weekly summary

Gee, its been a while between innings.

Tuesday - Lab all day, home at night
Wednesday - Lab all day, home at night
Thursday - Lab all day, went to watch Daniele perform in *Le Pillole d'Ercole*, a play which was in Italian (so i didnt understand most of it), then slept over at Lydia's place
Friday - Lab all day, home at night
And tomorrow, its gonna be lab all day.

I'm kinda seeing a pattern here...

Day in the life of a Couch

When people wish to dispose of large objects that they no longer have a use for, one method is to simply dump it on your nature strip. From then on, nature, the Heavy Garbage Collectors or "Glaneurs" will work their magic. Working as a broccoli pollinator for company near my house, I just walk to and from work and go home for lunch. As such, I managed to track the new life of a wicker couch today.

9:30 - Sad looking wicker couch is deposited on the nature strip in front of a suburban house, its cushions are deposited on a pile next to it.

13:00 - Couch has been assembled on the nature strip, cushions in place.

13:40 - Couch and cushions are no longer present infront of the former house.

16:15 - Happier looking couch is in the front yard of another house around the corner and 1 street away, being used by happy looking fob kids.

Everyone is satisfied. :)

New Orleans

Une belle ville ancienne sous l'eau, c'est dommage.

http://content.ytmnd.com/138000/138263/image.jpg

and everything that's coming out as a result...c'est dommage :'(

My Ben is BACK!!!

My room just went up 5 points in SQ (sexy quotient). I'd forgotten how bright and nice colours are on this monitor.

Man, I need a life XP
hehehe
just happy to have it back

I have a cold/virus

I'm sniffly, have a headache, got muscle soreness...yep, i'm sick. And yet I'm still going to uni and spreading the germs. There are many suspects that I could have picked it up from:
1) My brother apparently picked up something from his patients in the hospital. He said he'd been feeling unwell since last Wednesday
2) Jenny was sick when I saw her on Saturday and she'd also been unwell for a while.
3) Laura at uni isnt feeling good and took today off.
I just hope the lil' kids I played with on Sunday don't get sick too :-( Those lil' chub-pots, I want one!

One night in Boxy...

me, pans and spoo felt like getting some bubble tea. Finding our old Happy Cup closed for some reason or another we went to another one where we saw this classic sign on the table and counter...

Yes, a square waffle. Naturally we had to take a photo.

It wasn't enough to make us buy one, though.

Trying to quit

I'm still trying to quit my sushi job. I can't believe how difficult it is! Today my boss kinda laid on the guilt and reminded me of all the concessions he's made in the 6 or so weeks i've been employed there.

Damn it made me feel bad! But it worked and I kinda agreed to work every other Wednesday if I could fit it in.

party!

Last night we had a party for Mandy's going away. The theme was *kiddie*, for all of the great foods you could legitimately eat as a kid and for all the kiddie parties we couldn't attend as kids.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that kiddies foods are very easy to prepare. We had:
chocolate crackles
honey joys
cupcakes (three types)
fairy bread
party pies
mini sausage rolls
chicken chippies, and
frog in the pond

wow, all that sugar! We also made the great discovery of Cinzano Asti Spumante. It's a sparkling white wine made from muscat grapes and tastes like sugar too!
Thanks to everyone who came and made things jolly. cheers!

Star War: Backstroke of the West

My sister brought this to my attention a while ago and I remember absolutely pissing myself when I read it, but only now am I posting the link.

http://winterson.com/2005/06/episode-iii-backstroke-of-west.html

What's here is another person's blog. They bought a pirated DVD of Revenge of the Sith, and basically the movie has been translated into chinese, but you could get english translations of the chinese translations.

I dont know which one's my favourite screenshot.
There's just too many.
My face hurts from laughing too much.

Project Update

In terms of experimental progress, things have slowed down considerably. I have been trying to get the RCA-I lectin staining to work. And while it did work in the *practice* runs (involving making sure that it did work and to find the right dilution of lectin to use), when it came to the crunch, the staining failed. And it wasn't something that I could just go *Again tomorrow!* because unlike CD3, lectin requires an overnight incubation period. After 3 failing runs, I assessed the number of GM-CSF-/- slides I still have, and decided to just let it go for now. On the plus side, it appears that the knock-outs DO have microglia which is publishable. So I've started the SMI-32 practice runs. Here's to hoping they go well.

Computers remain my enemy. My USB stick died on me today, and I've been doing the stupid thing of having my most recent documents on it and not backed up at home. And the dumb thing is that last night I told myself to back things up on the hard drive.
I've now lost the latest versions of my
CV
Covering letters
Literature review
Methods
Appendices
Example thesis
Biotech companies guide
Grant applications

Dammit. So its a good thing I've asked the Sushi shop that I cease work until November cos I think I'd kill myself I wanted to get all that stuff done....but no $$......

Perverts

If perverts can be considered amusing, today I saw an amusing pervert. In Bordies Carlton, the shelves on the topic *sex* are right near a couch that's in front of the European history section. I was sitting on the couch reading a history of gossip waiting for my sister when some guy distracted me cos he kept walking across my peripheral vision. It turns out he was walking towards the sex shelves, then walking away, towards, away etc. And it had to be sexbooks because the shelf next to it were self-help books. He picked something up, saw me watching, put it down and walked away.

heheheheh

Panda

What is it about pandas that make them so cute and huggable? This is Hua Mei aged 3 months and 9 days (in 1999), born at San Diego Zoo ages ago. But such a cute photo!

I wanted to put up a photo of 2 pandas in the S'mx today that I wanted to put in, but I couldn't find it online.

Most unimpressed

My BenQ FP71E monitor has been playing up, so today I took it back to the store that I bought it from to claim warranty, and demand a few other things. Seeing as I pretty much need my computer to write various things, I as most unimpressed when they said they couldn't tell me approximately how long I would be without BenQ. They then offered to lend me another monitor to tide me over while Ben is in shop....and ok, I think its about 17"....but its a freaking behemoth!!! I had to move out my little screen shelf from the wall so it would fit in!. It looks so ungainly :-( I hope Ben comes back soon cos this monitor adds no appeal. Most unimpressed.

But to cheer everyone up, here's a picture of a baby.

project update

Its reaching the business end of the year. I'm spending long days in the lab and try to force myself to write when I am home. I'm looking forward to that day in September when I stop doing experiments, and even more so to November when the defence is over and I can sit back and wonder what to do with the rest of my year. I would rather work next year than keep going on with a PhD, purely for financial reasons. But I'll probably eventually do a PhD, again for financial reasons.

And then I'd like to become a fairy princess, rule the world as a goddess and eat marshmallows all day with my little fluffy dog in my lap and many knights completing dangerous quests to garner my affection.

hehehehe

Nightmares

I had an absolutely horrible one last night and it stuffed up my sleeping.

I dreamt I was in Venice, and I'd taken a vaporetto (water bus) to some island. I got off at the island, put my bag down, did something, then got back on the vaporetto without picking up my bag. The boat refused to turn back so I could pick up my bag and I couldn't take another there because it was the last one of the day. Someone on board told me that if I took the vaporetto to a certain place, I would be allowed to walk back to the island and pick up my bag. I took their advice, but I had to walk through this huge muddy place to get back to where my bag was...and it was still there. But when I opened it up, everything of value inside was gone. My phone, purse, camera, aeroplane ticket, passport...EVERYTHING!!! The rest of the dream involved lots of panic and trying to convince everyone I was who I was, but couldn't because I'd lost all my ID.

When I woke up, it was 3:30am and I was really freaked out. It pretty much wrecked the rest of my sleeping night :(

Hmm....

I've been putting in some serious hours at uni. Like, full weekends.

It's not fun. Unless I was being paid. Pity.

coming down

For a small asian chick, I know that I handle my alcohol well (must be all the fat :P). Alcohol makes me jovial and open to suggestion. However, it has come to my attention that when the alcohol wears off...that's when the trouble starts. It appears I become less even tempered. Downright surly, perhaps even a little scary. I suppose there are two ways to solve this problem.

1. Stop drinking
2. Keep drinking

Hmmm, I'm not sure if this is a real conundrum or if I'm simply making it so.

Snippets of conversation

Sometimes, when you walk past people or they walk by you, you hear snippets of conversation that can seem quite funny or intriguing. For example, I was walking down Charing Cross road when I heard a guy say *Yeah, I love you but....* That kind of line is intriguing.

But today, I heard what is possibly the BEST/WORST snippet ever.
*Yeah, and he used to donate sperm every month.*
I don't know how I'd work that into a conversation.

Movie review: Sin City

Sin City is actually 3 stories from the *graphic novels* by Frank Miller, *Sin City* (I think its now called *The Hard Goodbye), The Big Fat Kill* and *That Yellow Bastard*. The characters and locations are interconnected, although the time line is not like Pulp Fiction...time is kinda undefined here. The Hard Goodbye features a big, ugly guy, Marv. Marv has a history of violence and difficulty distinguishing reality from imagination. One night a beautiful hooker, Goldie, shows him the night of his life only for him to discover she was murdered while he was sleeping. The story follows his efforts to avenge her. The Big Fat Kill has Dwight and the Ladies (prostitutes) of Old Town attempting to avert a gang war after a corrupt cop is murdered in the Ladies' territory. That Yellow Bastard follows a good cop's attempts to protect a young girl from a paedophile.

If there's anything I like more than violence, its violence with style. And Stylish Violence is all over Sin City. It is VERY graphically violent so i agree it wont be everyone's cup of tea. Other than the violence, there's a surprisingly big dose of humour. Of course, its humour linked to the violence so....yeah. For example, Marv kills a lot of Police, drives a car off a pier, and swims off through the sewers. When you next see him, he's covered all over in little white bandaids that you know in reality would do jack all, but the visual gag is hilarious. Later, when police are searching for him, they say *No sign of him!*, prompting Marv to climb out and say *here's a sign!* and wack a cop in the nuts with a hatchet. The one-liners are great.

So, my score? If you love *fun* graphic violence (e.g. like Tarantino movies), 4.5/5
If you don't, don't watch it

Nelly and Poker

Well I went to the Nelly concert on Friday. I found it entertaining and well worth the money I paid for the tickets. If there's something I must complain about its that females of a certain age seem to believe that such things are an excuse to go out and dress in the most inappropriate manner. This may make me sound like a prude, but I'll just say this. I was wearing knee boots, fishnet stockings, a skirt and a very low cut black top. I saw another female, pregnant (she looked ready to pop), wearing a very tight, very low cut top and a denim miniskirt. Yeuch

Poker! It's the new social thing for young professionals.Tak and Nicky hosted a party and the final two were *Pimp Hat* Phu and *Erotic* Nick. The winner in a very tense final hand was Nick, with a pair of nines and a pair of aces.