Wednesday, December 02, 2009

)):

I feel so sian today. Tired. So many things to do, don't know what to start with @_@

In happier news, I got a new phone! But I transferred wrongly and lost half of all my contacts! -.- one of the various reasons why I'm so sian.


Like a floating cloud in the sky,
THIS TOO SHALL PASS

smile at 8:10 PM

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Tuesday, December 01, 2009

my pretty desktop wallpaper!


I really should print screen and save all my pretty desktop wallpapers from now on! ((:

smile at 3:13 AM

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yay

Random patterns and doodles XD




(stretched version)




Zoning out, listening to nice music, doodling.
Feeling at ease (:

smile at 2:56 AM

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Welcome, December!

And this thus marks another end to an eventful year.

smile at 2:09 AM

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photos

I'm thinking of compiling and categorising my nicer photos somewhere online, either on a photo sharing website or maybe I can set up another blog to store them (but I don't really know how to make the template to present the photos nicely and all those techie stuff). Anyone has good suggestions/ideas? (:

smile at 1:32 AM

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

time

All the random songs that popped into my head during this period of exams seem to do with time! Hahaha maybe subconsciously I was hoping to have more timeee XD

"time goes by, so slowly" - Hung Up, Madonna
"I need a love to last forever" and "look into my eyes, then you'll realise, here I stand with my everlasting love" - Everlasting Love, Jamie Cullum
"take this sinking boat and point it home, we've still got time" and "you have suffered enough and warred with yourself, it's time that you won" - Falling Slowly, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

Speaking of time, I realised that everything's ending - the academic semester, the year, another phase of my life, my toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, soap, moisturiser, etc. Lol (:

smile at 9:41 PM

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Norah Jones - Don't Know Why

I love the raw visuals, landscape, placing, colour, and of course Norah Jones herself (: she makes it look so easy and sincere! Not one of those music videos nowadays with confusing scenes and shallow words XD

smile at 7:20 PM

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smelly and taking stock (warning: long rambling uninteresting self-reflective entry haha)

Okay actually I wrote the next few paragraphs a few hours ago, then went off for a bath and dinner and went to surf the net, so I'm not really smelly anymore! Hooray. But shall still sit down and take stock (: here goes!

Haha I just cleaned up my room after one week (or more) of neglect :p was busy studying for my papers - completed my fourth one today! This time it's really bad ): poor management and planning. Shall never let it happen again! And so now I'm sitting down, feeling a little smelly, listening to Mika, sorting out my thoughts and taking stock of what has happened this semester. A little rest for my brain (: by the way, after cleaning my room I found two dead insects and a live spider (added on: 2 more live insects spotted as of 7.50pm! I'm sure there's lots more hiding here and there, lol)

Okay so about the finals for Year 2 Semester 1. Why do I say that I have poor management and planning? It's the timing - Saturday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday! All in a row :0 plus my heavy core modules are on the latter two days -__- what a marathon.

Thankfully, even though I spent a VERY compressed mugging period to cover my topics, I think I pulled off my first 2 exams quite okay - Ecology and the Environment (LSM2251), and Complementary Medicine and Health (GEK1507). Then after the second one, which was at 5-7pm, I started rushing like nobody's business because:


#1,
I only have the night and the next morning to study for a heavy module, Molecular Biology (LSM2102) which requires lots of understanding of concepts and memorising of facts. It ranges from learning about the different parts of the DNA (repetitive DNA elements, non-repetitive coding elements, non-repetitive non-coding elements; heterochromatin such as telomeres, centromeres, origins of replications, etc), to genetic modifications (somatic cell gene therapy, transgenics, gene targetting, etc), to prokaryotic transcription, lac operon, phage lambda, epigenetics, to the different ways to regulate gene expression (before, during and after transcription; RNA processing and export and localisation and degradation; before, during and after translation, etc).

At that time, out of the three lecturers' parts, I completed the first lecturer's and half of the second lecturer's topics on Sunday. I only touched half of the third lecturer's one a few days ago, and the other half few weeks ago, which meant I would have forgotten most of what I've read. But then that's the most important because we didn't have CA for her section! And for most of us, no CA = no mugging for those topics, and so it's starting from scratch and there's not much revision and we have no means of testing our understanding :0

And on the other hand, I haven't read the second lecturer's topics for more than a few weeks already :/ and his lectures are really compact and chockful of stuff to remember! Plus, judging from the previous CA, his questions require understanding, so cannot just go in without preparation.

(flashforward to today)
In the end, I managed to touch on everything up til the last possible minute, and the paper was.. hmm XD I managed to count the number of questions which I -
1. didn't know how to answer
2. am not sure of but would most probably have a probability of >0.5 of getting wrong

and subtracted those which I'm not sure of but made an intelligent guess so hopefully will be correct, and got 10 questions out of 40! Ohmygoodness, don't know if it's a good thing. But then again, speculations are never a good gauge; there's still so many factors to consider, like how the entire cohort fared, if the OAS machine screened the shaded ovals properly, if the persistent bird squawking outside the hall affected some peoples' answers, etc. Hahahaha joking. But yea you can never know for sure, so better not to think about it at all! :D Plus, I had more urgent matters at hand..
(end of flashforward, back to the situation after my second paper)

#2,
even if I miraculously make if through unscathed, I would still have ANOTHER content-heavy core module to sit for the next day! And it's worrying, because it's Metabolism and Regulation (LSM2101) which involves a lot of recall: the pathways, enzymes, regulation, how they all come together, the different organs involved, etc. Which requires TIME and PRACTICE which I didn't have the luxury of )):

This was such a different situation from last semester, where we had the core module Metabolism (LSM1101), which is about the same thing, only that now it's more in-depth and covers more stuff, like amino acids and nucleotides, and there's also the regulation aspect of it. Last time, I could list all the pathways and substrates and products and enzymes, and we didn't even have a provided booklet of pathways and compounds!

(flashfoward to earlier today)
This time, even up til the last minute, I was still reading the notes and had to selectively choose what to read ))): I guess my luck (and energy) sort of ran out :/ but then, somehow, even though I skipped a few 2 marks questions and just zham for a few others, I was still writing all the way til the end! I even asked for another booklet, much to the horror of the people around me :p but actually I wasn't that pro lah, I just used one page per part question! Even those which covered less than half a page, lol. And I cancelled my first page (due to nervousness and not thinking before writing). My second booklet only had one page which was written on XD

Also, the guys to the right and left of me didn't seem to be writing at all! The one on my left was starting at his booklet, then at the questions, then wrote a paragraph, stared some more, then crossed that paragraph out :0 and spent the rest of his time just staring from question booklet to answer booklet to the provided pathways booklet, woah. The one on my right was muttering to himself, and halfway through he asked the invigilator for something and left his seat to get some stuff and came back to his seat. Hmmm.

But then again, no point comparing, so I'm not raising my hopes. I just don't want to get below a B :/ argh ohwell it's over! Which also means, I've one paper left (: now that I've a few days to study, I will make GOOD USE of my time :D will conquer Biostatistics and raise my passed-but-not-that-good CA markssss. Shall recuperate from my long battle, and begin afresh tomorrow! No slacking!

Note to self:
- plan your modules properly
> take into account the exam dates - space them apart as much as possible; it's okay to end late (short-term suffering for longer-term benefit)
> make sure they aid you in fulfilling your university and faculty and MOE requirements (argh 2 Maths-related modules next semester for me @_@)

- study consistently
> don't wait til the last minute!!
> build up on your notes, don't start afresh each time (please learn from Metab, ohmygoodness)

- don't take up too many activities, aka don't put too many things on your plate, aka don't bite off more than you can chew, aka don't put all your eggs into one basket (okay actually all this food imagery is getting abit random and don't mean the actual thing, but haha I'm writing it anywayy)
> don't have to go for every weekly activity for NUSBS
> put aside a fixed amount of time for CCA (NUSBS, KE7OCIP) every week; don't spend too much time on them and forget everything else!!

- make time for friends and family
> I realised I haven't been meeting up with people that much anymore! Everyone's getting busier :/ but still, should catch up and maintain contact as much as we can afford to (:
> Familyyyy! Love them so much! Must strive to go back for at least one day every week, instead of just meeting them for a quick meal and go back to hall :/

- healthy lifestyle
> have been VERY sedentary these few weeks; if there's one thing I'm good at, it's plonking myself with my materials and just sitting there for a few hours straight (or maybe getting up to go to the toilet or fill my water container) - very bad!
> please please make the attempt to eat more healthily, and exercise at least once a week! Actually, I learnt in my Complementary Medicine and Health module that we are supposed to exercise at least 30mins a day, for 5 days a week :0 HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE. Lol nevermind I shall start small XD


Okay, off to get my laundry (:

smile at 4:55 PM

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Friday, November 20, 2009

ahhh

Feeling so sian now. I feel a slight impending sense of doom as well ): hopefully my urgency/adrenaline/epinephrine will see me completing my studying on time!

Note to self: Please plan your timetable properly next time, and that includes exam schedule! DON'T CLUMP THEM ALL TOGETHER. Spreading out is better. So what if you finish earlier? You've less time to studyyy. Short term torture is better than suffering from not-that-good-grades later (:

smile at 12:44 AM

1 comments

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

SO AMAZINGGG!


That was what I wrote on my Ecology textbook after reading this:

"Higher along the reef face a male bluehead wrasse mates with a member of the harem of females that live within his territory. In contrast to the male with his blue head, black bars, and green body, the female is mostly yellow with a large, black spot on her dorsal fin. As the male bluehead extrudes sperm to fertilize the eggs laid by the female, small males, similar in color to the female, streak by the mating pair, discharging a cloud of sperm as they do. Some of the female's eggs will be fertilized by the large territorial bluehead while others will be ferilized by the sperm discharged by the smaller yellow streakers. In addition to differences in color and courtship behavior, bluehead and yellow males have distinctive histories. While the yellow males began their lives as males, the bluehead male began life as a female and only transformed to a male when the local bluehead male was eaten by a predator or met some other end. At that point, because she was the largest yellow phase among the local females and males, she was in line to become the dominant local male and so changed from the yellow to the bluehead form of the species. Within a week the former female was producing sperm and fertilizing the eggs produced by the females in the territory."

Wow!


(Ecology: Concepts and Applications, 5th Edition)

smile at 8:08 PM

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ecology textbook!

"While Sonoran Desert cicada sings from the branches of a mesquite tree during a midsummer's afternoon [even on the hottest days, when air temperature is near its lethal limit], the scorpion spends the day in its burrow near the base of the tree."

Are you the cicada or the scorpion?
CAN YOU STAND THE HEAT? (:
(a) Lame joke: "No, I'd rather sit." Hahaha.
(b) My mother: "If not, then get out of the kitchen!" Lol.


Scientific sidenote: The cicada is able to do so due to its environmental adaptation, evaporative cooling. It induces massive water loss via evaporation in order to remove heat from its body! It gets the water by tapping into water that its host plant draws from deep below the surface of the ground, and drinking lots and lots (:

(Ecology: Concepts and Applications, 5th Edition)

smile at 7:21 PM

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go go go!

Good, I'm warming up already! Shall demolish Siva and Darren Yeo's notes todayyyy

(added on at 3.30pm)
Ohmygoodness I only completed one chapter! I still have FIVE MORE TO GO. And that is only for two of the three lecturers in the module. Gah.

smile at 11:51 AM

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Monday, November 16, 2009

DONE

Finally submitted my Pulau Ubin Field Trip Report. Now I shall do the NUS teaching feedback survey, bathe, drink some ginseng-wolfberries tea, and start full-fledged mugging! :D

smile at 10:55 PM

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Sunday, November 15, 2009

since i'm on the topic of birds

This is my current desktop picture! So cute ((: got this from Ann Wood's website - she's really good, love her work!

smile at 5:38 PM

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:D

Yessss I finally completed it! Sent it to my TA (teaching assistant) to read through and give comments; he's so nice ((:

And now, before I start on my HARDCORE MUGGING (lol.) I shall post some trivia on the wonderful world of birds! All those mentioned are seen in Singapore :D (taken from www.naturia.per.sg)

1. Pink-necked Green Pigeon (male)
The most fascinating feature of pigeons and doves is their ability to produce crop milk. During breeding season, special glands in the crops of both males and females enlarge and secrete a thick milky substance. The chicks drink this milk by poking their bills into the parent's throat. Thus, pigeons and doves can feed their young without having to incessantly hunt or forage for food. Instead of laying many eggs, they lay one or at most two eggs. Their abundance is proof that this feature gives them the advantage.

2. female common kingfisher (seeking permission for use) Common Kingfisher (female)
Common Kingfishers usually perch on a convenient branch or pole about 1-2m from the water surface. They plunge into the water from their perch (90%); or hover before diving in (3%). They have keen eyesight with polarising filters to cut out water reflection and better see their prey. They also learn to compensate for refraction. When they plunge into the water, the eyes are protected by a membrane. So they actually catch their prey blind, relying on touch to decide when to snap their bills shut. They then fly straight out of the water with their prey in their bills.

Before eating a fish, the bird will hold it by its tail and whack it to death against the perch, particularly fishes with poky fins. Otherwise, the live fish may extend its fins in the bird's throat, choking it, sometimes to death. Kingfishers regurgitate pellets of indigestible fishbone. The birds preen themselves carefully after fishing to ensure their feathers remain waterproof. Juveniles often nearly drown because they failed to pay enough attention to preening. (Hahaha aiyo see la don't listen to your mother!)

When contesting territory, they perform a ritual display perched some distance from each other. This involves displaying feathers and beaks, accompanied by whistling. Usually the dispute is resolved without actual combat. But in rare instances, combatants will lock beaks and attempt to drown each other. For those in Europe, courtship involves chasing and calling and usually culminates in the male catching and offering the female an "engagement fish". (So cute! But why only in Europe?? Do birds reflect the people in their country? Lol.)

3. Black-naped Oriole (notice how the black "bandit" eyemask goes right through to the back of the nape! :D)
Call: Described as a fluty four-note whistle what-the-devil! or too-did-yoo or ta-KEE-you; a rising ai-oo-raa; a hissing like fighting tom cats. (So interesing :p)

4. asian glossy starling adult feeding juvenile Philippine/Asian Glossy Starling
Like their relatives the Mynas, the Asian Glossy Starling can also mimic the calls of other birds. In bright sunlight, their glossy plumage has an iridescent shine, changing to green, purple or black as they move about. (I think they're also known for putting their eggs into other birds' nests!)

5. Yellow-vented Bulbul (Didn't know what's a vent? Now you know! XD)
Among the most common birds in Singapore; it is said that it is almost impossible NOT to see Yellow-Vented Bulbuls. They are found nearly everywhere except in the deep forest. Originally from the mangroves and coastal scrub, they have adapted to become one of the most common birds in cultivated areas (parks, gardens, plantations). (Hmm I've to keep my eyes open for them; not observant enough hahaha)

6. chestnut munia on a perch Chestnut Munia
Call: Described as a loud heh; shrill preep. The Chestnut Munia's nest is a ball made out of dried grass, close to the ground in long grass or low bushes.

7. scaly-breasted munia Scaly-breasted Munia
Breeding: Scaly-breasted Munias breed year round and may have multiple broods on a good year, up to 3-4 broods. The males perform a courting song, which may attract another male or even several. These males perch close to the singer and peer intently at his bill. This behaviour is called "peering".

A male also entices a female by flying about with a bit of grass in his bill and flickering his wings and tail. If the female is interested, she too picks up a bit of grass and flickers her wings.

The nest is an untidy globe made out of grass and bamboo leaves, with a side entrance. It is lined with soft fluffy seeds or feathers. The nest are not woven and material is simply pushed together. But the nests are well-made, robust and waterproof. The birds work tirelessly and the nest can become an enormous globe. 5-6 white eggs are laid, although sometimes more eggs are found, probably laid by more than one female. Both parents incubate. The eggs hatch in about 2 weeks and the young are fed entirely vegetable matter, which is regurgitated by the parents. They fledge in 18-19 days. Juveniles often form their own flocks after leaving their parents, and wander about together.

Scaly-breasted Munias are often hunted by birds of prey. When a flock flies some distance, although the whole group flies in a a direct manner, within the flock, each bird follows an erratic corkscrewing path. This makes it hard for birds of prey to target a single individual.


Amazing :D

smile at 4:51 PM

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so near yet so far; almost thereeeee!

Stupid (okay not really la) time-wasting assignment! If the deadline were not set at this period in the semester, I think I would have enjoyed writing this field trip report quite a bit -.- go Carmen go! You've already done the Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Appendix and References - last part already!

smile at 3:37 PM

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