Thank YOU Darling!

a sincere thanks to all who sent birthday wishes. and greatest appreciation for the SD gang who gave such a useful present. =)

but of course, no one can compete with my darling. she sent me four cards in two stressful weeks, which culmulated in a jap compo, jap quiz, bio lab report and jap midterm part i before my birthday on friday, sleeping only two hours on the morning of my birthday, and taking jap midterm ii, biochem tech midterm and microbial genetics midterm on my birthday itself. hell week it was, and darling must have the most credit for pushing me thru all that shit.


and as u can see, i have quite a feast. two big bags of prunes and apricots (apricots are my fav!), four cards, and most importantly, the small almost unnoticeable HAND-WEAVED pouch containing roses petals from my valentines bouquet to her.
(and did you notice the hand drawn sketch of us two? =) )

THANK YOU DARLING! i doubt i can do/draw as well as you, but i promise ill try... (the doing, not the drawing. :p)

Darling is 23!

Happy Birthday, darling!

i love you, always... -muack-

spring enrollment

its time to enroll for classes for the next quarter. and again, i feel the severe inadequecy of the position im in now.

one of the major advantages of joining this big public university is the sheer vast diversity of classes available for my choosing. look at biology for eg. wanna study abt AIDS? learn the societal impacts of it in BICD 136 - AIDS Science and Society. Or take BIMM 132 - Molecular Biology of Human Retroviruses to learn abt the replication cycle and gene regulation of HIV. Or even BIMM 110 - Molecular Basis of Human Disease, where you learn abt CCR5delta32 and how this defective cell membrane protein provides immunity against HIV (you lucky caucasian guys).

Not interested in AIDS? Take something else. BIBC 116 - Evolution of Genes and Protein teaches you abt observing evolution through divergence of primary sequences, aa sequences and protein 3d structures. Or BIEB 154 - Molecular Evolution, focusing on the role of mutation, selection, and drift at the molecular level. or even take a course from the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UCSD on modelling protein folding.

Or try Biology of Cancer for everything on the deadliest thing known to man, or Circadian Rhythms—Biological Clocks, to find out why you cant sleep at noon and cant wake up to mug at 3am. (or, at least for most normal pple). And not least, why not try the whole plethora of classes on marine biology, esp since we have world reknowned leader Scripps Institute of Oceanography professors here just down the road?

Gosh. im tempting myself so much by listing all this down. maybe i shld leave my boring Recombinant DNA Lab till later and take these fun classes first. but darn. 3 years is too short to enjoy all this courses! :..(

distracted, and a near disaster...

been too overwhelmed, too distracted, too tired recently.
left my valuable and irreplaceable laptop at revelle after breakfast.
luckily a kind staff kept it for me. thank god we have students working. the perm staff hardly cares abt these things.

gonna back up all my stuff tonight. my luck dont usually last long.

me and my pretty pretty flowers... =)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Thank you darling, for the beautiful flowers and cute huge card! i love you!
Now certainly my room looks extra bright and cheery! =D

Their Own Version of a Big Bang - LA Times Report

This article is scary. News these days are way too scary... I sense the tides turning away from science, slowly but surely. Scientists generally assume that special education is unnecessary since facts are on their side. But the opposing camp is working hard. Truth is, even science students like me are not adequetely prepared to answer all of those specific questions with enough confidence. Wondering if there's a need for educating young minds to debunk those half-truths that the creationists/intelligent-designists put forth continuously.

What is world coming to...

bored...

i'm now sitting in the student room, nice and quiet here. everyone in the lab went to the seminar, so there's no one around.

yay~! me just finished my first major test of the semester: orgo. supposed to get down to doing some other work that i pushed back to study orgo. but it's the feeling of wanting to do nothing for just that little while after a test. =P thanks to my orgo TA who emailed us few hours ago, pushing back the deadline for our lab report which was supposed to be due thurs. haha, so i get a little more breather!

going for broadway show today! it's called 'Gentlemen prefer blondes'. Dun even know what the heck it's about. a little reward for finishing orgo midterm, heh.

ah!!! oh dear me... now i dun dare to step out of my room!!! i of cos din post the pictures in venice... -blush- and the 'jap' picture termed by fm was not meant to be posted!!! -blush more- boo... perhaps i should go take them out eh? but darling dun allow me too... =( ahhh..... -turning red...- heh.

i love you darling.

"its a small world" series presents: Siena and Pisa

but first of all, an advertisement: my little princess jasmine! doesnt she look like some manga princess from ancient japan?

but well, back to the program. Siena, (often mispelled "Sienna") may be the best-preserved medieval city in Italy, thanks to its conquest by Florence nearly 500 years ago. While the Florentines were busy launching the Renaissance, the Senese played the role of country cousins--and as a result, Siena (or at least the walled portion of the city) still looks much as it did in the Middle Ages.

Although numerous guidebooks have advised that planning Siena as a day trip from Florence (which most travellers do) is a huge mistake, we've seen more than enough in our few hours there. I guess we were pretty much done with (and tired of) churches and duomos by that time, but the infamous torture museum (Medieval Criminal and Torture Museum aka Museo della Tortura e di Criminologia Medievale (pics)) was definitely an eye opener. definitely go check out the several dark underground tunnels!!!

and of course, the best part of the trip was bumping into RJ and KL at the museum, sharing a long chatty pizza dinner and enjoying authentic italian coffee at a fine italian coffee house.

and fate would have it that we meet again in florence, with both groups intending to make another short hop to the beautiful pisa to see the one and only famous architectural mistake in the world, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. and so, here we go together again!

Beautiful Pisa, (almost) untouched by the crazy crowds of Roma or the modern skyscrapers of Milan.

Scenic, to say the least.

And of course, how can we leave before taking corny shots with THE tower...

Venezia - islands of unexpected surprises...

i cannot believe jas didnt include this set of beautiful shots, of herself!!! so here i am, presenting a snapshot of a mini escape paradise - a small city park recessed behind the long winding streets of Venezia. Enjoy...

My dear little darling chilling out in the unexpected greenery all around us...

taken far far away using the powerful zoom that her digicam offers. look at how cute she is!!!

this is my darling jasmine. no one can be cuter than her... =) i love you baby. -muackz-

darling 'look- and act-' alike...

on the first day of orgo class, zhuyuan commented that our orgo prof had hair which looks like fm. that is quite true. no wonder i found him pretty 顺眼 (pleasing to the eye). =P

yesterday, during our lecture, zhuyuan commented again. prof acts like fm too. haha. oh dear. =) nice prof indeed. at least tries his best to make lectures interesting, funny. cracks little jokes to lighten the atmosphere. and clear lecturing too.

but oh dear. orgo midterm coming up. he's supposed to be hard. and especially when the last time i touched orgo was freshman very first sem. hmm. wasn a very gd idea to take such a long layoff. (well, not like i had much of a choice. oh well.) ok, it is just random. betta get back to wk. arghz.

(hope that because he's a darling-look and act-alike, that somehow the mideterm will be kinder to me! hee...=P)

The city of Florence...

After Venice, we took the train down to Florence. Darlings never fail to have a exciting time together, even right before leaving Venice. We had dropped by the train station to check the train timings the previous evening and wanted to buy then. But the counter closed while we were in the line and the staff refused to entertain anyone else the moment the clock struck 10 or 11 (forgot the closing time already). The people were told to use the automatic machines to buy their tickets. However, we were using the Europass and needed to place a seat reservation, which could not be done at the machines. sighz. so we could only do that the next day...

we planned to leave our room at XX time, take the water bus to the terminal to get our tickets and hop on the train.... haha. but holidays are after all holidays... we dilly-dally in the morning, kinda left our room slightly later than planned, but thot we were still fine. din realized the bus takes 1 hr to get to the train terminal. and of cos, we were late by the time we got there. =P

but worked out pretty well, the person arranged for us the next train possible and the timings were perfect =D Gave us time to admire the river of Venice a last time before heading to Florence. =) haha, darling used his favorite quote again: 塞翁失马... =)

Florence's a small little city, nothing much really. But the highlight was the Duomo. wow... the murals painted on the walls and ceilings were really pretty. Amazing artwork, really.



there was more in store... visitors could climb up few hundred steps up the duomo to the top!
darling climbing, climbing... getting dizzy with all the winding steps...


and wow... That's where we had a close-up view of the paintings. simply amazing artwork.


and... emerging at the rooftop, where a breathtaking view of the city of florence awaited... it was so beautiful... especially when the sun was just beginning to lower down in the sky...







Did i mention too that Europe somehow had one of their coldest winters when we were there? When we were in florence, it snowed! and according to one of our hosts, it never snows in Florence, perhaps only once in 15 years!



Btw, sorry for the delay in posting the pictures. fm and i are currently quite busy with sch work. please be patient while we slowly upload the pictures. =) darling having his hectic stretch of midterms this week. jiayou orh dear!