evening to unwind from the really stressful period of exams.

Woke up at 9.30 this morning WAY too early IMO, my circadian clock must still be set, decided to sleep in, woke up at 12 ish.... and still tired. Looks like i need to catch up on a lot of sleep still! Well going to cambridge today and will be reading a lot of cool journals on GSH! Fun fun fun!

EIM

2006-04-27T19:16:00.000+01:00

I did badly in PPEP because i was tired, SIB went much better than i expected, this exam was going to be one of my best, i spent ages revising, thought i knew all of it, the only thing missing was further reading and lack of time the day before to go over everything again properly..... I knew about phytoremediation and cadmium tolerance from PPEP essays so read those and hoped for a bioremediation question, but alas it wasnt to be.... instead i had the WORST paper i could imagine! Well GM was ok in the end i suppose, apart from transposon mutagenesis it was my worst GM lecture... we got a Serpula question.... Xiao managed to borrow DJDs book, all i can say is i regret not having been there when they looked through that book! That wood question really bugged me! Because i didnt really study much about those pictures, he spites me by asking about them! Boo! And my mind was so preoccupied with those pictures i didnt really think and plan my essay, consequently i didnt write about FSP, MC in wood (dispite the question asking directly about MC, doh!), on the way home all i could think about was that question and how much i knew about and could have written but didnt. Or how if i re-wrote it it could have a MUCH better structure etc. And thats all without looking at my notes once..... i REALLY REALLY hate exams. I found Lambs food and drinks letcure really hard to study, and again it turns up. I couldnt do the other wood question well, so HAD to do that one.... it was awful! I have no detail whatsoever, i dont even think what i wrote had much relevance to the question. *sigh* another C standard paper..... gonna fail at this rate!

Great just great....

2006-04-26T13:01:00.000+01:00

I feel like $h*t! I felt ok when i got up, just a little tired, so thought i would try good old coffee, enough people have reccomended it to me. Now i am feeling ill, headache and a cold coming on, looks like i will be dosing myself with paracetamol, cant seem to study, grr! Even stuff i found easy on my first round of EIM seems impossible to absrob atm, *sigh* what a time to get ill.....

/Rant over

Will get back to the revision, panicking and crying......

SIB

2006-04-25T19:23:00.000+01:00

Unexpectedly this exam came out ok, MUCH better than yesterdays dispite feeling better prepared for PPEP. Such is life. First i have to say a BIG thank you to Pink Princess, Anoa. First she woke me up this morning, my alarm clock didnt manage to wake me up at 7:15, and Princess phoned 7:30! Phew, if i got up any later i wouldnt have had time to go through things properly and would have been in a major panick! I also have her to thank for being able to do ANY of the questions in section three! There was a rumour going that Cass was setting 2 questions in separate sections, and i found SIB such a nuisance to study and most of it hard going... but it was Anna who saw the light and managed to convince me there was no way cass could be setting an omics question and advised me to revise transcriptomics - apparently an easy lecture... and she was right! Dispite not really following the lecture back then, reading it made sense! Pretty decent notes! So thats two times i need to thank Anna for.

Marvin on the otherhand... what a pain! Borrowing my notes and then NOT returning them. Then i had to spend time after uni to go through my notes with him becasue apparently my hadnwriting is BAD! And that was neater than my usual handwriting!! I have funny "f" i admit, but STILL! Poo u Marvin! :P You know i am only joking (just in case you read this!)

Anyway back to SIB. There was the predictable Stochastic and deterministic question and the protein network question. The PN q was a bit annoying, but i didnt study Stoch and det., so yeah no choice. I felt like i managed to reproduce his notes, whether i answered the q, i have no idea! I never understood his lectures! Cass question i wanted to do the critical analysis BUT i had a mental block (typical me) AND didnt like the word critical.... there was another q which i didnt even look at, but everyone else seemed to have done 0_o I did q2, which apparently wasnt even on the notes, so i made up rubbish. 0_o Great! The transcriptomics question in section three was good! I wrote about ChIP and MPSS and SAGE - not sure if the last two were The question required me to rember about stuff we did in AMB they mentioned using systesm and conventional approaches! I could only remeber the endonuclease protection assay, the rest i put down i made up! Ok, after "critically analysing" the exam, dont feel so good anymore. :'(

PPEP....

2006-04-24T18:42:00.000+01:00

Not so well. Talking to Xi yesterday i think i mentioned that i wanted a Low temperature and Calicole/califuge question, i might of mentioned wanting a salinity question then too (but i did say i wanted it on the morning of the exam). They ALL came up in the exam! Great you might think, i overcompensated on my weaker areas and so well couldnt recall much from what should have been my dream PPEP paper.... but alas it wasnt meant to be. Instead we have a stressed Wink who is kicking himself. I got cold and Heat tolerance mixed up, i GOT the right answer on paper AFTER like 1/2 page of scribbling out, wasting too much time. Becasue of my apprenhension whether it was cold or heat tolerance that i was writign about i kept it brief, 1/2 page when i knew alot more..... Salinity went well, for the most part. Apart from i couildnt remeber what true tolerance was, i remebered 5 mins to end, managed to write about Epsteins theory (or whatever its called, i didnt recall the name in the exam) - system I and II for ion uptake. I remebered the TWO EXPERIMENTS with 1 min to go, safely to say i didnt have even time to write it down on paper. :'( Stoopid Schistidium maritimum and Grimmia pullivanta! Bah! Oh why couldnt I rember those latin names DURING the exam! It sucks! The calicole question was MEAN! The first part was easy and managed to write about water and different types of diffusion, should have really thrown in some root stuff as well.... *sigh*. I am expecting a C/D for this, yes that badly....

I have to say i am going to have to write A LOT faster in tomorrows exam, didnt have enough thinking and writing time! Thats NEVER happened to me befeor, even when running behind on schedule i have usually been able to catch up in time.... spending of catching up i need sleep, i think that half explains my slowness today.... Sleep early wake up early me thinks. Hope SIB goes well to make up for poor performance today. No way did i get the B i wanted in this exam, AND i thought i was adequately prepared, spent long enough on it. Oh well whats done is done, moving on....

Another wasted morning

2006-04-11T16:41:00.000+01:00

Lunchtime recieved an email from Lamb telling me he has put my prac book in the UG office for collection. I couldnt wait to find out just how badly i done, i WANTED 75+, i expected around 55-60. Got nearer to expected. Boo! I didnt actually make too amny stupid errors, i just didnt have one conclusion and like 1 intro, or something.... stoopid hyacinths let me down!

Working in the comp room was too distracting so moved to the quiet study area.... it was packed couldnt find a space, so decided to leave and go home. What a wasted morning. Saw Dr. Stumpf on the Picadilly train on way home! He was listening to music (well he had headphones on). Wanted to talk to him, but didnt know what to say... it would probably be convos to do with SIB and trying to find out what was on the exams! lol. Decided i wouldnt embrass myself - prob wouldnt even recognise me!

So here i am arvo, with so much work to do! On top of that MSN wont let me stay signed in! Grrr

Slow going

2006-04-06T16:22:00.000+01:00

Grr first time i have not had motivation to study in a LONG time, usually i am all fired up ready to work hard within a day or two of study leave.... not this time, not when it is so important and i have no idea why? I have been feeling tired most of the year, cant think, cant work, when i do its slow going. Managed 2 measly lectures today... fine fine 1.5! Poo. Need to do MINIMUM of another 4 today. Was suppose to have finished PPEP yesterday arvo.... looks like i wont finish until tonight. Going to start SIB tomorroe whatever happens.

I really want to play computer games.... i just realised my bro has Super Mario 64 - unfort (or luckily depends on how you look at it) he hasnt got far enough in the main game to have unlocked the bomb game.... Cant wait until he does! Lol. Also want to play FF10 and 11.... how i miss FF games. I wonder if i bro will let me play his PS2 over summer? And FF12 should be out soon? Also want to play fire emblem, FF tactics, oblivion, Civilisation... and those are the only ones which come to mind. Well two of the animes i watch religiously (shana and Mai otome) have ended, and i seem to be getting anime withdrawal symptoms with only have the anime load! Only watching bleach and Nauroto atm... well Prince of Tennis occassional eps because bros are watching it..... cant wait until exams are over... then its FYP and deciding on masters. I am really looking forward to FYP.... no idea why, its going to be hard work and a lot of journal reading.....

Circadian rhythm

2006-04-05T08:50:00.000+01:00

It looks like its back to normal, its before 9am and i am up and not feeling (too) tired, hopefully this will mean a productive day.

Yesaterday i ended up playing tennis with 2 of my brothers. Obviously i am sore - thigh, ankle and bicep! Bah so unfit. It was really fun though, and they didnt seem Also managed a measly 1.5 lects yesterday! Bah want to finish PPEP today - thats 7 lects! Good luck yo me, will need it!

Monday already

2006-04-04T01:25:00.000+01:00

Felt like i wasted the whole of last week, stoopid genetics courswrk dragged on for 3-4 days longer than i anticipated. Then worked REALLY slowly, and now when i was SUPPOSE to finish my first module i am only just under half-way 0_o Sucky suck suck! Today i wanted the whole of PPEP done, so i could spend 1 day on extra reading while on train to cambridge. Becasue of being behind schedule i changed my plans and decided to stay in cambs until friday - bringing SIB notes as well (by sat both modules WILL be done....). It didnt help that my alarm clock ran out of batteries, i got up thinking it was 10:30 only went back to sleep.... still 10:30, huh? Even to my sleepy brain something weird was going on.... it was actually 12:30. Somehow finding my notes, late lunch, last minute tidy up took me until 7.... then left late and got the 9:50 train, cambridge being cambridge buses stop running at 6:30.... so had to walk home. Should have phoned parents really... they were worried and dad actually came by car to pick me up, i was less than 20mins by foot to house, but still..... got home at midnight 0_o Late, dinner, desert ice cream - something i seem to be eating a lot lately even thought its a bit too cold for it - then here i am.

So no work done? Actually it was same as my lazy days over the weekend - i managed to revise 2 lectures on the train - in 1hr 20 mins! And that usually takes me 2 hrs PER lecture.... 0_o Must be msn.... well in cambs i have competition for resources from bros, so should be on less - so HOPEFULLY that will mean more productive days. Fri/sat when back in london will be working at uni in library - quiet study area ONLY.... otherwise i know i will be distracted in comp room or too nosy..... Oh well only 3 weeks left. Time is tight but doable as long as i dont fall more behind. Just less time for further reading... :'(

Done and dusted

2006-03-31T01:19:00.000+01:00

I am pleased to say that the genetics prac lab book is finished.... it looks rather thick. Today it took me far too long to edit and do finishing touches, why is it that when you are so close it still takes that long? Why cant i be efficient like Xiao, being way behind me today and finsihing before me! Bah. Went home to check the spelling of EVERY single page.... knowing the way Lamb likes to scruntise students work i hope i didnt miss any really obvious grammar and spelling errors... oh well not going to think about it! Its done, its finished yay! Now only 22 days (something like that) to exams. Will be having fun studying from tomorrow, (not-so) yay!

I want to revise

2006-03-28T14:39:00.000+01:00

Monday:
Dentist appointment to have two fillings.... no injection was needed! Woot! I didnt feel anything either.... surprising. ALso you cant really see where the filling is, so thats good. Although the surface feels rough and weird....

Also spent the day working but not really achieving much unfort.

Tuesday: Only yeast, asp lef to do! Yay! Will be finished by tonight, tomorrow arvo. Then its revision time. I cant believe i am saying this but i want to start revision, these prac lab reports have been dragging....

On checking in at the undergrad office Xi noticed that the sticky labels for genetics prac reports were already up.... and the hand in date was today.... 0_o obviously being a bit skeptical and worried, we decided to call Lamb... the only problem was who was going to do the talking.... that embrassing day (friday) was too close for comfort..... in the end Xi rang, she was afterall the one who had finished all her reports already. Thankfully they arent due yet.... Lamb will be ignoring whatever the undergrad office is doing! In addition Lamb decided to ask Xi out to lunch! She has been panicking on what to wear and what to say!

Fun-filled Friday

2006-03-26T18:59:00.000+01:00

Had a great last day of term! Meet up with our "crew of orientals" for the alcohol experiment at Lambs. Started off with taking photos at T=0.... all embrassed giggles and bad pics.... both slides and normal photos.... this day however it turns out is forever immoratlised in print, and destined to be shown to future students of Dr Lamb, ekk! Then it was temperature testing using a head thermometer. Subsequent photos were more relaxed i think.

Lamb supplied the drink - "Teachers" whisky. We planned on 1 shot every 20 mins, thats 4 shots instead of 3 (we forgot the one at T=0)! The first shot was bad, the burning sensation as it goes down, the nauseating feeling.... then time seemed to kinda fused tog. I have no idea when i started feeling the effects, the dizzy lightheadedness, lack of concentration, but i didnt go red, so that means no deffective enzyme, so no oriental flushing! Good or bad?

Also a lot of pictures were taken, Xiyu seemed to get louder as the alcohol flowed, while Marvin became more subdued at first, until the near the end where everyone was quite lively! As always Lamb told us a bit too much (!!), read us one of his cool poems, talked about his travels and intersting people he met. Overall an enjoyable and memoarble day!

I was suppose to try and get some work done after this, but it took everything to even concentrate, in the end i just handed in my essay and played games....

By the time it came to meeting up with people to head over to Annas party the effects had worn off (thankfully). Xiao didnt seem to take her alcohol as well.... Xi, Karen and I were fine. Sophie and I were "late" at the train station BUT everyone else was later! So we made our way to Xiaos instead.... apparently it was the men holding them up! That surprised Sophie and I.

Anna being princess and birthday girl took forever to get ready.... i dont understand how she can take over 2.5 hours to get ready. 0_o I ended up carrying the present, i felt like i would lose it before we got to our destination, thankfully it made it to Chinatown in one piece. Phew!

It was then eat, sing, camera flashing, cut cake etc. The 3-4 hours went VERY quickly. Very memorable and enjoyable night! Karen and Vernoica were obviously trying to get Anna drunk. The dice game which Anna knew quite well and was good at, they resorted to cheat (rather blatantly) to get Anna to lose... she saw through it pretty quickly, what with Veronica seemed to always have 4 of the current number! Anna stopped after being tipsy.....

I could ramble on and on, but if you werent there (*cough* marvin *cough*) then you missed a great night.

Now i am off to finish those stoopid prac write-ups.

The name and shame session and the stroppy pink princess

2006-03-23T17:40:00.001Z

Today got up on time! But still ended up being 15 mins late to lab... walked in and was almost completely clueless.... oh well our results agreeded with the class results so its all good. :-) Anna and Xi were even more late! Discussion of results and then the exact same plant breeding video we saw in second year genetics.... first time around it was bareable.... second time very boring....

We then had extended lunch until 2pm... where i went to union shop with Xi to get funky folders for gentics (Xi decided to splash out on an IC hoodie); waterstones to get Lamb's book so he can sign it; lunch then lib to continue writing essay. I wasted a lot (two words not one! see later.....) but after some google searches i think i understand my topic very well.... why didnt i do that before instead of being utterly confused??

After lunch it was the dreaded "name and shame" session. My essay was first up to be dissected in front of everyone.... he seemed to spend an eternity on mine.... i seemed to have made grammatical/spelling/other errors on every page.... and lots of it. Including spelling concEIved wrong; writing alot instead of a lot; and other silly little mistakes however i still managed to get a good mark. What was funny was that Karen and Marvins both were very similiar essays - both based on Lambs' lectures - 80%, so come exam time i would have memorised all his lectures and hopefully get close to 80%.... Lamb defiantly spent the longest time on mine, whether that was becasue my had the most mistakes or whether i was first and then he started to run out of time i dont know..... i have to say i dont like this attention!

Not satisfied with a single "name and shame" session, we also got feedback from our talks. Apprently although i tried to pronounciate my words some of them were still unclear... and voice projection a problem. I think i got middle of the class this time rather than bottome like PPEP! Hopefully..... well i would rather get good mark and be bottom then ok and be near top..... it all depends on how strict the marker is i suppose!

There was one more student talk this arvo... it was about plant breeding laws etc... not my subject, v. boring.....

Everyone also recieved little wrapped gifts from Cherlyn, containing easter eggs and a personal message! So thoughtful, thank you. I am actually eating them as i type, there are just delightful. :-D

Lamb came over to us afterwards to confirm/remind us about the experiment - Lamb is defiantly very keen...... Xiyu taking this very seriously jotted down who was taking part, whether they would be "control" or "test subject" (i.e. drinking alcohol) and whether they would be eating an hour before the experiment as well as a list of what equiment would be needed. Lamb was surprised by the amount of people taking part, he is getting another bottle of whisky and clearing chairs! lol.

NHM had new research involving a squid, and it was on show at certain times of the day. So Jac, Xi, Sophie and I headed down to NHM to see... somehow Anna managed to find us and also came along... unfort showings were only in the morning and fully booked, and advised us to ring back tomorrow morning... shame. :-(

Princess being ever stroppy and demanding wants EVERYONE to be in formal attire tomorrow for her not surprise birthday party. Bah! First she wanted nobody to be in jeans... until sophie argued her ones were formal and teamed with boots, belt and goodness knows what other accessories would make it more causal formal..... so Anna uses me as an example as wont not to wear! Saying my jeans are scruffy.... humpf! Well tough, i didnt bring anything remotely formal to London, so i will just have to face the wrath of Scary Princess and the 3 song penalty. -.- Boo! Somehow Jac managed to convince Anna she just can not be in formal attire tomorrow.... bah! I need to be more persuasive.... Jac if you read this before tomorrow, if i go down i am taking you with me!!

Well tonight i have to finish my RNAi essay, and hopefully start the problems.... *sigh*.

Alcohol experimentation

2006-03-21T19:47:00.000Z

Yesterday i had my talk. It was my usual standard of talks, i.e. low, was bottom of class for PPEP and very low for SIBs. Hope he is leanient with marking. Actually apart from being bad with my nervousness and sluring of words etc, it was atypical. I decided against learning my speech and to read instead, why? One word systems.... nervousness and forgetting your words is not a good combination. There was four talks in "my" slot... it was suppose to end at 12:20, four of us managed to finish out talks before 11:50!! I have no idea how long my talk was but the problem is that Dr Lamb looked at his watch near the end of my talk.... i dont believe my talk was over time, less than 50 mins for 4 ppl.....so does that mean my talk was boring and dragged?? Oh no! Also Lamb sat in the FRONT bench, right under your view..... quite nerve racking and everytime he scribbled i kept thinking what have i done wrong now!

During lunch i was suppose to go to SIB meeting to discuss what was on exam (ALOT of ppl complained about being unsure....) I ended up going to wrong place and being 5 mins late! Bah, anyway usual stuff, explain/describe/anaylsis type q's. 8 questions 3 sections - stumpf, methodologies (mainly cass) and omics. No further reading needed, but will get u better marks, blah blah blah. THis is just a reminder for myself because i havent got it written down anywhere else.... so sorry for boring anyone!

Arvo was stupid yeast and Sp again. Last yeast prac! I think we didnt do too badly for yeast, we got ok results.... Asp i cant say the same!! We didnt culture the green diploid (0_o)... i was sure we did. Where were Princess and Xiao?? They didnt show up and Xi and I were clueless.... when asked about green diploids we blamed missing team mates! Serves them right for not showing up!

Also had slideshow, thankfully not a weird one. It was about human diversity. Throughout we had to guess what Race former students were from looking at pics of faces. There was one of the flushing of orientals in response to alcohol, the girl did not flush very much.... Lamb said he would be interested in taking pics of anyone showing....

..... and that lead to the discussion by Xi and I and the eventual email to Lamb, proposing an experiment, of the levels of redness in response to alcohol - 1 shot every 15 mins for an hour. Lamb replied by the time i got home.... he was very interested indeed, and didnt seem to mind when we did the exp so long as it was done, oh and he also wanted to be present to take pics. He would provide the alcohol! What have we let ourselves in for 0_0

Today was Cherlyns, Anns and Marcus' talk, all of which i wanted to attend. Unfort was feeling too well this morning and had a lie in instead! Waste of time coming in really, arvo was just newspaper clippings and mags etc to do with applied genetics.... interesting yes, but a waste of time nevertheless. Left after an hour to go to the lib. Read all but one journal before getting hungry!

Tonight its read 1 journal, SIB lecture 2 and start writing essay, more like continue seeing as i practically have 1/2 done. :-)

Also finalised the alcohol exp., its on this Friday at 12:30, applied genetics ppl. Also Husky i am sure Lamb wouldnt mind you taking part either! Lamb is really keen about this, he brought in a bottle of whisky and a head theromemeter today!! Lol, so looks like all set, we just need enough ppl to turn up on friday.

Waster

2006-03-19T20:14:00.000Z

I just hate getting up late... it feels like the whole day is wasted. And i dont know waking up late seems to make me work slower, amplifiying the effect. Got up around 2, lunch and then after messing around "trying" to work... it was 4pm, had lunch, then faffed around more, 6pm... get the pattern? Well finally managed the reading i wanted to do for tomorrows talk.... all of 4 journals, ok ok i wanted to read another 5, but then again that was for my original plan of finishing essay as well today. At the momenet just bored waiting for my dinner to finish cooking, you would think i wouldnt get bored with the amount of hours i waste wouldnt u.... thats what i thought too!! But alas its not the case. After dinner i have a fun task of writing and preparing my speech and hopefully an early night. Not looking forward to no power point, i dont know whether to draw the diagrams (steps of pathways) or to pre-draw them and have them as hand-outs or as one large copy to stick on the board..... decisions decisions. I think simplifiyng them and then drawing them would be better, that way i dont have to speak as long! lol, depends how long my speech is i suppose.... 15 mins isnt a long time.

Time wasting

2006-03-18T22:22:00.000Z

I need to finish my essay this weekend, and unfort i also have a presentation on monday, based on the essay. Got up late, lunch, faffed around. Then started work finally, slow going, why are some reviews just so boring and unreadable? Yeah not much work done. Then i get IMed by Xiyu showing me vids from google.... so spent a while wasting time watching a few....

A few shorts one that i think are good:

Number one: does this remind u of anyone?

Number two: very useful! I spent no idea how long trying to master this and just couldnt get it right! Xiyu says its easy once u get the hang of it... bah! -.-

Now i really do have to finish my reading!! RNAi such a fascinating topic!

2006-03-17T22:00:00.000Z

Thursday

Missed the first lecture for my dentist appointment. I need to have two fillings, bottom-back left and right side.... bah, never had fillings before and most likely mean i will have to go through the dreaded injection... grr. The werid thing is i dont think i have changed the way i brush my teeth or my diets changed etc... surprise that i need fillings... perphaps it all that ice cream and late night snacks!!

I came a few mins late for the lab, and i walked into utter silence, which is v. unusual for a lab session. Usually full of chatter.... EVERYONE had their face down and was writing... it kinda freaked me out! I thought Lamb had set an unplanned test. In fact it was another shaming session to find out if we knew what was going on in the yeast prac.... only 1 person got the answer to the q! lol. Luckily Lamb went around asking ppl individually what their answers were, me being late he didnt ask me (thank goodness!!). During lunch Karen took me through the "funny/weird" lectures they had on weds..... and i am glad i wasnt there! Although perphaps it would have been quite funny seeing his Drosophila and horse impressions! lol. The second one about sperm was just... er distrubing!!!

Friday: 1 lecture and a slideshow. Missed both... couldnt get up. Bah. Oh well easy to catch up on, and i just fall asleep in them anyway... they are quite slow moving. Slideshow wasnt too funny so didnt miss much. Got woken up by Anna phoning me this morning, making me feel bad that i missed lectures! THEN she tells me she also missed them (intentially) -.- Pooey princess!!! I assumed she went....

This weekend its essay, pracs and reading lectures! Oh boy what fun i am going to have! Plus SIB revision... that course is pooey, more poeey than princess!!

Tuesday

2006-03-14T17:21:00.000Z

Yeah boring title, boring day. Was only 5-10 mins late for lecture. Yay! Should have skipped it, it was stuff we did last year, all pretty self-explanatory. Same for second lecture. I couldnt be bothered to blog yesterday, but one thing to note: Lamb found out about Xi's "love" of alcohol yesterday, kindly pointed out by Anna and Xiao. Today during the break he came up to Xi with a bottle of whisky and a wine glass asking her if she wanted a taste... Xi seemed rather stuned and giggly, in shock i suppose... everyone else in lab seemed to be, esp Roanna and Karen. Then after the second lecture Xi showed the characteristic red flushes common in oriental ppl after drinking (and i cant remeber the reasons, year two genetics, lol.) So Lamb asked if he could have a feel (0_o) and said it isnt hot, asking how long does it last.... apparently one hour... me thinks underestimate, Xi was still red after lunch....

Xi wanted lunch at the Queens arms, other bio ppl being boring so it was just Xi, Princess and I. Typically Xi ordered a sandwich, Anna and I had bangers and mash. Love mash... too bad everytime i try and make it turns out lumpy or horrible tasting... expensive food on fancy plates IMO. Decided against an alcoholic drink.... alcophilic Xi (lol! not a word i know... but it should be!!) needless to say did... Importantly we came to the conclusion that Lamb was just trying to make princess jealous esp after all the wedding fiaso princess put him through.... worrying him with will she or wont she! And probs not trying to set up a liason.... well Xi hopes! Well i will keep you guys informed about the siutation!

Pooey Pink Princess

2006-03-10T15:27:00.000Z

Thursday:

Another late day, why? I have no idea, i sleep reasonable time, perphaps i need to sleep before 12, around 11... will try that next week me thinks. Then it was a microscope exp. not too bad.... using class results to write up anyway! After it was continuation of the seemingly neverending Asperillus prac... followed by the "name and shame" tutorial. Everyone got their comments and mark read out. Princess got 83% top of the class! Why is she pooey? Becasue she beat me obviously! Dur! Glad its non-assessed BUT still annoyed at myself that i didnt also get 83%. The only thing differing between our essays (well the question we chose was more of calculation type question) was the intro.... we discussed and basically wrote down the same for the calculations... so that means the intro cost me 15%. 0_o Well it didnt help that Lamb didnt record a mark for my essay so "made" one up on the spot. Bah bah bah!! But it does make me feel better that its possible to get really high marks without further reading, *cough* Marvin *cough*.

Friday: Our one and only free day! Plan on writing up problem sheet, pop sim prac, SIB lecture, reading genetics book/lecture notes, tidying up messy room, and perphaps a few karotype pracs.

Jac's B'day

2006-03-07T23:55:00.000Z

Today was late yet again, no idea why, i went to sleep at a reasonable time, around 12:30 i think... well before both Xiyu and Anna anyway.... got in for second lecture though... better than nothing! Lab in the arvo was short, then had an IQ article to critique.... that was funny!

Finished around 3:00 and having to wait around until 5:30 for Jacs dinner do. Planned to do work, just reading lecture notes ended up not doing much!! Bah. Went to a Restaurant in Gloucester Road, called Bugis Street at Millenium hotel. Singaporean food... reminded me of the summer, had Chicken Rice, tasted just like in s'pore, needless to say it was muy bien! After it was back to Jacs/Xiaos house to continue the celebrations. Does it seem familiar? Perphaps but no drinking games, Chin didnt stay for long and Jac didnt have work. Had nice ice cream cake. For some reason Jac wanted me to have a go at her Mario DS game to see what i would get. Its basically sorting out bombs into two separate boxes using the touch screen, it gets faster, more bombs come out, until the point where one mistake costs u dearly! Well first go got a measly 49... second got 161, seeing as i made a mistake and blew up quite alot of bombs, i wasnt that dissapointed to hear that Jacs highest score was 184. I was determined to beat her highest score. Well got completely addicted and so did Princess! It think i played on it the most, but Anna had quite a few goes to - i could only draw with Jacs 184, once Anao got 189, the high scores just carried on coming, with Anna and I alternating in beating each other.... yeah we are highly competitve... well i am anyway! I ended up with 280, after blowing up around 30 bombs, dissapointed, i knew i could have crossed the 300 barrier. Bah, as u can clearly tell i had great time, i hope Husky will have just as great a time beating our scores. The 184 is history, not even on the top 5 score board. lol!

Well Happy Birthday for Monday Jac! Hope you had a great time tonight. :-)

Past week

2006-03-06T20:42:00.000Z

Went to see dentist on thursday at 9am, missed 1 lecture. Got seen at 10 (ish) and got told i had a tooth abscess, mouth too swollen for them to look properly, given antibiotics and then told to come back in 2 weeks.... sign waste of time. Well maybe not, miraciously past few days been able to sleep well!! Lol, probably psyhological. Had muy bien lab in the afternoon - beads to simulate a population and test what happens when there is a deletious allele. Fun fun fun.

Sat/Sun didnt work AT ALL!! Poo! Wanted to finish essay or atleast do the reading... didnt start in the end!! Grrr..... Somewhere in there i managed to do the practice essay questions (just!), talk on msn about Jacs b'day party... shes such a hard person to buy for!!

Monday: Bumped into Tar today. He left uni after 1st year to do a furniture restoration and conservation course!! lol. It was really unexpected, he tapped Xi on the shoulder and then started talking... obviously we were in shock!! Someone we havent seen in oh so many years suddenly turning up. He didnt recognise me at first. -.- Apparently i have changed alot.... he said i looked alot younger then.... yes i know i now look old and hagged, and always tired looking.... Bah!!

Had a microscope prac today... AGAIN. However it actually went well today, the hycanith, fine i messed up first prep, BUT second one i actually found something!! Yay! Dr Lamb said it was well stained, the separation wasnt too bad either. I was happy with it, dispite having so "expert" microscopr prep person sitting next to me with wonderful slides! The only thing wrong with this morning lab session was getting Dr Lamb to help me with phase contrast and i had it all set up and Princess looked at it for me and changed the magnification to x100 and the phase was set up for x40.... when Lamb mentioned it i blamed it on Anna... well it was her doing. :-D Lamb defended Anna by saying "Not everything can be blamed on Anna". Then while Lamb was out of the room Anna got a phone call.... and she wouldnt tell us who it was from! She even said it was "secretboy".... were they planning their next liason? To top it off Anna dropped a huge surprise on us, she is getting married, and this friday! All the preps are well underway, venue - Roannas biggest beach, Karen - flowers, Xiyu taking Xiao and Anna and yet to be named groom by private jet... will keep u updated!

Afternoon was more microscope work.... this time taking swabs from mouth and staining DNA to look at bar bodies... well in female cells and the lack of them in male ones! Also had yeast and asp. pracs. OMG yeast is confusing the life out of me, esp the questions he asks to test whether we are actually thinking... and some clever person at the front bench knows all the answers, MARVIN!!

I am really tired, i think i might write-up the problem sheet adn then sleep.

Nuisance of a day

2006-03-01T21:19:00.000Z

What i plan and what i actually acheieve seem to be polar opposites. I seem to want to cram everything into one day, but end up doing nothing. Perphaps if i set my targets lower? I dont think my plan of reading (yeah just reading, not even learning) all of Lambs lecture notes upto todays and then writing the practice exam question is too much. But it appears it is for someone not motivated to work. Boo!

Then i have my tooth to worry about. The swelling had gone down from monday but overnight it suddenly got bigger, so much so that marvin noticed it! Poo him for being so observant. I was planning on waiting until going back to cambrigde on saturday to get it seen... then decided to do a little goggle search and i am worried. Also apparently i havent been to my dentist since april 2004! It would have helped if they had sent me a reminder. -.- I am one of those lazy ppl that need to be prompted! So apparently they are full and so are reviewing their clients... basically translated as no we wont see you.

"Continuous toothache which prevents sleep, or is associated with Fever and swelling of face or gum, or a tooth which is loose or feels too long, may be caused by a Tooth abscess; you should see a dentist within 12 hours." I wasnt able to sleep sunday and monday because of pain, my face is obviously swollen, the tooth feels loose... but hoping i dont have an Tooth abscess - they sound horrible!

Well unless i decide to miss lectures i wont be able to attend any of the "emergency walk-in-surgeries" at local London dentist until saturday... looks like i will have swollen mouth until then! Never liked them being called surgeries... images of pain, blood......

Not so surprise party!!

2006-02-28T23:46:00.000Z

Got in late again, this time it was combination of train delays and waking slightly later. Today was suppose to be easy laid back day and finish at 3:30 so we had time to pick up the cake from wonderful pattisserie... unfort tubes got mixed up and prac was moved over to the afternoon so we got extended lunch! Grr... so how were we suppose to collect cake and be on time? Finish lab early of course... unfort the yeasts were misbehaving... took forever to find them, but once found a meare two ticks and they were diluted, innoculated and streak plates were made. Finished rather later than we had planned. Me, i like things going to plan and start to panick when i dont have time to re-organise/plan! lol. Yep typical me. So it was try and not act too suspiciously/overheard talking to Anna and Xiyu during lab about what we were going to do, but Xiao being in the same group wasnt too easy! I dont think it helped that we mentioned we had to leave a fair few times! Apparently i was the biggest giver away (is that even a word!). :-( It was quite obvious Xiao worked it out especially when she asked us why we were in such a hurry and where we had to go to.... we should have had better made up answers instead of trying to think on our feets!! Bah!

Dinner at Giraffe was great! Loved the "free" giraffe stirrer that came with my fruit smoothy!! Food was nice, chicken wings muy bien, the singaporean noodles abit too spicy for my liking! The only negative, the tables - long rectangular tables and 12 people, not the most sociable setting! Loved the sofa style seats though!

5 of us went to Xiaos to continue the celebrations with drinking games... well if you can call it that! Most of us dont/didnt drink. I think Xiao had a great evening but not as much as a certain someone who had one too many.... not naming anybody, but read her blog. *cough* Xiyu *cough* ;-) My brain was alot slower after one drink... I stuck to coke/water after that! The card games were fun... got noisier as the evening progressed, esp from a certain someone! Hope we didnt distrub Xiaos housemates too much! Too bad it isnt first year where everyone lives around s.ken.... couldnt stay long becuase of tubes and getting home.

Monday

2006-02-27T13:16:00.000Z

Went to bed early yesterday at 9:30! Can you believe it. I just felt so shattered. World of good it did me... not. Woke up at 2am, then it was cycles of sleeping and waking until 8am, now i feel even more tired that usual! Grr, i can never win....

Had meeting with Dr Cook/Derek about final year project. Basically it was just a brief to tell us what we need to do, etc. Derek and Steve very nice ppl. Contrary to what Xi and Jacs sups seem to want, Derek told us not to worry to much about FYP until after exams.... or perphaps they are just super keen!! The outline is just that an outline, it is dynamic and can be changed as we move through the project. I have a rough idea of what i want to do. It makes me feel better that what i write wont be too important. Still need to do it right though. Well will be starting a new blog soon for my FYP.... will let you know when its done! Anyway back to meeting: anna did ALL the talking, my tired disfunctional brain just wouldnt think! I am sure i was half asleep and looked every bit as tired as i felt! So sorry anna for making you do the talking! But then Derek didnt seem to mind... he already talked to me beforehand and told you about the ideas i had come up with.

I just want to go home and er sleep! Its not as if i havent slept enough! Lol, i hope i can start sleeping earlier and waking up earlier. Well we will see.

Oh good news! Pink Princess has started blogging again! Perphaps she has had enough of hiding and using that other blog and wants us bio ppl to read it - u know attention seeking!

Lazy day

2006-02-24T22:34:00.000Z

I am still suffering from the half term. Half terms are suppose to be breaks from studying. Instead it was spent writing two essays and 4 pracs and getting my circadian rhythm messed up. I couldnt sleep yesterday night, as soon as it neared midnight i started feeling more and more awake, then at 4am i suddenly felt really tired... thats when i crawled into bed. No surprised that i couldnt get up the next morning, i missed my first genetics lecture ever! I didnt miss single lecture last year nor first year of genetics! no!! Luckily only 1 lecture and they are easy to catch up on - thank goodness for good notes. Also had a stats problem sheet, which incidentally i still need to do tonight.

Just when i thought the day couldnt get any worse i found out afternoon prac was microscope work. Looking at roots tips and karotpying - no. and size of chromosomes. What a nightmare. First mistook the sheeth as the 1 mm of cells at tip... obviously i saw nothing! SO had to start again... the prep took 14 mins... so i decided to make 4 extra... luckily i did, i wasnt the only one who started again!! Unfort we have to karotype another plant and i suppose compare. Boo!

Tonight want to write up human karotype prac and the plant uv/mutation prac.

I woke up so late i didnt even have time for lunch... in fact i didnt eat until i got home at 6:30! Ekk! Hungry, and annoyingly i havent stopped eating since!

Wednesday

2006-02-22T21:39:00.000Z

Had genetics lectures with lamb, everything seems familiar to what we did last year but perphaps with 1/2 extra bits... perphaps its because we are doing fungal genetics atm... hopefully there will be some new matieral, otherwise i will get bored. I know it will make revision easier....

Half a day, with so much hope. I decided agaisnt going into PC world to look at speakers to concentrate on lectures. What a stupid idea that was! I ended up wasting the time instead.... no work done as of yet.

Good news in that we got allocated our FYP!! Yay! I got my first choice, GST with Dr Cook. Anna is also working with Cook on the other GST project so looks like we will be collobrating our results afterall! lol. After the excitment of getting what i wanted, i just had to look at the form we needed to fill in. Its not so much as having to meet up with Cook/phd student its more of the fact that it assumes i would know exactly what i would be doing!! Looks like i should start reading!!

Also got Riccia from Xi. Put them in my coleslaw tub! Lol. Will add nutrients later, hoping alage doesnt start to grow....

Day of mistakes

2006-02-21T19:22:00.000Z

Todays lectures were fine, more revision from the second year. I think there were only 1 new info. the third test for auxotrophs. Maybe i wasnt paying attention at there were more.... Labs in arvo were fun and full of mistakes! First we had to take the mycelial mat from yesterday, and put it into TWO minimal medium plates.... we only put it in one! Oh dear! Next it was mutating fungi with UV. Anna spent half the time helping Team Cherlyn/Marvin and the other helping Team Roanna. Poo her! Without her we are what..... team?!?! I just realised how bad and how much i hate dilutions!! Really confusing! I THINK i get it now though... Anna knew her stuff - she did this for her UROP! So we expected to be the first team to finish...however another team beat us to uv machine. They took forever fiddling about.... hmm so Team Princess barged in! They kept complaining about us being slow and how that if we barged in we should know what we were doing or they could have been finished now, it would have taken them only two minutes. Whatever, if they hadnt taken so long to fiddle faddle they would have finsihed BEFORE we got there! Well we took too long due to me mainly! Anna was trying to tell me what i was suppose to be doing - i took the lid of the plate too early, therefore killing the fungi too early! Opps! We made our third *fatal* error, in that we forgot to dilute the 0 and 3 second readings. So it was starting again from stock solutions anyway (saving us from bad mistakes due to killing too early!! In the end EVEN Team Marvin beat us.

First part was blood testing. "Shame" we werent allowed to test ourselves, due to regulations blah blah blah. Mainly becasue our blood hadnt been screened. So Lamb tested his own, he even got a student to prick his finger! I didnt watch, never liked needles or blood..... well we were given a blood group test to take home... i dont think i will use it unless i get a cut or something. Also had to test the blood from an anonymolous (spelling!) person. He/she was O-.

U can probably tell from my long post that lab was fun and exciting. What a good 2nd day of genetics!

Revision?

2006-02-21T08:14:00.000Z

Revision plan went wrong yesterday, wanted to revise two ppep lectures, but 5 mins put my sleep derpived mind into well... sleep i suppose! Slept at 8:30 with the intention of getting up around 5/6 to do 1/2 lectures ended up getting up at 8am!! Too much sleep. Hopefully will be able to make up for today!

Half term over....

2006-02-20T16:40:00.000Z

... and i cant believe i am saying this but i am glad. Why? It means that i have given in all my EIM corusework and boy was there alot of it! lol, 4 pracs and 2 essays. Finished everything by 3am this morning, decided not to sleep. Why? My alarm clock hadnt been getting me up lately, and i wasnt going to risk not waking up. I didnt do all that work just to hand it in late and get -5%......

Well 4th and final course also begun today. It was a good easy, straight forward start. Nothing to taxing (even with my sleep deprived brain). Everything was revision from last year. There was a verbal quiz where he asked everyone in the room and asked them a question, in fact he went around twice! I was asked what Haldane map function was.... 0_o i had no idea.... its something to do with correcting something or another. My other question was what was a gene pool, that wasnt too bad. Felt sorry for ppl not having done genetics last year....

Pracs are in groups of 4, i ended up beging in Team Princess! Anybody who didnt do genetics last year had to work with at least one person who did, well Princess being our esteemed leader with help Xiao and Xi.

After lunch it was jolly good fun lab - we "karotyped" that is have a photocopy of chromsomes isolated from someone and had to identify what chromosome abnoramalitites they had. I have to admit i hate karotpying. It didnt take long to finish though, which is always good. I think i got 4-6 pairs right. The rest were just totally wrong! Oh well.

Soil bac and preservatives.

2006-02-16T01:57:00.000Z

Had a muy productive day yesterday, managed to finish RAMP resistance essay in one day. Very proud of myself. Today... not so productive. All day managed to read what 10 journals, rubbish, non-relevant, and i think i was reading just because i didnt want to actually start writing the practical.

Worried about all the junk i have been subjecting my body to. I have been feeling hungry ALL the time recently? Is it because of my nocturnal routine palying havorc with my circadian clock? Had lunch - baguette, snack - ice cream and banna, dinenr - pasta and sausages, more snacks - crisps x2 packets, cereal bar, another banana, apple.... and still hungry!! I think i might end up polishing those biscuits off as well! Grr.

Yesterday also went to NHM with Xi to see Jac. I dont know why but never really thought about "behind the scenes" and what type of stuff the general public didnt get to see! Its really cool and huge! There were cupboards and cupboards full of preserved insects (well Jac was working in entomology). I kinda wish i had been more organised and sent in my volenteer application form. Abit late now IMO, if i do masters here next year will defiantly apply! That reminds me i STILL have no idea what i want to do next year. ET with Nigel does sound good, but is it what i want to do? I thought it was, that was until i seemed to be more interested in the microbiology FYP over Nigel/Jeff/Sallys ones..... bah, why so many choices in life!

Patulin done, FYP submitted

2006-02-14T12:35:00.000Z

Well the title says it all. Now i need to do 1st Spanu Essay today. Loads more fun reading journals. :-)

FYP submitted:

1) Cook 030
2) Morley 094
3) Spanu 118
4) Williams 128
5) Feys 053
6) Langford 073
7) Lamb 070
8) Bates 008

I am not sure whether i want/should put down 6 or 8 choices. Would putting 8 affect my chances of getting the projects i put higher up? What if i only put down 6 and dont get any of them? I really want any of my first 3. 4-6 are good projects and i am sure i will enjoy them, 7,8 are more for insurance, interesting but prefer the other 6! (obviously seeing as they are ranked 7 and 8!)

Such a productive day.....

2006-02-13T02:54:00.000Z

....not. Managed to do little work, read 4 journals for patulin. So that leaves me 6/7 days to do 4 pracs and 2 essays, i also want to continue revising.....

What did i spend my time doing? Plating civilisation 4. Played for over 12 hours in two days, that could have been at least 10 lectures revised......

Shopping

2006-02-11T19:27:00.000Z

Initial plan was to get up at 10 to leave by 11.... didnt get up til 11:30 and left at 1!! Wanted to get there and back early.... didnt happen, got home at 6pm. I got cheap speakers - they were a bargain at £5 (4.97 to be exact!!). They are an improvement to the built in speakers on my laptop... but yeah wanted better, but too lazy, couldnt be bothered (and pretty pointless) to carry them to London when i could just buy them in London (the only difference is if i buy them in cambrigde me parents will pay!!). Lol. Also who can go shopping without impulse buying?? I wanted a new bag - slightly bigger than the one i have. In the end brought two, around same size! Oh well both were in sale....

Grr, left my camera in London, and family one is being a nuisance and wont let me download it onto PC! I took the wood out and added some new plants from my big tank last time i was in cambs. Hopefully will get camera working so i can post pics of it up. :-) The Thai Stricta has grown above the water level now.

Well back to reading patulin journals..... joys of the weekend.

I have Patulin today!

2006-02-11T11:35:00.000Z

I have to say recording lectures in wav format is the worst. It is all crackly and hard to hear. I just about had enough of either straining to hear or turning up the volume so it started to hurt my ears... it was then that i remembered i could plug my MD/CD player to my laptop. Bliss! There was still the crackly noise but the voice was ALOT clearer.

Today i have set myself the task of writing Patulin practical - intro, method and discussion. Results done already. I think i will aim to use at least 6 journals, read two already. Also going shopping today, looking for speakers for use when i get back to London.

In Cambs

2006-02-10T21:33:00.000Z

Yesterday was the beginning of our "half-term" but it didnt feel like it seeing as i had to go into uni to see FYP supers. I learnt alot... but the meetings werent really neccessary seeing as they have no say in who they take.... still undecided as to which to chose! I think i have my first 2/3 choices - the supers i have seen/messsaged.

Got up around 11, finished lecture 4 PPEP, unfort cant remeber what it was about!! Something about anoxia.... Then it was off to cambs for an extended weekend. Only had light lunch before leaving for camb.... and since getting back havent stopped eating! Had waffles with beans, lots of chocs (Hotel Chocolat their "exclusive edition christmas chocolates") - very nice and had too many! Also been muching on choc biscuits and cornettos ice cream. Looks like i will need to do more excerise..... or more like start!!

Meetings aplenty

2006-02-09T12:28:00.000Z

Arrived nice and early 11:30, didnt want to make a bad first impression!!! No need for them to know i am a bad student until its too late! Spanu was nice, he filled in most of the silences by speaking, very honest and passionatly against the new system. I think (i hope more like) that he thought i would be capable of doing his project. Its reassuring to know the fungi only take 5 days to grow, so potentially there is that reassurance of being able to re-do the experiment, apart from that they dont have much substrate/space to grow it on - it requires a live plant to infect. The only problem was i didnt really ask many questions, only had 2-3 prepared beforehand and only thought up a few more during the meeting. I should have thought up a gazillion q's. Why is it that i always think up good replies and/or questions AFTER the meetings and not during....

After i had a meeting with Derek Wallace, about the GST project. I didnt really have any questions to ask, just felt i should go see him because well i want to put that project as my first choice. I think it pretty much showed that i didnt have much to ask/say. Marvin also there.....

After it was a thrilling discussion about IPBC prac write-up with Marv. He just made me realise how little i know and my "that prac will be easy to write-up" thought has been shattered, sending me into a panicked state! Now its going to be 4 hard pracs to write up.... and not so sure whether to do Sapstain or IPBC as mini-project. *Sigh* decisions decisions.

And sorry for the complainer(s) who think i blog too much about work, you know who you are!! But work is fun and exciting and i just have a compelling desire to talk about work.

Cant wait for Valentines day.....

2006-02-08T23:01:00.000Z

..... and no i dont have any plans, its just that i am tired of worrying about FYP, by that day i would have chosen my projects, or if not then i wont have any choice but to put down 6-8. Its the deadline for FYP deadlines.

Had the last EIM lecture. And a tutorial about GMO.... the picadilly line was horrendous this morning. No idea what happened. But there was a problem....

Then i was suppose to meet up with Marv to discuss IPBC prac.... ended up emailing FYP supers instead. Got reply from Spanu, Cook and set up 2 meetings.... great..... yeah. Came back later than i expected at 2-3. I wanted to write lectures up - yesterdays and todays. But no instead i thought more about FYP and read Spanu journal, "tried" to think of exciting q's to ask tomorrow... couldnt so settled for thinking up ANY possible q's i could ask.... hmm spanus meeting shouldnt be too bad seeing as he didnt answer the q's i asked in email. But Cook bascially already outlined what the prac is likely to include, couldnt think of any addictional things to add or direction to take it.... oh well will think more...

FYP

2006-02-08T01:49:00.000Z

Lectures by GB again today. No more filling in the blanks! Yay! He isnt too bad a lecturer when u are actually able to concentrate on what he is saying rather than scribbling and trying to copy everything down from the board. Enjoyed the lectures.

I THOUGHT i made up my mind about which 8 FYP i would be putting down. Then started e-mailing supers... well drafting and i realised i hadnt actually thought about what i would actually be doing, so no idea why or how i came to chose those 8.... its so stressful. I liked Spanus one and there are alot of variations of what i can do so emailing him wasnt too difficult - just worried that i might find it difficult seeing as i didnt do MPMI. Stupid systems.... I think Cook/Dickinson GST one is going to be my first choice. Well going to try and email a few more ppl, and then sleep on it. Maybe i will change my mind yet again!

Turned new leaf

2006-02-06T20:03:00.000Z

Woke up early this morning 7:15. Got to uni by 8:30 and started to sort out my FYP and which ones i wanted to do. So far still have 13 "possibilities". *sigh* i want to do everything!!

Had lectures by new lecturer to the department GB.... he took over Kennys lectures. GB must have came from a bad uni with much less enthusiastic students apparently he had poor attendance at his old uni.... He missed parts out of his lecture notes in order to 'make' us attend his lectures to fill in the gaps..... as IF we would even think that!! lol. It was seriously annoying having to wait for ppl to finish writing, having to write very quickly in order to get everything down - and there was alot. It was either listen to him or copy what SHOULD have been on the hand-out!! Grr!

After lunch decided to register to use the sports centre, the queue wasnt too long. Although for some stupid reason they can only book inductions a month in advance and the last day available is 3rd march at either 4:15 or 3:15.... seeing as i didnt know my timetable yet i decided to wait for timetable and then book induction. Going to have to come back another day.....The extra few days shouldnt make much difference anyway....well unless more ppl decide that they also want to use the gym. Too many people! Grr!

Lab consisted of the monotonous task of counting whether bac grew or not and measuring the area of growth of fungi.... oh what fun! We were suppose to start at 1:30..... but DJD forgot so we started just before 2.... 0_o Well at least our *last* lab (hurray!1) was short. Left by before 4.... and then it was library time!! I wasnt able to connect onto the uni wireless internet and couldnt be bothered to move my stuff and use a uni comp.... so there went my plans of working on Spanu q's. Instead wrote up lecture from this morning as well as read a journal.

You would never guess who i saw at S.Ken tube! It was Dr Lamb! I didnt recognise him, we were both waiting for tube literally a few metres apart.... and it wasnt until the tube arrived and he lifted his head did i realize it was him!!! I never knew Lamb wore a grey coat! We got on same carriage.... awkward convo! He commented on how late it was and whether i had been working hard.... i kinda nodded, should have gave him the impression i was the hard working student by telling him i was working on practical reports.... He was on his way to see a ballet. I never know what to say to lecturers.... i wish i had Annas "gift", but perphaps not as er "friendly". :-D Also talked about his slide shows and how much he loves giving them, apparently it takes him ages to take the slides out and put them into order.... but its all worth it. He absolutely loves giving slideshows, so much so that we have 3, yes 3 in applied genetics!! Too bad the convo was cut short, i left at my usual stop - Green Park, but now i am thinking perphaps i should have changed at Kings Cross instead and maybe even ask him about FYP! Although i didnt really like the sound of his two projects, shame really, i wouldnt have minded working for Lamb.

Love my food

2006-02-05T17:56:00.000Z

After two non-productive days - i managed to write out 2 lectures..... wanted to do alot more. *sigh* i ALWAYS say that and i am too lazy to work.

Making lunch - well fine only boiling pasta! Went upstairs for awhile and got phone call from Sophie... no idea how long we talked or how long the pasta had been boiling when she called.... well needless to say the pasta was soggy and over cooked. According to my stopwatch it was 26 mins instead of the usual 8 i leave it for. Obviously muy bien lunch! Hmm i forgot to defrost the meat last night, so looks like either plain pasta or rice for me tonight, gotta love my meals!!

Didnt sleep til late last night, no idea why! So got up after 1 today! Grr, since then havent been up to much... should have worked, well at least i have started now, reading "Fusarium Ear blight" which is actually quiet intersting. Then its either PPEP lectures or start on pracs.

Also got a phonecall from mum today, apaprently one of my albino angels has died. It was found on the bottom of the tank. :-(

Glasses......

2006-02-04T19:26:00.000Z

My glasses broke. No idea how it happened.... one minute i was wearing them they felt fine, the next thing i knew something was digging into my nose. I moved my glasses - no more pain... then pain a few secs later. On closer inspection of my glasses i noticed the plastic part that sits onto of the nose was missing on one side! Bah i will need to go to opticians to get the part replaced... Luckily i have a spare pair.

Also done absolutely nothing today. I want to blog one day and say i have done x amount of work, y amount of fun things, and z amount of excerise.... but it aint happening today thats for sure!!

Need to go grocery shopping, couldnt be bothered so made do with what i had in house - pasta and eggs! Also have lots of meat in freezer... but hungry and that requires time to defrost! Will made do with rice and some meat tomoz and shopping monday.

Eventful day as always!

2006-02-03T21:57:00.000Z

Woke up late at 12. It was decided yesterday night that i wouldnt be going home today - no point really seeing as dads workmate was going back to London today anyway! Lol, what a coincidence. So meet up with him to hand the bag back for him to take to my dad to send back to the company.... they wanted original packaging which was back in cambs!! lol, i am such a pain!!!

While i was at the train station i decided on impulse to go shopping. I didnt actually need anything... just decided i didnt want to go home and... work!! Lol, so ended up walking around Oxford Street for an hour just browsing... refreshing but kinda a waste of time really. Watched rest of Rosen Maiden - hmmm a weird weird series about dolls 0_o. I wouldnt personally reccommended it.... but only short at 12 eps. Dont think i will download any more series otherwise i wont work!! Well should start working!!!

Laptop case finally purchased

2006-02-02T20:58:00.000Z

Got in 20 mins ealrly today.... no idea how, i didnt get up particularly early...well started reading the journal for Spanus Q1. Lectures were by Lamb. Especially compared to Goldsworthy's lesiurely pace he lectures really fast! Its really hard to get everything down! Lol, had it too eassy recently! I was sure last year i could just about cope with his speed.... well just glad we could get photocopies of his lecture notes! Relief! After lecture princess stayed behind to talk.... wonder what for!! The second lecture with Lamb included a slideshow. It was all about his love of wine making.... and it wouldnt really be complete unless he tells us a little too much! In this case it was a pic of him crushing grapes in a bucket... whats wrong with that? Well firstly he was in just a shirt.... he also commented "my wife had to be careful when taking that pic", so was he wearing anything other than the t-shirt 0_o.. Lets not dwell too much on that subject!! ><

Third lecture of the day was with Murphy.... and i have to say it was interesting but just couldnt concentrate, 3 lecs in a day is too much for my little brain to take!! Well we were suppose to be in Room 120... but the epidemilogists were there... 0_o It took a while to sort what was going on... moved to lab 562 in the end.

After it was off to lab to record the results of the co-formulation prac. Our results turned out well. :-) Dickinson forgot camera, so everyone used Xi's. So everyones prac report should have muy bien photos. :-D

After lab i made a trip to High St. Ken. Went to PC world. They only had bags for 15' or bigger laptops 0_o Annoying!! So all that walking wasted. Bah! Also planned to go to the Apple shop in Regents st. Getting off at Picadilly Circus and then coming out of tube station and seeing horses (not Anna, the statue - water fountain) everything seemed familiar. Never knew that was near Regents St!! Lol. Then it suddenly struck me, which way i am to go. Walked up and back down in two streets, they didnt look like the right one - well apparently according to Xi it was same st as Hamleys... and i have driven past that shop too many times! None familiar.... in the end i got instructions from a patrol guy. Apple shop doesnt seem like a shop. 0_o I saw the apple sign a mile off... well literally. :-D When i entered i was shocked. Not what i expected AT ALL! It looked more like an architectural building or theatre even with its perspex stairs and spacious feel. In the end got an "incase" carry wallet.

Decided to do some work today and go home early tomorrow instead. Will then send back the much too big bag...shame really, i genuinelly like it. Too bad they didnt make a 12' version...

Bag

2006-02-01T17:41:00.000Z

Lectures were by Goldsworthy!! THe BESTEST lecturer EVER. Understood and followed the WHOLE lecture... well parts i missed out but still muy bien. Then off to lab... it was locked had to get someone to unlock door so we could UV our TLC plates and then photograph and measure the bands.... it didnt take half as long as i expected. Finsihed before 12:30, was planning to work in lib... er yeah! lol. went home instead. Didnt end up working...

Got my new laptop bag today. Too big!! Lol!! I know it said the size on the page.... but still i think the size looks fine, the only prob is it drowns my bag... and whats the point in having a small laptop if i have to carry such a big bag??? Well yeah likely to be returned tomorrow. Looks like i will visit PC world and have a look at their expensive bags.....

2006-02-01T17:36:00.000Z

The bag drowns my laptop 0_o

2006-02-01T17:35:00.001Z

New V Old bag

2006-02-01T17:35:00.000Z

Comparison of old bag and new one.

Extra lab

2006-01-31T16:34:00.000Z

Had 1 lecture in the morning - it was ok, apart from it put me off fruit - espically organic ones..... perphaps jam as well! Can u believe they store it in sulhur dioxide??? 0_o

Then it was off to a fun filled lab. It wasnt suppose to take long and it didnt... but then SA asked if anyone would like to run another gel, being the keen students we are, team Xi&Wk did... no one else did though!! Not even team princess!! And there i thought they were good students. It was *suppose* to take 1-1.5 hours... we waited for 2 hours and it *still* hadnt reached the top... so in the end Xi phoned SA and apparently it was ok, we could go, phew! At long last! In that time also had lunch - went to sandwich shop,but the queue was just too long, there was 10 ppl waiting outside including Box! We see him everywhere! He appears to hang around the same areas as us... and i am sure if he had started in our year he would be part of our crew! Oh well the wheel weaves as the wheel turns....or did i get that slightly wrong, oh well :-P Instead went to Tesco. Deep filled chicken salad only cost me 1.54! Bargain! Thier Bacon and Egg was 1.64. It makes me not wanna go to SAF cafe EVER again!! Also *attempted* to start my healthy regime by signing up to the gym, but again the queue was just too long, after 20 minutes waiting we (Anna and I) hadnt moved much... so we gave up, probs coming back tomorrow.... the word is probs!! Why are there this many obstacles stopping u from doing something you know you should do??

GOod news! My laptop bag arrived today... unfort it appears to be VERY big! 0_o It didnt look that big in the pic! Misleading or what. Well my dads workmate is coming down to London tomorrow, so hopefully will get it tomorrow. And hopefully it isnt TOO big, otherwise well i will just have to use my current bag! And i have just about had enough of the bubble wrap so er yeah that has to go!!

FYP out!!

2006-01-30T21:53:00.000Z

Had Lectures by SA. Quite intersting, covered a little on chilling/freezing injury but less in depth than PPEP. So if hes q comes up it will count as extra reading :-D Had Patulin prac with SA. Hmm what can i say, i think we royally screwed up.... blame it on princess! :-D

FYP (final year projects) also out today.... hmm what can i say apart from mostly eco ones. On the first run through i only liked the sound of Huw Williams one... but then he might not want me due to my poor dissertation mark..... after talking to Dan and Princess it appears there are a few more that are up my street!! Well going to have to go through the list again and read them properly!! Have until Feb 14 to decide, will mass emailing lecturers tomorrow! Oh boy what fun.

Happy Chinese New Year!

2006-01-29T17:56:00.000Z

Well i am ill - cant remember when i caught it but i cant seem to shake it off. I am sure i have already complained about it, so moan moan moan, u get the pic. Also my wisdom teeth is killing me - constant pain, more moan moan moan. Ok thats done with.

Had a great weekend at home, spent more time playing and relaxing than doing work - read that as nop work done! Read 1 journal on train, and half of that timber one... less than 1/2 of what i thought i could have done in that time... my cold, [insert other excuses] blah blah blah i am lazy.

Have i complained about the laptop case that was ordered at the same time? I have... ok wont say more apart from its ugly and over-priced! Ordered a new one, should get it soon. Well its sent to my camb house, my dads workmate goes down to london once a week.... so hopefully we get it delivered before he goes to london this week!

In order to transport my laptop from camb to london my parents were adamant i needed to protect it. Spent ages trying to find the bubble wrap - it just didnt seem to want to show itself, so made it out of cardboard... well it looked cheap and tacky, but oh well it will do the job, so meh! Well eventually found bubblewrap (it was in the kitchen with all the other bits and pieces -.-) i made another one. Bubblewrap beats cardboard hands down aestetically. Well u can judge for yourself in the pic below!

Must watch those anime episodes i didnt watch at home... er i mean start that assignment!!

2006-01-29T17:53:00.000Z

Temp. laptop case made by moi! Bubblewrap is cool!

Tank

2006-01-28T23:05:00.000Z

Well just tidied up my tank - its mainly hair algae with alot of dead plants - i had tonnes of elodea and now only have 4 stems left, all my cambomba died, creeping jenny i got rid of coz i didnt like them!!, in fact most of my stem plants have decreased in number. :-(

The new red plants i got (sorry dont know name) had holes all over the leaves - in fact they had so many holes they looked like they went through a shredder! I had to cut most of the leaves off. My lillies also had a few holes here and there... i finally found out why when observing my tank.... i saw my clowns AND angels taking bites out of them!!

The wood i put in my nano (the tall one from AD) wasnt fully submerged - the top cm or two was poking out of the water. I noticed white growth on it.... i am assuming soft rots. They outcompete basidiomyces (white and brown rots) becasue they can tolerate wetter conditions. In the end i took out the wood and added more plants from my already dwindling supply in my big tank!! I added thai stricta (which i have plenty of!!), 1/4 of my elodea (yes i stem!!) - that makes 2 in my nano.

Lazy Saturday

2006-01-28T19:04:00.000Z

Dispite waking up late at 11am and sleeping early(ish) at 12:30 i felt absolutely shattered this morning, i blame it on the cold i caught early last week. I am surprised i STILL have it, usually atfer 1-2 good nights rest i shake it off. Must be getting older and must start looking after myself better.

Laptop is muy bien. I tried playing games on it - civilisation 4 but alas it ran really slow during the middle parts of the game in the standard map - it took ages to load and there was alot of lag moving around the map. :-( looks like i am forced to use it strictly as a work laptop then!! lol.

What have i done sicne waking up? Watched anime ofcourse! Bleach, Naruto, Shakugan no Shana. I still need to watch Law of Ueki and Honey and Clover. Also helped type up some Chinese New Year info (you know the different animals, the years, the typical personalities and all that jazz) and menus for dad.

Well going to play more civ (on comp!!) and then start the dreaded work - PKS papers. What fun!!

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

2006-01-27T19:36:00.000Z

Friday is here again, the weekend of work - Spanu questions and PPEP revision/ecture write-ups; of fun - laptop and home - read family and anime!!

Well Prac was with Archer. I woke up with a headache which persisted throughout the whole practical - yes an excuse but meh! What can i say but Archer must think i am not all there in the head. My mind was switched off throughout the prac - and i kept having to bug anna on what to do! For some reason i talked about EDTA instead of EtAc (ethyl acetate.... that was embrassing to say the least!!) Still we managed to finish first!!! Team Princess are such prefectionists.

Had lunch at SAF then it was off to AD. No muy bien! They didnt have any of the fish we came to buy. No large Ancistrius for Xi. They had angels but either too big (the gold ones) or wrong colour (black - they are apparently more aggressive, which knowing my tank i DEFIANTLY didnt want...). I forgot to draw out any money so didnt end up buying algae wafers or filter wool. We even forgot to look at the wood!! How 0_o AD just isnt the same without having a browse of their rockery/wood, taking them all out, rummaging to find good appropraite pieces that could look good in our tanks, then finally decide we have brought too many already/no more space and have to put them all back!!

Then it was off to Cambridge. My headache returned, so only managed to read one journal and a few pages of that wood/timber manual in 45 mins. Unlike me Marvin seemed to be hard at work, phoning me about excel and T-tests just as i got into Cambs.

My laptop waited for me at home. Nice size and light. The only slight problem is external DVD/CD drive.... but then again i hardly use CDs anyway! It has [i]soo[/i] much memory (remeber my old one has 5GB!!!)

So good was Laptop, bad was AD and prac. What was the ugly part? You will have to ask Anna to eloborate about our convo during lunchtime... in summary i look ugly and dont put effort into how i look..... Also apparently my hairs is rubbish! Bah. Since when was i vain and cared??? Besides i like my hair just the way it is. :-D

Finally here....

2006-01-26T14:17:00.000Z

My student oyster photocard!! I got seriosuly annoyed when they rejected my first app. then forgot about it completely until near the beginning of this term. I suppose better late than never! ;-)

Had a guest lecture today Sir David Hopwood talking about Streptomyces and genetic engineering. It was very good, clear interesting lectures. Tomorrow is only half a day (well ish - with manana SA prac and lunchtime tutorial avec Spanu), then cambridge for the weekend, been looking forward to it ALL week. Cant wait to get my hands on my new laptop!!

Hot and cold....

2006-01-25T15:50:00.000Z

I always thought december was the coldest month, but as we are approaching feb it appears to be getting colder, especially these last few days indicated by me getting a cold! Well after working hard on writing-up lectures i felt thirsty and no water left (yes chinese ppl and boiling their water before drinking!!), so fill up kettle etc. Few mins later pour water into the glass jug (like i usually do....) and suddenly i hear a "breaking" noise, next thing i know the jug is in 4 pieces and water is flowing everywhere! Gosh why didnt i think about the physics of glass and shattering due to differences in temperature... i must admit it was quite relaxing wrapping up the pieces into tissue and scallotaping and then chucking into the bin. Oh what excitment!

Well todays lectures were on antibiotics part 2 and 3 by Spanu, muy interessante y fácil. It seems familiar - some of it from either AMB, BP or possibly even some first year stuff? Bah, the first two years material all seem a blur!!

Well now i am off to do what i should have done yesterday, stupid cold stopping me from the joys of lecture write-ups!!

THe morning after

2006-01-25T09:21:00.000Z

I have such a headache and feeling groggy. What was i up to last night? Sleep, can too much of it be a bad thing? Or is it just interrrupted non-quality sleep?? Lets start at the begginning....

Was feeling ill most of yesterday, but was suppose to work on prac results for IPBC detox. But before that we had a slide show during lunchtime of sophies muy bien photos. The results took far too long to do, was expecting to leave by 3:30-4... didnt leave until 4:30? Cant remeber. Stupid excel and error bars, SC was muy helpful, and showed us how to work excel. :-)

After dragging myself home and eating, i slept early - 8pm. 0_0 After it was constant waking and sleeping, i must have woken up 4-5 times during the night...

Another monday

2006-01-23T17:28:00.000Z

First lecture was at 10:30 today, so got a lie in... unfort spent the evening talking on msn, i blame u sophie! Didnt sleep until 12:30-1am. So only got 7 hours sleep, not nearly enough. Tired and couldnt concentrate. Lab started at 1:30, it was suppose to be quick.... stupid bacteria are annoying to count!! Most showed a little growth, and we tried distinquish between "a little" and "a lot" of growth.... yeah i know, very scientific. But then again all we really needed was whether the bac. grew or not... Well i re-did my results, it took forever. Then it was photocopying journals, exciting!

I went to supermarket to buy toothpaste (and a few other bits and pieces) they didnt have any out on the shelves 0_o How???? There was other types, just not the one i use. It must be popular, there was the space for it, just all sold out. 0_o Grrr i have to go tomorrow.... might go to boots instead.

"Cheating" on cooking again, still using up the char siu from yesterday. Got back home feeling famished, so kept pilling up the meat onto a plate to steam in rice cooker, hmm now that its cooked with rice and lettuce, its probably twice as much as i can eat!!!!

Grr i should try and remeber to bring my phone in more often, i didnt get the txt message from anna telling me about SIB returning work... now i have to wait until tomorrow!!

Tonight i have lecture write-ups, journal reading and prac write-ups to look forward to! Fun fun fun!

GP @ HK

2006-01-22T21:42:00.000Z

My grandparents (GP) went on holiday to HK today. Felt weird to cook for myself, after a long time of meals being made for me!! Although it wasnt really cooking, GP brought me some char siu, so all i had to do was boil up some rice!!!

And back to my favourtie topic, work... managed to read 2 journals, 1 EIM and 1 PPEP lecture. :'( Thats another 3-5 PPEP lectures to go. The annoying thing is i got up early to start working and managed to finish 1 lecture before lunch. Then got absorbed into TV and shipwrecked and T4.... grr!! Then it was fiddle faddle.... and yeah no work done, meh.

Picking up pace

2006-01-21T20:08:00.000Z

Woke up at before 9am.... too bad i felt like a lie-in... which ended with me falling back asleep until 12! Not tired today! For once. Well going to tell you guys again about how much (or shall i shall how little work) i have done. Planned so much work for today. Hoping to do 6 lectures. Managed 3 so far! Woot, a vast improvement, hope to keep it up. Still only 8:18, so plenty of time to do at least 2 more. :-)

Weekend is here

2006-01-20T22:11:00.000Z

Well another day (another practical). Enjoyed the prac. Infecting apples and apple juice with Pencillium. This practical was really quick.

The lectures with murphy were good too. Unlike his previous two his handouts werent jumping everywhere! The first one i even managed to write-up most of it up in the lecture!

What a fun, thrilling weekend i have in front of me, of lecture write-ups EIM, then further reading/reading for prac write-ups, and PPEP revision. Start the weekend!

No muy bien lab

2006-01-19T20:13:00.000Z

I worked until 12-1 am last night, not the best thing to do for me. I was tired in the morning. The first lecture i followed resonably well, even managed to take sufficient notes during lecture - good thing as well becasue my MP3 ran out of space during the last 30 mins. Second lecture was not so good, my mind was suffering from the "late" night yesterday...

Lab started off badly, i had no idea what to do, it took me ALOT longer than usual (not that i am on the ball usually!!) to know what was going on, and what to do. Bah. Then it was mistake after mistake, with Xi somehow messing up the dilutions - she ended up with different amounts of solution in the tubes and one dilution tube with nothing in it; meaning it had to be re-done. While Xi was diluting my job was to pipette the dilutions onto paper discs which had been placed on a white tile. I tilted the tile and the order was mucked up, needless to say it had to be repeated. Team princes finished before us, actually in fact we finished fourth, yes last. Not that it was a race or anything. :-D I just dont like to hang around during labs. ;-)

And to top off the bad day, i left my pencil case in the lab, with my mechanical pencil somewhere on the lab bench. Bah will have to go in early to retrieve them.

Wasted day.... yes another one

2006-01-18T21:54:00.000Z

Got home by 2pm. Spent until 5pm reading "New Spring". :-) Then started doing lecture write-up but got distracted, therefore took way too long to do that lecture!! Was hoping to write 4, managed 1 so far. Housewives is on tonight, after it should be another 2, then sleep.....

Sorry about my rather boring blog entries recently. Catching up lecture write-ups is taking priority in my life atm.... :'(

1 lecture and quick prac

2006-01-17T16:57:00.000Z

Late start this morning, 11am. Intended to get up early and write-up 1/2 lectures. Got up late so.... still tired for some reason dispite over 8 hours of sleep last few days. Got to uni slightly early couldnt work due to noise so gave into temptation and brought the prequel to the wheel of time, New Spring. Havent had time to read much yet though. Cant wait until the 11th comes out in paperback!!

Prac wasnt too bad today. It was SC's prac, the one where it took an hour last time. This prac took longer 1 hr 45 mins! Did pracitcally same as last time, 3 discs with sample and tetracycline, then incubate for next prac. Measured the growth from the previous exp - muy bien results apart from IPBC of Aur.... grr! Also tested for Iodine, again muy bien results!! Like the previous two pracs Team Xi and Wink were second to leave. Consistentcy. :-D

Also ordered a new laptop yesterday, my late xmas pressie. :-)

Unorganised

2006-01-16T14:12:00.000Z

Went to get my transport form stamped, yes its still not done. I forgot all about it after my first one got rejected due to something being wrong... well i left my pic at home and just remembered that before i entered the room, so that was a wasted journey. Went to uni shop to buy glue - 42p for the small one.... The guy in front of me in the queue had a bag similiar to Xi's. The red bag with the wheels that she got from s'pore. His was blue though.

Lazy boring weekend

2006-01-15T23:42:00.000Z

Well this weekend was practically free. So what better reason to work on revision and lecture write-ups? I wanted to write 2-4 PPEP and 4 EIM lectures over the weekend. I managed to write 2.5 lectures. 0_o No idea how time flew so quickily. Kicking myself, but tomorrow and tuesday look relatively free so i WILL work then!! I will i will. You heard it here first!

Sunday went "yum char" with grandparents. Went to the new restaurant with lots of big windows which IMO makes it look quite trendy. Cant remeber name though!! They had cool plates, it kinda reminds me (only a little though) of shells. The bowls were same style, but very shallow compared to the traditional types. They didnt have some of the usual food we usually have!! Shock horror. The restuarant was two tiered, but each floor quite small. It wasnt that busy either - but then thats expected with a new restaurant.

Friday the 13th!

2006-01-15T00:42:00.000Z

The previous 2 days lectures have been muy bien - easily understandable, and quite intersting. Hopefully there will be a question in the exam where i can use knowlegde from either second year BP stuff on actinomycetes or PPEP phytoremediation... Prac in the arvo was long. It was montonous, all i did was labelling, and steaking, no no my clothes stayed on throughout the prac, i innoculated 5 bac species onto each of 60 plates, thats a lot of steaking!! Lol, after doing no lab work since genetics in the second year i was really out of practice, the loop was alot more tricky to use then i remembered!! Towards the end i had the technique re-worked out and i didnt dig into the agar....hope they turn out ok... Worked with the ever efficient but pedantic Xi, who managed to prefect the "art" of hammering in the colonies and then transfering them onto the middle of plates. We only finished a few mins behind the 3 person group, not that it was a race!! Really hope all that effort was worth it.

First day of second term, third year.

2006-01-11T17:06:00.000Z

One word already, in terms of the hols being over far too quickly and my life at Imperial being that much closer to being over. I hate thinking about the future, what will it hold? What will i do? If i had my way i would be a student forever, without a worry for "real-life" and working.... too bad i dont have that kind of money to make it a reality!! Slept reasonable time - 1am, maybe a tad late. Couldnt sleep until past 3am, well that was the last time i glanced at my alarm clock. Stupid brain wouldnt stop thinking. Unsurprisingly i got up late, 8.50. Somehow i managed to convince my brain i could get in only slightly late, got in 1 hour later at 9.50. I didnt want to go in 20 mins late on the first day, so i skipped lecture to go t o comp room (i found out later it was a stupid idea!!!), where i researched masters/job possibilities. So far i like the sound o being a biostatistician - i would need to do a masters in stats, or an environemental consultant - requiring me to take an environmental masters, e.g Bells environ. technology one. Choices choices. There is only one funding for masters, and that has to be in before 30th Jan, if i didnt apply for funding i would have until august i think it is.....

Apparently there was a fire and major delays on tubes - Xi didnt get in until slightly before 10:30. After comp time, we meet some of the "bio crew" and exchanged pleasantries.... well maybe not exactly pleasant seeing as one has a poorly hamster and bad back, the other got robbed on xmas eve!!! OMG! Still no sign of ppl doing Envir Micro..... i panicked and decided to look in the room - they were still there, i presumed they started second lecture already (i was right in a way!!). Only around 50% of the number turned up, suppose to be 12 ppl in this course. It really was pointless turning up, stayed for like 10 mins, and that was it. The two lectures were combined into one, AND he didnt start until 9.45, if i had just gone in i would have missed 5 mins only. Grr annoying or what? serves me right i suppose.

Well getting back into the swing of things, writing up lectures, well read through in todays case. But will be starting on PPEP lectures today. Good fun indeedy. So much to look forward to....

Xmas hols

2006-01-11T16:49:00.000Z

It was a blissful, stress-free (mostly), relaxing time. I occupied myself with reading, reading Wheel of time by Robert Jordan. I have to say i didnt really start reading until the final 2 weeks. By the last week i was finishing 1 book every 2 days. From mid-book 6 it really does start to get exciting... Also played alot of comp games, Fire emblem on the game cube, Civilisation IV on PC (part of my xmas pressie). Fire emblem muy bien on GC. I love not having to use promotion items, the experience to level up characters outside missions. Too bad i didnt have enough time to complete the game. No work done, well tell a lie, i read 1 journal about microfluidics (i think or was it microarrays, lol, well something along those lines!!). Well alot of work need to be done this term though. *sigh*. Dont even want to think about that.....

Stack of books i read over summer. All those plus one more on the way to Anna tomorrow. Enjoy. :-)

On entering 2006 i decided my new years resolutions should be:

more excerise - 3 times a week
start revision early - hopefully during the 4th course, after spending 3rd finishing writing up my notes.... a tall order i know
Plan/Organise my work earlier, so i dont burn the mid-night oil working.

Well no idea how that will turn out. I think it took 4-5 "new years resolutions" to break my biting my nails bad habit. Well all i need is motivation.

After much work cleaning the tank, hair algae problem!! I decided to add more fish. Brought 4 X-ray tertras, 2 guppies - dark blue/black colouring, and added Fighting fish from nano into my main tank. 24 hours later the result was 1 dead guppy, looked like it had been ripped apart, and dead fighting fish too.... no idea what happened. My tank is now bursting with life after adding 6 more x-rays and 2 angels. The tetras shoal together alot better than guppies. Also added two clumps of red plants and some other grassy looking plant, no idea name, species etc.... no photos either!!

Holidays at last!

2005-12-12T22:26:00.000Z

Stupid essay!! Stupid lazyiness is more accurate. I stayed up, well didnt sleep actually - spent the whole evening doing review of that FRET article. I didnt start reading the journals until sunday 2pm.... i read them all by 8pm. Started writing at 10pm. I didnt seem to be in a rush at all. I took my time and leisurely wrote...I was still talking on AIM/MSN.... I have to admit i have said i wouldnt stay up late for the last few assignments i have had to hand in, but everytime its at least 4am... what can i say i like burning the midnight oil. I really do. i seem more focused in the evening/early morning. And i hate being rushed, with those extra 8 hours it doesnt feel rushed... perphasp i should just start 8 hrs earlier! But its done now, i can start my xmas hols! Yay! I slept from 2pm-9pm! Great first dday of hols and my sleep pattern is already ruined!

Presentation nightmare

2005-12-09T23:32:00.000Z

Another course another presenation. After a shaky start i managed to finish my presentaion, speak and slide by 7pm, got home and had dinner. Then it was practise speach and internet, not really too worried. Ended up sleeping late - around 3am. Woke up, couldnt really remeber the speach - didnt reall get the journal in the first place. Erm, so i decided to just read off what i wrote. I wasnt feeling too bad/worried.

I woke up feeling tired - not a good sign! I left early and got to uni around 45 mins early - so it was practising - it wasnt doing any good. Just left it and resigned myself to reading. We were in pairs - we were group 1! So that means going first!I casually asked my partner how long her speach was - she said she didnt time, we timed 1/4 of it - that took 3.30 mins. So around 14 mins. We thought we were allowed 30 mins, so that was fine.

Today was a nightmare, first the link lecture - the room we were suppose to be in had building going on next door - so we moved to learning seminar rooms - only to find a class in there until 10. We were due to start at 9:30, but we were forced to wait until then. By the time we got in i was feeling nervous. I was presenting in the second half. So i was feeling more and more nervous as time went on, it didnt help that my partner was reading SLOWER alot slower than when she practiced it.... that just got me worked up! I know thats not good to worry about things beyond your control, i couldnt exactly interrup her and tell her to hurry up! But i felt like doing just that! In the end Dr Stumpf stopped her and asked how many slides more, she said 5 - stumpf said way too long, already 15 mins and only 1 person, apparently it was 25 mins and 5 min questions! Great, if she stopped there i had 10 mins, my speach i reckon takes around 10-12 mins depending on how fast i read it. I was thinking ok read fast, it will be fine. Obviously i got worked up instead of calming down! She ended up "summarising" her slides - another 3 mins. So that left me with 7 mins. By this time i didnt even think about timing, just to get through as much as possible! So i read, and my voice just wouldnt work, it was shaky and my mind went blank. In the end i stumbled over things, and just kinda thought, try to say it again, then gave up and moved on! It was obvious i wasnt well prepared and/or very nervous. A little of both IMO. You can never been too prepared. I was suddenly told, few mins please start summarising, that really panicked me! I flicked to next slide, couldnt remeber what on earth i wanted to say, read what was on my page! Still no tigger! Panick, so i just continued presenting! Well in the end was told to conclude, which i happily did! I just wanted that nightmare over with. 2 q's was asked - both by Xiaodong. She asked me what extra info does autocorrelation then us compared to FRET - i couldnt remember/didnt know! I thought it was mass. Sumita (presentation partner) answered mobility - talked about diffusion coefficients.... that did sound familiar! Great i managed to get myself so confused!

The rest of the presentations went well, BUT it was a long day! 10:30-12:30 first session (lecture before ran on and it took tme to organise etc). Then 45 min lunch break and next session 1:30-4:30. Well i have to say the next three after mine (Pauls, Dans and Annas) were really good. Paul (lucky thing) didnt have to answer any q's - his partner was the keen biochem student who always seems on the ball and asks lots of q's!! She seemed just as good answering them! The best of the mornings (and top3 of the day) was Dans group - they had an animation and was well prepared, and i focused and listened to whole talk. It was intersting and kinda made sense, yes even to me! Anna was on her own. Her talk was less formal, she managed to get ppl to laugh along with some jokes and u basically felt for her being on her own. Her talk was good, although a bit shaky here and there. Typicacl Anna style, she loves the attention that princess does! The window blinds going up put her off, but she recovered well and it was a good overall IMO. There was another group, and considering one of them was another of those keen biochemists it wasnt actually that well presented....

Afternoon - 6 talks - had a different lecturer with xiaodong instead of stump. I cant rmeber his name, but he was harsh, he asked lots of hard q's and opinions etc. Harsh man. Glad he wasnt there in the morning. Luckily for the last 3 groups the lecturer changed. I dont actually think he asked too many q's, I switched off at this point. Some of the presentations were good, others not so much so! I am sure Anna was just saying it to make me feel better, but she said this guy was worst than me. I am 100% sure i am bottom 3 in the class!

The last talk i completely switched off and ended up doing the Sudoku in Fleix instead. It was engrossing! I thought i almost solved it by the end of the talk. I made a horrible mistake i later found out at home!!

And all this in contrast to the quite good IMO esp. compared to this talk, that i gave on cadimium tolerance in plants for PPEP. We are still to get that back, but i cant imagine getting worse than this presentation, esp. as Dr Powell said that the average was really good, and everyone had done well...... i better not be the person who pulled the average in that too!! Stressed now. Was planning on working on the essay to be handed in on monday - but wasnt feeling up to it - instead tried to do sudoku, now trying to figure out the solution after spotting a mistake!

Well monday is hand in essay and "summary" seminar with debate on pbl! "sign" so pointless! Then would have gone home, but apparently a postgrad talk/thing on wednesday.... so looks like i will stay for that! Then home and xmas hols!

And that ends my long rant.

Haircut.......

2005-12-06T16:37:00.000Z

I cant even remember when was the last time i had one, it was before i went to s'pore anyway. I think a few weeks before. So around June if i remeber correctly - thats about 4 months ago. Its not really surprising i dont have my haircut often, EVERY time i do it seems to turn out awful.... well the last few times have anyway (well maybe apart from last time - which was ok, apart from not anything like i envisaged and tried to explain using words and pic).

My hair wasnt actually annoying me, so what pocessed me to actually have it cut? I didnt think it looked THAT bad long, at least it kept my head warm. The fringe was down to my nose, it wouldnt take long before it grew over my face, covering over one of my worst features - my fat cheeks. Well anyway it was on impulse. Phoned hairdressers - the same place that did my hair those 4 months ago, great they had a free appointment. Nervous as anything when i got there - yes ONLY a haircut BUT with my experience of them can you blame me? Well last time was better because i brought a pic with me - i realised quite soon that i cant explain very well! Yes same haircut that i wanted last time. Why? Dont ask me, i have been trying to have a long fringe and short(ish) everywhere else for over a year now, and only ever brought me bad haircuts!

After the first few short rather haphazard cuts i was just hoping it would look ok... much less resembling something i wanted! Well the fringe ended up being too short, IMO it was ALOT shorter than the pic. I am sure last time i had my haircut i said i would speak more and actually tell them EXACTLY what i wanted rather than be vague and saying "something similiar to the pic".... well looks like the same thing happened again, the fringe too short, the sides slightly long.... maybe i should have got them to cut that shorter? Bah! It emphasises my cheeks, i should have just kept my hair long! Ok lesson learnt haircuts are EVIL! Or perphaps it could just be the haircut i want doesnt ACTUALLY suit me face. :-( But whatever, going to grow my hair, or perphaps just go back to my usual haircut..... Most likely what will happen is i will re-grow my hair for 4-5 months, decide to get it cut on impulse, then get the same haircut, using the same pic, have the fringe too short blah blah blah history repeats itself.

Do i like the haircut? I didnt when i left the hairdressers.... it was the way the hair looked on me as much as it wasnt what i wanted.... But after washing it doesnt look as bad as i first thought.... Ok enough of me whining about my hair! Will be in uni tomorrow, so can judge for yourself! Dont have digital camera - bro borrowed it, so wont be able to upload pic til during xmas hols

Internet - essential NOT luxury!

2005-12-01T19:37:00.000Z

Well this is what i have been up to since my internet went down - and i can happily say i have access again now! Woot!!

Wednesday 23 November

Yesterday was a nusiance - ran out of internet time!! Stupid BT anytime.... whats the point in limited number of minutes every month? So out dated, need better package me thinks...*hint hint mum/dad* ;-)

Had 2 lectures stats, parts of it made sense, others well er.. yeah! The lecturer we had seems to just want to to "be aware" of this, that and the other. We share lectures with master students so we are always given extra info which we dont need for our exams.... its still off putting when there are chunks of lectures where u dont understand becuase of lack of info - master students will be given more lectures on it later.... Practical in the arvo was ALOT tougher than what was given last week... *sigh* apparently it was suppose to be easier than last thursdays tennis problem... no such luck!! It took a while for me to figure out the "while" function with help!! The demonstrators seem to expect "us" the bio crew to get on with it, and was spending alot more time with the biochems... i still couldnt figure out how to use arrays to do a loop of t-tests.... *sigh*. Bascially managed to achieve nothing in the final hour or so... just fiddling and trying to work things out.... Left at 5pm... most of the class was still working!! I would have stayed longer had we (Anna, Xi and I) not decided to attend Dawkins talk at IC! We got outside G35 (medics lecture room) at 5:15? - all packed! Went to overflow room... packed!! In answer to "we only have 1 overflow room" someone said "i didnt expect so many people"... apparently it was the same title as the one we DID go to at UCL last academic year some time, something to do with evolution. I have to admit i only wanted to do coz it was Dawkins!! No idea what the lecture was on... lol! Sadly to say we didnt go - too many people and not enough space.

Lectures on protein interaction networks - apprently this was the main lecture which we were likely to be tested on - by this particular lecturer anyway. Gave us a few refs to read. We were also given a sheet telling us how to do the loop i couldnt do yesterday and how to use the matrix command! Great i should have just gone home earlier yesterday!! Well thats ALOT of reading to do, printed off all 9 review articles our other lecturer wanted us to read, most are around 6-12 pages (including refs) - one is 37 pages!! Fun times ahead me thinks....

Any way have to SAVE this and then publish it tomz... no internet!! Have i told you that? Yes no internet!! How am i going to cope? :-(

Thrusday 24 November

Does bad news always come in threes? I hope not.... The tank of death has struck again, another of my original guppies are dead. This time one of my two reds. The fish had an overinflated stomach, apart from that it looked healthy. The fish looked fine over the
weekend. Some diet problem?

Its really annoying with our the interweb!! Boring. Watched TV and did some work, not a lot, but some.

Sat 26 November

Work, work and TV!

Managed to do most of the work i timetabled for today - almost finished the R pract. just need to draw graph and something else. Wrote 2 lectures up, but havent done any further reading. Watched TV most of the evening. Slept earlish at 11pm. Sunday was less productive, went into Uni to research, waste of time really, not much work done. Wasted the day really.....

Summary of my weekend - sleep - around half of the weekend! Work and TV.

Anyone else watching "I am a celebrity"? I have to say David Dickinson really annoys me, as does ball. Both need to go!!

Monday 28 Novmeber

After sleeping too much over weekend, i was up around 6am!! Sadly to say i didnt actually get out of bed, i felt strangely revitalised. After a few hours lie-in i felt groggly!! Its true what they say - the more u sleep the more u need!! And to top it all off there was "severe delays on the Victoria lines due to a track AND signal failure at Euston". Typical. Waited at station for 15 mins, then changed at Kings cross to Picadilly - it was packed! There was ALOT of barrging to get on the train when it arrived. Everyone was crowding around the doors and trying to get in from all directions, i was on, until this stupid fat man pushed me out the way - literally; i was on the side of the doors getting in, he was directly in front, i slipped past him and headed onto the train, there was elbows everywhere and somehow he was in front again!! I was half on and half off the train, i just decided to wait for the next one. Next one was just as crowded, but because i was directly in front managed to get in - but squashed sardines we were! By one or two stations it was not packed at all!! Exciting!

Today: Thursday 1st December

Well today ended my week of no interent. Yay!!

Today the victoria line was playing up yet again. Apparently in the morning there was two signal failures so the line was running slow anyway. When i arrived at the station everyone was standing outside.... this time it was due to someone being under a train/track at seven sisters! Oh dear, suicide? accident? Never got to find out. I was early today, well i would have been if there was no delay.. instead i got into uni dead on time. (sorry not intentional!) There was no lecturer yet.... he was going to be a bit late apparently. In the end someone came in and told us he had just been informed that our lecturer forgot that he was teaching!! Great! Then later on we found out that the Yeast 2 hydrid lecture we were due to have this arvo (it was rescheduled from tuesday...) wasnt on either! Great so nothing until 2pm. Tried to work, ended up wasting the time, typical!

R prac was easy!! It basically had alot of "hints" which told you what to do. He really dumbed down the prac because most ppl in the class found the previous one too difficult, silly biochems for not having done it before!!

Signal failures........

2005-11-20T21:09:00.000Z

After a relaxing weekend in camb i had to go back to choatic london. I was meet with signal failure and masses of people. There was no sevice either direction on picadilly - apparently power failure at euston. As i was going by victoria line i didnt pay much attention. Waited at the platform, got on train and an announcement told EVERYONE to get off the train.... then over the intercom it said "due to a signal failure there will be no service between Highbury & Islington and Waltshourm central (or however u spell the last stop)". Again as i was only going from Kings cross to H&I i didnt pay much attention. The train was there for a long time, after waiting a good 30 mins and hearing the intercom telling me of the severe delays and to take alternative bus routes i went outside, i knew which bus stop to get on just not number bus. So looked around, found buses stopping at Angel Islington but not highbury.... so decided to go there and then walk the rest of the journey. THe bus came, too many people, i couldnt get through the crowds, dispite saying "excuse me" and resorting to pushing. The bus wasnt even half full, but the driver left before i got to it!! Bah, Waited in the cold and then thought oh i am freezing and dont even know the bus - so went back in..... the whole victoria line was suspended!! Signal failure at seven sisters!! Great, so i decided to ask bus number, no 30 - i was waiting at the right place, albeit for the whole bus.... It took a few mins to get on. Alot of ppl crowding to get on, so it was squash sardines most of the way home. THe driver couldnt let many ppl on. Now back at home - 2.30 hours journey instead of 1.30.....

Fast weekend

2005-11-20T15:53:00.000Z

It went by so quickily. I was hoping to do 2 lectures a day and finish the molecular technique ones.... but alas it wasnt to be. I went shopping on saturday - brought my bros xmas presents. Then read most of the nite away and watched TV. Read until 2:30am trying to finish the 4th book of Robert Jordan series..... left one chapter for the next day.

Sunday, finsihed the book after getting up at 12 noon - feel so refresehd though! Now i want to buy the next one and read that also!! Water change - pruned quickly, as time was limited, my java moss doesnt seem that secure on the rock - perphaps it might become better attached if i trim it - will do so over xmas hols. THere is hair alage everywhere!! Whole clumps of it.... none of my fish seem to like eating it - there is no brown alage to be seen though - which is good. I took out most of my hair grass - the roots were all rotted and so was green (well brown in my case) above the substrate. When i removed the hair grass all i could see was a mass of hair alage growing all over it - it must have smouthered it.... oh well now i have 3 tiny clumps... hoping them will re-grow. Took out camboba - they were dead also - although the root system on one stem looked fine - meh, maybe i took that one out too soon, it might have survived. Want to buy more hairgrass and comboba.

I used the hose from outside... the pipe was frozen solid, it wasnt blocked or anything but small chunks of ice came out with the water - it must have been frozen water left inside the pipe!! THe water from the hose was freezing, the water felt warm still though - glad i only did small water change.

Also caught up with anime over weekend - bleach, naruto and Law of Ueki. ALL very exciting and cant wait to find out what happens next.... wont be until xmas now. :-(

Cool R prac!!

2005-11-17T20:29:00.000Z

Lectures on microarrays - AMB course lecture material but with extra. Quite interesting. practical was good. Stumpf was mean!! He set a difficult (ish) problem because he was "annoyed" that we finished all the work!! Well it was difficult because well, we werent use to thinking like that!! It was to model a tennis game, where player A won 55% of their service games, B 60%; it is random who starts first; they have to win 2 sets to win match. They play 1000 matches. It was difficult at first - something new and not to use to!! Then he set a MUCH more simple model to do - they play 20 games, each serving 10, whoever wins the most games wins the match. He went through it roughly on the board. It took a while to figure out the command funcs (which Dan figured all out!! and he basically did most of the work!! lol.) Then for fun we decided to try and work the more complex one - Dan decided to model a PROPER game - every point played. 0_o i didnt think i could - so modeled the first problem - i figured it out in the end!! Woot! Left at 4:15-4:30 something like that. It was fun - throughly enjoy R - i enjoyed last years comp. and stats course too. :-) I hope the pracs next week are as exiciting as this one. Good day. No lectures done yet. Starting now.....

The long and winding post.....

2005-11-16T19:14:00.000Z

I would just like to say thanx princess. She suggested i should defragment and scan my MP3 for errors - remember me whining about technology? That seems to have fixed the problem and since then i havent had ANY problems!! Yay! Well i thought i would also defragment my comp. it took 1 hour to reach 50%, then another hour to reach 60%.... i gave up - it just kept restarting from the beginning. I tried again today - took no time to get to 50% again, but then kept restarting.... preserverance really does pay off, i tried an hour after and it DIDNT restart once - it took less than 1 hour to finish!! yay.

What else have i been up to? Nothing really. Handed in both my pracs. Happy i have done them, out of the way. I miss my last course!! This course - systems and intergrative biology is basically the study of systems (dur!!) like protein networks, and the use of computing and maths in biology. Had a comp prac yesterday - on R. The biochems in our course hadnt had used R before so needless to say it was fairly easy. The work sheet was suppose to be for 2 pracs worth.... Dan, Anna and I worked tog and finsihed by 4:30 - the work for both pracs!! Easy. When i say we i mean Dan - he seemed really on the ball and helped Anna and I throughout the practical!! And then i stupidly had to ask whether we had to turn up on thursday if we finished - the demonstrator went and asked Stumpf - we did... he hasnt decided whether he is going to set any more work yet!! I think he will as most ppl had finished. It was pretty funny listening to some of the biochems sitting in the row in front - they didnt seem to know what was going on! They were doing things by trial and error - saying "dont do this" or this will happen etc. I couldnt imagine UNDERSTANDING that prac without having done our computing and stats course - or obviously something similiar!!

Had a lecture on evolution as well yesterday - all first year work! Looks like this weekend i am going home and leafing through my old lectures. Fun ^^ Today it was on sequencing and NO it wasnt about the Sanger method etc. It was pretty much new stuff - from the perspective of the bioinformatists (is that a word?!?!). Sarah (our lecturer) i knew from my UROP - now regret not getting to know ppl a bit more!! I dont think she recognises me...

Overall this course is pretty good as well. Happy with my two choices. I KNOW i CANT go wrong with genetics, and well the third option there was only one which sounded appealing. So hopefully a good, fun, interesting year.

Presentation

2005-11-09T19:35:00.000Z

Havent really been up to much - just preparing for presentation. Had to give a talk on effects of pollutants on plants. I chose Cd and plant tolerance. Very interesting. My talk went ok i suppose, managed to say everything i wanted to and within the time limit. Was failry happy until question time. The lecturers are very nice and didnt ask many questions if any at all. I was asked however whether i read ANYTHING about a specific genotype and its tolerance genes - i didnt understand his q and it took forever for him to complain before i did get it... well it seemed forever! All for my answer to be "no i havent read anything". Thinking about it afterwards - which i ALWAYS annoyingly do it was any journal in last 5 years..... all current research in heavy metal tolerance is about indiviudal plants and how they adapt to the stress... great!! Well that is done and dusted. Now for the last 2 bits of coursework... the practicals. I was expecting 2 days off and weekend to finish them, but alas no. Why? Stupid Systems decided to be the only awkard course to move lectures forward. Thank you. Now time scale is more rushed than i would have liked. Oh well thats life.

Another Personality Type Test

2005-11-06T22:31:00.000Z

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Low
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Catch up: Wed to now

2005-11-01T22:03:00.000Z

Catch up:
not been up to much.
Friday handed in my cold tolerance website. Was suppose to meet Jac and Xi at 12 to go to AD... they left without me.... Well i took an hour finishing off and printing. Then left for AD, and they were still there!! They were there for ages. Jac seemed to buy the whole shop. No matter what Xi says it was I who convinced her to buy corys and gournimies!!! lol. I brought a Siamese fighting fish for bro.

Went home to cambridge for weekend. Intended to do 2-3 lectures... ended up catching up on anime intead!!! Tank has no more brown algae instead full of hair.... great!! Hoover is bigger than my guppies now!! Such fast growth!! Didnt log into SK all weekend - i was expecting to be killed off - no i hadnt been attacked once!! Bah, just robbed to nothing.

Monday lectures on soil - muy interestante and simple/straightforward which is always good. Then it was off to lib. Photocopying journals and finding books for talk.

Also gave Anna her souvenir from s'pore - finally!! It wasnt planned, everyone (except med micro ppl) were sitting around during the break bw lectures when Anna turned up - we couldnt wait any longer. Annas reaction was boring to say the least - no tantrum, no princess strop - just a look of bewilderment. She seemed confused about why we would spend so much effort to find a pink horse which we had stressed was a hard to find rare item. She didnt look pleased nor displeased so hopefully next time we see her she will be sporting her new look phone - look out for it!!!

Today:
Lecture on h. metals. Interesting - some of it i covered in my essay on phytoremediation. He went over some of the mechanisms of tolerance at the end - that was most intersting - my talk on cadmium needs to include some sort of mechanism in it. Collected essay, did well, and now really considering doing Bells environmental technology masters!! Then off to the library... again, 0_0. This time yet more journal photocopying - those annoying 'survey' ppl were there and will be until end of nov.... and we (Rakhel, Xi and I) borrowed literally all the lichen books between us!! Alot of reading to do!!

Stupid transport ppl!! Apparently i didnt fill in my credit/debit card details - i left out or filled in wrongly my expiry date. 0_o I REFUSE to believe that i filled that wrong!!! I phoned them out and they told me the only way i could check what actually was wrong was to phone the bank - they had that part blanked out for confidentiality reasons on their computer. So thats my photo and £5 gone and i now have to re-fill in and wait another 2 weeks!! Great.

My MP3 has been playing up for a while now - it always crashes, and sometimes my recordings dont work - they say the file size is 0 bytes. Yes it happened to the h. metal tolerance one today.

I have yet another cold - lost count how many i have actually had, way too many.
/rant

Times flies!!!

2005-10-26T18:12:00.000+01:00

Well not literally!! I have just been working in the SAF comp rooms for 4 hours on our day off.... after deciding to have a lie in until 11ish and getting into uni around 2. I was hoping to write a bulk of my essay by now - but alas no, i managed to read some more journals, found Taiz and Zeiger (which alone is worth the effort of coming into uni!!!!) and reading. I have written 400ish words so looks like a long evening for me if i want to finish it by tonight - well if i left it for tomorrow i would still be in the same situation - instead late night thursday - oh what fun choices i have to make.

Lazy weekend

2005-10-24T16:08:00.000+01:00

Sunday i was also suppose to go to church with cherlyn meeting at oxford circus station 11:15....

I woke up and the first thing i hear is my phone making noises telling me i had i new message. My first thoughts were who would want to get hold of me so early in the morning? I checked and saw Cherlyns name... it finally dawned on me that i had completely forgotten!! Sorry Cherlyn!!

Again no surprises here - half the work i wanted to finish i actually did. 2 lectures on friday and 1 each on sat and sun with reading on my cold tolerance website. I managed 2 lectures and a START on reading... Well that doesnt leave me much time unfort. now. Well i have a few ideas for webbie - well as much as u can have with my lack of creativity!! I want to read like 10 journals in 2 days a tall order i know!! And a few books, i might miss a few of them out.... and then weds (free day) to actually write the contents and thurs to mess around with html.

Tired oh so tired

2005-10-20T18:17:00.000+01:00

I have been sleeping in the afternoons for past few days, its NOT like i havent had much sleep either - been sleeping at 1am and then getting up at 8, a good 7 hours. Then 3-4 hours in the afternoon nap!! Anyone would have thought that would be enough - i blame it on old age!! Such a drowsy feeling after naps.... it seems my body is telling me to sleep more. I will do once sk is over - 5am on friday!! Yes thats tomorrow, and no i wont be staying up later than my usualy 1am. Sk has stopped being fun as soon as you have a half-decent kd with high income, sleep=robbed=bad, and how much i loafe that. Having said that though, it is still addictive, and needless to say i will return (talking around year+ here).

What else have i been doing past few days? Not much work - although i do spend time working, i dont seem to get much done, it takes me hours to do 1 lecture and thats NOT including further reading, maybe i should do what xi does and only re-listen to parts that i missed rather than the whole lecture. But i feel like i get the lecture better if i re-listen... And eating ice cream with fruit - bannana or strawberry usually!! Nice? Ofcourse, but it is having the annoying effect of adding much unneeded weight around my already fat belly!! All the keen enthusiasm i had at the beginning of the year has already gone. I didnt join any socs in the end:

anime: they meet up way too much, and watch countless hours at a time - i just dont have that amount of time.
wu shu: well its the time which puts me off - late evenings when u only have mornings is a nuisance to say the least.
yoga: never signed for at freshers fair, and too lazy to check when they meet - although i should seeing as my back kills me!! blame it on old age.
volunteers: i might apply to IC one, but first looking into working at NHM.