Showing posts with label Summer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Summer. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Tired Again

Hello again,

It has been a relatively tiring day. I spent a ridculously long time going through a peer-reviewed review article for my essay. "HMGB1 Mediates Endogenous TLR2 Activation and Brain Tumour Regression" from the Public Library of Science. 3 letters pretty much sums up the whole article. W.T.F.
Here's a happy little picture of green chimeric mice for you
My little mice are happy to see you. They've been injected with Brain Tumours, yay! Ever article I read bored me to tears. But I managed to somewhat complete the essay with just 1 referral to a cited article regarding "Combined Immunostimulation and Conditional Cytotoxic Gene Therapy Provide Long-term Survival in a Large Glioma Model" Yes, these were also injected into the happy little green mice. There was another chart on happy little red chimeric mice too!

The lectures today weren't that bad. It was really about genetic variations and stuff like that. The second lecture was pretty simple as it was more about hereditary traits and a revision of Meiosis I and II. I got my first essay back, I got 6/6! yay! Some of the other people didn't do as well though but it was a good thing no one failed. I confirmed my schedule regarding the Biology exam. I'll have to sit for it after the 3 hr biology lab next Thursday. There is also a revision test before the lab. I'm having a heart attack from the overwhelming joy... So in summary, 1 biology test, 1 biology exam on Thursday, and my Chemistry exam on Friday (most probably). Pardon me dearies if i start becoming incomprehensive and emo in the next week or so.

(Foreword: The following paragraph might be fairly incomprehensible as it'll just be mindless bitching about the trouble trying to get a form signed between two different faculties)

After lectures today, I had to run around lower campus to get the clash of timetable form signed by the respective course authorities. Thankfully, the lecturer in-charge of Biochemistry was one of my lecturers for the Biology course I'm taking now. She's such a nice lady. I'm glad that she'll be teaching me again next semester. The other course is Calculus for Life Science. That one was the one that caused me the most trouble. Had to get to the 3rd floor of the crappy maths building, find the old lady to look at my form, fill in another form (which I didn't have to do for Biochem), only to find out that I'm supposed to have enrolled in Biochem first, so I had to rush down to the Math Computer Labs to get myself enrolled since her lunch break is in 15 mins. I thought that'd be the end of my worries once I got down to the math labs, to my dismay, my user id and password wasn't accepted... I had to rush to the next nearest available computer, I quickly made my way to the law library when I realised that I could have used the computer at the Science Student office just opposite the maths building. I backtracked and got myself officially enrolled online into Biochem at the SSO and got back to the maths building with 5 mins to spare. When I got to the old lady's office, I found myself staring at a locked office. I was like "WTH, she said lunch was at 1 pm, why did she leave at 12:55?!?" Disappointed, I headed out to the reception and I found her hiding behind the computer monitor, trying to figure out a problem for her colleagues. I thought, "Phew! She's still here." After waiting for another 5 minutes, she gave up and we went back to her office to get my enrolment done. I was sadly mistaken, thinking that it was the end. She needed me to print out my timetable to find out the tutorial and lab timings... I was thinking to myself "omg... why didn't you tell me earlier!?!?!" There wasn't enough time for me to get it done as she was going for lunch so I just gave up and told her I'd be back tomorrow during the short breaks I've got in between Chemistry lectures. I felt so fatigued having to shuttle back and forth between buildings and offices in blistering 31 degree Australian heat... I went to Law Library to chill for a bit while I was waiting for papi to reach Kingsford. We were going to the club to have steak for lunch again. There were a few hot guys walking around today. I'm quite satisfied that I managed to turn their heads as I sauntered past with my usual genteel smile and demure facade. Under all that, I was actually swearing in my head from the insufferable heat.
Lunch was good as always, Papi and I discussed where I was going to stay in Singapore as Grandpa has become somewhat of an unhappy grouch. I was thinking of staying with my uncle at Bukit Timah which is as inaccessible as it is posh. His mansion is pretty nice! Papi started talking about "the best thing to do" vs "the right thing to do". Basically, he wants me to stay with grumpy grandpa even though there's a chance things could turn very ugly... I will really be needing all my skills in maintaining a porcelain smile while masking my emotions as I get verbally abused... It hurts alot more that he's my grandfather but it'll be a test of the extent of my ability.

Alright, enough of bitching about things which are still some ways off... It's hot, I'm tired, I'm getting naked, I'm taking a nap.

Lurbs yew long time,
Jo(n)

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Searing Heat of Summer

Hi ya’ll,

I’m feeling crap again today. Don’t know why I’m reacting this way. Maybe it’s the heat. My whole body feels like it’s burning up. I have no air conditioning… That’s even more fked up…

I haven’t blogged in a while and Panda reminded me today so I thought, meh, what the hell, I’ll just bitch about what’s been happening the past few days if I can remember it.

Tuesday - 16/12/2008

It was biology again today. I had 4 hours of sleep because there was an essay due today. It was about peer-reviewing article crap. It seemed easy but hitting the word quota was surprisingly challenging. The day started off with a lecture. I was really tired, dozed off for a minute or two every 10 minutes. My friend and I took turns to wake each other up to copy down the important notes. It was so bad that I had actually fallen asleep in the middle of taking down notes. My words went from neat to scribbles which trailed off into a line, marking where I had unintentionally dozed off, scarring the page.

Lab today dealt with osmotic pressure. This surprisingly tied in with chemistry. We made sheep erythrocytes lyse and Rhodeo leaf cells undergo plasmolysis. It was quite a fun lab. All of us were pretty involved in it. Might be because of the whole Christmas cheer crap. Anyways, I managed to take a picture of the  plasmolysed Rhodeo cells with my phone.

DSC00352 Cytoplasmic shrinkage

DSC00353 This was a candid shot. I thought the guy was looking at the picture of the cells, but he took a picture instead. Check out the ancient computer in the back!

Wednesday – 17/12/2008

I had more sleep so I felt better. Lecture was the same as usual, starting at 0900 hrs till 1000 hrs. We had a short break before going for tutorial. Carol is hilarious! She’s a Lebanese girl but we all think she’s an Asian in disguise. She speaks Mandarin and Cantonese. We were full laughing our heads off. We got out test marks back today at the tutorial. I scored 24.5 out of 30. I could get about 0.5 – 1 mark more because she didn’t award me marks for my formula. Anna said she didn’t mark that section so she’d take it to find out who marked it so I could get my extra marks. Yay! We had another lecture after tutorial and a break before chem lab.

Today’s chem lab was also relatively interesting but if you phase out halfway, you could get seriously confuddled. We were dealing with classes of cation today. It was quite a pretty experiment. Lots of colour change etc. I made friends with 2 hot guys today. 1 was a Caucasian guy called Nim (he smelled reaaaaallly good, could have kissed his neck right there) and the other was a Japanese guy called Yoshi (he probably has a longer name I think it’s Yoshitaka or something). They’re both nice guys in my lab. Diagonally infront and behind of me. I’m surrounded by hot guys! Double yay for today because I’m so gay! (Excuse the lame rhyme. I couldn’t resist) Anyways, I ended up getting confuddled by the experiment. Tried to copy results off someone but his didn’t seem reliable at all. Seized the opportunity to check results with Nim and Yoshi. Hahaha, I’m such a slut. but not as bad as Sukebe-chan! He’s just… sukebe :p Anyways, the last part of the practical involved using the data/results we’ve got from the prac to identify which cations were present in the solution. Mine was a bluish solution so I was quite happy because Cu2+ would be in it. The problem is, there were more than 1 cations in the solution and my results were messed up so I had to go through all the steps to figure out what was inside. I have a hunch it was Pb2+ and Cu2+. There wasn’t enough time for me to reconfirm because I messed up the steps. Ah bugger… Will need to check results again with hmmm Nim or Yoshi again maybe :p

Oh well, that’s all for now. Feeling hot and depressed… But remembering what happened the past few days has cheered me up slightly. Sadly, the buzz didn’t last as long as I’d have liked it to.

Lurbs yew long time,

Jo(n)