New semester, time table, and more

ok, i shall start with the more serious stuff 1st. this sem we get to pick 4 core electives out of 8... unfortunately for me, some irritating person seems to have taken the exact same 4 modules as me... *shudders*

i still have 2 electives un-cleared. one in AHSS and one in biz. all but 1 of the biz modules clash... and i decided not to take that weird looking module, so i'm left with 1 biz that i MUST clear next sem. got my 3rd choice - coping with cultural transitions for the AHSS one... went for the 1st lecture, seems quite a fun module/topic to learn, tho the lessons can get a bit boring... i guess its partly of the nature of the module... the kind of u-know-it-but-nvr-realised-it kinda thing. but it discusses the difference btw cultures and all... fits into my exploration into the japanese culture (all the HMJ classes i took previously, tho i still suck oh so badly at it) + language explorations (HMJ + the tech speaking module) pretty well. so yeah, decided to stick with it... plus with all the japanese shows that i'm watching right now... i think it'll be quite an interesting module... at least the lecture mat. will be interesting :P i dont forsee myself listening properly to the lecture much. think i already mentioned abt my classes clashing with japanese class this sem somewhere earlier.

so here's the subs i'm taking

BS312 Protein Folding and Biomolecular NMR
BS313 Functional Genomics and Proteomics
BS314 Pharmacology
BS412 Drug Discovery & Development, Biotechnology
BS4202 Human Resource Management
HP804 COPING CULTURE TRANSITION

copied n pasted from diff places hence the caps and all. the HRM thingy... is a core... else i wld nvr have taken it... its once again a pretty crappy module...

less modules than last sem... alot less... 19 AUs only i believe... previously i had like 26 and 23 or smthing...

CNY is coming... relatives coming over on the eve of CNY for reunion bbq dinner. luckily cos they came ard xmas/new year and the house was cleaned once already, there isnt much work (comparatively) to do now. for one, the only place that i need to pack in my room is my table. and the mirrors and glass panels/windows etc all seems pretty alright, dont think there's a need to clean them again XD *phew*

been bringing n using my lappy in quite a few lects already. not too bad... i dont exactly not pay attention becos of the lappy, since the same can happen with my phone, but it doesnt quite prevent me from falling asleep either... -.-''' oh wells. but now its like... i'm not sure if i shd print out my notes or not and such...

bought quite some bit of stuff on fri n sat. fri my family ate at my sch can 1, and then we trooped over to can 2 for frozen yogurt... and than after which we went for a walk in nanyang supermart. didnt have anything in particular to buy... than my dad took a can of beer... than my sis wanted some biscuits... than... than... we ended up buying LOADS of stuff. in that small... minimart. (the name is nanyang supermart if my memory doesnt fail me, but its quite small tho the variety of goods sold there is quite amazing)

saw this nice mug... black with gold words, looks really nice. they had a white in blue words version which looked just plain UGLY. since my parents were paying... XD




my 'collection' of mugs:


went to velocty during the weekend as well and got a wrist wallet... doesnt work as well as expected cos my itoy is kinda huge, sticks out as a rather huge lump... but the thing looks quite nice tho, esp if i wear it when its empty -.-'''

---------------------------------------------------------------
the abv content was typed on like 30th of jan... didnt get to finish the post... and things dragged on cos of CNY... and great... here i am attempting to complete the post more than a whole week later -.-''' i cant even rem where i posted till... -.-'''

ah yes... the wrist pouch picture...



started using it to put my ez-link card... yes i wear the thing to sch... not too bad but i realised that tho it looks nicer to put the card on the underside of my wrist, it gets hot and scratchy so today i put the card on the top... ok lah... not really say more convenient, since i still put my wallent in my jeans pocket... maybe i shd try putting my condo card in the pouch too and dump my wallet in my bag... only thing is that i gotta rem to bring my ntu card out if i need it... but from my time table this sem i might not be going to the resource room much. i'm digressing... gotta add on a final thing that my beloved pantry is under renovation now. not sure wat they are trying to do to it. supposed to be done at the end of the month. oh wells.



new... pencil case... got from OG like... before sch start. forgot if it was end of last year or start of this year... still haven use yet


haiz... got alot of random pics to post... maybe will post a picture special from my itoy again when i get bored.

this sem... interesting courses but not easy... gonna work hard i promise!

on the maple side of things... haven mapled since like dec last year if i nvr rem wrongly... busy + no interest + all busy spamming cubes which i have neither the $$$ nor mesos for so yeah... waiting bbp, haven trained in ages... still waiting n waiting... maybe by the time it comes i may lose interest? idk... wanna switch over to xp to maple... shd go now or smthing... wanna get that valentines 30 day cape just for the lols of it...

the problem is that its so troublesome to switch from xp to mac and stuff... in sch now i dont even bother printing my notes anymore. mac all the way during lect. batt can last up to 4.5hrs there abt... my longest time is 4 hours tut + lect on mon non stop... so the batt still can tahan. that's the really great thing abt mac. i dont even both bringing the charger to sch on such days cos there's no power point anyway.

gd and bad things abt mac lah.... its not the perfect... godly computer as many mac advocates make it out to be. there are some features that i prefer the old windows xp/vista (not windows 7!) style like the multiple tabs in the task bar. note that i DO NOT group any of my windows. ever. why i prefer that? granted there are such like tabs on browsers which i used ALOT of. like there's more than 10 tabs open on the current firefox window, but i like to use different windows for different things too. like 1 firefox window for sch work, 1 for facebook (mousehunt and such just to sound the horn, i dont go ka poh and see other ppl's news feed or photos), 1 for AS forums, 1 for HS if i'm working on it... so that things dont get too messy. the old windows style makes it easy for you to switch btw all these windows of the same application. in mac, you have to waste 1 extra step picking btw the windows u opened in the same application. now very convenient when u open up alot of windows tho i am already becoming very used to the mac system (haven been on xp for so long after all... the most irritating part abt switching is that i use web browser shortcuts alot, and on mac the command key is used, but on xp, its the control key). so yeah, gotta switch btw mac n xp... on xp i cant even listen to any songs cos i cant access my mac hard disk haiz...

ok lah... getting kinda eager to maple for some unknown reason... with that said i shall go on xp... but before i go... since i was bored just now, went to search some ASCII pics and found this:

Bored

At drug discovery n biotechnology lect now n I'm bored so I did this: http://plixi.com/p/72525213
Deleted the lame pic from my itoy already n I can get the link of he image only from my phone so too bad... Well I did br my lappy with me but I dont feel like taking it out.

edit - now that i'm on my lappy i shall get the pic on here:


No doubt the lect is want I like n want to study, but so far he's only. Been saying stuff I've heard many times before in rg options, h3 chem, other sbs modules etc... Well it's only the 1st lect after all. I'm really glad I'm taking this module tho. It's pretty much all the pharm chem stuff I learnt in h3 pharm chem. It's definitely gonna be more in depth n even harder, and considering how I merely pass h3 chem this is kinda dangerous. Nonetheless it's truly wat I'm interested in. Or rather, I'm truly interested in this area. It's not my sole area of interest, and I don't know if its wat I'm most interested in, but the interest is 100% genuine. Not like cancer bio where it's more like... Interesting to know but that's abt it. Had a lect yest on protein folding n NMR. Gonna be another tough module, but we'll be learning all the spectroscopy stuff which is a pretty essential skill to have... Gotta... Buck up...




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Nanyang Dr,Singapore,Singapore

Random pics!

Some random pics! Rem the puzzles I posted abt the other day? Only did one of them that day, today I did the other.



Took almost 30 mins for this 108 piece puzzle, bout the same as the previous time round.



Here's a cup I got from daiso quite a fee months back. I keep it exclusively for use at my table XD.



Just took with the rubric cube cos it happened to be there on the table.



Yupyup periodic table mug! 2bucks only from imm daiso!

On another note, sux that sch starts on mon. Finally gathered the courage to look at my sch exam results. Surprise surprise, I didn't fail after all. Gpa was even a whee bit better than the previous two sems but I took more modules... even more surprising was that I didn't get a single c for my core. Instead, my jap didn't make it for a b... Sad... Shd have s/u-ed it damn. Haiz. Wat to do? Really wasn't expecting to do that badly for jap. And those subs I tot I wld get a c for I still manage to get b or b- the c+ came for jap instead arghs!!! Haiz. Next sem can't take jap cos time table clash. Don't think I'll take it in the following sem either, very likely time table cmi also. Doesnt mean I'd give up tho! I'll be watching my new found arashi shows n dramas, and I'll try to put in more effort too! Not just my hobbies, but in core modules too! Esp since the modules shd be more interesting since I got to pick them myself...

Haiz. Been neglecting hs stuff lately. Actually, I've not even logged into maple since like... Start of the year? Yeah smthing like that. Sch is starting so soon! Alright. That's it for now, typin on my itoy is kinda slow n time wasting. Till next time!

Location:Bukit Batok Street 52,,Singapore

troop dinner!

warning: long, wordy, badly paragraphed post coming up. they should put a character and word count on blogger just so i know how long (in terms of no. of words) i've typed. i think i've been at this post for like almost 2 hours, with some time off in btw to help my mum with chores, google search etc...

been so long since i last made a post specially for this blog. most of the time its a shared entry btw this and my gaming blog but... today is special! went out with fellow troopers (and more) for dinner! attendance check: me, mich, joy, sandra, ash cant make it cos she gng out with her family for her mum's bday... and a newcomer - zi ying! she's one year our jr at rg n rj, not too sure why she was with joy cos they dont seem to know each other very well either, but anyway we all got along just fine so all was well XD


(pic abv: its a tag to let the cashier know which table we are from when we 'check out'-- ma maison (the shop name) apparently means 'my house/home' in french - says the shop menu/brochure)

food... went to ma maison at bugis, its this western styled japanese restaurant. really cool i tell ya, the menu (too bad no pic) is in japanese (larger font), with english(smaller font) at the bottom. what's so cool abt this you ask? cos normally in sg, the japanese restaurants have menus that place more emphasize on romanji (to cater to us non-japanese speaking/reading singaporeans. alot of the menus dont have japanese at all, only romanji...). the atmosphere and deco of the restaurant was really good, darkened room, lovely stained-glass table lamps, tea-light candles for each table... the food ah... the food was great too. (at least mine was, mich order this rice n meat thingy, which was in japanese brown sauce... erm... idk how to describe the sauce... its not really sweet, its a lil bit tangy like vinegar... the taste is kinda strong and didnt really suit my taste buds [nor mich's])

joy sandra zi ying ordered hamburger steak, i had a chicken steak with garlic.

gotta skip abit to talk abt the staff there... there was this really cute young lady who recommended some dishes to us... quite cute/funny the way she spoke abt their dishes... like she was saying how this wine of theirs is, in her words, 'supposedly the best' and how 'according to my friend, i mean my college, the rest of the wine are not as nice'... well she was whispering the last part and i didnt quite catch it, but yeah i guess u get my drift. the cashier is a japanese... which surprised me. saw a japanese man patronizing the shop too, he was joining his friends who were already at a table, so i guess the food must be pretty good?

anyway, back to the food... here's my chicken steak with garlic:

the chicken was good. really good... the broth was superb, i cant really describe the taste somehow... there was shredded meat in the broth. even the cherry tomato taste great... pardon my lack of vocab today >< href="http://www.camemberu.com/2009/04/fruit-paradise-tart-shop-at-manpuku.html">found this blog post abt it tarts... go take a look for some nice pics, i only used my itoy (iphone) after all... and in that poor lighting it was kinda dark. not sure abt the price now at the other shops, but our was at 8+ almost 9 bucks per slice. very expensive but i understood why it was priced as such the moment i tried it... 1st off, here's the pics:




From top, clockwise:
Banana caramel
Blueberry
Strawberry with white chocolate

so yeah, we bought 3 and the 5 of us shared... was... absolutely heavenly... the 1st one that i tried was the blueberry. fresh blueberries was used, covered in a layer of clear jelly. the overall taste was very light and refreshing... the blueberries were very fresh, slightly sweet, and there was a slight bit of sourness to the whole mixture that gives it the light and refreshing taste. the crust at the sides and bottom was very hard (we had a hell of a time cutting it with our forks) and it was very crunchy... the strawberry one tasted quite similar to the blueberry... the typical kind of refreshing taste of fresh berries... both the creams tasted strongly of the respective berries as well... the cream was very light too, you wont feel sick even if you eat more of it... the banana one was the most memorable one for me... tasted... of those banana sweets kind of taste... or like banana cake... cream and whipped cream both tasted of bananas too... most unique one to me... very nice (sry, running out of words, and time...) the caramel and white choc in both the tarts were kinda... non-existent for me... for those who are wondering if the fruits will be overly sour, ya dont have to worry... its hardly sour at all... just slightly tangy, and ever so refreshing.

was quite excited abt the fruit tarts aft my sis told me they appeared in arashi ni shiyagare (if my memory doesnt fail me, its either AnS or hitmitsu... like duh...) and she was telling me how gd the fruit tarts looked... now i got to eat them! must go out with my sis to eat them one day!!! gonna see if i can find that episode later to watch :P

we walked to city hall n went to esplanade rooftop after all... for all the times that mich suggested gng there, we finally WENT there this time! last time we went there was like... the whole lot of us troopers gng to the rooftop for a super short period of time, cos the place was so crowded as esplanade had just opened... (and all the kiasu singaporeans rushed there to take a look...) very nice view of MBS (marina bay sands) from there... can see the merlion at sg river too but my nub itoy is... well... just a toy... didnt stay there for long. i wanted to go take a walk on the 'DNA' bridge since mich (didnt get ard to asking the rest) haven been there before... but it was getting rather late so we decided to head home (went to the DNA bridge with my mum n dad while waiting for my sis who was watching some play in esplanade, its really quite nice to walk ard there, took pics, but still haven gotten round to posting them)

ok, so here are the pics...

marina bay sands...


i know, i know, itoy pics shd stay on the phone and not appear anywhere else where they'll look really horrid... but this lazy bum finds it much more convenient to take pics on the itoy and post them to fb n twitter directly w/o having to upload them to the comp 1st... hence this lazy bum decided not to bring the camera out just now.
you can somewat make out the shape of the merlion in the photo... its that bright spot on the other bank, just abv that row of lights by the river


that bowl shaped thing doesnt look too bad when viewed from afar...


the singapore flyer, and the DNA bridge beside it... (its that intertwining/spiral string of lights)


ah, the merlion once more (you'll see it if the pic quality was a lil better :P)

yup... that's abt all to the trip... had a nice chat over a nice meal with my friends, and made a new acquittance...

side note: did i say this already? i'm using mac dual booting to xp now, but somehow dual boot driver cant install properly, so now the drivers are... not working. i cant access my mac disk drive from xp, cant read dvds/cds... keyboard fn keys not working etc... sucks but... deleting and re-installing the entire xp drive didnt work... got sick of trying so i'm just sticking with things as it is now, but really troublesome like i'm on xp and making this blog post now, but i cant access my pics and post those DNA bridge pics as i would have loved to... -.-'''


man, i really gotta type more. since i hardly write anything in sch these days... my handwriting has become atrocious, and now my typing skills have greatly deteriorated - so many typos. worst still is that i cant spell many words right cos i've not spelled out anything in such a long time! in sch the essays i wrote for exams and the lab reports i do.. its all scientific stuff, no fanciful words or language... so its been quite a while since i used many words... thank goodness for spell check else i'll nvr be able to finish up this post. gosh, its so late now, i guess i shd head to bed now!!!

Random stuff - an iPhone picture special

Yes. An iPhone picture special! Since it takes so long to type from my iPhone... But the pics are on my phone and I do wish to show u guys the pics so here goes!



Books n more books!



I borrowed 12 books from the lib aft my last paper last yr. <3 jurong regional lib n nlb's holiday double loan cap special



Anyone else plays Kawaii megu pet on iPhone?






Love their graphics, it's so freaking cute



Went out with my sis n my friend to nihon mura sushi buffet. Aft that we went kino to buy a book my dd was looking for, and I got this! Vol 1-10 of bakuman for a mere 13 bucks! In one book! Raw version!



Gift from my sis. She got it in Taiwan... 108 pieces jig-saw puzzle x2! <3 jig saw puzzles but the last time I did one properly was probably in like primary sch. Or kindergarden.






So I did the puzzle. Took roughly 30mins... Quite slow I guess. Been too long since I last did them... They are like so ex these days sheesh






Pocket frogs anyone?

More pocket frogs pics coming up!












Very old pics





Nope, this isn't my habitat. It's my neighbor's.





Next up, loads of pic from my family outing to the zoo. So log since I last went to the zoo wig my family. Maybe since primary sch even? Idk. Even the last time I went to that place was during my jc1 class outing to night safari. Zoo? Hmm... During some sec sch sci related field trip I guess? When? Can't rem sry! Too long ago aldy lah! Ok here comes the pics.









Yes, a deco in some tent in the zoo








































I didn't take much pics of animals on my hp. Took with the camera only. Took quite alot of pics of flowers, the playground area n other stuff tho. The playground area is now so completely diff from the last time I went there!

























































Some kind of bird or duck..


Yup! Stingrays!






At the kids world aka playground area. Guess wat those are? It's uber cute right? It's the shower area! For u to rinse before gng into the water playground that is. Got proper toilets n cubicles for u to shower one lah. Cute right???






Squid benches n taps!



I stood there waiting for my mum n sis. N for the person to remove their belongings so that I can have a nice shot.



Squid head!



I was finally rewarded!




That's abt all for now! Tata!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Bukit Batok East Avenue 5,Singapore,Singapore