[end of module one]

It's the shortest module I ever had..lasted for 5 days! We had an end of module assignment today where we had to write a 2000-word essay in 6 hours. It was quite an accomplishment cos I usually take one whole week to write that much. The deadline was like at 5pm but most of us sent it around 5.05..without even editing our papers! I managed to write abt 1854 words...which now come to think of it..is probably quite out of point (can I blame it on the ambiguous qs? haha :P) ah but well..at least I submitted something. It was such a lazy day..I didn't sleep well last night, was sneezing throughout lectures this morning...could barely open my eyes in the comp lab but well..I made it. Heh. After school, I met flo at lucky plaza and I went to buy genes (gosh!) jeans. Then went to far east...I wanted to buy my "cow" shoes but too bad it was taken up. Was pretty tired so we went home after that.

Yesterday was pretty fun. We went to play pool at lucky plaza. After two previous failed attempts - one in Australia when upon seeing how pathetic me n Sakura were at hitting the balls, an 11 yr old Aussie girl offered to teach us how to play, and another when a 10 yr old beat me to it in Indonesia (mum's friend's kid I think...)...I guess I didn't do too badly. Ch n F were pretty good teachers (F was a bit fierce tho haha) so in no time I was even winning games (err well..does ONE game count? hehe). Hey so next time any of u gonna play pool..call me along!

Welcome to GAME

Yesterday was the start of the joint PhD programme. What a morning. At first I thought the classes were at Biopolis. I was already on the way there when I decided to check which room it would be in..that's when I found out it was supposed to be in COFM itself. So I stopped at Clementi MRT, crossed over..and discovered the taxi queue was too long. So I took a bus to AYE to change to 963. I was waiting n waiting n waiting. Unfortunately, since it was towards the expressway, all the taxis had passengers in them. I was about to call for a cab (not wanting to be late for my first day of lessons) just when the bus came.

Then came the second boo boo. I was walking across the field..wondering whether I should rush. I thought maybe I checked the schedule wrongly and classes were actually at 9.30 (wishful thinking). Instead of finding "good news", I discovered I was supposed to be there at 8.30!! Luckily it was only a buffet breakfast so well..I didn't miss much (free food...damn..haha). Oh well, I grabbed my folder and went into the seminar room..they hadn't started proper so yeah..I was "on time".

The class has a pretty interesting makeup. 10 students from KI, 7 from NUS plus 2 sit ins, me and another girl. The batch from KI is quite diverse...one Cameroonian, a Tanzanian, Lithuanian, Chinese, a few Swedish and even a Singaporean. Quite a number of profs from both unis sat in too..I guess for the first week only. First day of the programme and we were given 7 readings, and our first grp assignment! (which I'm supposed to be working on now hehe)

The lessons so far were pretty okay...intro stuff. Today a few of us had to intro ourselves and our projects. My turn will be on Thurs...hope I won't be bombarded with too many questions. Ok better get started on my work now...see ya.

P.S. Btw how do I look with my hair straightened? hehe :P

Happy Birthday, Sakura!

Not that she'll read this...maybe a month later..haha. It was a tiny celebration on Thur (not that it's usually huge) cos she was busy studying for her history prelims the next day. I got her a Sims 2 game n a Billabong wallet (on dad's behalf). She was actually surprised with the Sims 2...so i guess when she said she went to my blog to tag the board..she did JUST that...and maybe read the first two lines of my then latest post (I was worried she read my entry which said that I'd bought her the game). So when she finally gets down to reading my blog again..I guess her b'day wld've long passed. It really sucks having ur b'day during exam time. She said her gifts were at an all time low haha.

Today I went to Flo's mum's place. They were having a bbq to celebrate her sis-in-law's bday. It was a pretty impressive place...a high-end service apt in orchard rd. I felt like I was in a hotel room haha. The bbq was nice. Dieter's medium roast beef was good. They were so afraid I had nothing to eat that they brought up the beef stew her mum had cooked for lunch. In the end I was more than full. After more chatting n joking ard, we left ard 9.30. Had a good time..they're nice ppl to be ard with. Well here I am now, nursing my itchy insect bite haha. Sakura wants me to accompany her to watch "Mexican". "Spend some quality time" as she put it. I'll sign off here then. :)

Så som i himmelen

Caught the earliest movie ever..at 10.15am today. It was a Swedish movie "As It Is In Heaven". It was a pretty impressive movie - very touching and easy to relate to. Plus of course it brought back memories...the vast fields, the thick snow and the "doh-nial" instead of Daniel. Heh. It was a simple story line yet captivating. Ok, I suck at writing reviews..shall stop here.

Later on we went to Taka looking for something to buy for my sis. I'm the b'day secretary...so dad asked me to buy something from her with his never ending Taka vouchers (think he has a secret stash somewhere haha). But my sis is such a satisfied gal that she doesn't really want anything. Guess the best b'day present I can give her right now is to tell her that she doesn't have to sit for her prelims. Yeah like that would happen...

Yesterday flo n i went to the old turf club at bt timah. Call me crazy but I wanna buy a car. With the little downpayment and 10 yr loans..it doesn't sound too outrageous to own a car these days...of course small one lah. Hehe. The Honda FiT looked good...1.3cc..low fuel consumption. Shall keep my eye on such cars. For now I have to save up for Sweden. But hey, if anyone wants to give me a car for the time being I'm open to it :P After shopping for chat-moyen's mouse-pen thingy, we had a failed attempt looking for a billabong wallet so we headed home. Wanted to spend more time out but chat-moyen had to go home n i wanted to let flo study.

I finally fixed my mp3 player...it kept hanging whenever I transferred corrupted song files..which really sucks cos there's no way to check if a file's corrupted, especially when I can play it on media player! Anyway with some updating here n there, n playing with the reset button, I managed to ge tit working again. How ingenious. Haha. I never said humility was my strongest point. This together with the USB card which I successfully fixed in my cpu....makes me feel like maybe I should take up a computer course to improve my "skills". Yep..we'll see...

I just finished a session of yoga. Bought a CD at Sim Lim last wk. Precious accompanied me for awhile..but she had to get back to her books. She has Lit n Maths paper tmr. It's been awhile since I've stretched....hope I'll get back my flexibility again soon (actually, I don't think I was that flexible to begin with..but there's no harm in wishing :P). One of our prof's wife from physio will be starting yoga lessons next wk. Hope it's fun. I think I should start yoga seriously again soon...wanted to but after procrastinating for so long...the classes at clementi sports hall are all full. Bleah.

Oh well, that's all I guess. Hope I won't have trouble sleeping tonight cos I had a late nap. Tata.

Can we have some of ur blood please?

No I'm not turning into a vampire. We went for our field work on Tues n Thur to collect blood (and saliva) samples for our study. It was pretty exciting. The rest of the group kept asking me how I found the trip to the factory (sounded as if they were eager to find out the response from a 9 yr old kid going to the zoo for the first time). Everything went smoothly, except that I missed out a few consent forms (oops!). The workers were pretty friendly, and most had no problem donating that little extra bit of blood. The workers from China were more reluctant...was quite amazed that there were so many of them there...but after some persuasion they agreed. There were quite a number Indian workers from Malaysia too..and interestingly they kept insisting I had to speak to them in Malay for the questionnaire altho they had no problems speaking English when Vivian interviewed them. Yesterday's session was smoother than Tuesday's. The consent forms n questionnaires tallied (woohoo). One pakcik however was so unwilling to donate his blood. He was like, "Why do u ppl keep asking me for blood..didn't u do that last year? And how do I know that it's gonna be kept confidential? etc etc" I tried to calm him down by saying that's why he's signing the consent form etc and of course things will be confidential but he started erupting by saying even the S'pore govt is all out to cheat us. Lol. Like what's the connection? Even after he went to Viv's station he came back to me to complain (unfortunately I was the only one who could understand Malay). Well eventually we told him he can always just go ahead with his medical examination. Later on I found out that he was complaining at every station he went to haha. There was another Jap guy, a phd chemist...who asked a million and one questions and after half an hour of probing (the rest just took half a minute) decided not to donate his saliva or blood. Waste time onli :P Anyway this occupational med stuff is turning out to be pretty fun (I did think it was fun to begin with...)

When we returned to lab with the samples, YB taught me how to separate the blood components n stuff. It was simple but tedious cos we had ard 30 samples x 3 separations to do. The grossest part was when YB n I had to discard the urine samples cos the bottles we collected them in were not autoclavable. Imagine 30 ppl peeing into the same bowl. It STANK!! Will have to start on the assays next week. And I have to tabulate the questionnaire results too. Gosh sounds like a lot of work heh. Hope I can finish them soon so that I'm not bogged down when my GAME modules start. Cos altho I'm not an official student, Prof Chia said I should sit in and even do class assignments and CAs so that I can get credits for the modules later on. Looking forward to meeting the new Swedish students too.

Ok enough boring stuff abt work n studies. Shall end here for now. Gonna meet CY for lunch today. Tata. :)

Today sucked

6am in the morning. I get screamed at for not doing housework these past few days. I don't get what they want. I sweep the floor, wash the toilet, do the laundry. But of course..I made the biggest boo-boo..I didn't cook. As if I've been lounging around all day and waiting for someone to serve me my lunch. As if I haven't been going to work at 9am for the whole week. I really don't understand what is expected of me. Wonder how long I can take this.

Later on I went for tuition. Prince Arthur got locked out of the house so he ended up calling me every few minutes during tuition. In the end, I left 10 mins early, rushed home by cab..only to find that the gate had been opened. What the F***!

At least the comfort was that I had a fun time at az's house. She came back from London after a year with her hubby so it was time to catch up. Looking at her pics made me wanna go back to London again! We watched a couple of movies n indulged in some pizza :P

Later on, I was 10 mins late in meeting my fren n got questioned for my punctuality. We went to Rowell Rd cos my fren was attending a volunteer's session there. I didn't wanna feel like an extra so I went to Sim Lim Tower to look for a software. The whole place was so deserted...hardly any shops open so I went to Sim Lim Square instead. Bought some unnecessary things like ink cartridges (altho I already have stock) and a USB 2.0 card (hope I figure out how to fix it). What I really wanted was to find Sims 2 for my sis' b'day (oops hope she's not reading this before 15th sept!). Got a pretty good discount despite my lack of bargaining abilities. Was happy with the purchase (I'm punctual with her gift for once..haha). I went to Burlington Sq to kill time till 8.45 then went back to Rowell to meet my fren. That's when I got really pissed. Cos I msged her to ask her what time she'd finish. No reply. I wouldn't have minded but the place was filthy and what with all the transvestites ard and bloody foreign workers who couldn't keep their eyes to themselves. I had to wait till 9.30 before I finally got a reply...and even then my friend was not done yet. I was so pissed that when she msged me at 10 I didn't wanna wait for her anymore. It's one thing waiting for ur friend when u know what time she's coming out..but she didn't even have the decency to reply my msg to at least tell me she was gonna be delayed or whatever. I stormed to the MRT station. Went home without waiting for her. And here I am..still trying to calm myself down. Oh well, shit happens I guess. Arghh.

My modelling career

First it was the i.CARE costume parade. Today I went down to asia-images for a photo shoot. Surprise surprise. Haha. Well it was just some test shots...my itchy fingers replied to an ad in the classifieds wanting north indian models...sent in a pic or two, n received a reply to come down for the shots. I guess they were pretty desperate for models so they called me down. Haha. Was thinking twice about going at first cos i was wondering whether it was one of those "pay $400 and u'll get ur portfolio" scams. And the email sounded like they wanted an expert: "we would like to see how well u manage ur facial expression in front of the camera to express emotions". In the end, ery n flo urged me on. ery decided that she wanted to try too so when the photographer asked us who was going first, her nice friend *chuckles* volunteered her :P (in my defense, she said she had done this before so i thought she'd feel less nervous). It was a pretty fast session...after looking pretty..up, down, sideways for a couple of mins, the guy told us we'll be contacted for any assignments. Hope I get one. Not that I'm dying to be a model...it'd be a fun experience. *winks*