Thursday, June 29, 2006

quizzes!







Which Unstable Man are you Most Attracted to?




Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese, from "Terminator."You like the misunderstood type.
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What obsolete skill are you?




You are 'Gregg shorthand'. Originally designed to enable people to write faster, it is also very useful for writing things which one does not want other people to read, inasmuch as almost no one knows shorthand any more.You know how important it is to do things efficiently and on time. You also value your privacy, and (unlike some people) you do not pretend to be friends with just everyone; that would be ridiculous. When you do make friends, you take them seriously, and faithfully keep what they confide in you to yourself. Unfortunately, the work which you do (which is very important, of course) sometimes keeps you away from social activities, and you are often lonely. Your problem is that Gregg shorthand has been obsolete for a long time.
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Wednesday, June 28, 2006

He Returns!!!

Taking a tie off made sexy.
Brandon Routh, you truly are a Superman!
Who wants to go see it?!

ooh yeah







Which Horror Movie Character Are You? (Many Options)




You are Ash, from the "Evil Dead" trilogy. My hero.
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Tuesday, June 27, 2006

ups and downs

Well my return to the lab went off with a burst of excitement! I had to collect the eyes of two rats....but man, I felt so out of practice! As much as I prefer to use the dissecting microscope because you can see what you're doing more clearly, it showed up how shaky my hands are and how badly I was dissecting the eyes :( Overall, it went off without too much of a hitch which leads me to where I am now.

Now I'm just sitting at my desk, reading the online newspaper rather than doing any journal reading. *sigh* Lets hope I pick up in the rest of the week, esp since I no longer have to wake up to watch the World Cup. THAT WAS NOT A PENALTY!!!!

Monday, June 26, 2006

holiday!

Holidays are great things. I've just finished a 4-day break where I visited my sister in another city. Quite fun and also educational! I've discovered which wines I like and why! This can only make my boozing better ;)

I'll post stuff when my sis emails me the photos.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Stories from the Lab

This story doesn't actually come from my lab - it was done in another lab within the department. Someone made a piece of metal touch a plug that was half hanging out of the wall...nearly blew their lab up. Luckily someone who knew their stuff managed to stop it before the sparks lit something. Here's the photographic evidence of what's left of the plug.
I'll leave this clue....zui hao pengyou!

Crimes against fashion

Number 25673 - Accessorising to match your outfit is good, but its downright weird if your whole outfit matches. Especially when your outfit comprises completely of black and purple viscose and velvet.


Number 4 - I like to call this the Reverse Skunk. If your hair is naturally very dark, DO NOT bleach your hair blonde unless you're going to maintain it.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Movie Review - Caché (Hidden)

If there's one thing you can say about Caché (Hidden) by Michael Haneke, it's that it is unsettling. Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteil) and his wife, Anne (Juliette Binoche), are an ordinary successful bourgeois couple. He hosts a literary discussion show on French television, she works for a publishing house. They have a 12 year old son and a nice house in Paris. One day, Anne comes home to find a videocassette on their porch, a two-hour long video that only contains a shot of the front door of their house, filmed by a hidden camera. The menace level slowly increases as Georges realises that the videos may be retribution for he did as a child...or is it? There's not really much I can say about the plot without giving too much away. It's very psychologically tense - I walked out totally exhausted! The pertinent information as to what's going on are slowly drawn out, and even then some things are thrown in the end that just screw everything around! There are few scenes of violence in Caché, but when it is used....wooh! Some people in the cinema gasped aloud - I know I did!

With two of the biggest *Big Name* actors of French cinema, of course you're gonna get powerhouse acting, and we're not disappointed. Auteil's portrayal of Georges runs the whole gamut of situations - the confident and capable public person slowly disintegrating from the stress of his guilt who refuses to face the past and making the same mistakes. Juliette Binoche (truly one of the most bee-yoo-tee-ful women in the world) is the wife who is bewildered at being terrorised for reasons she doesn't understand and furious that her partner knows but won't share. Every actor in Caché, take a bow.

Other than the acting, the feeling of fear and menace is also built up using sound and visuals. Unlike other movies, and perhaps more like real life, there is no background music. All backing sounds are what you'd get everyday - the closing of a door, footsteps, the sound of birds...these sounds are so ordinary but they are transformed in the context of what's going on. While Anne and Georges are going about their ordinary lives, there's someone watching them and unlike many Hollywood movies that use that *BAM!* music to reinforce that fear and warn you when it's coming. We and the Laurents arent given that luxury. The visuals are used to make us unsure of what we're watching - just like the Laurents. The opening shot is particularly clever. We see a house on the street, with the occasional person going past....which is then revealed to be the video that the Laurents received. Likewise, the ending shot which has the credits rolling over it is of their son's school - similar to a scene we saw earlier...or is it? The whole audience sat through the credits watching it....what did it mean?!!??! Why has Haneke chosen to show me this?!?!?! EEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!!!

While the movie was incredibly tense, I do have some criticisms with the pacing. There were moments when it just felt that the suspense was dragged on for too long. I wanted to know what Georges' secret was....just goddamn tell me! Likewise, the lack of soundtrack accentuated when nothing was happening and made the whole dragging thing more obvious (to me). One major problem for me was the subtitle format. Ok, I can understand French quite well, but it's all over my head when people are talking in fast, tense sentences. Given that ppl who probably can't speak French are also in the audience, who was the genius who decided to put the subtitles in white?! Some of the time you couldn't read what they were saying!!!

If you want a movie that will give you the creeps and keep you thinking for ages, then this is it! But careful, it is heavy going. There's so much I'd like to say - about who did what and why...but that'd be giving bits away. *sigh*
7.5-8/10

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

headachey

This is not a good sign. I'm finding my tolerance for using the con-focal microscope is diminishing each time I use it :(. Today I was only on it for 1.5 hours when I pretty much had to stop cos my head was hurting like all get out! I've popped some ibuprofen, so hopefully it will be gone and I can go to the gym soon.

Omg...I was going to post a photo here, but I just found out that they weren't saved in colour *groan*. God, I'm gonna have to photograph them again!!!

In other news, Lydia finished her exams yesterday, so to celebrate we went and saw a movie for tight-ass Monday. It was supposed to be something non-intellectually taxing....but we ended up seeing Michael Haneke's Hidden (
Caché) instead. Its a very good movie, but will require some thought before I can review it.

Anyway, here's a photo of Shippo from the Inu Yasha anime. I just thought it was a cute pic.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Memorable songs, crappy movies

Today I discovered Three Men and a Little Lady was on TV and I made my brother change the channel from the footy so I could watch it. It's alright, you can laugh all you want. The movie is a sickly-sweet follow up to the original blockbuster and features the last hurrahs of Tom Selleck, Ted Danson and Steve Gutenberg in their 80s-glory, and Nancy Travis with a bad English accent. But I persevered and was finally rewarded with that song over the end and the closing credits - Waiting for a Star to Fall by Boy Meets Girl. *sigh* Such a cutesy song that brings me to many early 90s memories. This then got me thinking about movies that are horrendously crap but live on in some song that came from their awesome soundtracks, and came up with the list below:

I Will Always Love You & I Have Nothing - The Bodyguard
Everything I Do, I Do It For You - Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves (wooh, there's a shocking movie!)
Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now - Mannequin
Fame - Fame
Into the Groove - Desperately Seeking Susan

Man, compiling this list was a lot harder than I thought it would be! Feel free to suggest any of your own.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

World Cup report

What can I say about the FIFA World Cup? This may sound horribly unpatriotic of me, but as much as I cheered and smiled when my country won, I can't seem to make myself really, really, REALLY support them. When I watch them play and then compare them to a silky team like Brazil or Spain...I can't help but hope that we're not the team who gets killed 8-0, because you know there's a team who is killed every tournament.

I also hate the way the games dont start here until 11:30pm - it means I feel like !@$#% when i crawl into the lab after only a few hours sleep.

What else do I hate about it? Well, I hate how tense watching the games make me. I mean, on one hand its good because I'm really into it! But I also
hate it because they stress me out bigtime. Watching England v. Paraguay with my Mum...every approach, every missed shot, it was like being stabbed with swords of frustration and fear!

Good things about the World Cup! Well, apart from the fact the men are hot (although some of them tend to be quite ugly - e.g. Ronaldinho, Wayne Rooney), I love the outpouring of manlove in their post goal/match celebrations such as in the photo below:There's nothing quite like playing *stacks on* to show enthusiasm, something the Italians have in abundance. And the Dutch as well - such a romantic embrace...

And of course, I find a lot of amusement in the antics of the fans. All that make up, costumes etc...but what I really enjoy are the chants! Hundreds of ppl chanting the same thing simultaneously. They're often quite funny in a biting way that can double as social commentary! Like the way the Australians chanted *You only sing when you're whaling* to the Japanese after their 3-1 win. Hilarious!

So that's my round-up for now. So much sport this year....

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

These pics speak for themselves...

If you're like me and you trawl online celeb gossip sites, you've no doubt seen these pics. But if you haven't, then you can head off here to see more pics of Ryan Phillippe and Jake Gyllenhaal working out together. But here's a teaser for y'all!

Monday, June 12, 2006

Recipe for Joy

Mmmmm! Doncha just love public holidays? Other than sleeping, I spent the day doing something I like to do best - fiddle with recipes. I've described doing experiments as akin to cooking - you follow the directions you're given, and if you don't like the result, you keep fiddling with it until you get something you like. I was gonna try the macadamia shortbread again, but discovered that the kitchen was plain flour-free. I ended up helping my Dad bake a cake (cos he enjoys cooking too) and then I received a request from my Mum to make honey joys.

(You guys probably don't realise what a momentous thing that is - my Mum almost never eats anything I cook. Pretty much the only things that she'll eat are my chicken and corn soup, pasta bake, and shortbread. Even then she complains that my shortbread is too fattening.)

And so following this recipe, I made 24 joys:

90g butter
1/3 cup sugar
1 tbs honey
4 cups cornflakes
+ the secret ingredient (LOVE :P)

Melt the butter, sugar and honey in a saucepan until all the sugar has dissolved and its nice and frothy.
Pout the mixture over the cornflakes in a mixing bowl and mix it in good.
Divide them up into little patty-pans and bake them at 150
ºC for about 5-10 minutes (it depends if you prefer them hard or slightly sticky, less time for sticky).

It's best to store them in an air-tight container if you're not intending to eat them quickly. I ate about five in one sitting once and it felt like my teeth were gonna fall out, so I don't recommend overeating. Happy joying!

Sunday, June 11, 2006

When authors' lives get in the way of a good story

I used to really love the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton. It featured a really kickass heroine (Anita Blake) who worked as a professional necromancer and also hunted vampires (natch). She was smart, small, had a lot of knowledge about supernatural beings, extremely gutsy, and owned an arsenal of weapons and was proficient in martial arts. The dry humour didn't hurt either. And one of the bonuses of he series was the extremely sexy male cast starring the Jean-Claude, the Vampire Master of the City. The sexual tension between them - whoo! - and then there was the introduction of Richard, the leader of the Werewold group which led to the development of a love triangle.

Everything was awesome and I looked forward to when my reservation at the library was filled.

But then something happened.

Although I was firmly in the Jean-Claude/Vampires rock! group, I found myself hating Richard as he developed into a hypocritical whiney asshole. He just brought the whole series down as far as I cared...but then something even worse happened. While I was cursing Richard for his dumb behaviour putting his Pack in danger, Anita began acquiring a lot of different powers, which initially was damn cool...but then she also turned into the woman that EVERYONE wanted to #@%! and it was like the series turned into the adventures of a woman who was extremely obliging to all those guys if they weren't evil, culminating the in the arrival of the were-leopard Micah of the giant genitalia (trust me on this - if you read the book, Anita always talks about them). Then things got a whole lot more explicit featuring things like group-sex, sadomasochism, and...er...changing during sex and while the books got exponentially thicker, this was mostly (imo) due to the increased amount of action Anita was getting as opposed to her doing any supernatural hunting.

I kept reading and cursing at the same time and then I found out something that explained the way the series turned. The character of Richard was based on Hamilton's husband...who then became her ex-husband, hence the u-turn in his characterisation. At the same time, Micah is based on her current husband...and all those declarations on how much Anita loved Micah and his gear is merely her celebration of their life together. I don't even want to think about what the symbolism of the sudden increase in kinky sex means. Hamilton defends the changes in the series being her way of challenging the expectations female-written subject matter. I suppose this is a valid argument, but since she's chosen to ruin what was essentially a series that already was challenging convention by featuring a woman who utilised violence in her day-to-day life and didn't whine about it, I can't help but roll my eyes.

Good luck to you, Ms. Hamilton. If I really wanted to read about kinky sex I'd pick up The Story of O or Anne Rice's Beauty series. For books about vampires and werewolves I'm gonna look somewhere else.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Oxygen thief #1

Holy crap. Even though the numerous gossip sites I visit showed evidence to the contrary, I had always kinda believed that Paris Hilton's threats to release an album were just that - threats. If you have several minutes of your life that you dont want back, you can watch the video for her song below....



This has struck me dumb. Having gracefully declined a copy of her pron tape, I imagine that it must have been something like this. After all, its pretty much just her posing and writhing around without many clothes on. But like a car crash, I just couldn't stop watching. As a comment on the song and her *cough* singing, she sounds a bit like Gwen Stefani doing Blondie's The Tide is High...but goddammit, that's such an insult to them I retract that statement.

This just goes to show that money can not buy class or talent.

Ready for more data?!

Sorry if it seems it's been a while since I wrote anything non-work related. I just seem to be doing a lot of stuff at uni and/or drinking with ppl from uni. Hopefully I will soon see Xmen 3 and get to reviewing again...but maybe not. Although having said that, I'm considering whether I should write a review of The Da Vinci Code book. Oooh, there's gonna be some controversial comments right there!!!


Anyway, here's some more of my photography that no one understands and puts me firmly in the *geek!* category. This photo here (400x mag, oil) was an attempt to replicate some images published by Hughes and Chan-Ling (IOVS 2004, 45, 2795-2806 for those who want to check it out). It shows the expression of desmin, a protein present in cells that come from a smooth muscle background. In the retina, desmin is only present in pericytes, a cell that lines blood vessels. I've lost some of the detail in the compression, but I think you can still tell where the cell nuclei are supposted to be (its the blank-ish round bits!). I dunno about this though - while desmin shows up the cells well, I'm thinking I might have to try labelling for something like occludin which should show me where the individual cells are. Yeah? Yeah? Meh, you guys don't care anyway :P

Monday, June 05, 2006

wow!

I was in the gym today and I saw the most impressive thing EVER. There was this guy on the stair-machine....reading a broadsheet newspaper.

I still cant figure out how he managed to do it without everything just going to hell. I wish I had a camera there with me to get photographic evidence!

motivation

I'm finding it harder to make myself do absolutely more than I have to do. Right now, I should be writing another app for another scholarship...its due in less than a month.....but I cant seem to make myself do it.

And this mood seems to be contagious - no one else in the room (except the one who is writing up) is doing any work. We're all just sitting here...doing nothing. Well that's not quite true, we were sitting here talking about doing nothing. But now my fellow procrastinators have gone downstairs to kill time and find someone.

Gee...I'm only 3 months in as well :S

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Bad Dream :(

Wooh! I had a dilly of a pickly bad one last night! After a night of partying (again), I went to sleep at around 2-something (again). And I dont remember the earlier part of the dream now, but it ended with me alone in a run-down cottage where the doors were like...flyscreen doors. You know, not very secure. It was daytime, one of those bright summer days, but then a bunch of people I didn't know turned up at the place and knocked on the door. I went to the door, but then a gun came through a hole in the door and they shot me in the foot! So in panic I ran away from the door (natch), but they came into the house. I ran to the kitchen, pulled a gun from my handbag (no idea where that came from), waited until I saw the person who shot me, and shot them in the back! And it was a good shot too, hit them right above their left lung. But it turned out the ppl who broke into the house were teenagers and they shot me with a cap gun - bleeding but not incapacitated. Meanwhile the kid that I shot died.

And at that point I woke up and it was 5:30am.
So....any analysis?

Saturday, June 03, 2006

The Hammer, The Spark, The Window

A bit of a change of pace in this entry. Those who know me and know me well know that I'm not single through lack of offers (there are some who go bar hopping with me know that no night is complete without some older guy hitting on me - Hi Mandy! :P). I am instead single through inclination. Part of this is no doubt due to my desire for *The Hammer*, as QQ calls it.

As much as I would like hammering (get your minds out of the gutter), I'm pragmatic enough to realise that it probably doesn't exist, and if it does then its not common so I will settle for *The Spark*. Although sparking still isnt quite common for me I think it did happen not so long ago, and so active person that I am, I took a chance on it. Due to things outside my control, the follow up to the sparking was delayed by a fair amount of time, during which I came to forget what it was that fuelled the spark in the first place. And while the eventual meeting was pleasant, the sparkage was decreased.

This then brings me to *The Window*. For sparkage to be truly successful, there is probably a limited amount of time for which to follow up. Windowing is a problem because you never know how long the spark stays alive. This is a pity because the window might be stopping the spark from turning into a hammer.

Get your mind around that last bit? Good!