Rainbows and Sweets… and a clean table

The day before CNY eve… i playfully skipped helping out at home and met up with my troopers instead… it started raining cats and dogs on our way back from my friend's house though… 3 traffics lights in a row were out of commission! Thankfully my friend's dad drove us to the mrt station… but even than, running from the car to the bus stop still got us quite drenched… and the bus stop was flooded! Even my socks got a little wet… :S When i reached the mrt stn at my house though, the rain subsided into a drizzle… most thankfully. As i was returning from the market with my family's dinner (and trying not to get the sizzling hot fried chicken in an open box in the plastic bag wet), i saw a beautiful rainbow just as i was about to cross the road… The immediate thing that came to my mind was 'Niji no kakera ~no rain no rainbow'. After getting rather wet in the rain, its nice to see a beautiful rainbow… so rare to see a rainbow these days imo… i still remember the very one time i saw a complete, 360degrees circular rainbow in the park. It was a super bright as sunny day so till now i still don't know why there was a rainbow. The rainbow was directly above our heads, so you really had to strain you neck to see it… and even than the sun was soooo bright that you can't look for long. The rainbow was directly in the way of the sun… and thanks to that, the rainbow couldn’t be captured on camera… :(

So anyway… the rainbow… i stood there at the traffic light like an idiot trying to take the picture (the light had turned green already). I bet the drivers were thinking i'm a werido or something. Didn’t help that somehow it couldn’t sense my forefinger on the screen so i had to use both hands to take the pic (hands full of plastic bags too)

 

Speaking of rainbows… i remember my trip to chongqing like last last year… went to this attraction where there was a manmade waterfall.. somehow a pretty rainbow formed at the waterfall… very pretty XD

Pretty much? Took me a while to dig out this pic heh...

 

Ok, some random pics… beautiful Japanese handmade sweets… there were more but we ate them :P

 

Ah this… i love this photo! My table ish soooo clean. Or rather… it was… its rather messy now again. :X

The next time my table will be so clean is… next CNY? Ah yes… the 6 cheapo erasers i bought for $2.50… i use it for propping up my lappy so that it won't get too hot (and i have a fan blowing at me and my lappy too). I had a laptop USB fan cooler, but that one spoiled pretty fast… The good thing about these rubber pieces are that i can put things UNDER my laptop. Like stuff half the paper i'm reading under my lappy… without having to worry about them getting shredded by the fan. The bad thing is that… its quite hard to shift my laptop - like if my dad/sis sits on the bed and wants to look at my laptop, i can't turn it around properly w/o having to shift all the individual rubber pieces too. Sometimes the pieces will go out of place, or i'd find my lappy resting on 3 points instead of 4. Cos the pieces aren't exactly identical in size/shape, i've got to tinker around with their positions once in a while… still like it better than the fan cooler - which i threw away on CNY eve… :P

Popsicles and Toast!

Milo popsicles! i love how the milo chocolate powder settles to one side… of cos, that part tastes the best XD dumped the milo packet drink into the freezer the other day, but forgot about it till it was too late… hmm… i should try with other packet drinks next time… i wonder what would be nice?

 

i made toast and hard boiled eggs for brunch today… yup, it’s the honey + butter + mayo toast that MJ made! Turned out quite nice… although the honey was a bit too sweet at times. Cos the only honey i have at home is the manuka honey from new zealand which is super sweet… and also super sticky. So big chucks of honey was stuck on the bread and it won't spread properly :(. I was thinking of putting maple syrup… but  one look at the over stuffed cabinet that used to be the fridge (still full of all the stuff we stocked up for CNY eve gathering), i gave up :S. Other than that… butter + mayo was really good! Ah and mix some egg yolk to the mix <3. I wish my mum would stop buying the 'special' omega3 eggs though… when half boiled the egg white is either solidified or runny… makes my favorite half boiled egg dish end up weird :(

Was actually craving for kaya/butter toast with half boiled eggs… a Singaporean styled breakfast that i really like… but there's no kaya at home… than the MJ toast idea came to me… XD

 

okays. i should stop my ramblings now :)

Not all Angbaos were made equal...

Not all angbaos were made equal… some were made prettier than others...

Saw some nice angbaos and since i was bored while waiting for blast… i snapped away on my phone.

Since today is the 7th day of the lunar new year (ah… its past midnight now… again. I mean yesterday…), it’s the birthday of all humans and that means… yusheng yay! My parents went to the National Museum of Singapore to check out the exhibit (erm… the one with Van Goghs' Starry Night) and on their way back home they bought tons of food… My sis and i didn’t go cos well… i'm not really THAT appreciative of art and my sis had loads of homework to do. We'll probably go next weekend though… since the exhibits are free from friday to sundays and my sis really loves art...

We had like… yusheng, 纸包鸡, and a whole chicken for dinner… so yeah… there were PLENTY of leftovers… somehow my parents went to the wholesale distributors and brought sashimi grade salmon yesterday… so our yusheng had extra fish in it (Y)

eeps… wat's with my sis and her fingers… tch! spoil my picture...

hmm… so i bought the uniball multi colored pen for my sis's bday… cos she lost her's when her whole pencil case went missing… her old pen was pink… but after much urging from my mum i got her this blue/green outer casing instead of the pink one… but in the end my sis still preferred the pink one so… she finally got the pink one on sat, while i got the blue/green one which i like. She convinced me to try out the multi color pen and i picked+bought my refill colors some time back… only that the shop ran out of pink outer shells then… so now i finally have my multi color pen in working condition… wonder how often i'll use it :S

I saw this in watsons like 2 weeks back when i went CNY grocery shopping with my mum at jurong point… cotton candy and coconut favor… since my sis has been showing me the reese and other weird/exotic flavored lip balms for some time already… i just had to bug my mum to get me this :P my lips seem to dry and crack pretty often, so recently i've been trying to get myself into the habit of apply some lip balm… i actually have quite a bunch of them...

The tube i got recently… the blue and yellow on in the middle were from super long ago when we bought them for overseas winter trips… there was a cocca butter one that my mum passed me… but i *face palm* dropped it outside so… T.T its gone… T.T

bleh… i had one red tub of lip balm with some exotic fruit flavor from body shop… been trying to find it for quite some time but to no avail… T.T i wonder where i dumped it to… i should go look for it again...

Things I should do...

Decided not to go to school tmr… and this time round i HAVE to do work at home rather than just slack all over the place. At least i did progress by doing some blasts today… I'll try and get as much of the blast of of the way as i can before i go to bed...

Hmm lets see… i think i'm almost done with my structure research on protein 1...

So i've  got to continue reading up on 2nd protein… which is seriously complicated (all my previous attempts have ended up in failures)...

Still got to read up more on why i'm working on protein 1… and i have to do that for protein 2 as well… and than i have to read up on structure of protein two…

And finish up the blast for protein 2… and since i've gotten so many hits for protein 2, i should start on the clustalw asap else i'll die later or something… it’s a great thing there are so many hits for it… but that also mean more work when it comes to analyzing the results later… Its totally unlike the 1st protein where there aren't many hits… (even than, somehow i still had more than belinda… which is weird)… now i have so many hits that its crazy… there'll be like 4 or 5 hits with similarly high sequence coverage and a superb score… i'll still pick one only though… else it'll be way too many to work on… So many hits that its really crazy…! Crazily happy and crazily worried… if you know what i mean. I Should more my white board from above my bed to my book shelf. I should write out the stuff i need to do and leave it where its really obvious so i get reminded to do my work and all.

List:

1) Consolidate findings on structure of protein 1, write it out nicely

2) Consolidate findings on why i'm using protein 1 as a marker

3) Find out about protein 2 structure

4) Find out about protein 2 general info

5) Find out about protein 2 - why it’s a good marker

6) Finish blast for protein 2, and do a meta clustalw and clustalx

7) Finish up annotations for protein 1 clustal -> almost done

8) Start on clustalw for protein 2

9) Organise all the research papers i've gathered

10) Organise all the useful information i've hastily dumped in a word doc

Yes… i'm working on bioinformatics and its undoubtedly more relaxing than those lab work… but like 3 weeks of slacking off is really bad… if we can't keep to the schedule we won't be able to order the primers in time for us to do the pcr… which i really want to...

 

ok, back to blast!

16 Kilos of Cocaine Mailed to United Nations Headquarters | NewsFeed | TIME.com

Interesting… some crooks figured out a way to mail cocaine… but it ended up against them somehow...

 

16 Kilos of Cocaine Mailed to United Nations Headquarters | NewsFeed | TIME.com: ""

 

FYP and EndNote...

Downloaded Endnote and configured Endnote a while back… Decided to get started with it and organize my references that i'm reading (and will most likely use). Might as well get things starts ASAP… its not like i'd have much time anyway. 3 weeks out of 14 is already gone… time flies!

Didn’t get much things done this week… still have not finished my blast on the 2nd protein and i've got tons of reading up to do.

Was quite happy on friday though. Did a ClustalX and saw that all the important features of the protein were conserved across ALL species… really amazing! Its like… wow, so this is for real kind of feeling.

I signed up for a EndNote course the following monday… actually wanted to get at the start of the sem but i forgot to sign up… forgotten that belinda actually went in like year 2 or something already… i was too lazy to go that time :S Didn’t realize that there was one specially for mac users but… is there that much diff? Thanks to belinda i managed to change the citation format properly and like… now i don't need to go for that course anymore… kinda figured everything i need out already :S. Opps. Maybe i'll end up erm… skipping it? Eepps… but i signed up for it already… with my matric number too… oh wells… i should just go for it… hope i can wake up for it in the 1st place :S

Random Photos

Here are some pics that i've been wanting to share for some time...

Saw this pretty Merlion made of lego bricks at Toys R Us at Vivo City sometime back… Went Dian Xiao Er there with my family and my grandma for lunch before CNY came around… My grandma has been talking about that shop for some time and our past attempts in the previous years to eat with my grandma ended up in failure… finally got the chance this year though.

 

Ah… ice cream cake and macaroons… for my sis's bday… that's really quite some time back eh?

 

Beautiful sunset isn't it? Seen outside RJC… or rather… RI(JC). Watever. It's still RJ for me… nope, not taken by me… taken by my sis's friend… who also became my friend. The wonders of iMessaging… now you can photo bomb your friend instead of just spamming text messages!

 

Ah… the following are a series of scribbles by my sis. Who drew those somewhere on her worksheet (i guess?) while studying cos she got… bored. And she happily took my phone to iMessage them or something over to her friend (the same one that took the abv photo)… so now the pics are in my comp (thanks to photo stream), and they are going on my blog… Whee.

Ah… so she was studying chem… i totally disagree though… i like chem…

A dragon? or  a snake with legs? Yeah she was just scribbling… i'm sure she can do better than that...

You know what… i'm bored now too. Else i won't be posting all these...

I SO disagree… Tsk… i hate myself… my handwriting isn't even a quarter as nice/neat as this.

I like this one… its so cute!

This one is cute too...

 

I wish it was part time too...

 

Hmm.. that's all her scribblings… hmm… more random photos of my lunches some time back. Taken for the sake of… what else? iMessaging...

 

Oh this… pic from that same friend… her sun tanning her piglet and teddys…

 

hmm… i guess that's enough photos for this post :P

I love MarsEdit (yes i brought the bank and paid for the license)… its so easy to put in photos than anything else… that's why you see me spamming photos and not typing anything lately… haha.

New Year…!

So on the 2nd day of the new year we went to watch the movie dance dance dragon… or more like i got dragged to watch it. Watching movies kinda gives me a headache and i feel like puking when watching them so...

The movie was… ok. There were quite some bit of funny concepts here and there, and the story line was decent but that's about it. Don't expect too much and you won't be disappointed. Its just a lame little movie for laughs during CNY and that's about it… i think Already Famous would be better in terms of laughing points but i've not watched that yet...

Anyway… we went to MOF@Izangi for lunch after that. Wanted to continue our usual 'eat KFC during CNY' 'tradition' but the KFC was pretty crowded. So we ended up visiting the restaurant instead (we still have to queue for a while, not cos it was full, but cos they didn’t have enough manpower to clear the tables/cook/usher the customers in). The service was… slow… i'll blame it on the CNY holiday though. The food was good however… i was a little worried at 1st that food quality would be compromised but it wasn’t… the food came pretty fast too, much to my surprise.

Here's wat we ordered:

soft shell crab curry… $14++ (prices as i remember them, on the menu. i.e. before gst, service charge..)

This one is quite curious. The curry is more on the sour side… not the usual sweet japanese curry that we normally get. Its refreshing but a little bit too sour for my liking.

 

Tonkatsu char siew ramen… the ramen is good! Very chewy and seem closer to the one we had in Japan… the pork slices were very good too. Fatty and full of flavor.

 

Ah… the cold salmon ramen is really good! it’s the 1st time i see cold ramen in Sg and it was really good! The sauce was a little sour but very appetizing. The almond slices added a nice nutty touch. Slightly ex at like… 18 bucks i think? Its on the top of my must have list if i visit that place again though...

 

(yes, it's raw salmon…)

 

eeks… such a pathetic photo i took… oh wells… this is the stone pot salmon rice… or smthing like that. totally forgot the name… its basically a more japanese version of korea's bibimbap (oh yes, the restaurant sells bibimbap too)… the rice is a bit too sweet for my liking… the salmon is good though… since its raw when served but gets slightly cooked by the heat of the stone bowl. Yes the bowl is pretty hot… it was still really warm after we finished eating.

Ah… the last thing we ordered… desert! The mocha ice cream is really good… really tastes of mocha… its quite interesting as they put jelly cubes and mochi balls at the bottom...

 

hmm… that's all for now!

To Do List...

Things to do by 3pm tmr:

1) Meta clustal -> done!

2) Individual Pairinings clustalw -> done!

3) Literature review on why i'm working on protein 1 --> papers i'm looking for have remained elusive through days of searching… finally getting somewhere now… i hope.

4) find out structure etc of protein 1 -> not done

5) find out about protein 2 --> in progress... headache… this guy is such a mammoth, complicated protein!

6) Do blast for protein 2 --> started on it… well i don't have to finish this by tmr though.

 

need to get no. 3-5 done tmr though… since we'll be discussing about it again tmr.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone!

恭喜发财！新年快樂！万事如意！

Here's wishing everyone a good year ahead!

Well… for the lack of CNY related photos… my sis took this with my phone just now

The past few days were kind of torturous… considering that i really really suck at packing, and i really hate all the dust… blah :( but well… since my relatives came over for the reunion dinner just now… it really forces you to pack the house nicely and all. Dinner was quite fun, played bridge with my cousins… and mum cooked way too much food as usual. Was supposed to be the yearly BBQ thing, but after the heavy thunderstorm on Sat, we decided to just cook everything at home and forget about the BBQ - a wise choice indeed cos it rained on and on. The year of the water dragon indeed.

My feet/heels are really hurting now…! From all that standing up i guess… even though it wasn’t really THAT much. Used my right and my right arm only to clean all the glass panels/mirrors… my right arm was pretty dead last night/this morning, and i guess it'll be worst tmr since i wiped some more this morning… oh wells. I did manage to meet up with wx, sandra and michie for lunch yesterday… just in time before wx gets her double eyelid + lasik surgery and b4 sandra goes back to austria for graduate med sch… cool yeah? wx's going to graduate law ssh in the US too… whereas i'm… still completely clueless about my future… and to think that i'll graduate in a few months OMG…. right now i'm just… i just wanna do my FYP and do it as best as i can...

FYP… total of 14 weeks only… 2 weeks already gone, entering the 3rd week… my work is a bit more troublesome than belinda cos the proteins i'm working on are… a bit more troublesome… like the ones i'm working on aren't that good and i had to change protein once… hope the 2nd protein tat was picked will go alright… but i really can't tell till i do more BLASTs… right now i've got to pick 1 out of the 3 possible candidates i've got so… unlike belinda who's already gotten a gene all set and ready to go, i've got a little bit more work to do.

Met with my mentor(s) for a discussion on friday… we talked for quite long, like 3.5-4 hours or so? I've got really a huge bunch of work to do… its like he gave us more work to complete in one week than wat we had for the whole of the previous 2 weeks… i guess that's hope things will go. It'll just get harder and less slack as time goes… i'll have to do a lot of literature reviews and i've got a thesis to write after all. Hopefully the bioinformatics part goes smoothy so that we can do the PCR too.

Since i've to check if my gene is alright and  discuss with my mentor on wedn if anything goes wrong… i've got quite a lot of stuff to do b4 wedn… sighs… not easy indeed. Its not like he's forcing us to do anything, but if i don't get things checked by wedn i'll lag behind belinda, which is no good… things are just gonna pile up and snowball if i don't get it done quickly.

 

Still, i'm taking some time off to enjoy myself a bit… hastily put up this banner on banned story just now. I want to install photoshop on my comp (on that dad has bought it), but i've got to clear my hard disk 1st… the installation of the bundle of software will take like 7GB of space… but now i've only got a pathetic 15 GB free. No good at all…. blah… its an irony cos i wanted to photoshop some of the pics that's why they are still on my comp, but i don't have the space to install photoshop so……. ZZZZZZZ

ok… here's the banner

my friend was saying the characters look really bad… oh wells, i was just picking some red stuff that has as much CNY feel to it as possible so it ended up like this… yeah...

okays… Wishing everyone a Good Year ahead! Night night!

Help! It’s a blackout!

So there's a blackout on the internet today… several major sites like wikipedia and reddit have decided to blackout their sites in protest of the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). The blackout will last 24 hours… till sometime around lunch tmr in singapore time… this is kinda bad news for ppl like me, who's relying on wikipedia to search about the various taxa that i'm BLASTing for….

Still, there is a walk around for this though… all thanks to the caching services by google…. the caches are probably a little old though, but most of the pages really don't change THAT fast… like the page i opened earlier was from a cache done on the 12th of Jan… sounds good to me… oh… disabling javascript works too… :)

 

Other major internet companies like Facebook, twitter and google aren't taking part in the blackout though… a day's lose of revenue in this inter national business is a huge amount after all… google has instead put a link on its US homepage to information on the SOPA...

I don't support the SOPA, but than again, i'm not from the US, i don't know the details of the act very well… and wikipedia's blackout is kinda troublesome...

Having a BLAST of a time

Having a BLAST of a time in school now… BLAST, stands for Basic Local Alignment Search Tool in case you are wondering. Doing Blastp now… and the site is taking quite long to process my queries… at least 2mins per search :S

So while the site is slowly searching, i do stuff like read up on the different taxa on wikipedia… or read up for the report writing and mini presentation on friday… or read the straits times… or read live journal… or write on my blog etc etc...

Came across this pretty photo on wiki...

pretty much? looks like some flower or coral or whatever? wrong! how about this...

 

any idea what it is?

well it’s the Strongylocentrotus purpuratus… or purple sea urchin!

 

Doesn’t look too much like a sea urchin does it? and its really pretty!

 

Gonna try and finish up as much of the  blast for this 1st protein as i can today… belinda's almost done with her's already… but cos i had to change protein so i'm a little behind...

ok, that's all i have to post abt BLAST…