Wang's Kitchen

writing term papers always tear a huge chunk out of me. Though basically the same as writing a response paper, its still a piece of pain in the ass task that totally takes the interest of the subject outta me. Though I set aside today to "work on" the Sov history term paper, I could place no hope in actually finishing the damn thing by today, even though it was merely 6 pages, and my first term paper was a 16 page monster for geog in the summer.
i guess the starting part is hard, and analogous to climbing the energy hill during the activation phase of a chemical reaction. Today it was worse because I had a headache and no coffee to kick my ass for the day (it wasn't cold enough either to stick my head outta the window). So I lay in bed for two hours and dozed for a while, with thoughts of zeitgeists and the Purges swimming in my head.. (It was said that Descartes did his introspective work this way, but hell, I ain't no Descartes). Then I finally decided to not be an ass about it, after remembering that I had a hell loads to do the following week and finally got to it. As usual, my MSN messenger was on the whole time, so the actual writing of half of the term paper (merely 3 pages) took my 4 hours, with generous portions of online conversations, musings, and randoming surfing of netstuff interupting the thought process. This was exactly what happened when I wrote that geog paper and I'm surprised how coherent it actually looked. ah well.
so now i'm taking a break blogging and I just got back from lab an am procrastinating in preparation for the next half.
back to writing this shit then.
good night!

its freezing but there's no snow yet, but chicago, further down south was so inundated with the white stuff that that flights were delayed. madison's supposed to be colder so why no snow dammit!?
finally acquired a slow cooker, Ram bought me some lentils, and I stole some spices from him, and I have finally a pot of daaaal slowly cooking in my slow cooker. finally! mmm mmmmm!
however, am out of coffee. That is a bad thing, for I'm in mugging mode nowadays. That's fuel for the brain, regardless of the effect on the stomach. Ah well.
The von Karajan Beethoven recordings finally arrived. I'm listening to them now. Supposedly its one of the best recordings but I guess I've been too used to the faster version by Norrington. The 9th symphonie is now so slow that it sounds draggy, like some invalid trying to run a marathon. No energy at all! How the hell am I going to mug to this music.
Ah well. von Karajan or not, I still prefer my olde recordings.
To each his own

brrr finally the real weather is coming to Madison. Can finally wake myself up fully without resorting to the hot shower; i'd just have to open the window, take in two breaths of ice, stop myself from screaming and carry on.
Ram's sister came over for Thanksgiving and we (me, Ram and her) went trotting out in the cold onto State Street, which by now resembled a ghost town. Everything and everyone was closed and gone for the holiday except the pizza place, so we had pizza for dinner. On hindsight, I don't think I'd have missed much on the food aspect of Thanksgiving, and I don't the norte americanos celebrate this occasion just by the food alone. If they did, well, it would be a farce.
I had a de facto Thanksgiving celebration at the dorm today, where the manager, in an uncharacteristic fit of generosity cooked the standard Thanksgiving fare for us. To be frank, the fare resembled the same kind of junk that passes for edibles on the dinner menu when turkey meat is served during normal cafeteria dinners. The turkey, as usual tasted like old tired hen; perhaps the farmer slaughtered it as an afterthought when the old bird ceased laying eggs. The taste reflected it. It was, well, tasteless and tough to bite into, as though the flesh was still rebelling and contorted and in a fixated state of rigor mortis (*squak* i don't wanna die dammit, why did u kill me dammit!). The cranberry sauce, well, reminded me of jam preserve and the mashed potatoes were ho hum ho hum.
I suppose I just went for the free grub. Not really much in the spirit of Thanksgiving, whatever that spirit is. I suppose I still see myself as an explant (to flog a dev. bio term to death) to this foreign land. Never had a chance to integrate nor to assimilate for the want of time. Sure, there was and still is a huge chunk of learning and formation of a new and separate worldview, but half the time, I still thought in terms of us vs. them. In other words, I might be a neutral and bemused observer in a foreign society, but there were not many times I could be an actual participant myself. Books, ideas and theory might be good, but there is no substitute for real life interactions. Sadly there wasnt any Spemann organizer inducing me to turn into an americana infused chink. (apologies, another dev. bio term). I don't think the rest of the buggers here are like me, so I guess its just me. I'm just an antisocial chinky who still speaks in a weird brit/singaporean accent. I don't think that disgusting midwestern inflection will creep up in my speech soon. And I would be probably ashamed and alarmed if I did.
Anyway, my personal Thanksgiving will be a month away, when I'd be finally be replanted into my home society doing what I do best: terroizing hawker centers and drinking beer with my similarly antisocial muggerlots.

back from my Thanksgiving dinner of sorts at a Nepalese restaurant. am tempted to write something, but at this time, I'm nursing a headache from banging too much on my writer's block. Not that I can write coherently much of the time anyway, but this time my brain feels like its shrouded in some kind of electric blanket, making it feel really fuzzy. Ellington in the background ain't doing much help either, and I'm dozing off as I write this... stupid inconsequential post about having nothing to post. hrm.
would love to say i'm looking forward to Thanksgiving and the turkeys, but I ain't eating turkey, nor am i going to get any rest. I gotta fly back to the 1930s to the Stalinist Purges for my term paper, while I gotta kill a couple more million stinky E. Coli cells and take some DNA out for the lab; my super needs them to screw more cells the following Monday.
no repreieve for the wretched. at least there ain't no school for the next 4 days.

Whoaa. Last night was the most advanced stage of inebriation i acheieved in my entire life. Sure, thats no mean feat for an average freshman, but for a bugger with a viral load in the liver waiting to explode, that was a dance with danger.
But anyway, looking at last night's entry, I am completely surprised that it is rather.. coherent still.
On the 40 min journey back on foot, I was so tipsy, it felt like my head was attached to a spring instead of my neck, and I had no memory whatsoever of the previous night's entry.
So I can neither confirm nor deny its contents, only to say, it was a reflection of my state of mind at the present moment.
There is always no smoke without fire though.

essen haus was awesome. german food makes no excuses unlike prancy bourgeois jappy shit, with its emphasis on aesthetics and the fluff. a fugu will be dressed up as a crysanthenmum, nevermind the damned thing can kill you in 3 seconds if the chef goofed up and prepared a lick of its liver. in german food, a knuckle is a knuckle, a potato is a potato, Dunkel Weiss Bier is a Dunkel Weiss Bier, and good it is at that. liver is black, as with anything painstakingly prepared. it might look ugly, but what a treasure! Such is that of life contraditions, that those most heartachingly beautiful people are unattractive in real life, and such is that of german food, all the ugly in your face meat, but absolutely heavenly when eating
The polka at essen suited the mood completely, and i managed to recognize the strains of "Mac the Knife" , " the Way you Look tonight" amid all the festivities and the beer. its all straight forward and clean. just like a good dinner in a cold cold night should be. here is my damage so far, and if i die, i will donate my liver, chock full of HBV particles to science!
1) Franziskaner Dunkel Weiss
2) Spaten Optimator (really good stout. as malty as horlicks)
3) some-german-wine i couldn't catch the name, the polka band was doing too loud a number
4) some red beer with a really interesting taste
And how i wish, that life could be so straightforward as German food. and german beer itself!
How, the adventurers, the explorers, the people who ventured in the unknown could be recognized for our efforts. Not the careerists?! True blue scientists are explorers, not merely careerists. The careerists can go rot in the administration arm. We are the ones who make the organization! We do not deserve shit like that?!
O when o when will i be ever freed of my chains? To do whatever I want? To study whatever I want? For as long sycophants occupy the chains of power, a sincere explore is deprived of a chance to contribute. You can write everything I write above as a rambling of a drunken bugger, what the truth is the truth, and one cannot cover up the truth. someone. just buy me out. just buy us all of us out. let the syncopants and the stupid bureaucrats implode!

i guess this is weird, but faced with the prospect of doing nothing for the whole weekend, a rarity since the start of semester, I don't know what to do at all. So I spent the whole of today doing nothing significant except mope at my inability to get the classes I want for next semester, and my data (or lack thereof) from the lab.
Might be going to have beer again at the Essen Haus with Ram, if he manages to sashay back in time for dinner.
Apart from that, nothing interesting i guess. Lione's nick still hasn't changed, I still don't care about readership, so......
well, am tempted to diss people again, but will lay off for now.
being bored, in a way, is a blessing

well, hello again.
i don't really want to moan and groan about finishing my third cycle of crap, and how i did my last paper before thanksgiving break under adverse conditions. I'm bored of moaning about myself.
BUT I STILL WANNA MOAN!
:)
well, lets cut the emotional crap. i'd just write a skeleton grumble in good old fashioned point form
1) had two exams today, both done on empty stomach. by the time i had cell bio, i was seeing stars from not having breakfast/lunch/dinner. my stretch marks are thus no surprise hor.
2) cell bio was the hardest test of my life so far. Mad Bill B has done it again! I'm actually worrying about this exam afterwards; remarkably this is my first case of post exam acute anxiety so far (as compared to the hist of sov union test in the earlierpost. that was a slow burn.
3) SOMEONE, SOMEONE called er. L ! ( Juju, time to rein in your boyvboy) went and put this blog's address on his nick , causing a rise in new readership. to say "Shit!" is to say the very least.
well, for the people who are reading this, well, er , hello! and er, this blog is not meant for a wide audience in the first place, so don't get offended if i diss you off. The last guy found out that I was dissing him, and made a huge hue and cry. well, I DONT CARE.. er... i don't track readership .... er. ... and too much people reading this blog will make me feel very shy, and i won't write anymore arlready.
but LIONEL! REMOVE THE ADDRESS FROM THE MSN NICK ALREADY DAMMIT!
haha.
what the hell am i writing. i must be going mad.

i guess i shouldn't be blogging in the midst of pulling an all nighter but...
i just realised that almost all of my courses this semester are taught by eccentric characters. Apart from the History prof that dresses up as Lenin and mutters "sigh, and as usual, they were exiled to Siberia..." the singing (O' comon you lot, Sing!) Brit Neuro Prof, I forgot to mention the champion of them all: my Cell Bio lecturer Bill-the-rubber-chicken-B. Incidentally, he's from the same department as the neuro prof, so that might say something about Zoology people in general.. the neuro co lecturer is from Zoology too and he might turn out as whacko as the Brit Neuro Prof. Time will tell, but anyway..
The Crazy Twin (who's no slouch at being eccentric) has actually been to Bill's office and she swears he blasts heavy metal and has loads of rubber chickens strewn all over the office. He looks the part too, a short little fella wearing a pair of thick black rimmed nerd glasses who, as he walks up and down the pedestal, has a habbit of shaking his head from side to side unconsciously. He has a class tradition of the "Golden Squid" contest, where winner who manage to actually answer the crazy questions he sets every week will earn, at the end of the course, a dried squid spray painted in gold and a dinner date with his-truly himself. (I really wonder where he gets the squid..). More importantly, he makes really ....... weird comments during lecture. One example was when we were talking about something on the board when his eyes lit up and he said "do you think an exposed ass crack constitutes a public health hazard?" or when expounding the importance of synaptic neurotransmission "its so important that the spastic antics i am performing for your benefit cannot be done if my synapses are screwed.." so on and so forth.
actually my thought was, after all that rambling, whether ugly buildings cause people to act slightly offbeat. Zoology building (Noland Hall) looks disgusting, to say the least, while the removal Humanities Building from the face of this earth, where the History prof. works has been described by the city alders (sorta the people who run things) of Madison as a "benefit to Madison, and to mankind itself" The Music prof last semester who works in Humanities was another completely-lost-it type.
If i manage to figure out a way to post pics here, maybe I will post pics of Humanities and Noland. Its really disgusting.

what do i really mean when i say (in response to "what's up/how are you") "the usual"

"the usual" means mugging and drinking coffee and eating too much Combo rolls and lifesavers candy plus having a Thali lunch during the weekend.
"the usual" means pacing about the room trying to write my weekly essay and doing last minute revision and sleeping at 1 am during the weekdays.
"the usual" in the lab means screwing up sometimes, and having small successes.
"the usual" does not mean I went to the pub and got myself blisfully tipsy and I had a nice weekend with no work to do. that would be in the category of "not bad".
There can be no rest for the wretched nor the enslaved. Hence there is never anything that amounts to "oh it was good" at this time.

Hence, my weekend was "the usual" :) Welcome to my mundane life.

2/3rds of the term is over. at this slice in time, it feels like back in the bad ole days in the army, where I'm in the 2nd day of a 3 day bridging exercise: 2 missions completed and waiting for the last one to begin; the goodies i hid in my tonner have been eaten up by my section buggers, am completely drenched in swampy water and the commando mosquitos has bitten half my face off, and worse of all, i aint got enough sleep.
at this juncture, i'm barely surviving. though 2 cycles of midterms (whoever invented the term "midterm" must be shot. overhere its more like a quarterterm) are over, and the schedule for the third cycle on paper seems easy enough (3 in a week, as compared to 6 in 2, and 7 in 3), I can't help but feel goddamn sian.
i'm starting to get sick of mugging/reading almost every night out of necessity so that i can stay afloat in the sea of deadlines, term papers and midterms. i don't get enough sleep during the weekends. I haven't had beer for 2 weeks, the thought of home hardly comforts me. all this to meet standards. *gah*
CsCl2 extraction in the lab is a pain in the arse; i get EtBr all over my gloves and i get zapped by the advertent long wave UV exposure; gel shifts and westerns take up all my time, and i don't even want to get started on the ubiqutious molec. cloning with barely competent cells. Nowadays i don't get back to dorm until 7-ish and have to eat that disgusting shit/dorm food as a lunch/dinner.
sometimes i wonder whether it's worth it, fighting so hard in two attempts to be able to end up here, working in the lab to "gain experience and look good on the CV", plus all that bloody mugging.
i don't have a life here, i don't have a love or passion for anything or everything or something. Yet, I'm supposed to have everything already at this moment . Ironically, i'm my architect of my dichotomous state. Its all my fault. *gah*
(i don't like to rave and rant... is this a rave /rant?..*gah* in spite of the conscious efforts by yours truly to not do that, here i am sounding like a ....... angst filled balloon full of hot air)

been wanting to post this entry for a long time, but either there was a lack of time, or there was no impetus previously. anyway, now i'm back into mugging mode and my mind's straying left right centre, this would be a good time to post. no apologies if someone accuses me of reifying or spouting reductionistic bullshit,so i make no definite conclusions. its just an observation man!!! relax!!!!

anyway, in core courses (meaning mostly science courses) there seem to be a graduated distribution of the type of people sitting at fixed distances away from the front. erm, much like a form of.... positional determinism? weird shit... can one really tell what type a person is by one's decision to sit at a particular place during lecture? damn.. anyway with tongue firmly in cheek:
1) the last third of the lecture hall is often populated by the slack kias. usually they tend to arrive late or can't be bothered with the course itself, so would usually read the student dailies or attempt to finish the crossword or do some egyptian PT(ie, sleep) during the lecture itself. needless to say, the population of the backrows often vary wildly. it fluctuates especially just before the weekend or before a holiday.
2) the first three rows are often infested with the super siao on buggers. They tend to come for every lecture, sit at exactly the same places (often with a small variances in positions, accounting for random distribution of students... damn i'm rambling here) and are wont to ask questions.. all the time. In bio-related lectures, those buggers are usually premeds. *gah* the professor usually notices those buggers and at a later part of a course, he most certainly would ignore that back rows and carry on a de facto conversation/lecture with the front rows only. This might be a major indication of how much the prof. cares for his/her class (or whether he/she has passed tenure review). If the prof at the later stages makes attempts to connect with the back rows, or if the guy's so interesting that no one is reading newspapers at the backrow, then the prof 1) is really good and/or this is his/her tenure review year.
3) the middle rows are the hardest to characterize. suffice to say, they're intermediate between the front and back. oh, and they like to roll their eyes when an overenthusiastic front row denizen asks a stupid question, which happens like... almost all the time? a significant minority of the middle row buggers.. don't know whether this is true or not.... tend to gravitate towards grad school.. well, thats an unsbustantiated claim... so...
but anyway, this applies to core courses. in the humans/arts courses so far... er.. the siao on buggers tend to be evenly distributed all round the room. so instead of a battery of cannons bombarding the dear old prof in science classes, its more of a Vietnam-era napalm bombing. the more interesting the prof, the more the whole room will flame/disagree/agree/debate with the prof.
going by this weird piece of "theory" alone, this might imply that science students in general are... unbalanced?
......
draw your own conclusions.

am relieved. the damn thing that's been gnawing at my side for the past 3 weeks were the History test results. i got the buggers back, and lets just say, er, i will continue doing Social Sciences course that are classified Intermediate/Advanced next semester because it's fun, although there is always that irrational fear that my handwriting (its atrocious btw, my former teacher said it looked like Sanskirt. and yes, she's Indian), will cause the Prof. to throw my blue book to the bin and fail me on the spot. It did help that the history Prof. has even worse handwriting than mine, so she could probably read what passes for scratches made by a cat on catnip, which was exactly the case that day, because i got slightly too high on caffeine and I had to zip through an essay in 20 minutes time as a result of spending too much time on the preceeding sections.
so why submit yourself to the torture you might ask? well
1) I don't have to and don't want to contend with freshmen/upperclassmen who just want to take an easy course for requirements. I am doing it right now for the History of Science class, and am rolling my eyes during the discussion sections at the flaming asses who think they know everything but in actual fact just know a superficial arse fold of the subject and hence make assertions bordering on the outrageous (once causing my eyes to almost spontaneously roll back into my skull) . they're also wont to dominate discussions and cut off almost everyone who disagrees with what they're saying. in effect they're not discussing. they're pontificating. the buggers! they remind me of that chimp that just got himself re-elected, but er.. thats another topic for another day.
2) its more eye-opening then any cup of coffee (that includes the ones i brew to keep awake). it's arguably more valuable then my hard core classes. and besides, it's nice to have ammunition just in case some dick from NUS FASS chides you for being a scientific buffoon/philistine.
3) i am incidentally a Stekhanovite bastard with a sado-masochistic streak. whips anyone?

ah well, back to doing the usual routine: mugging.