Of history and blogs

For quite some time now, I've been trying to recall the blog I used in my sec school days. I used it pretty extensively... grumbling about school, confessing my love for chemistry, posting tons and tons of chemical structures that I created with ChemDraw. I couldn't recall the site anymore... but I did some googling work and finally found it today. 'Found' it. You can see this news article: http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/press/2005/pr20050909a.htm

My school won second place pfft. But I was part of the blog contributors who made it happen.... So I do am glad for that... but sadly... the site is long gone... and with it all my entries. I can barely remember what I wrote there, though I did remember that pretty much every entry was about chemistry. Esp the pharm chem option I was taking. Man. Those were the days. The days when I was still in love with chem. How did I end up in bio now? Pfft. Blame it on the JC days. *Sigh*. 

Sad that I can't look at my old posts again. Would have loved to keep a copy for old times sake. Been recalling the stuff we learnt in sch and did in labs. It's sad. I barely remember a single shit from uni days when it was just a few years back... but I remember so much stuff from sec sch when it's been a decade or longer. Why so? Cos it goes like this I guess. 

Lecture: Prof teaches about NCBI BLAST.
Me: What the heck. I freaking learnt that in SECONDARY SCHOOL.

Lecture: Basics of org chem... showing all the functional groups
Me: Scans through the list. Ahhhh I've read about them all in SECONDARY SCHOOL. Except for this one! ONE new item. Wow -.-''' *rolls eyes*

Lecture: Separation techniques - GC, HPLC, MS, NMR, UV VIS
Me: I learnt that in SECONDARY SCHOOL, JC (H2 and H3 chem?), and we're learning it again? And what, there's NOTHING NEW in these lecture notes? Are you kidding me? 

Lab prac: Gel casting
Me: Zzzzz are you trying to bore me to death? We freaking did that in SECONDARY SCHOOL. All the time. So many times. Ok at least we get to use EtBr here. 

Lab prac: Cell culture
Me: But... I was doing so much of it in my INTERNSHIP already.

I do remember some of the stuff that we did for the first time in uni... like SDS page and protein pull down assays... but so many things were repeats, or simple add ons to my sec sch knowledge that it's no wonder that I don't remember them at all. Boring, duplicated experiences. Gah.

I realised my 'first' blog is gone too. Myspace. I didn't migrate it. I hardly posted a thing there though so it's fine... Oh wells. 

I checked my very first entry here. I wrote that this is my 3rd blog. I guess the myspace would be the first, followed by moblog… and then this. Afterwards I had a gaming blog… then LJ… and now a wordpress. 

I’m reluctant to completely abandon this blog just for old times sake… but maybe… maybe it’s time. Either that or… this blog needs a serious face lift. I don’t know. Just looking at the tags I have and really… it’s been a long time. Gah. Chem spa? Lololol. Well this was made in j1 after all. Hahaha! Oh wells. I’m hardly using this anyway. No one visits this place anymore either I guess? And IMO bloodspot itself has become outdated. Ok LJ is dying but that’s a different matter. 

Oh wells. Started my wordpress projects today. Let’s see how they will turn out… *cough cough*

Weekend!

So I went out with my family during the weekend... and thought I'd share some photos.
We went to Turf City during the weekend and there’s a hidden corner called the Pasarbella and it’s a really nice place. Doesn’t look like it’s Singapore in there.
Feels more like some market in the western countries… or in Australia.
Loads of food shops… selling all sorts of foods. Spanish, German, Japanese…. Seafood, cheese, cakes, pork…
Of course it’s a little pricey but… the atmosphere is pretty nice eh?
Paella. That’s the biggest pan of paella I’ve ever seen.
There’s this really nice shop (this is the corridor leading to the shop) called The Cheese Ark selling all sorts of otherwise not readily available cheese. The shop décor is really nice and more importantly, the staff is really, extremely, nice and friendly. Introducing you to the cheese and letting you try the cheese… and not talkative in an irritating way too. We were going to be out for quite a while so we didn’t want to buy the cheese right away… though we did ask what time they close. And guess what? We actually returned to that shopping centre for dinner just to buy the cheese. That’s how nice the staff are to make us want to return… of course, the cheese was great too. That’s got to be a must isn’t it? ;)
That’s the name of that… market place.
Really cute toilet signs.
We went around visiting various car show rooms around the island, but we went back to Turf City for dinner. Not in Pasarbella though. It’s a restaurant outside called the Curry Gardenn.
And boy the food was good. I didn’t take much photos though. We just attacked the rest of the dishes when they arrived. They took extremely long with the food. I guess they really put in the care and effort to cook the dish after you order… they don’t re-cook the food… but well… you really have to wait pretty darn long.
Anyway the drinks. The green one there is the butter milk, and no it’s nothing like butter beer or whatever you might expect. There’s green chilli, salt, herbs… yes salt. It’s a freaking salty and a little spicy drink. More like a soup than a drink? Supposed to be cleansing and what not but it’s darn good. The white one is lime juice. It’s good… but amongst the three it’s the least outstanding, the most normal. The last orange thing is mango lassi. Mango with yoghurt. And I just loved that too. The taste of the mango is really strong and good - it’s fresh mango - and the yoghurt provides just the right amount of sourness for balance.
That’s the BBQ chicken. Darn it was so fragrant, so juicy, so delicious. The sauce was fantastic too. It’s really ridiculously well prepared. You can smell and taste the BBQ-ness… the fragrance of the charcoal, but it’s still so juicy and tender. This is also the only dish I took a photo of yay! The rest of the food took really long to come and we were just starving by the time they arrived so… :P
We ordered a few dishes, mutton masala, some cottage cheese dish, nann… and some other dishes that I don’t quite know/remember the name of. They were all really good, very refined and well made. You can say it’s not that authentic or representative of the general food in India because dishes most likely won’t be so refined, but it’s high class and well made and definitely worth having. The prices are very reasonable too.
We went to buy the cheese after dinner… that’s the signboard and list of shops at the entrance of Pasarbelle. Passer means market in Malay by the way… and as far as I can gather belle means fine (amongst other meanings) in French. So Fine Market… and what a fine market it indeed is. That’s the entrance to the place. Up the steps and to the left. Hidden in a small corner, with a small entrance. I really didn’t expect it to be so big inside! There’s a level 2 (or more?) too but we didn’t go upstairs.
So we bought something from The Cheese Ark. They have a really cute paper bag.
What a cute tagline. Turns out there’s a reason for it. They gather rare cheese from traditional cheesemakers that would otherwise possibly close down due to being unable to compete without mass production… and give them business so that they would hopefully not have to close down.
That’s the cheese we bought. Casatica Di Bufala. Cheese made from buffalo milk, and this one is really fresh. Love it!
Personally… I prefer soft cheese to hard cheese. Well at least I’ve not tried a hard cheese that I’ve really liked yet. I love the texture… love it when it’s ripe too… when it starts oozing… that’s really nice too.
Their address… to be honest their FB page kinda sucks. They can do so much more with it but as I can see it… they just have reposts of cheese related articles. So cold and impersonal, and completely unlike my experience when visiting the physical shop.
Alright. That’s all for this entry! Till next time!