Monday, May 30, 2005

monday woes

Actually, it wasn't that bad. Pans was feeling sick enough to leave work and she sent me a msg saying that she wasn't feeling well. I received it while I was in a meeting with my supervisor, who said it was ok for me to go home and check after her. But by the time the meeting finished and I was on my way home, Pans was feeling better. So we had lunch and then planned our food week.

She still has a croaky voice.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes

I don't buy it. Something about this relationship just doesn't ring true to me. And the Oprah interview? Man, that was embarrassing. I winced everytime he got on the couch. For a guy who so zealously guarded his private life to be jumping around and making public displays....I'm not saying Katie doesn't have her charms, but something's a little bit off......

Hopefully my next blog will be a review of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie.

Sunday, May 29, 2005

cute

Today (Saturday), I was at my local library when a little girl fooled me big time. She was about 12-18 months old. That is, old enough to walk about unassisted, but not old enough to talk or have don't approach strangers drilled into her. It was a cold day so I wore my Big Red Coat and a fluffy white scarf. I probably looked like a cuddly bear. She was small and blonde and wearing a pink coat and kind of running around the library while her grandmother (I assume) every now and then led her away when she got too close to the door or other library patrons.

On our first run-in, I was holding some books when she walked up to me and put her arms up in a kind of *pick me up* gesture. Not normally getting this kind of reaction from caucasian babies I stood there a bit surprised while her grandmother apologised and took her away. Later, I was using a catalogue when she came up again and did the same thing. Her grandmother again came and apologised, so I assured her the girl wasn't bothering me (she really wasn't), so the grandmother left her there. The girl stood there for a while with her arms in the air, so I got onto the floor and reached my arms out to her armpit level to pick her up when SHE RAN AWAY!!! A bit surprised, I got back on the catalogue and picked up my books when she ran up and put her arms up again. I got down to pick her up again when she ran away AGAIN!!!

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. And that baby fooled me twice!!!

Friday, May 27, 2005

wow

I think this has been my longest time between blogs. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

Anyway, research-wise, I've had a crappy week. I think its karma from the good stuff I did last week, cos this week none of my cell staining worked. *sniff* But on the other hand, my photography is getting better although I now have to share the machine with other people.

Ah well. Can't always have it our own way. Cheers out!

Monday, May 23, 2005

Movie review: Revenge of the Sith

This review is going to be a lot more simple than the KoH one.

I liked it despite all the new plot holes and the crappy writing. For example, C-3PO's memory is wiped, but it doesn't explain why Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen don't recognise him and R2-D2 when they return in the *original* Star Wars movie. And Anakin goes to the Dark Side....because of love? Love is normally considered a redeeming feature in Movie-land. Even the most horrible person can be humanised by making them fall in love with someone, case in point - Hannibal Lecter. I thought they were going to play up Anakin's jealousy/suspicion of a possible relationship between Obi-Wan and Padme, now THAT would have been more believable.

(I will concede to male logic here. A male member of the party I watched it with said that there are 2 things in the world to turn a guy to evil, Chicks and Money. And I suppose since his chick was the source of his money, then I guess Anakin had a double male reason to go bad.)

Onto the good things, I liked the increased amount of Yoda fight, although his ability kinda shows up all the other Jedi, particularly when Command 66 kicked in. I also liked the explanation of how Chancellor Palpatine became the freakishly deformed Emperor. What I didn't like was how in the fight between the Chancellor/Emperor and Mace Windu mainly consisted of them grimacing... shoulda shown more swordplay!

It's not the awesome-a-power movie some reviews/fans painted it, but I'm satisfied and it did kind of make me want to go and watch the original trilogy.

Enjoy-o-meter - 3.5-4 out of 5
Cry-o-meter - a bit of shock when Anakin kills the younglings, but overall 0

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Mon anniversaire

C’est mon anniversaire aujourd’hui, et hier soir j’ai fêté avec ma famille et mes amis. A dix-neuf heures, ma famille et moi sommes allés au restaurant chinois et nous mangions des nouilles homards, des légumes et bœuf sautés, des crevettes, des coquilles, et des calamars frire ( ? je ne suis pas sûr si c'est le mot juste). Et de riz, naturellement.

Après le dîner, j’ai retrouvé mes amis et ils donnaient-moi beaucoup de choses à boire ! J’aime beaucoup la boisson litchi que Mandy achetait. C’est délicieux ! Après ça, nous sommes allés à une discothèque et danser jusqu'à deux heures et demi du matin. J’ai portais mes chaussures parisienne. Elles sont très belles, mais je ne peux pas les porter assez longtemps – j’ai souffrit un peu. J’aime le cadeau d’Akina et Daniele, Ces sont très jolies – les bouclés d’oreilles. Merci beaucoup !!!

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Wedding theme songs

A few weeks ago, I had lunch with Nicky and Mandy and we somehow got on the topic of what song to have as our wedding themes. I think the cafe was playing Richard Marx's *Right here waiting*. At the time I suggested *Closer* by Nine Inch Nails with the immortal line *I want to $#!@ you like an animal*, but on further thought, rape fantasies don't make good wedding themes.

So in return, I suggest these songs and the lines i like from them.
Is this love? - Bob Marley (I wanna love you, and treat you right)
Beautiful - Alex Lloyd (All goodbyes disappear)
Love song - 311 (Whenever I'm alone with you, you make me feel like i am clean again)
Accidentally in love - Counting crows (These lines of lightning mean we're never alone, never alone...c'mon c'mon!)
Love at first sight - Kylie (Baby when I heard you, for the first time I knew...)
These words - Natasha Bedingfield (These words are my own... I love you I love you I love you!)

There's more, but its taking me too long to think of them.

Christopher Plummer

Best known as the Captain in *The Sound of Music*.

This might sound a bit weird, but he's damn sexy as the Captain! So sophisticated, stern but with a sly kind of sarcasm....

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Looking up?

I've got a cold, which is disappointing because I got some very promising preliminary results in my GFAP-immunos on some sections of cerebellum from the original knock-out project. I don't want to get too excited, but ....very..promising.

Must not get too excited.

Anyway, other than that, I also learned two other histological techniques, Luxol Fast Blue for myelin which is very easy, and Bielschowsky's silver impregnation stain for axoms, which is not.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Things people should never do...

Swear at others in a malicious manner (that's just rude)
Wear colour contact lenses if you're asian (you look like aliens)
Cut their nails on public transport (thats just disgusting)
Wear short skirts, then sit with their knees apart
Spit pool water at each other
Re-wear dirty underwear
Make sex tapes with partners
Wear white opaque stockings (unless very thin)
Put up with unacceptable behaviour from others
Ask others to smell their feet (pans.....)
Vomit on/outside nice buildings like the Palais Royale
Talk at conversational volume during movies
Spit-sneeze

More later!!!!

Monday, May 16, 2005

Hold on tight

I'm feeling philosophical today. Do you ever think about how crappy things can make you more appreciative of when things go well? I had a terrible 2004 which has made me want to fix up a lot of things that I realised I was ignoring because I didn't want to deal with having to make the hard decisions. And now I'm happier. I wouldn't say I'm in a purple patch right now, but I'm definitely feeling a lot more settled and satisfied than I did say this time last year, or even a few months ago.

This might be tied into the level of work I'm doing right now. There's enough to make me feel productive rather than just wasting time coming into uni, but not so much that I'm constantly thinking I have to complete a certain experiment by such and such hour. This will likely change in a few weeks.

I think I've been fired from the florist. And while I was kind of dreading it because it means my income is no longer what it was, it's like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders and the world is beautiful again. Yes it is. Of course I'm going to have to be economical, but if I'm just doing my work at uni, I guess I shouldn't be blowing a few hundred in one day like I was last year.

That's right Mandy, I'm talking about our shopping adventures! ;)

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Movie review: Kingdom of Heaven

This movie confounds me. So many factors that normally would make me hate it. And yet I find myself quite happily saying that I enjoyed it.

Firstly, Orlando Bloom. *sigh* Pretty, isn't he? Looks, charm, and willingness to throw himself into roles where he has to get dirty and wield weapons. One day perhaps, he will become a great actor, but right now...no. That's not to say he's unconvincing, its just that when the time comes to take control or deliver The Great Speech, he's no Russell Crowe. The casting was kind of puzzling. Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons and Edward Norton have small roles as Godfrey, Tiberius, and King Baldwin IV respectively. Small roles. For the larger roles, Brendan Gleeson and Marton Csokas were cast. Was this to keep the budget down? That's not to say these actors were bad and they're not complete unknowns (at least, not to me), but it seems strange. Especially since an unrecognisable Ed Norton gives the best performance in the movie based only on voice and gesture. David Thewlis as the Hospitaller and Ghassan Massoud as Saladdin are also standouts.

Historical inaccuracies. These normally really get my goat. Orlando Bloom is tranformed from being a blacksmith into a knight after one sword lesson and a repentant father. He also discovers an understanding of military strategy, land management, ballistics and warfare, and the ability to move comfortably with royalty. Amazing!

One of THE most useless romance plots and one of THE most perfunctory love scenes ever. Eva Green has publicly stated that she's disappointed that the love scene was majorly cut. I agree. I think it went for 5 seconds and consisted pretty much of them kissing and lying down. That was it.

Now, the battle scenes. I've heard a bit of complaint (from males) that they were expecting far more fighting, especially since the movie goes for 2.5 hours. While I love a good fight scene as much as the next person, I believe the level of warfare in the movie was fine. There were quite a few bodies struck by arrows, spurting blood, throats cuts etc. And the first rule to fightings knights is to take out the horse. I'm not advocating cruelty to acting horses, but this was done many times so in this case, thumbs up for historical accuracy.

This movie could have easily become another Troy (now that's a movie that made me want 2 - 3 hours of my life back!). Kingdom of Heaven was obviously shooting for *Epic* label but falls short. Despite its many obvious flaws, I'm quite satisfied. Unlike other Dumb Movies that long to be Smart (Pearl Harbor, I'm looking at you), while it was obvious, I didn't find the message it wanted to deliver overly heavy-handed, possibly a reason why I enjoyed it.

I don't know if anyone else picked this up, but there were two things in particular I found quite amusing.
1. Orlando is being taught to fight by Liam Neeson, the Hospitaller (I think) says Liam should go easy because Orlando has an injured hand. In reply, Liam says he fought for two days with an arrow in his testicle to which the Hospitaller reacts in a sort of *yeah, I've heard this story before* kind of manner.
2. In the exchange between Marton and Liam, there are references to Liam/Godfrey being promiscuous. Later, Eva says to Orlando something like *I loved your father and I'm sure I'll love you*. Okay...

Rating - 3.5 out of 5. Cry-o-meter - 0

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Yum yum!

I slept in today! It was awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwesome-a-power!

I didnt reach uni until 11am. That's just great.

Finally!

After months of working and re-working, the hurdle part of my thesis, the Literature review, was handed in today. I think i'll take the rest of today off from working on honours stuff - no journal searching, no article writing, no experiment planning, no nothing. Just sleep.

And tomorrow, I'll digi-photo my H&E slides even though I think theyre of bad quality. In the course of processing, the centres of sections look like they've deteriorated. I was originally thinking that that was a result of a flaw in my technical handling of them - eg cutting when the section was too warm so that it crumbled when run across the blade, but underneath the microscope, it looked less like a tear so much as a crack. It was suggested to me that it may be due to poor tissue fixation. After all, the tissues weren't perfused so perhaps the formalin wasnt able to fully permeate it. I don't know.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Things you no longer notice

It has occurred to me that I no longer detect the smell of formaldehyde at work. And today, I was showing my supervisor some freshly stained slides when she commented on the smell of the slide cover seal - DPX. I couldnt detect it anymore.

Does this mean I'll also soon get used to the smell of Shellex (derived from petrochemicals)? That's kinda scary.

Sunday, May 08, 2005

Pull my hair and beat me hard

I was going to write my blog on the subject of my uni boss, Howard Grossman, but instead I'm going to rail on about my other boss, Roseanne McMahon.

Just when I'm beginning to think its not such a bad place to work, I am essentially forced to work an ELEVEN hour shift because she wasn't organised enough to prepare in advance the equipment and staff required to prepare and wrap THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY roses individually. I was already scheduled to work a seven hour shift, but for reasons that I'll describe here the Florist, Cathy, and I ended up working fa-a-a-ar beyond what we were supposed to.

Being the day before Mother's Day, I fully expected being required to do some things beyond a normal shift, but being such a crucial day to flower sales, I also fully expected that Roseanne would be present to make our tasks clear and extra staff on to help prepare. Nup, other than Cathy. I also expected everything prepared. Nup. So after turning up at 9am, I arrived to find that we had no flowers, no water vials prepared, no *correct* ribbon, no cellophane cut up, and not even the number of patients in the hospital.

I found out the number of patients in the hospital (70 private, 260 public), counted out the respective number of vials and filled them all with water, handled all phone orders, and began cutting the cellophane...but twas all for naught because the flowers didnt arrive until nearly midday. 4 cartons worth of flowers and 3 cartons worth of flower arranging paraphernalia. So, precious time was spent looking for space to put everything away. After lunch breaks, I ended up starting on those 300+ roses by myself at 2:45pm. At 4pm, I realised I could not leave and let Tash (the girl after me) do them by herself. Cathy realised she couldnt either so we both voluntarily agreed to stay until 6pm.

By 6 we had only completed about 150 roses. While I was delivering 70 to the private wing, Cathy called Roseanne to tell her the situation and that we (me and her) were going to leave since we'd both completed 9 hour shifts. Roseanne said that SHE would not be let down by US. Excuse me? She didn't even bother to come in and help out her own business. And, from my discussions with the nursing co-ordinators of both wings of the hospital, the flowers were DONATIONS. Having been threatened with being fired, we three decided that we would stay until they were all done, but that at the rate we were going, we'd have to refuse to serve any customers, unless they were absolutely going to spend a minimum of $100.

Therefore having given up all pretense of serving customers or trying to make the roses look as nice as the first batch, we DID manage to get them all done by 8pm. Our thanks? We were told to take as many flowers as we wanted. I suggested we take the roses home and sell them ourselves, but Cathy and Tash said they didnt want to see anymore until their next shifts. So instead I took a bunch of gerberas and roses for my mum. But thats little comfort after all that.

And i didnt even talk about having a shelf fall on me!

Thursday, May 05, 2005

hmmm.....

The problem now with my project up and running is that I will be putting in increasingly harder hours at uni. For example, today I was there for 10 hours. This will probably become an average day. So, I dont know how often i'll be posting, but I'll try to make them interesting and not whiny!

Having said that, man I'm tired!

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

i'm running through my money too fast

Yeah, that about says it all.

I resolved to be good today about spending, but in the afternoon I found myself hungry with only mi goreng, cruskits, and a can of tuna at my disposal. To solve this problem, I went to Safeway and bought some packets of soup noodles and a half-dozen eggs to throw in the noodles.

I've made my lunch for tomorrow out of stuff at home...i hope its enough.

Monday, May 02, 2005

Project update!

Today had all the signs of being a crappy day. I woke up at 7:30 feeling tired but dragged my sorry ass out of bed cos Monday morning is gym morning. On the train, I had the sun shining in my face for pretty much the whole ride. When I got to the tram, it was crowded and wouldnt let me on. When I got to the gym, my card was desensitised so I couldn't enter, and I left my water bottle on my desk. Without my bottle I simply couldn't do the cardio for as long as I would have liked so my workout was only half-assed. At 11-ish, after gym I had a meeting with my supervisor about my project and lit review, both of which I had done very little in the week.

BUT somehow, the meeting ended up ok and we managed to get some direction out of where I was going! Then, I had a 2 hour lunch with Mandy and Nicky, followed by negotiations with Laura in the histopathology lab about when I could come in and do some staining. Then, I had another meeting with my supervisor about slide scoring which John sat in on, and we all had a bit discussion about whether my hypotheses were viable and he gave me insight into what he'd ask me in my defence! Then, I went down to histopathology and cut some practice sections, and had a big discussion about the OC/Summerland/One Tree Hill and Chad Michael Murray with Laura.

I ended up leaving uni at 6pm, but it was a good day!

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Sunday 1st of May

There's a lot to write about today, i might even make a double post!

Last night I had a really weird dream, so if there's anyone out there who wants to analyse it, feel free!

Anyway, it was set in yr 12. I know this cos I was wearing full uniform and it was some kind of graduation programme. I had to remove my shoes and put them in a locker labelled with my name and had my old school padlock. The graduation ceremony took place in this large kind of cathedral place (maybe cos i went to an anglican school), and took place over 3 days. On the first day we were supposed to have meals with our parents present and each day, people in the year level were supposed to give presentations - recite passages. On the third day, I suddenly found out that I was supposed to be reading a passage from some text by reading the programme of the ceremony. However, the programme listed me and another girl, Debbie Chan, as the last group.

When the ceremony was about to start, it turned out that we were supposed to go FIRST, so having not practiced and only a few minutes notice, I had to quickly run after Debbie down the central aisle of the cathedral. I had to pass by the younger year levels and they all watched me run around them. When I got to the end and caught up with the other girl, it turned out we both didnt know what we were supposed to be reading, but the school chaplain gave us a giant book and told us the location of the passage. Debbie got the passage and started reading - it turned out to be something where were were interchanging lines. Slowly the crowd began to get louder cos it turned out we were reading the wrong passage. The chaplain came back and showed the other girl the right page and told me the number again, but I still couldnt find the right page because a lot fo the pages had the same number. So when it was my time to read, I'd peek at Debbie's book. When I found the right page, it turned out the passage in my book was written in Latin, so I had to translate in my head, but recite it English.

After a while, I became aware that I could only read a few words, so I was making it up as I went along and people became aware that I was reading it wrong. The chaplain was very angry and then my honours supervisor (!) came up and said something to the effect that I could do better than that, to which i protested that it was in Latin. She pointed out that it was in French, and sure enough, the passage was in French! I then said I couldnt speak French either (this was true in high school). The chaplain then told me and the other girl that we could go and so we both got up and started walking back to where we were at the beginning of the dream. But then (I think this was part of the ceremony) the cathedral started being flooded and all the girls had to get up and run out of the place. I was about to go running too, but when the water reached my ankles, i realised my shoes were still in their locker. So even though Debbie was yelling at me to come, I went to the locker to get my shoes out. Then I noticed that all the other girls in my year level had labels on their lockers saying where they were going and what they were going to do, but my locker didnt have a label. And when I was putting the combination into my lock, it wouldn't open.

Then I woke up.