Wang's Kitchen

2007-08-18T13:24:00.000-05:00

Before I leave:
Thank you for the lunches everyday. Thanks for the dirty jokes every Saturday. Thanks you for cursing with me in Simei every EPL weekend. Thank you for climbing up that mountain with me - and getting a hell of a time getting down from it. Thanks for the drinks at Introbar, and the wine at Kampong Glam. Thanks for games at your place, and bonus fireworks thrown in. Thank you for trying to shut down my project because of a crappy antibody, you noober. Thanks for believing. Thanks for the presents - the thong especially. Thank you for insinuating that CSHL is crappy. Thank you for breaking my heart, asshole. Thanks for repairing my heart - and giving me yours my love. Thanks for leasing us the treehouse at tioman- we'd be back. Thanks for the movies. Thank you for the treat at Infuzi- i might really join your lab when i get back. Thanks for having my back- i will get yours when the occasion demands. Thanks for giving me advice, even you are thousands of miles away (and i will see you all very soon). Thank you for teaching me to drive. Thank you for sideswiping my car on my first licensed drive. Thank you for letting me drive your car again. Thank you for letting me help you with interviews and GREs- i now know what's patience and what's the malleability of the human spirit. Thanks for going to the gym with me. Thanks for all the jokes and laughter in the lab. Thanks for going with me to the performances. Thanks for introducing me to good food. Thank you for helping me with the symposium - my hands shook but my speech didn't. Thank you for doubting. Thank you for making me pseudo-best man at your engagement- and congratulations with the baby.

Thank you - for this year-long interlude.

2007-02-23T10:38:00.000-06:00

you know when you're having a bad day when you get the sequencing results of your constructs that you made after a mighty struggle, only to find that you designed the primer wrongly because you took the antisense sequence of the epitope tag in question.

DAMN!

2007-02-22T07:28:00.000-06:00

while staring at the cells i've been culturing (and killing and harvesting) for quite a while, i realized how beautiful they looked. Especially when you've just plated them and they're all fat and sticking nicely to the culture surface. Nice big round nucleus with two or three dark nucleoli in them, surrounded by a sprinkling of shiny vesicles carelessly rimming the nucleus and fluffy lammellopodia spreading out in all directions. order in chaos. ok fine, the bastards are cancer cells. but dang! i think i'm spending too much time in here.

2007-02-19T06:05:00.000-06:00

"eh your driving is terrible la!"
*wince slightly*
(basket. my instructor is not of the opinion ley)
"how come during pay-lalel parking dat time you have to turn your wheel when you're stationary har?"
*surprised look*
(har? wth? my instructor didn't say anything about this. and i see everyone doing it all the time dammit)
"also hor, when you're moving off that time, can you change gear faster or noh har? very slow ley. its very dangerous to the other drivers you know.)
i look at the paper; he marked me on that on 4 occasions.
(like wtf! its LUNCH TIME bumper-to-bumper traffic dawg! you want me to shift to third in a jiffy and end up in someone's rear end?)
"then hor i know you want to be very safe la, but when you check your blind spots can you don't also veer your car? I saw you veer out of the lane three times ley."
(okay la i give it to you. i was very kan cheong)
*nod*
"and i gave you 12 points for changing lane in to the same lane as the taxi was changing to. how come you never see the taxi change lane har? very dangerous ley, if the guy doesn't give way, accident liao lo."
(basket the taxi driver was being a bastard can? he swerved into the lane at the same time i thought it was clear. what the hell was i supposed to be. a driver or a fortune teller?)
"and your instructor never teach you when you turn right you turn into the rightmost lane, not the center lane mey?"
(okay la i was being a retard here. that my fault)
"next time i see you, must improve har."
(sure. and i hope the next candidate makes a right turn at rush hour traffic and then stalls his vehicle as a car is approaching the junction. that will teach you a lesson prick. hell i might try the same stunt myself. i love to cut off my nose to spite the face u know.)

2007-02-15T10:04:00.000-06:00

yesterday was a special day- not because my cloning worked or that i was ready for my driving test tomorrow - trifles such as these are not worth even thinking about here. (not that I could write much now- i'm still suffering from a block).

yesterday my bestest brlader in the world - ej-de-the Geleng- got engaged . and i had the honor of being there watching it all and taking it all down. it was the absolute minimum- no extravagant boquets, no welcoming gaggles of friends and all the embellishments ; seven minutes in the ceremony room was all it took and tomorrow - and many, more more tomorrows- they spend their lives together as an unbroken whole.

sometimes you just know and yesterday was just this time- i know, i can tell, and i can sense - that they truly loved each other; and thus for them the absolute minimum was more than enough because the point of this engagement has been made - no need for any restatements of any kind.

so congratulations again mr and mrs toh. good things happen to good people and i'm sure you'd will do more than just fine, you bastards :D (and i will get you drunk next year when i'm back for your actual wedding, you chao gelengkia. haha)

2006-11-21T07:50:00.000-06:00

while i was digging myself out of that hole a few weeks ago, i kept asking myself why i felt so irrationally betrayed even as i got over the-really-fucked-up-and-much-ado-about-nothing rejection.

and i keep wondering why nowadays, everytime i saw you, i felt a strangely familiar stench of anger that never failed to spoil my entire day.

then i remembered it was the exact same way i felt when i found out my first supervisor in my first lab "engineered" my "transfer" to the mertz lab and i left the ahlquist lab in tears that autumnal day. only a thousand times worse.

then i realized that while i might be stupid and easily manipulated, my heart always feels the truth. it always knows.

and what its telling me, and what's making me so hung up is not because of the rejection, but because by selfishly and thoughtlessly hurting me, you exposed your whole approach to people around you. that was the heartbreaking part, because i cared about you before. because i've always thought i saw something good in you. guess i was wrong. stupid, stupid me.

usually i don't give a shit about these things but, you'll never ever take me for granted again; you will never ever treat me as your punching bag again; you can never ever take me as your personal storage box again;you will never treat me as your errand boy again; and you for sure can never hurt me ever again. this is the last time i'm wasting this space about you.

because you're out of my life, asshole. motherfucking out.

"Your voice it is so soothing
The cunning mantra of killing
I need you my witness
To dress this up so bloodless
To numb me and purge me now
Of thoughts of blaming you"

- Testify , Rage Against the Machine

2006-11-07T10:36:00.002-06:00

there was this experiment that was described in neuroscience class two years ago, where cruel bastards hooked electrodes to a rat's ventral tegmental area, and the rat kept pressing the button - to its decline, for the current all because it felt good.

i think it feels even better to have the fucking electrodes out now. it hurt like shit for a while. but hell yeah, sometimes, getting shit thrown at you is the fucking best thing in the world. because it lets you know where exactly you stand and who's worth standing by and who's worth for naught.

and you're not.

2006-11-04T22:37:00.000-06:00

i miss the smell of flowers in the cold winter air; the smell of my coffee in the mornings; Giang's vietnamese pork ribs in the night. Bach's gentle suites playing into the wee hours of the mornings because i forgot to switch it off (or rather, didn't want to) , and Giang's gently strumming guitar as he sings of love and love lost. I miss slapping Lewis's skinny ass; and saturday mornings watching EPL and the badgers kicking some ass. goddang i miss saturdays, where you have absolutely nothing to do as you wake up in the mornings with the windows half open in cold, to the shouts of drunken happy red badger army commandos on their way to Randall. and that you can wear whatever you want to the capitol for marigold's kitchen (duck confit and in house ancora roasted coffee beyatch!) and farmer's market. and again, that you can wear whatever to Great Dane and get absolutely wrecked at a quarter of what it costs here to get wrecked and posed at some poser fucking place in singapore.

i miss my last year in madison. Sure, life was stressful but the cold kept me alive and happy, because everything seemed to be simpler there. Being here absolutely sucks.

2006-10-24T08:43:00.000-05:00

i don't want to be an emotional beggard no more.
nowadays, token handouts just don't cut it with me.

2006-10-11T06:43:00.000-05:00

Alcohol is:

a clutch to my brain,
so I can downshift my revolutions;
stop safely by the side,
to look away from
the blinding light
in the mirror
in the darkest of nights,

that is you.

2006-10-03T10:41:00.000-05:00

as i recalled earlier this year in one of my posts:

"i believe now is one of the high points of my time in madison"

and at the time i recalled mentioning to one of my housemates that i was expecting a big dip to happen next because of The Law of Conservation of Shit.

me and my big mouth.

i guess thats where i am right now init. at the bottom and wavering there. i'm going not going to type some emo shit because i'm not feeling so shattered now and its just a little up from the downs i'm having recently. no make that a level numbness. hopefully it climbs a little tomorrow. i need it.

believe me i want things to be back to normal. but its hard when its just .. i dunno. its just a vicious cycle between sadness and anger and disappointment.

i would love to have back the grey monotonous average ; some little victories interspersed with minor anti climaxes will do. too much drama, self induced, induced or otherwise is not good for my soul.

2006-10-02T09:05:00.000-05:00

i can't get through this week. too painful.

2006-09-25T12:33:00.000-05:00

its not the pixels that were hard to dispose of.
the ones i hold dear are the worst.
because to erase,
you gotta cut deep.

2006-09-19T08:51:00.000-05:00

About me,

You were both right and wrong. But it doesn't matter now.

Because its' all sundered and rent. Who cares? It doesnt matter now.

I never wanted to try anything; but it doesn't matter now.

I'm sorry I felt this way. But it doesnt matter now.

Take care.

2006-06-09T10:00:00.001-05:00

the reading light came on and i was startled out of my reverie.
"going home?"
I nodded to the american lady next to me.
"where are you headed to?"
"yogykarta. heard its a beautiful place"
"and where did you flyfrom?"
"yogykarta, its a beautiful place"
somehow, i understood.
she looked at me and i saw her lips move. the roar of the jet engines increased.
*ding* went the fasten seatbelt sign.
"what did you just say?"
"oh. are you heading home?"
"yeah. flying from home, to home."
"any luck?"
" i don't know what i'm looking for, and i still can't find it"
I shook my head.
"i hate flying"
she looked at me, surprised. " but you do it all the time"
"i need it to end. this journey is getting to be a pain in the ass. and the plane isn't touching down anytime soon"
she nodded.
I picked at my dried, salty fish with my plastic fork. the wailing of the baby 4 rows behind me started, on time.
she rolled her eyes.
"its that time again."
"dammit, the stupid baby. as if being in suspended animation, unable to eat drink and even sleep properly is bad enough. now this. everytime, at this time"
the stewardess flitted by, an ethereal shadow.
the fasten seatbelt tone sounded again- faster and faster and faster and faster. on cue, the engines picked up, increasing in intensity.
will somebody just shut that thing up? i've been shackled fast to the seat as soon as the plane took off not a wihle ago. i can't move i can't breathe i can't feel anything. i'm tired.arrrgggggh

and i opened my eyes as usual to the sound of my alarm clock going off; as usual its time to work. work work work. i hate my recurring nightmares.

2006-05-20T16:53:00.000-05:00

i felt numb during commencement, probably because i was doing it for my parents who'd want to see their son wear a gown, and probably because a few thousand were walking together in a conveyor belt : undergraduates in here ---> congratulations! *takes diploma cover* pose for de riguer photograph, get out, smile, pose somemore. graduation! - maybe Chekhov would have something to say about this.... lifeless procedure. It was so impersonal that those who came to see their offspring were marooned further up in the stadium- not that I cared. all the honor cords and stoles (and not to be a show off, but i was particularly bedecked with those things.. okay okay okay. i'm a showoff) didn't mean a thing to me.

the sense of loss only hit me during my final lunch with the lab. granted, i haven't exactly be mr social in all the three years there, or even in my three years in wisc, but to be leaving the place where my science and my thinking was shaped didn't feel very good. it might be rather shitty sometimes to work in such a demanding lab, but by the very fact that i was in a place where i actually belonged and didn't stick out socially like a sore thumb (well, if the conversation topics got meaningless, there was at least the tissue culture room where it was too noisy to talk and Bach was blasting above the hum of the fume hoods) perhaps, was the salve for the intense loneliness i've experienced in my three years in madison.

i've grown attached to quite a few people in madison, but people will come and go, and i'm confident we'd meet again, in new york city, in singapore, in san francisco, or whereever they are, but even more so, i've grown attached to the things and places in madison, and they hold more meaning for me than empty rituals. so its goodbye McArdle and the Union Terrace; the tree lined walks of University Avenue with the smell of flowers in the air, and ugly Humanities, the building that everyone wants to blow up but in there I learnt the most out of life and Chemistry, where the hottest TAs whom i'd always have brief crushes on reside. i promise i will visit you all sometime. there's a direct flight from la guardia to madison.. so probably, if i find time. :D

but i'd be gone in two days time. goodbye madison. i love you.

now i'm all alone again. *sigh*

2006-04-28T23:42:00.000-05:00

Wind asked me, when he came for a visit, how did i ever get used to being so alone here.
I couldn't really answer at that time, but the fact is, you don't. if you do you'd have lost all your humanity.
you just get on with it and bitch about it on friday nights when you go back to solitary confinement in your room hoping the alcohol will warm you up when you sleep with the windows open.

and the worse part is

i think the next year in singapore and the following four at Long Island is going to be the same as now.

the ironic thing is that its the only thing keeping me alive and on my toes and buried in my work. i need it to push myself, yet i hate myself, and hate it for doing what it does to me. turning me into a machine.

2006-03-14T22:57:00.000-06:00

i've been trying to put this incident out of my mind for a week now but still:
i got my evaluations for a presentation about my research a week ago; most of them weregood and the professor in charge of it liked the presentation. However for 3 of the evaluations these were the comments:

"it is obvious that his first language is not english"
"i admire his courage in giving a presentation in his non-native tongue"

condescending rat eating pre-med motherfuckers.
The prof didn't have any problems with my accent, or lack thereof. So did my ex roommate in the audience. The professors at the schools i interviewed at didn't make any mention of my accent. so why the fuck are these motherfuckers thinking? Because I have a chink face and I deliberately make it a point not to sound american (which i think its an ugly accent to put on in the first place) equals lack of ability of to speak american (yes its american, you muthafuckers, its not english to start with)?

i know who those pricks are. and i'm fucking, fucking glad i'm not taking any classes with them anymore.

conservative assholes.

2006-03-07T15:58:00.000-06:00

i believe now would be one of the high points of my time in madison.
its feels really good to know that at least some of the experiments i ran helped the lab get an NIH grant; it would be awful for me to graduate with seeing the lab shut down because of the lack of funding, and even more so when it has taught me so much and i have given so little.
my supervisor's paper finally got published by a high impact journal and my name would be in it because i chipped in with some apparently important figures and experiments - his baby for the past two years is finally going to be born; it really is exciting because the data really flies against what the whole field is thinking and the grant application got rejected last year because some people were skeptical of the results. hopefully this will pave the way for my other boss's and my data to be published- very hopefully after i graduate.
and i am seriously embarassed by advances of cold spring right now. they've been woo-ing me and sending me gifts after they offered me admissions and now jim watson the really dua kee person has just sent me an autographed book. and i've been delaying sending in the acceptance forms not because i was playing hard to get but because i've been up my neck in work and graduate school interviews. i'm just still an undergraduate now and it feels kinda weird to be showered with that much attention. so i think i better wake up my idea and send in the acceptance tomorrow. it really is too much..

but anyway, its back to studying. i got three midterms tomorrow.
(edit: and chelsea lost. that makes it complete. haha. ok shit back to mugging)

2006-03-04T22:55:00.000-06:00

when a debate becomes
stretched;
and all sides lose all sight
of the map;
it becomes a sustained theme and variations
ad infinitum;
vulgarity becomes all in the end.

2006-03-03T23:10:00.000-06:00

it was after the free (and steady bom pi pi ) juilliard concert that the three of us decided to join the rest of the Rockefeller prospectives at the salsa place. i thought it was going to be a concert but when the rest of the club started dancing, i decided to get a glass of champagne and observe the dance floor.
and when it soon emerged that both of us belonged to the rare group of people who couldnt move to even a very loud and obvious rhythm, and we were both tired and needed to catch a flight out tomorrow, we decided to leg it out to the upper east side from where we were, which was somewhere in greenwich village or something.
we got down to the subway and initially wanted to take the subway to 66th and Lincoln and cut through Central Park at 11 pm at night but then, the lady at the station interjected (Brooklyn Accent included)
"don't be crazy, i've lived here for 35 years and I still don't dare to go into central park at night."
and she accompanied us to the right station and showed us the way back. and i still don't know her name, just that she lived in new york all her life lived every where except staten island, worked for a charity for 37 years, been to amsterdam and paris and loved it.
whoever she is, i think i can't thank her well enough.
and i think i'm sold on new york city.
i can't see myself at rockefeller smack in the middle of manhatten even though its a seriously great place to do science in, but i guess being in cold spring with its equally great program and its proximity (but not that close to) the big city has its advantages.
so come 2007 its new york here i come then.

2006-02-20T17:48:00.000-06:00

*sitting on my bench pipetting some shit*
"so i heard you didn't really like harvard?"
"yeah..."
"hrmm how come?"
"the people there are weird. i had one interview where i was standing up the whole time, and another one where his puppy under his desk wanted to go to the loo every 10 seconds"
*supervisor chuckles*
"that might make harvard havard"
-grad student at this time interjects:
"oh i was talking to prof W and he was saying like, he was actually tenured in harvard but he chose to come here"
"oh why?"
"oh he said that over there the faculty engaged in a whole load of cockwaving. and he didnt' like it"
*chuckles*

"so where's lookin' now?" <--- other boss
"cold spring"
"hrmmmm. lemme say that, given a choice between iraq and cold spring right now.."
"erhuh"
"i would go to iraq"
"haha"
"........"

"but really its no walk in the park"
"its 4 years. won't be too long"
*supervisor returns*
"yeah its 4 years because you have no other thing to do but spend time in the lab"
"yeah i guess. i think i'd look at the other schools before deciding"
"why not UCSF?"
"oh, its a good place for a holiday, but the people there are abit too laid back"
"ah.. i heard that before"
"oh well, we will see"

(Actually i'm all set on CSHL already. aha)

2006-02-14T19:10:00.001-06:00

-retroactive post, should have posted this when I interviewed at Cold Spring Harbor a week ago-
Despite the icy rain, walking along Times Square in NYC, after watching Chicago the musical (and the scantily clad actresses helped), after 2 whole days of getting my ass grilled by CSHL professors/machine guns, after the bourgeois and rustic charms of Long Island New York, felt very very very good. And floating in a sea of humanity and blinding lights, (No I wasn't high.) I was alone thinking in my head about the reality/play extent of Chicago a la Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading blah blah blah(yes, i'm a boring prick. so shoot me) when she suddenly appeared. Kooky eyes , kooky smile.
"err, so, err I didn't catch your name."
I was taken aback. more by the eyes and the smile, then by the approach.
you see, i always thought ABCs were stuck up, because I obviously looked like a crumpled Chinky ass, and they were always so well dressed and the ones in Madison always refused to talk to me. and I thought she was no different, being nicely tailored through the two days and looking sharp.
"first time in new york city?"
"yeah, never seen so much bright lights in my life."
and she laughed that laugh again. koooky.
"so where are you from?"
"New York state, someways near here."
(that explains the sharp dressing. East Coast. should've known. but that kooky smile!! kooooky!!!!)
"oh"
We talked, but I couldn't remember what we talked about. it doesn't matter. what i remembered was those eyes. and that kooky smile. arrggggggghhh.
and i think i will never see her again. because being a doofus, i didn't manage to even get her email address and I didn't even manage to get her full name. and she's not going to interview at any places where I'm going.

well, so long Lisa; it was good meeting you. good bye and good luck.

(hopefully i get to see her again. i'm more or less decided on CSHL.)

2006-02-14T18:46:00.001-06:00

From a distance, Ram looked like he used to; but as he sauntered up to where my student host at UCSF and I were standing outside of Amoeba at Haight-Ashbury ("its pronouced hate not hoight!-student host) I could see he shaved- and no longer looked like an al-Qaeda operative. But some things always stay the same- his mental state dragged all the way up by pot-for one- and his swaying gait (i see he gained weight, that bitch) for another. We met up for a short while, walking through the park where the hippies used to hang out and drop acid, up the slopes onto the UCSF Parnassus campus while as usual, his description of Trader Jo's at Greary and Masonic, and his Ram-esque description of the organic gems sold there, struck a cord with my equally inclined student host, and made my stomach rumble.
I don't want to produce his descriptions here not only because I don't really remember, but its because I want it to exist as only just a psychic footprint in my unconscious, to be recognized again when encountered in the future by him- if i ever see him again.
the next night he came up and visited my hotel room and I; it was a small affair and we were both tired , so there was none of the promised food and good beer and attempts to get me laid (always rubbish, for some reason) in San Francisco. So we talked and relived the days in Madison of me trying to get laid and high (and being unsuccessful, of course) while he was the one getting laid and high and now he's the one who's engaged and i'm still unsettled in the world--the more things change the more things stay the same.
and I guess we both have moved on, not unwillingly, but inevitably. and the realization that the things we did in Madison, we will can never do again. None of the Curry N' Hurry trips, none of the New Glarus beer, none of the restaurant hopping. ever. again.

I guess its goodbye, Ram. I will see you when I see you, bitch. And I will.

2006-01-18T00:25:00.000-06:00

have two half offers and a definite offer from schools; not bad at so early the year. they're all strange schools, according to my PI, because they're all places specializing in biology- small intense places where u get treated like a junior post doc as opposed to a real university campus with real graduate students (and chix man chix. i don't want no aging stressed out postdocs making up the huge pool of dates man. i am getting old already man). upside of it is that you jump straight in and get immersed, downside is that the pressure starts from day one and you'd be definitely kicked in the arse since well, you're basically thrown straight in and you will definitely screw up in experiments and theres no handholding and u've gotta troubleshoot and troubleshoot well otherwise the PI is gonna have your balls for dinner-u know what i mean. oh, and no formal coursework and shit. which is fine, because coursework is a hinderance in biology, even at graduate level.
now will the real universities tell me whether they think i'm shit or not. come on, its not too hard. i'm tired of waiting
these schools seem inviting to me though, because i'd be actually learning by doing as opposed to sitting on my bum listening and trying to get a minimum GPA so as to meet my sponsor's arbitrary standards. who cares about GPA-s its all empty anyway. why don't they just audit the transcripts in addition to GPA? if you're a dickhead that takes the easy courses to zhng a 4.0, grad schools will think you're a brownnosing, stats worshipping dick- and tell you to fuck off. frankly i'd have more respect for a less-than-3.8 who got his or her ass kicked in high lewel courses, then some play safe future bureaucrat who takes the bare minimum- as opposed to above and beyond requirements. science, in all respects is also about having balls- not a 4.0 GPA y'know. stats... *pfft*
anyway the point is, i'm thoroughly confused though: to go back to a campus or to be thrown in the deepend?

(Edit: one more in. i think the rest told me to fuck off. aha.)

2006-01-14T17:46:00.000-06:00

Hi Madison!
I'm back from Peru. Was supposed to be back early this morning, but y'know, that fucking Chicago screwed me up again. Both ways. On both occasions I had the airplane going up on the ground and delaying the flight by 2 hours odd. So I had a nice night at the airport.
Peru was good, dawg, we went to Cuzco, then I got my arse kicked on the Inca Trail, ended up in the ancient city of Macchu Picchu and wounded up in Lima. heres a breakdown of the shit I did:

Cusquena (local beer, made from water taken from an ancient source consecrated to the Incan water god-) x shitloads
Chica Morada (Ribenish local drink made from blue corn) x shitloads
Cerviche- national dish, raw fish marinated with lime juice x2
Guinea pig (yes bitches its a local delicacy) x 1
Alpaca steak, (South american cammelid related to the llama) 1 piece
Andean trout x shitloads (yum yum, bitches!)
Quinoa x shitloads
Andean potatos x shitloads (yum yum yum bitches!)
Andean maize, as big as an M and M chocolate with nuts x shitloads

It is informative to note that I did not get food poisoning from all this funky food. It is a wonder how a simple Peruvian dish prepared with self respect and pride surpasses the prepocessed shit you get in American restaurants nowadays- remember that piece of diseased Chicagoean beef at the cheesecake factory? (Speaking of which, I now have indigestion because of the lousy chain pizza I had soon after i touched down in Miami. - what the hell is with me and chain food?)
The Inca trail was tough and I turned belly-up on the first day carrying my 15 odd kgs of shit - and barely made it back to base camp. I had the services of a porter the next two days but they were equally hardcore - with 3 climbs of around 3600-4200m on the steep inca roads. Its still a wonder how the inca runners of old could complete the 4 day circuit in a few hours, fueled by quick feet and coca leaf. I was chewing coca leaves like a cow and it only sustained me for exactly ten steps- on the eleventh step later I don't feel so high anymore and instead want to flinging myself off that sheer cliff I was trying to climb up on. What is a waste though, is the waste laid to the inca homelands after the Spanish conquests. The evangelical scrouge of Christianity attempted to wipe out Incan culture by mass conversions of the incan pueblos. and so, the secrets of andean engineering- especially how the fucking hell the incas could build such lasting foundations in an seismic area without using mortar and cement, and how they managed to domesticate shitloads of corn and potatos and acclimitize these species to different heights. asspanolmuthafuckers! perhaps if the incans were still here today, we'd have maize the size of our heads, more potatoes we could ever want, and y'know, some really nifty building designs that could stand up to an earthquake or two.
and i was touched by the sincerity of the porters and guides. it was a shame we did not tip them enough; inevitably, group dynamics came into play but ah well:
as what victor, the head guide would say :
"cheeky monkeys!"

perhaps the point was not that i lost quite a few pounds and a futher few inches off my waist, or that the food was delicious. it was more the unbridled joy of the porters as they cheerfully skipped past us up the mountain passes lugging my luggage (and often more) at the same time and their greetings of "bienividos juan (wang!) aha!" - the joy of being in the Andes and being Andean- that embodied the hardy spirit of the Incans. Just like the Inca foundations that now remain and still support the colonial buildings in Cuzco, all is not lost. Inca culture might merged with Catholicism into mestivo culture, but elements still remain as strong as ever and I suspect will continue to persist as long as the Andeans worship their Pachimama and continue to take pride in themselves. yes i'm rambling like a bitch here, but theres too much i want to say and admire about the Andeans. I think it was the mountain air but heck. the point is, all power to them. yea baby and out.
*sleep*

2005-12-30T23:49:00.000-06:00

its the last days of 2005. and what am i doing still?
slaving away in the lab.

thus, tis' the story of my life so far.

2005-12-21T17:10:00.000-06:00

i have no more exams, but my life has lost its meaning because I have no more exams to prepare for.

Ironic init?

2005-12-20T01:10:00.000-06:00

Author's instructions, Act IV end:
A distant sound is heard coming from the sky as it were, the sound of a snapping string mournfully dying away. All is still again and nothing is heard but the strokes of the ax against a tree far away in the orchard.

-The Cherry Orchard - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.

2005-12-02T06:49:00.000-06:00

When you've spent the last month running here and there about around campus like a kan cheong spider every tuesdays and thursdays just to run through hoops to finish up your application by Thanksgiving, you would expect your referees to show a wee bit of urgency init, especially after much repeated badgering and whining and moaning that the deadline is in a week's time goddamit so wake up your collective ideas and show some urgency will ya?

but nooooooooooooooooooooooo.......

its 5 days to the deadline and theres still no activity.
its times like these that makes me want to blow up the fucking lab.

2005-11-27T12:27:00.000-06:00

Lunch: Lost Appetite

Their words like,
The vintage chords and the jazz standards on the top,
the shopworn displays and the nameless crowds on the bass.
this polyphony tires me.
merely sounds, derivative of something, which were borrowed
from everything which was taken from everything else- a trite cacophony.

one word to describe it all.
but alas,
a foreign word that cannot be used for sure.
just as a stranger can merely look and sigh
uncomprehending from within;
but understanding from the outside

2005-11-26T19:37:00.000-06:00

Dear chicago,
i swear you hate me. (and i hate you too)
i've been to you three times and still i've never managed to enjoy myself
the first time it was thanksgiving two years ago. it was too cold to go outside and i sat in the amtrak station all day waiting for the goddamn train
the second time the company was basically a pile of shit; not worth mentioning even now.
i decided to give chicago a try again this year.
and what the hell, i had to eat that piece of beef that put me under for half the night.
lost my appetite, lost my head; walked around like a zombie in the snow and cold feeling like the scattered yellow leaves in the fall. scattered, unrooted and terribly lonely.
all this semester i was learning about exclusion; about dehumanization; about loneliness.
and while walking through all the postlust consumerism in michigan avenue i realized that all this semester i was learning about myself. an international excluded from the mainstream. merely a insignificant, sometimes bemused, mosttimes bitter observer of your american life. where your holidays are just brief respites from the chug-chug-chug-inch-by-inch advancement of my days. where my real holidays are the days where i fly out from you to my real home where, because i've been gone so long, it has been a long lost friend that i am simply trying to understand again.
where can i find my place in the sun? when in your places of steel and glided gold idols will i find my like? and where are you-the you where i can pour my thoughts into and not be judged and masked and censured?

2005-11-24T11:32:00.000-06:00

i hate getting judged. i hate getting characterized. and worse of all i hate getting encased in a category where I'd be entombed in a mould from which i can never get out from.

all this to judge my competence for school

what the hell! i hate this admissions process

2005-10-29T14:21:00.000-05:00

Writing my personal statement: here are some things i've left out:

Why do I want to go to grad school?

1) I love biology
- more like, I like biology and I have no choice, bitch! I signed my soul to my masters a loong time ago.
2) I am really good in the lab, having spent 3 years of my life working 10 hour days despite my super hard schedule (to those cheebyes who think Wisc bio is easy peasy, well fuck you nigga. i'm doing grad level courses and i'm not slacking) , <------ less vulgar words to the effect
- I have no skills apart from the sibeh high level of technical ability at the bench. I've overspecliazed myself out of the job market, so to speak.
3) I've been so adapted to life as a grad student that I will transition seamlesssly from undergrad to grad (slave)
- i am too deep into research such that incoming rotator grad students mistake me for a grad student and all my bosses think i'm a grad student. Why? because I dress like i woke up from bed 5 minutes ago and have no life and look like a geek shit.

As u can see, my fellow cynics, its about putting the right amount of spin in it.

2005-10-28T22:58:00.000-05:00

From Russlit Prof, mumblings and unintelligble sounds edited out:
"...in Chekhov's view, a sure sign of dehumanization is the non disjunction between one's professional and private life- one can easily find such individuals in Chekhov's Russia as here today: just listen to them talk. It is as though their professional details are a sort of shell in which they retreat and hide from reality, insulated in an ideological pigeonhole where they don't really live, but merely exist in a multitude of cliches and thrive only in the material. And this insulation is the start of the rot into full blown automatization and mechanization and at the end human beings become merely animals, as you see in his many stories..."

I think the rot started two years ago and i'm in this advanced stage ever since:
i speak in a string of unintelligble phrases, have no personal life at all, and am a virtual machine at work. i don't get crushed or crushed upon anymore, and i studiously avoid eye contact.

is this my personal utopia? to ascend from a mere human to a bronzed cast iron academic god?

2005-10-26T18:52:00.000-05:00

Russlit Class, Monday:

Old Prof, Croaking: *mumble mumble Anna ... autmaticization.. mechanization... *mumble**Mumble*
Me: ....... *scribble* .....
Old Prof: hrmm. oh. hrmmm i suddenly remember what i'm supposed to say to you since last friday. oh rmmm . *breaks off into russian*
Russian Guy sitting next to me: shit!
Old Prof: oh hrmm sorry. let me say again in english. you have a test on friday. 19 stories what we've covered so far...
Everyone: *groan*
Me: Pua Cheebye
Russian Guy: 'yob tvoyu mat!
Everyone looks at us.
Me: Er sorry I was talking to myself.
Prof looks at the Russian guy and says "now now, no swearing"

and i've got virol test on friday already. siao liao ji pai!

2005-10-08T00:55:00.000-05:00

Wind dropped by today and we drank quite a bit at the union. Was a windy day though; 5 degrees Celsius but i was going about in one layer and rosy cheeks and i still thought it was hot. maybe my insulation blubber is really getting thicker from all that pigging out. Could it be that Wind brings along the wind? Hopefully he won't get tired of this town; the sun will be out tomorrow and the brilliant blue skies will be clear. it means its time to hit Mifflin and the East Side to have a look at the hippies in their native environment, not that they're animals or something, but they're the only idealists left and are soon to be extinct. i'm blabbering as usual after a pitcher of strongbow but hey, since when old friends come visit eh? i have to get him drunk goddamit.

(blah blah muthafucking blah. another attempt at the insiduous monologue. wtf am i doing typing when tipsy)

2005-10-02T16:42:00.000-05:00

ok. looking at my previous post, i'm amazed by myself. i was having a schizo episode of sorts when i was tipsy last night, and i recorded the whole self conversation down. wtf.
but anyway, after consulting with Ram and an another yindian guy, i finally made some decent daal. turns out 1) you must fry the spices first 2) you have to put less lentils 3) that orange yellowish spice i bought at the asian supermarket is not saffron, its tumeric and hence can be added liberally. and now i'm eating my first real indian daal as opposed to my earlier attempts with the slow cooker that didn't make daal, but just lentil paste, which turns out in retrospect to be a better medium for growing fungi than for replenishing the stomach.
anyway, yum yum. no pictures though. i ate the damned thing up already

2005-10-01T23:48:00.000-05:00

*nudge nudge*
"why are you tipsy, you dumbfuck?"
"why do you wanna know?"
"why do you wanna drink so much luv. its no good for your liver"
"there are things in this world better than the state of my HBV infested liver, prick"
"so u wanna die early prick?"
"anything is better than being shackled to you, you book swotting cheebye. i drink to be free. from you"
"you jolly well know, my little other, that you can't be free from me"
"well for a short while i can. so there. wotcha gonna do about it?"
"i've gotta study for my p-chem tomorrow brother. i would appreciate if you left me to do my thang with a leeetle bit more of them brain cells that you're killing now"
"fuck you and your p-chem. and go away. my spaten beckons."
"spaten your ass nigga. your brain cells nigga! your brain cells!"
"thats all you care about? your brain cells?"
"then what. you wanna be lynched? you wanna be sent to siberia to roast in the sun and clean testtubes and push paper and fellate admin dick?"
"at the rate you're using me nigga, i'd rather suck and scrub then go to grad school"
"well screw you. at least the truth will set me free."
"freee?" *takes a mouthfull of Spaten* " free my ass. you're opppressed, brother, thats what you are. and you can't do without Spaten and music too prick"
"oh yes i can. i do my p-chem the best without music. of course, if its virol i'd do the best with music. and of course, with socio, the best combi.."
"SHUT THE FUCK UP BRO! I'M DRINKING."
"hey chill out"
"you chill out. its been two years since you were set free nigga. set free. and now you're as oppressed as ever"
"what oppressed? i'm freee. i'm taking the hardest shit courses and kicking everyone's butt. everyone in my lab thinks i'm this mega machine who churns out data like a robot.."
"thats what you are bitch. you're a machine. a fucking machine. Raging against the Hygromycin."
"i wish i could be a fucking machine. but thanks anyway. i'd be a machine"
"you remember the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz?"
"yeah, he's the guy without the heart yes?"
"WELL PRICK YOU'RE HEART'S GONE! YOU'RE THAT PATHETIC CREATURE!"
"........."
"whats wrong with you prick? look at your clothes . you dress like an old man. and you're only twenty 3."
"going on twenty four nigga. twenty four is and am old time"
"ok. forget about the clothes. look at yourself nigga! permanent scowl. no one in the lab actually knows you. you're as quiet as a door-fucking mouse! you hate people!"
"i'm busy. what can i do?"
"busy? busy building walls around you, thats what you're doing. why are you so afraid of people lately?"
"well... who says i am?"
"fuck you. its boring here luv. almost three years in your intellectual home (and you had the gall to say that) and you have no real life. everyday, every day its about work work work and the next test and the next paper. wheres the fun? "
"what fun? there are better things than fun luv. like kicking grad student butt"
"you're oppressed you shit thats what you are. instead of fantasizing about arses, you wanna kick them. two years of this shit, and i've had enough" *cracks another bottle of Spaten*
"well............ fuck you. i'm free. like right now. getting ready for bed"
"how orderly your thinking is, mr sensible. do u know what dictates your life? your fucking calendar. your fucking order. your fucking coffee. and your fuckign Bach!"
"hey hey. don't insult Bach!"
"okay sorry. he sounds good when I make us drunk"
"yeah nigga. stop drinking. comeon. time for bed" *nudge*
"you still haven't asked, whats the occasion nigga"
"yeah , so whats the occasion nigga?"
"the occasion? its a non occasion nigga! everyday passes by and everyday passes like yesterday is today, and today is yesterday and tomorrow is certainly yesterday and today! fucking ay!"
"its like that luv. suck it up, and deal with it."
"goddamn you know and i know that this year is gonna be shit"
"fuck man you're right. Every since Ram went MIA on me. and The Evil twin graduated. no more confidantes"
"exactly prick. no more fun. and my other brladers are what, a million miles away"
"fuck me, yes. pass me another bottle will ya?"
"fuck you. its my turn to drink!"
"drink, you? double yew tee eff brother?"
"Ram's getting married remember. a toast to him and Tiff. that slacker's got some charm to charm Tiff's socks off eh. and Tiff's not bad looking either. Damn. geleng and a mat salleh. imagine little Rams going around.."
"stop it prick! that thought of it is unbearable"
"hell, yeah, but look at the present company goddamn."
"whats wrong with them, they're fine"
"well fuck you they're fine."
"no confidantes, but they're fine."
"fine your ass nigga"
".... can't click."
"exactly. fuck. i miss ram. and the evil twin."
"yeah me too."
"and some of them tossers are stunted like you too prick."
"speaking for yourself eh?"
"they're acting as if they've made it. they're enjoying the yuppie lifestyle. all the cars. all the frivolous shite."
"speak for yourself before you judge prick. take a look at yourself. you're stunted too. just growing too much in the other direction. you're going INTO the ground nigga, while they're just trying to grow out too early too quickly bitch. hiding yourself where people can't find you. pathetic. why do you covet the ivory tower so much?"
"its not ivory prick."
"yeah its made of bone. i forgot. the bones of the shoulders of the giants. old and fossilized."
"inertia is the my life now dawg. inertia is what moves me."
"still....."
"how very fucking true. screw the beer. i've exceeded my quota for two weeks."
"my drunken half other. you've regained your sense of propreity"
"well fuck you.
"inertia. remember my brother. inertia. its that which gets me going. the weight of the mundane. the comfort of normalcy."
"stop bullshitting you're tipsy. get your ass to bed"
*pulls drink from hand*
"la la la. i'm pathetic, and i've just realized that i'm pathetic and i still gotta study for my p chem tomorrow"
"you didn't realize nigga. i did you and myself and yourself"
*smash beer bottle on head*

--------oblivion---------------------

2005-09-09T22:32:00.000-05:00

Chekhov, in his early career wrote a masterpiece entitled "A Man's Life in Questions and Exclamations." There was no thematic coherence in that entire piece, norwere there logical flow in the preceeding and anteceeding sentences, being made up of a whole battery of unconnected trite phrases and stereotyped responses that are encountered at each phase of a typical provincial Russian middle class life in the 1880s. A sampling :

Childhood. Whom has God given you, son or daughter? How soon is the christening? .... Take him away from here, he can't behave! What has he done to you? he speaks! Terrific! To fire the nanny! Shame on you to beat such a little one! Don't cry! Give him a candy!.........
.........
skipping to: Between 20 and 30 years of age. Borrow 100 roubles for me! What university department is it? its all the same to me! How much do I owe you? Will you come back tomorrow? What is on at the theater tonight> Waiter! Do you drink shrry? Is it you, Lia? I am done for, maman! Give me a job Uncle! Ma tante, the carriage is ready! Merci, mon oncle! Introduce me to your grandmother, Serge! .........

.....and so on and so forth. One is profoundly touched by it and saddened at the same time by his seemingly comic work. Life is so predictable and inevitable inasmuch as that every phase can be neatly summarized into the usual stereotyped phrases and tired old questions.

vis-a-vis my own life and state of mind, Chekhov is perfectly spot on. How does a character osscilate between two stereotyped extremes with such ease and skill that one can become two (oh, i wish two can become one! but i digress) at the same time. A cold blooded machine to his colleages and a drunken boring avuncular dick to his friends? Don't ask me, I am still trying to recouncile myself:

Typical question by colleauge in lab: What are your plans for the weekend, Wang?
"oh nothing much. going to study i guess."
Two days later same question: "So how was your weekend Wang"
same answer: oh it was alright.

Typical question by friend: "so how much did you drink today?"
typical answer (typical pungent reply, complete with standard profanity put across in a faux jolly manner)
Typical question : "eh go to the party ley"
typical answer (typical pungent reply, championing anti-social qualities and the need to drink beer alone.)

Right now only two things in my life are constant. Being disappointed and being drunk.

As usual one should end off in the PR way, but i shan't.

Byebye

2005-09-09T22:03:00.000-05:00

what happens when the stuff you're cooking is too dry and you need sauce? empty half a bottle of Spaten that is. and get happily drunk while you're at it

Spaten Sauce tastes good. I need to get a patent for it.

hahaha

2005-09-02T18:19:00.000-05:00

ignore my whining about the difficulty of the courses i was going to take at the beginning of each semester; this semester takes the cake.
i woke up to bio pee chem lecture and found out that , apart from the dozens of premeds chattering away, i need to reaquaint myself with calculus, which i took like er, two years ago. and whats more, the calc required is at a slightly higher level then i took; ie, partial derivatives and other higher level stuff. so mr zonda, save my ass pleeeze. and the problem sets look more like calc homework then one pertaining to biopeeee chem. the worst part is that i don't need to take this course in the first place, but as usual i had to torture myself. wtf wtf wtf.

next up was russian literature, " cheyekov" (Chekhov) in translation, the translation part being in theory. i walked into the discussion room with 28 ang mohs and one asian - me. the russian prof walked in, took a look at me for a while and said "hrm we er-er-er still er-er-er ha-fe famirrrrliarrrr faces. (heavy rlussian accent) " at least he prononced my name correctly. it turns out that the russian zh is prononced similar to the hanyu pingyin zh. but of course, everyone was looking at me like i didn't know a hoot about russian history and figures in russian history. hell i almost corrected the old prof because he gave a wrong date for the Emancipation of Serfs by Tsar Nicky- only my uncomfortable position as the most eyeballed person in the room stopped me. its understandable though, since its like once in a blue moon a yellow skinned monkey learnt something slavic like russian- i wonder what would the reaction of the TA if i took russian as a third language next year. but ne'mine at least got a slavic chiobu sitting accross me. shes hot. damn.......

then its back to the Mcardle for a spot of bio. Two things made my balls shrink. The fact was that Prof P. was teaching the course and he recognized me and attempted to make eye contact. Prof P. was my first lab PI when i was a freshman two years ago, and who attempted to pair me with a non-engrish speaking postdoc and of course i didn't learn much and left the lab a semester later; though he was nice enough to help me secure my present lab position, the disconcerting thing is that he was the sole reason why my GPA's not 4.0 ; fair enough, i didn't do much in his lab, and i didn't know how to suck cock also. but thats another story for another day. the other reason was that no undergraduates who took this course got an A last year. that i don't mind, but u know, with the sponsor's fixation on letter grades, any false move i make this sem will cause me a warning letter the very least.

so i better play my cards right this sem. and of course exercise my jaw. and my wrist. i think i have to angkat a bit of bolah in order to survive sial.

2005-08-31T23:21:00.000-05:00

this is uncle wang's part two of the drunken tirade. 1122pm august 31st.
bach rocks. i am listening to pablo casal's cello suites as i type this. the programme jacket describes him as hot blooded.
i can see why.
the vibrato is gorgeous. the sound is mellow and rich, despite the ravages of the 1920osomething recording.. yo yo ma can go f**k off. that hollow sounding twat.
technique is nothing without emotion.
and casals is as emotive as one get.
and he has balls to play bach like he plays bach.

bach rules dawgZ!

2005-08-31T22:59:00.000-05:00

i am rehensibly drunk as i type this. three pitchers: leinenkugel's honeyweiss, spaten optimator and strongbow by the terrace, by the lake. and we even gave free beer to a passing queer who were regaling us with tales of drunken co-eds skinny dipping by the lakeside. boy would i give to see the above mentioned people now...
my head is swimmimnmg; my thighs feel week, my eyes are rolling around like a gyroscope in 6 gs. this is as high as i can get. and all before school starts.

i wish school would start earlier so i can forget all my sorrows and just concentrate on mugging. after alll i'm a canine: give me a goal and i will work like a dog for you.
but anyway its off to bed at 11 pm

i love my school and my union ! the beer's dilute but i'm nevertheless wrecked. my hands are fluid as hell. i feel like rostropovich on his cello: one with the keyboard. beer is as good as rostropovich in erasing my sorrows.
.....

my sorrows are my sorrows are Spaten Optimator.

Bitter. Sweet. and downright complex.

amen for life.

*conk bed*

2005-08-30T17:45:00.000-05:00

life is slowly going back to the mundane triumvate of lab-school-mugging at home-repeat ad infinitum. i don't mind really, except new distractions are abound. and no, none of them involve people of the opposite sex, unless well, i revert to flights of fancies (and thats euphemistically speaking for something else. hur hur hur ) . hurhur.

cooking is one of them, surprisingly, for an anti SNAG bastard like me. its always a surprise to discover that indiscriminate use of herbs and spices, inexplicable combinations of ingredients (curry leaf + lemon grass in pasta, howzzat?) 1:10 dilution of stew to make soups (that can last a few days) and a little magic from chinese cooking wine and nuoc miam can make dead hunks of animal muscle taste edible and sometimes even delicious (thats always a fluke though. depends). sure its not chinky cooking per se, but hey, my stomach is filled every night and i ain't complaining about that insult to the dead animals Bob (and his cafeteria helpers) commit nightly that passes off as dinner. if something screws up its my fault. the downside though is that i can no longer make excuses to rush off at 6 pm from lab because the cafeteria is closing. now i can make excuses to rush off at 5 pm because mac daddy here needs to cook or there will be no food on the tonight, bitch-supervisor! hur hur hur!

speaking of lab, my plans for a senior honors thesis is in a mess because my PI is too busy and my supervisor is too busy and he "hasn't talked to her yet". if he doesnt get a move on, something bad might happen. right now everything is in the air because i don't really know whether my data is usable or not. the supervisor is sending mixed messages and making non commital noises. if my project really gets shelved, i think i need a drink, because that would be an entire 1.5 year's work down the drain. and i'm not kidding. i did all the work. but life's unfair, so..
anyway
my room is bigger now, so there's more space to engage in ahem, activities with privacy. no no no, not that (well, not all the time) . i've got a new hi fi now and am enjoying annoying my housemates with classical shit. it aint gonna pull girls though, because i aint got no car, but it makes my life a leetle bit easier, because sometimes my ety's get in the way of my reading. also, in lieu of the barren monasteric life, i've restarted making tank models because sniffing the fumes calms me down. a little chemical distraction doesnt hurt u know, if i hallucinate something good.
oh, and the liquor store is now opposite my place, as opposed to a 20 minute walk lugging six packs home.. hur hur hur hur. and i already know the owner's name. hur hur hur hur!

i am sure i will get fat and slightly more happy this sem. i am content, for now. all i need now is for the sponsor to send more chiobu freshmen down to wisc and then i can safely say my life is perfect. right now the standard is still er, wanting. how the hell are they gonna succeed in their breeding schemes when you get mummy's boys and preppy frigid little ladies? (for the record. i will never be a willing participant in this... this... conspiracy! )

the more things change, the more they stay the same, eh.

Edit : Goddamnit. i just spoilt my dhaal when i jettisoned too much black pepper into the pot. ARGGRRGH

2005-08-24T00:06:00.000-05:00

dear boyz and galz,
today uncle wang discovered one of the fundamental truths in life. To my surprise it was standing in front of me all theeze while, and me blind shit stood there and got smack right in the kisser. so here goes:
to get attached, you need a car. more zai the car, the better.
i waz talking to me senior today and he told me: "zhenxun, u know, if i dinch have my car i wouldn't have got attached in the first place. "
my right eye popped out.
"dio bo!! wtf! u iz got charm one ley! u charm girl like charm cobra lie dat. one charm one kew one ley. wtf!!!"
"charm my ass la. you look at all the people who are attached here. they got car not?"
................
my left eye popped out.
"MUTHAFACK! RIGHT HOR! JIZZZZZZBYE! all is got one ley!" Then i thought a litte bit more and then i realized that those who are attached outside of madison also got car one. W . T . F . !!
"eh, why ar? why got car means you mac daddy har?"
"ey iz like why guys go for looks even though they say they don't. is unconscious la. juz like we are hardwired to chiong looks, they chiong attributes one lor. give a zhar bor two person. both similar character similar looks. one rich and got car, one honest john. u say she choose who?"
" nao hia. i understand liao lar. lie dat i iz big muthafucka looozer. i no car. got bike. not even motorized kind ley! use leg power one ."
"hai lan lan lor. wait until grad school lar!"

true la. wait until old man, more like. so hor, you rich freshman out there coming to wisc- u know what to do liao right.

2005-08-18T21:34:00.000-05:00

moved in, finally. Of course, before we actually moved in, there were some things to take care of. like helping pricks who were away move their shit. Damned mofos, i almost lost my third finger trying to shoulder a wooden cabinet full of coins from one apartment to another. My right third finger got wedged into one of the drawers and almost did not come out. Fuckin' hell. This is the last time i'm going to be a free bangla worker for those pricks. Next time, pack your shit, move your shit yourself (and be around when you do so) and be nice to us before the moving starts. Faux grateful phone calls after don't cut it with me you spoilt pricks. Oh, and packing means collapsing stuff that can be collapsed. Moving entire assembled ikea cabinets down your faux bourgeois pads for free, even if the place is just next door is no fun. Next time, why don't you pay the movers to move your shit instead huh?

...

Er anyway. What i wanted to say was, that I managed to obtain a antiquated hifi set in my new room. So I am blasting my classical shit all day nowsadays, annoying the shit out of my roommates. The thing about the Hi Fi is that its resolution isn't as good as my etymotics, so the funny shit that happens in a classical recording doesnt appear even at high amplitude, as opposed to my good ole noise reducing Etymotic ER-4Ps.

Shit such as this:

-In the highly excellent Rostropovich and Serkin Brahms Cello Sonaten recording, u can actually here one of these two old men moan like they're in heat. I wonder who is it. Here is a rough transcript:
ja ... (note) ja..... (note) gut! ...(note) ja! mmm ! mmmmm! mmmm! (ascending higher notes to climax) MMMM!!

- in the Bach Cello Suite No.2, Rostropovich actually records in an old French Church. At the begnning of the Prelude, u can actually hear a pesky bird chirp. Perhaps its a hungry bird calling for the mother or some song bird trying to get a mate.

- and somebody burped and farted during a recording of Anne-Sophie Mutter's Beethoven Violin Concerto (forgot which number). And one of the string section was testing the microphone by thumping on it.

- and perhaps the same guy was there during du Pre's recording. Same burping and coughing and farting. What is it with old men and front row seats huh?

I wonder what kind of stuff happens on stage when the orchestra is playing. Does the conductor swear at the orchestra when one of them screws up? Or moan for the matter when everything goes well together?? And Rostropovich seem to have a very weird habit of taking sharp, orgasmic breaths when he goes on a long virtuostic section.

Anyway I am veli bored la. Thats why I can type so much shit. but the point is, i love my Etymotics. You hear things u can never hear on a normal hi fi.

2005-08-09T18:15:00.000-05:00

After hideous weather in Narita, and even more hideous waiting at Minneapolis, I'm back in Madison.

The weather is still hot, but is drier, so I'm not sweating as much now.
And for all my plans due to my sudden impetous love for cars (undoubtedly as a result of hanging out too much with a supercar freak) , I've dropped them once i saw my Bitch.

No BMW M3 with a V6 engine and all the trimmings can take my Bitch away from me. I love my bike. The poor thing has been sitting in the bike cage for too long and a layer of dust has clogged its transmissions. I'd have to take it for a bath soon.

Apart from that, everything else seems the same. And Madison is still pretty in the summer. Even though I keep bitching about Madison during term time, 2 months away from this place still seems a bit too long. Its implausible to think of Madison as home, but it is also equally implausible not to think of Madison as one. Perhaps, in a weird sort of way, I grew up in Madison and it has shaped my ideology, or whatever that it is quantifiable. Maybe home is in Singapore, but life is slightly simpler here. Whatever the case, I'm glad to be back

Edit: This is icky poo-ey sweety sick. What the hell, must be my jetlag and my feasting on the New Glarus Belgian Cherry Beer. This temporary outpouring of emotive bullshit is only tempoaray.. i hope. Now lets get on to some Greenbush donuts...

2005-08-06T12:05:00.000-05:00

Being up on a plane, someone once told me, is a whiteout.

There is no night and no day- only the saccharine fluorescence in the cabin- and on the faces of the crew. Night and day are but notions in your control.
There are no emotions- only a dull ache of regret and the twinge at the back of the mind about the unknown. Here you are free to arbitate your emotions- assign what and which you please.
There is no consciousness- for all thoughts are syncopated with the numbing roar of the toiling engines. One does not think in that few hours. One merely vegetates - consciously waiting for the clock to wind down to landing. Time can be a few seconds or a few hours- just adjust your pill dosage accordingly.
Strapped in your seat, you are utterly free. Everything is within your control. Lights- a button a fingerlength away. The crew-another button. You are only trapped in by your imagination- does the fish look like roast chicken or it is just pretending to be braised chicken?

Is this a plastic utopia, or a hell in heaven's place?

2005-08-05T22:08:00.000-05:00

its been two months ago since i plodded on a 747 back to singapore.
unfortunately, i've been moaning about stuff here for most of the time. its just plain skewed though, because i've had quite a nice time. What wouldn't be nice if one just needs to work instead of working and mugging at the same time? Plus there were quite a number of hot chix on my floor (not my lab).
Too bad I'm leaving on Monday.
However, I'm starting to miss Greenbush donuts and the not-so-expensive-and-infinitely-better-beer over there. Too much of that weak shit Erdinger can cause me liver cirrhosis, because i keep thinking its water and i keep chugging down more of it. Give me back my Spaten anytime. Save my liver!
While this holiday has ostensibly refreshed me, my writing skills have gone to the pits. Which explains why i'm still worrying about the GRE writing section. If the marker was a sharpish guy, he would have discovered that my arguments were so flimsy they couldn't even be used to wipe an ass. And then it would what it would be : in pieces and full of shit.
And so i welcome the 25 hour ass breaking journey back to the monastery that is Madison. Where i trade the hot weather, good food and hot chix for cows, cows cows and more cows. Soon I'd be mooing about my heavy workload, failed lab experiments and what not.
What a nice tradeoff!. What a Faustian deal that is , eh.

2005-07-30T04:46:00.000-05:00

was chewing cud on a conversation with a certain "scholar" from a certain university down south and i kept wondering why i was so pissed off:

She: "oh, so you're from wisconsin?" (accompanied with a subtlely dubious look. trust me. i've got an excellent radar)
Me: "Yep"
She: "Well, wisconsin is.. how should i put it... theres nothing to do there, and its so slack."
Me: "Huh? Slack? Why?"
She: "Oh, my friends (referring to the batch one year below mine) do nothing but study most the time and they still have time to have fun and do things. us, we do soo many breadth and core courses.. (the usual rants about not enough time for oneself, tests and papers and midterms in between. ie, the usual scholar rhapsody. check my blog entries. its all there)
Me: "I don't think its so slack. I'm in liberal arts and I'm a part time lab tech and I'm dying almost every semester......." (furrows eyebrows in perplexity)
She: "Oh, but you see, yours is voluntary. You can choose.We die die have to do these courses ... ( continues the tirade, but with a sprinkling of how life is perfect down south - the usual PR/Scholar spiel)......"

... well, whats wrong with it being voluntary then? Well granted there are pricks who do the bare minimum here (and yes, the minimum here is as bare as one can get, and the issue of pricks doing the scanty minimum and ending up on the Honor's List have been covered ad nauseum in other parts of this blog), what about the rest of us?

Are we to be judged on the basis of student-faculty ratios, percentage minority, percentage graduating after 4 years, party school rankings and other useless stats that we don't make good scientists?

naohia. i'd like to see you fail your first experiments again and again and again and you don't know the hell why, and find out first hand how life is so not a bed of roses (nor fun) in the laboratory whether or not you've got the stinkin' scholarship and you've got nothing to show for your commitment and dedication except some random bird droppings on the X ray film. Then I'd ask you again, you freaking undergraduate!

2005-07-22T11:16:00.000-05:00

From my ole buddy Wind’s blog, someone commented:
“do you just want the piece of paper that says you graduated from Cornell, because that's worth more on the market than a piece of paper that says you graduated from NUS? (don't forget the piece of paper isn't important in itself; it's employers' expectations of overseas grads - more independent, more initiative, etc - that are important in securing that job.)also - don't forget that it cuts both ways. if you think Americans (and not just "ang mohs" but the whole rainbow of races - "American" isn't a homogenous descriptor - and what about the Koreans, Turkish, Israeli, Nigerian, Kenyan and Indians at your school as well?) are antisocial, maybe it's because you're pushing them away by clustering as a small, segregated group of Singaporeans. it keeps you within your comfort zone, but it reflects poorly on us as a nation. is that the impression we want to give the world? that we are antisocial, arrogant and insular? i hope not”

that’s a meaningless comment. It’s not even worth a rejoinder but then, I’ve had enough of this self righteous crap.
Its certainly easy to point one’s languid fingers while safely snug in one’s own comfort zone, accusing us of being overachieving pricks more bent on maintaining a perfect GPA than being, ahem, perfect ambassadors for our country doing all the happy smiley things perfect people do, ie socializing and making shitloads of friends from all over the world and taking in their culture and playing an active role in their community yada yada blah blah splutter splutter .

Its all bullshit. Sure, I do not doubt for one moment that we are overachieving dicks- that’s what got us to where we are in the first place. To satisfy the sponsor, and to do the above mentioned? Sure, Windy might sound a little insular, but I don’t think he’s arrogant or antisocial per se.

This phenomenon of a homogeneous cluster-fuck is not uniquely Singaporean in the first place. I observe the same phenomenon happening in other international students in the lab I work in. The Chinese grad students in my lab hang out mostly with his fellow Chinese contemporaries. Same with the Indians. I would daresay the Koreans are even more close knit (and endogamous) than the Chinese. Hell, even the minorities in Madison stay together in groups. It is simply fatuous to ascribe this clustering as due to the supposed arrogance inherent in the “scholar mentality” of the sheltered well fed Singaporean scholar. Here the guy is assuming that as sponsored slaves, every one of us are extroverts, share the same worldview and even speak the same scholar-speak. Wtf?

Every sponsored kia is different. Windy is an introvert. So am I. There are other people who are extroverts and they do not necessarily share the same worldview as I or Windy. So whats wrong with being an introvert?

Why can’t we do our own thang and carve out a niche of our own? Must sponsored buggers be obliged to carry the task of merely being overt ambassadors of Singapore? Yes and No. One can if one wants to, I see this most strongly in EDB scholars. The buggers, well at least the ones I know are an extroverted bunch. And all power to them. I’m constantly amazed at the ability of almost all of them to socialize and make small talk at the drop of the hat. Of course, they are the ones with the wide network of friends. So what about the rest of us; the quiet geek archetypes who don’t value attention nor have time to spare socializing as a result of heavy academic workloads? I think that’s perfectly fine. At the end of the day its a matter of finding one’s niche. I’ve found my niche, and so does Wind. I work in a lab where I’m the only Singaporean around. I have a sprinkling of angmoh/ABC friends, mostly through work. They know me as a person and they know about Singapore- well at least its not part of China. I am comfortable. They are comfortable. And in Wind’s case, he does spare some time to play table tennis and he also has some foreign friends.
So what the hell is wrong with that? Must we judged on the number of non Singaporean friends we have? Must we judged solely the “fun” (whats “fun” in the first place?) things we do? Must we be assessed by the amount of hours spent contributing to the community?
Why not see us normal individuals trying to cope with life in a foreign land, and adjust one’s expectations accordingly? Hell, why judge in the first place?

Even if all of us were cast from one perfect scholar mould and released to the various universities, I can safely say that results will still vary widely. As what the commenter said it “works both ways”. Is the Singaporean community at say, LSE or UCL exactly the same in number, make up and composition as the community in Cornell , Madison or Ann Arbor? More importantly, is the school and the zeitgeist of the particular school uniform in all places? Obviously not. When taken together, these factors interact and affect how each Singaporean – and various other minorities groups on each campus intergrate and participate. So can one safely say for sure that just because an individual who had so much “fun” in one school, the same individual will have the same “fun” in another school? (again, “fun”/ “enriching” to one person differs from another’s idea) And so what’s the “characteristic experience” vis-à-vis cultural integration of an overseas Singaporean student then? Is there one in the first place? Sure it looks the same from the outside; will it look the same from the inside?

2005-07-15T11:44:00.000-05:00

i. am. seething. right. now.
lets. just. say. i. want. to. kill. lab. techs.
f.u.c.k.i.n.g a.y.

....
oh and ostentatious bastards. if you're hollow go fill yourself up with yourself. you don't have anything to prove to me.

2005-07-12T08:20:00.000-05:00

somehow, i'd wish i've learnt to be a cocky bastard from the start of secondary school. but noooOooo i had to be that self obsessed nerd that combed my hair with Vitalis and a ruler for the parting in order to meet the fucking discipline master's requirement. 4 years of that shite gave me the supernatural ability to force myself to do anything i want out of pure discipline, but effectively removed testosterone from my balls. yes, in other words, i became a limp wristed diffident fuck. my limp wristed ballless outlook persisted throughout my NS (ask my bunkmates; they'd tell you what a obedient soldier i was), when i diverted my resources to trying to hook a scholarship than trying to maintain my relationship with my ex, which explained why it bombed terribly; and it had to be bombed after my NS, as per Murphy's law. but anyway,
nowadays i think i'm having a delayed teenhood. coming from the party school that is Madison (riots in Halloween. yearly. nuff said) and despite my near monasteric lifestyle, one still cannot be immune from this hedonistic zeitgeist that hangs around even after the weekend and that which made my free weekends (not that i had many to start with) living hell. Hence the teenager-like why-does-no-one-want-me-oo-i-hate-myself posts. Its freaking boring, to say the least. Even worse, I've been kicking myself for not having enough ballz to get the phone numbers of TWO, freaking TWO girls that I met and kinda fancied. ok. not fancied. interested WTF! i've had enough of this lack of testicular fortitude. It wasn't the failed attempted that completely pissed me off. It was the complete lack of doing something. Zhenzhi was right, at least where I am concerned. Shit.
While the idea of myself suddenly turning from sex deprived geek to sex deprived poser is not exactly entertaining, i think its time i started living again. well, at least for one more month or so.

exactly how though, thats the problem. ie, how does one appear not desperate when one is desperate as ... er.. nevermind.

on another note, who
a) likes cold weather up to -10 degrees Celsius
b) likes walking
c) likes train rides?

am planning a backpacking trip to Eastern Europe during Winter break. who wants to join?

2005-07-09T11:18:00.000-05:00

i just realized that there are recurrent themes in the content of the blog thus far. and its not really good. in fact, its freakin' boring. i mean, wtf, i could even predict myself what i'm going to write according to the seasonal changes. i don't think this would validate the thinking that a human's emotion cycles according to the seasons, but this would just be plain proof that I, am just a boring piece of shite. i met up with my juniors who were overseas and they were telling me tall tales of fun and fun and more fun and backpacking and travelling, while i could only give them a bewildered look: " oh. but you see, i'm a monk and my monastery is my lab. ohmm" wtf man. they've been in the US for only one year and they've had more fun (and for some, more *ahem* ) than me. wtf wtf wtf wtf. and i've only got one more year left. wtf wtf wtf wtf.
anyway, to illustrate the boring shit life i lead i present to you my thematic blog template for a sample year :
The Cyclical Life of Wang - TCZB Wang
- Fall Semester
- celebrate and feel excited about coming semester.
- celebrate the impending cool weather.
-moan about 3.8 GPA requirement
-moan about asshole scholars sucking up to sponsor
- insert random observation about beer and its powers of boosting mugging (or lack thereof, dependant on time and context)
-moan about love lost and more love lost (especially pronounced during thanksgiving season)

-Spring Semester
-celebrate end of Fall emester.
celebrate and feel excited about coming semester
-bitch about cold weather
-moan about 3.8 GPA requirement
-moant about ....

u get the idea.
i'm bored already.
WTF!

2005-06-17T09:49:00.000-05:00

back from Paulaner Brauhaus. Stupid gay (i meant effeminate. not homosexual.) band singing gay songs. and i suspect the brewery dilutes the beer to suit local tastes. no salvator. no maibock.

damn i miss my Spaten

2005-06-08T08:28:00.000-05:00

words cannot describe how i am feeling now watching my first rugby broadcast in 3 years.

ITS NOT GAY AMERICAN FOOTBALL! ITS GAY YES ITS GAY! court jesters dressed up like clowns kicking the ball about and passing the ball forward . WTF? and they think they are the shit because they're big, fat and act like animals. Those gay shits need the British Lions to rearrange their faces. Without their freakin body pads and armor. Let them smell the pungent scrum. Let them feel steel studs raking their faces. And lets see how they prim and pose like big boys after the Lions are done with them. That'll show them mofos.
nao hia.
HURHURHUR

2005-06-07T07:29:00.000-05:00

the only thing that i was looking forward to: chix in Biopolis. er. don't have ley. i work in an all girl group, but er, .... nvm.
the food's fine. but i'm too tired to go out hunting. i guess the hawker centers should be thankful that Le Tornado isn't here for the seasonal clean up of their stalls.
however, i'm already sick of the weather already.

oh. who wants cheese?

2005-06-01T23:36:00.000-05:00

The room's been cleaned, the beer's been drunk, the donuts has been eaten, the cells has been passed over to the care of my supervisor; no more gel shifts left to run.

now all that is left is that nao hia 23 hour plane ride. my poor ass. this is the part i hate about going home.

see you in 2 day's time if i actually survive.

2005-05-31T22:48:00.000-05:00

after spending about a whole month getting my daily illicit dose of UV and gamma radiation, i'm finally done with my project here. as a reward, i'm going home!

erm, to do another project and get my daily dose of UV and gamma radiation.

well at least i don't need to twiddle my thumbs and stare at the four walls wondering what overpriced shit i'm going to eat for dinner. Madison, for all her merits, is a fucking boring place in the summer; though i must say, the chix tend to dress less and hence expose more over here. however, since its only the start of the summer season, the winter pallor (naobu, the spelling correct not har.) hasn't completely been wiped out, and one tends to see pukeworthy stuff. imagine a extremely fat hen waddling its way to the slaughterhouse. now imagine it being dressed in hot pants and some halter thingy barely concealing its droopy..er, ne'mine. u get the idea. one just hopes for the sun to come out more often just to roast these bloody moo moos.

well, being a desperate bastard i am, hopefully, just hopefully, i might meet some chix over at attachment. unfortunately its going to be very er, probabilistic, as remote as finding a two headed di.....er, ne'mine... according to those already working there (ie, my forward observation recon kias)
am lugging 8 lbs of prime wisconsin cheese back. have a feeling the stuff will end up sitting at the back of the fridge ripening and turning mouldy, so if anyone wants prime wisc-y cheese, tell me! i'd happily throw a bit of the stuff at yer. oh, and a pound and a half of sauerkraut too, though i must say, it goes well with porridge. which reminds me, stirfried bratwursts go really well with rice, especially the zhup after you fry 'em. talk about fusion cuisine dah. fuck those expensive restaurants man. just make sauerkraut with porridge and brats with rice, and you're on the path to world culinary domination! of course, you'd be saving loads of moolah as well, especially since wisconsinites eat bratwursts like jenna jameson eating di.....er,ne'mine.. the point is, you can get a $10 box of 12 huge bratwursts and one is enough for one meal. that was actually how i managed to survive summer a year ago. talk about how time flies.
won't be bringing any beer back, because if i were to stuff two more bottles of the stuff chances are the bag will break, or i'd just chug them down in transit. that my friends, is how much i love wisconsin beer. or hell, Spaten and Paulaner in general. Dang, if theres something i'm going to miss when i leave this place, its New Glarus Beer (the buggers don't sell out of Wisconsin) and Greenbush Donuts. Greenbush Donuts is the reason why Krispy Kreme isn't monopolising sales or even moving to Madison. Yes, its that freaking good. Unfortunately, I can't bring any of the damned things back. Either I will eat it, or some buggers will tear my bag out and eat it for me. Its Fo sho ma niggas!

Anyway, Wind just passed me a musical baton. Since its not edible, nor is it infectious, i don't think i will pass the baton to anyone, not that there is anyone to pass in the first place. The thing is, I don't have no decent MP3 collection on my lappy, because I ain't got no time to burn the stuff in the first place. So everything is in CDs. Anyway, most of the music I listen to is classical stuff and for some reason WMP tends to display the wrong information all the time, and its freakin' tedious to change the title to the correct one...
so well, back to my packing then.

2005-05-25T22:38:00.000-05:00

To the certain lady who questioned the, as a certain commentator of the WWE puts it, testicular fortitude of males everywhere:
shut the fuck up bitch. While I readily admit that I'm a wimpy bastard whiner (and a champion one at that. ask the Evil Twin and my eating kakis) , and I wholeheartedly agree with PY's comments (whom i like very much. the guy walks the talk regardless of his sometimes infuriating habit of excessive verbal overkill), I don't particularly enjoy your efforts at trying to angkat bolah the senior management.
you can explain away all your verbal gaffes and gamesmanship to the press you clumsy cow, but the fact remains so: the intention to angkat bolah is still there and nothing can change it.
Go back to being a Dance I/C in HCJC will you? You're better off as a show pony than anything else.

(k. rant over. back to my favorite pasttime: whining)

2005-05-13T18:30:00.000-05:00

Bestbuy!
Just as I finished the last drudgery of a paper, I got back, and opened my fridge and found my long lost Toblerone bar! Nao hia, I totally forgot about it. And now, its Spaten Time!

*BURRRRRRP*

2005-05-08T17:51:00.000-05:00

i hereby take back everything i said about tea being better than coffee. Coffee seems to work better than tea at this juncture, even though i've been forced to settle for that alternative source of caffeine because my smuggled stash of Lipton tea bags just ran out on me, together with the condensed milk dammit.
One wonders, would have my mugging for neuro (the 2nd midterm i buanged) have been improved sufficiently? who cares, bring on the dopamine! My prefrontal cortex's been screaming for it since this morning!

2005-05-08T00:26:00.000-05:00

its that time of the year again! life is wonderful!
i've merely got 3 actual exams to clear this time, as opposed to 6 last sem. How lucky I am! How lucky I am to end up in the same state again, with the luxury of time to stare at my notes all day long, thinking long glorious thoughts about genes, genes, more genes, and a little bit of chaperonin shit and a whole dustinload of neuro!! How freakin' lucky! I'm shitting myself already!
I simply love it when i enter the state of Total Mugging, where my very existence is defined by the sheer volume of wonderful knowledge waiting to be digested and regurgitated like a foul smelling furball, with food and water breaks for sustenance.(of course, if i die.. well, i'm dispensable.. like a piece of toilet tissue) Let my professors wonder at my ability to retain large loads of knowledge that i would have absolutely no use for in the near future (ok, this time, only one, but.. how cares? shit is shit, init!) Let them marvel at the exactitude of the bullshit they've thrown at us via the self deprecating way i throw back at them.
Gosh! I hate the greenery outside my window. It reminds one too much of home, just as Bach's Cello Suite No. 6 reminds one of love lost and passed on by. I cannot look out at the freakin' window, I cannot. Too much happiness is no good for me. Let me remain in my squalid semi-permanent virginal monasteric existence here. Here is good, for I will always be guaranteed to lose weight, slaving away at that freaking lab and eating subway everyday just like last summer (oh, how time flies. i'm old already. a year to my death thats what it is) , with Spaten Optimator as my only sin. Take me far away from home; this alien notion of home, where the heart is and where i belong, when i'm right at the beginning of that energy hill that is the finals, is so near yet so freaking far. I'm not going home. i'm staying here. for two. more. freaking. weeks. thus, let me wallow with the hedonists and their politics, their sneering condescending way of doing things. No i shall not wallow; alone I shall be, as always.
which reminds one of the question thats been beating out in a death march like an infestation in my head. Why isn't this ascetic lifestyle giving me peace? Where is peace when one needs one... like right now huh? huh?

2005-04-25T16:18:00.000-05:00

you know theres something not quite right about u-wisc if, during the Phi Beta Kappa induction, all you see are rows and rows of wisconsin cheeseheads and their proud parents, and you're the only chinky who is incidentally the only international student, the only blur coc from Singapore ("no , we don't flog people publicly for chewing gum."), speaking with a distinct Singaporean accent with a Chinky name that no one can pronounce and you're embarassed for them that they mangled it all up even though you told them - its okay just call me wang already.
now i understand what my PI was talking about when she mentionted that wisc is desperately in need of minorities to boost diversity ratings. Being an only underdressed chink among the sea of tuxedo clad paleskins is rather uncomfortable, when half of them buggers, "recognized with distinction for both breadth and depth in the liberal arts " don't know where the fuck singapore is.
Damn, Saturday was a weird shit experince.

2005-04-20T00:21:00.000-05:00

never in my life have i been so fucking irritated by a whole course. never. it might be due to in part by my spectacular screw up, but i don't think so, or again, maybe i'm just biased.
ever since i started this course, a loud voice inside my head told me to screw that course and drop it, but nooooOOOOOO i had to keep it.
Could it be the anal retentive content and the level of meaningless detail one must memorize in order to get just a point?
Could it be the overwhelming number of pre-meds who emininently memorize the abovementioned details and hence skew the curve so badly to the wrong side of the bell curve?
Could it just be the self important jargon clinicians like to use to mask their comprehension or lack thereof on the subject matter?
Whatever the case is, its turning me off systems neuroscience. I take it that at graduate level, things are not as anal as senior level courses. However, I have a feeling one still has to memorize oneself silly with all that bullshit that doesn't mean anything.
And now instead of working on my Lit paper I'm worrying myself silly over this bullshit course that i don't even need for my fucking major!
Thats it then, no more senior level courses for me already. I fully expected myself to buang on the grad level courses this semester, but I've never thought that its this stupid self important anal stuck up piece of shit course (hrmm.... sounds like I'm talkign about myself here) is taking away years of my fucking life.
Fuckin' 'ay!

2005-04-18T21:19:00.000-05:00

i hate mondays.
especially today, when i just had my buanged my neuro midterm. This is the first time here that i've gotten a freakin' B. Before you start throwing bottles at me, er...
.......
........
who cares! die lor. *shrug*

2005-04-06T16:43:00.000-05:00

finally reached a threshold where, despite the threat of a lynching from the sponsors, i cannot be bothered with studying anymore. someone just cut my head off and give it to them. i want to be lying back and drinking my goddamned beer stash which i haven't touched for 2 freakin weeks because i was studying for these goddamned tests all the goddamned time.
so screw you! yes you, you freaking obfuscating neuro TA. talking through you nose? won't impress anyone. complex sentence structure on notes? i won't admire it fool, i'd only tear the notes in two and throw it at you. pre meds? fuck off you curve mangling tossers!
40 minutes to the chem quiz. I dont care! i won't study anymore!

2005-04-01T18:11:00.000-06:00

because of the kind hearted professor's gesture of shifting the exam till next week (intended for the spring break buggers, not limpeh), he has created a situation where I sit for two graduate level courses and one chao mugging premed type course (did i mention to anyone how i hate premeds? or pure mugging courses in particular? contradictory i know, coming from a pure mugger, but i digress..) in the space of two days.
so of course, i've been doing what i've been paid to do the whole week. and regardless of what i've actually said about beer and mugging in my earlier post (sorry, i think i was drunk or high from solving that bugger question or both), beer really screws up mugging especially if you're required to remember useless bullshit that you will have no use later (like where the hell is the occular dominance columns in the primary visual cortex located ... fucking neuro i hate you!) . Unfortunately, this meant that i've been dry the whole week. i need beer now! NOW!!!!!!
To not screw up GRE (tomorrow.. sibeh good timing har. this is the classic manifestation of Murphy's bloody Law) by not screwing up my liver, or to maintain blood EtOH levels and ADH activity (DAMN YOU GRE... did i mention i've been really dreaming about yeast and ADHs for the whole week?) that is the question .
So how? Drink or not drink? *Gah*

2005-03-29T22:31:00.000-06:00

Things don't like me today.
Went to lab, found out i digested my plasmid with the wrong r.e's
OK, fine.
Then I started on my gel shift. In a state of confusion, i mixed up my samples.
Haiya it happens lar
Set up my gel in the cold room, stupid gel started to leak. Result: one very wet floor, and loads of agarose to seal it.
its just not my day. delayed my exit time from the lab by 30 mins. okay lar 30 mins.
Because of freaky (warm) temp, (unadjusted) lab heater went crazy and I was melting in my lab coat
buay tahan , back to NS liao izzit.
Started on my protein gel. Weird sediment on my samples, I heck care and just loaded all the darn thing. Then I asked Boss about it. Result: Very possible screw up.
Me and protein gels, always no karma wan nar *shrug*
Gel shift finish liao, marker never move properly. Will know whether i screwed up tomorrow.
Wah this time siao liao. I wonder what will be the boss's face when he finds out.
Develop gelshift in darkroom. Wanted to take off my gloves, because they were stinking. Tried to take out with great difficulty, because my hands were sweaty. *Bang!* Gloves disintegrated, I hit my hand on the darkroom dorr. Now it looks like Dracula has left its mark on my hand.
Wah even the darkroom door also buey song me ar!
Then lagi best, tomolo radiation safety people coming to check, I check my area, found out one sibeh hot spot on my bench. Bloody hell, i reached home 1.5 hours late lor! how to mug lie dat.
ARRGGGGHHH

2005-03-27T18:20:00.000-06:00

it was hot out today. finally the thermometer reluctantly broke to the -1 degrees celsius cap which seemed to be stubbornly frozen there the whole freakin' winter.
and i took my old girl The Bitch out for a ride today. I haven't been riding for most of the winter, because my chronic procrastination meant that the fender i was supposed to have installed by the end of last semester still hasnt been put on yet, which meant that every ride through the slush and mud will cause my whole bag and back to look like it's been through a mudfight. Furthermore, her gears are sluggish and sticky at -20 degrees Celsius, but otherwise old dependable her is still a good ride, the muddy back not withstanding.
my dear, how have you aged! your body is now encrusted with a layer of salt and ice. Your gear teeth are sandy, and your brakes are rusty. and yet, you still remain powerful and can still wipe the floor of those wimpy road cyclists. how i love you so, my bitch!
For one, the Bitch has been a constant companion in my life here. And so she will deserve a pampering at the bike shop next weekend ;)

2005-03-26T22:54:00.000-06:00

nabey why i keep saying nabey ar. its nabrey ala my old platoon sergeant back then.
swearing is so fun. and why am i blogging instead of mugging?
nabrey!

2005-03-23T20:37:00.000-06:00

nabrey
not i wanna say ar, but i think i'm falling in love with Mstislav Rostropovich. ok at first i liked him because his Bach cello suites made for good mugging music. but i recently bought a recording of the Dvorak Second Cello concerto by him with von karajan. The guy made me cry. ok not cry. weep. but anyway its the first time ever.
......
(geleng, relak one corner. pasat england also can wan. i also pasat england mah. miss home mah)

2005-03-22T19:33:00.000-06:00

i'm chomping on my first full meal in 3 days as i type this - yes its that time of the year again! spring break! where others go to warmer locales to drink and get laid. and where i play full time lab rat, enjoy the start of the "spring" season in Madison (and why is there still freaking snow on the ground eh?) drink in my comfort of my dumpy room and think about getting laid. warra life eh! like signing extra lie dat, but this time its voluntary
but ne'mine la. my brlader The Geleng (no i'm not the geleng you are, bitch) stopped by from New Orleans (Purdue has an earlier Spring Break) to come visit me. When I met him at the Memorial Union, it was still flurrying and snowing and guess wot the sonofabitch turned up in ? Bermudas and shorts.
Nabey, suan me not enough, want to suan the entire city of Madison by displaying his hairy sun drenched legs? Lucky I arrived fast, before a riot could start in the MU. The whole lot of people dressed in downs and windbreakers were staring at him. And on the journey back, everyone looked at him incredulously, most probably thinking on the lines of "wtf???" , or "nice hairy legs, mate, lets see you stand the cold". But eitherway, hats off to you, brlader. I lay prostrate before your thick thick skin. (in all senses of the word).
And after that, a whole haze of drinking (I told you Spaten Optimator was sibeh chio, right) pigging out on good food (Himal Chuli, the Nepalese joint might have made a whole fortune out on us) and swearing in Hokkien followed. For three whole days. My poor liver. :(
And so its back to mundane normal madison me.
I wonder how subway everyday will change my tastes vis-a-vis subs? i'd know by the end of the week, i think

2005-03-17T22:35:00.000-06:00

The Glycerol Song

O Glycerol, O Glycerol, my protein is soo going to die.
O Glycerol, O Glycerol why why why?
Why can't you be less viscous, less wry?
now my supervisor is going to kill me, and i'm going to cry
i'm going to see patches of bullshit on my gelshifts, no matter how hard i try.
and nothing on my Westerns, of the correct size.
Damn you glycerol, you'll f**king shorten my life!

..... as derived from a MSN conversation with The Twin after I realized that I screwed up my cell extracts and put too little glycerol in the damned thing. Damn pipettes and the thick oily shit! . Nabey i'm getting sick of lab .

2005-03-16T21:43:00.000-06:00

either i'm burnt out, or i'm losing it quite soon.
don't seem to be able to concentrate properly nowadays in class. when the prof talks i only see his mouth move and his body gesturing. i can hear the scrabble of pens on paper. i can hear the hiss of paper shearing on paper. what i can't hear is the prof's words.
it comes out like a slush of static and occasionally, i can vaguely make out keywords and some concepts by looking at the board, but nothing goes in. if the class laughs at some lame joke i laugh along. can't help it. its freaking herd instinct. i look at my notes and its a pile of mumbo jumbo bullshit.
in lab i can't seem to remember what i did a few minutes ago. started to question myself again and again and again, and i'm rapidly losing my zen in procedures. goddamn i thought i didn't screw up in the westerns today, but goddamn no signal at all. i think its a truncation in vivo, but how the hell am i going to convince my supervisor when my confidence is all shot and i can't think properly nowadays?
think i'm going mad

2005-03-14T16:58:00.000-06:00

been worrying over my midterms and fussing over GRE preparations that i've forgotten i've got a blog.
been drinking too much lately; don't think its my fault too though, i've been savoring the delights of indigenous Wisconsin beer. Yes they have weird names (whoever named a beer A Spotted Cow must either have a sense of humoror are out of their minds staring at the cornfields of Northern Wisconsin, or both), and it supposedly tastes of corn, but its sibeyyyyyyyyy shiok. I might smuggle a few bottles back home, since the buggers don't ship out of Wisconsin. Perhaps the beer is the only good thing to come out of Wisconsin, admist the freaky weather lately.
You'd have temperatues above zero (Farenheit not Celsius) one weekend, and then a 6 inch accumulation the next. Even worse, you could be having pizzza at a pizza place and just before you entered the place it was nice and cool, then when you're eating your pizza outside the wind suddenly whips up and u'd have figures crazily going against the sudden snowstorm (sheesh, i dinch bring my camera). And when you're finally done, you have a 3 inch accumulation and you're cursing yourself for not wearing your boots out and now you have to crunch your way home and get your feet wet. All in the space of 30 minutes.
Come to think of it, its the same thing in summer too. It would be shimmeringly shiny at the Union in the day, with the sheer green of the midwestern foilage enveloping the place as you go about your stuff in the day. Then a tornado would come and the next morning it would be : "Eh nabey, what happen to the leaves ar, spring again mey?"
The tornado actually killed a nice old couple when the wind blew their roof off in the outskirts of Madison, and it actually sliced through downtown Madison. However, I just remembered it being a rather cool and windy night, because my ears were stuffed with my Etymotics ER-4s and I couldn't hear the howling even though I noticed leaves fluttering about in my room. I guess thats what happens when you're mugging too much. You're disconnected from life already. *shrug*
enuff about my babbling, i gotta rush off to the incredibly anal organic chem lab. cya

2005-02-25T23:25:00.000-06:00

my mind is nicely plastered with Spaten. i have nothing to say but i have an urge to communicate.
i still don't understand what i was thinking when i took the courses i took this semester. they're turning out to be pains in the asses. i wish that the view from the lab was as clear from the classroom than the actual view from the lab in the lab itself'; its been a year since i've worked on the project and i've got no results since. its been merely a sine curve of expectation/disappointment. the rising phase of expectation and then the steep fall to the -y axis as i see my experiments fail time after time.
ah well.
off to sleep then; its time to anaesthesize my mind.
good night.

i've got nothing to say. really. (and i'm tipsy. it seems Herr Spaten is my constant companion nowadays. now, will they start importing to singapore and replace that bullshit Erdinger with something better?)

2005-02-20T21:12:00.000-06:00

i don't know where my project is headed, after all that shit with the weird bands. How the hell does one characterize something without half-decent antisera? Its like trying to arrest one of a pair of triplets, and they di'nd bring their blarrrrrdy ICs. And you can't see them, because you're blind. what the hell. Ignore me anyway..
Have been drinking tea instead of coffee and I must say, tea is stronger than coffee. Well, only in my case, because I have a penchant for not throwing away old tea bags and leaving them for a few days to soak in with new tea bags, so I end up with 6+ teabags in my small mug, and you should see the color of the stuff produced when i brew the thing. (can't describe, it reminds one of the toilet bowl water. yes, after a bombing mission.)
Tea works in strange ways. Coffee (brewed my way, a 9 to 1 ratio thereabouts) cracks open your skull with a jackhammer and makes you produce ectopic REMs when you read a text at 230 am in the morning. Tea on the otherhand, massages your cerebral cortex and gently tells you, in that sexy low **** me voice , "hey baby, time to wake up". No ectopic REMs or what not. Just a gentle bounding high. Of course, you won't be able to sleep later, but thats not the point.
Oh what the hell, its time for beer. Spaten Optimator BockBier :) ( And Mr Wind, I tole you Heineken and that distilled lager shit tastes like piss:P_

2005-02-16T00:50:00.000-06:00

this is verry weird.
i was staring at a bacty genetics question for 50 minutes. Earlier I had drank 2 cups of very potent teh ni (condensed milk smuggled in from Singapore), and was so jumpy my train of thought went to the dogs.
Out of desperation and perhaps as a tribute from my German ex-roommate who used to write his thesis with a beer in hand and Rage against the Machine (and/or Radiohead) blasting through his earphones, I opened a Spaten, downed half of it, and stared at the question. About 10 minutes later, I got the answer.

The wonders of beer man! Wonder whether I can smuggle a few shots of vodka into the exam hall next tuesday...

2005-02-10T17:41:00.000-06:00

thanks yx for burning me the Butterfly Lover's Concerto. (even though its by vanessa mae :P). Am listening to it and thinking of home now. :)

2005-02-09T16:19:00.000-06:00

Ho-bloody-Ho

Today's supposedly CNY morning. Went to the lab, and developed my gelshift results. Turns out, the damned bands were artifacts. That means no publication liao loh!
I'm so bloody lucky this year.

Ah well, Happy Chinese New Year to the rest of you then.

2005-02-09T01:24:00.000-06:00

Registered for GRE, and took a peek at the syllabus.
Good news: i did most of the stuff last semester.
Bad news: I threw my frickin' notes away at the end of last semester.

Clearly, while some are born under the shadow of Murphy's Law, and others have Murphy's Law thrust upon them, I singlehandedly cause Murphy's Law to come true. All the time.

(and now i have to pore through a ton of material in the texts. literally and figuratively)

2005-02-06T23:48:00.000-06:00

its about time the hermit crab went back to its shell. emotional roller coaster rides are not my thing.

2005-02-05T11:53:00.000-06:00

its about the tradeoffs. why can't i have my frickin' cake and eat it? for once?

2005-02-01T22:50:00.000-06:00

today was supposed to be a good day:

small triumph at the lab. no screw ups during the experiments. supervisor was quite happy and for once did not show his default lanjiaobin at me. class went fine, i did not fall asleep; managed to snuck out of Mcardle by 6 pm which is notchbad already. Usually i'd still be assraped until about 7pm.

its supposed to be a good day, but its all been overshadowed by persistent thoughts; of bad outcomes and of thoughts of not measuring up.
This hasn't happened to me in a long while, and its frickin' eating me up. I don't like it and i hate myself for acting pathetic. for printing 6 useless papers (or rather, yet to be used) for the chance of catching a glimpse of her. of catching just a smile.
if this is the way i fall into that bottomless pit of infatuation, then i don't want to go down into that stinking hole.
i have to revert back to my old self. the unfeeling drone that can chomp through tons of readings and assignments.
being human is fucking scary, to say the least.

2005-01-30T13:24:00.000-06:00

shit. finally its confirmed: that i have no life. at all.

2005-01-29T23:46:00.000-06:00

perhaps i'm having a delayed growth spurt, because i never really went through a teenage angsty phase. perhaps being emasculated and indoctrinated in a rigid Confucianist school was the main reason, but still i think my emotional development is lagging waay behind all other aspects, judging from the outburst yesterday. maybe i'm still a pimpled snotty ass at heart.
anyway, the calender finally arrived from amazon and hence could finally plot out the exam dates. its a sort of juxtaposition with Fall 2004. Back then the calender was marked full of dates; this time it was few and far between. I literally have too much time for myself that i keep wondering whether i've forgotten any stuff to do. More tellingly, the first stain of the year on my jeans were no coffee stains; they were tomato ketchup stains from the cafeteria. I never found time to actually sit still in bob's cafeteria (yes yx, he's named bob ;) ) and eat last semester, and now i'm spending breakfast everyday diddling about. seems like i've stumbled upon the motherlode source of time.
maybe its time to grow up. and maybe its time to stop being too hard on myself. self deprecation had always been my way of pushing myself but t'was emotionally tiring. i don't want to keep second guessing things but how do i replace my old with a new self? i like my old self and i don't wish to have a transitional phase where everything gets fuzzy and confused.
yes i will speak louder. yes i will stop making jokes about myself. yes i will somehow regain my long lost self esteem. but how should go about with the transformation ? will someone tell me here?? hello??

2005-01-28T23:47:00.000-06:00

seems to be a few nights ago when i staggred back to madison and went straight to the toilet bowl to projectile vomit after sampling the best of airline cuisine. These days i keep waking up and not believing that i'm actually back in madison already, even if the snow outside keeps piling up into white lumps of shit.
two weeks already and not much has changed. its a struggle so far and it a struggle it will stay. its hard to wake up when the alarm clock rings and u know you have a day full of shit ahead. its hard to even go downstairs for breakfast anymore because its plain ol' grub and 3 semesters of eating the best of Bob the cook's efforts and finding out whether the mystery meat in the jumbalaya is beef or chicken or a mixture or both has lost its novelty value. its really siannish to go to class everday and deal with snotty freshmen thinking i can't speak english because i wear shitty clothes ("oh you're from China?") ; premeds who sit in the front of the class, think the world about themsleves and generally block out my usual train of thought from that infantile chatter (oh, you've applied for cornell? coool! hey, i've heard this class is soooooo2 (hanyu pingyin can be used to imitate the midwestern accent, thats fo sho !) easy man, the prof gives easy As man...u know what i mean) ; freaking bimbo korean/jappy/taiwanese/other-rich-asian-country girls talking about which white guy gave them head (or the other way round *pfft*) the weekend before and comparing dick sizes and who-treated-who-at-which-expensive-restaurant-and-did-what-later.
i could go on and on about this sort of shit, as u will probably have realized that
a) i'm an antisocial rat bastard
b) i hate people

it was quite a revelation in Russki Lit class when the prof was droning on and on about the text that the reason why i stuck out like a sore thumb over here was not a surprise at all, because thats always been the case even when i was home. Chekhov was right. everyone has some sort of a case that prevents himself from touching base in reality. for my case, i'm stuck in a cast iron box. 9 inch thick lined with lead to be exact.
of course, this makes me a huge wussy living inside my own world. this wussy doesnt like to appear vulnerable, nor to be inclined to be social to others. this wussy sees the world from journals and books and theoretical shit. this wussy is a huge ass
so stay away.

2005-01-22T21:21:00.000-06:00

a rarity: i'm sitting at home on a saturday night with nothing to do. same story as last semester: its just the first week and hence the lull before the storm; "before you get hammered with all the assignments and papers" in the words of my PI. (She also has a curiously neighing horse laugh. its a obvious marker when she's around. but i digress. another blog post i suppose)
one of my resolutions was to slow down my life and take time to smell the roses; i don't know whether its been true or not. maybe is too early to tell. two credit courses (as opposed to the standard three courses) imply that less coursework is required, but the sum of parts don't add up to their whole, especially when graduate courses are concerned. and having spotted some faces from McArdle in lecture on Friday, I don't know whether I'd be safe from the 3.8 monster this semester.
its a deplorable creature, this 3.8 ogre. it is the primary leash to which i'm bound to my surrogate sponsor agency/paymaster/slavedriver (i'd give other names, but u know what i mean.) whenever i choose courses, there's always this question at the back of my mind that sez ("will i get screwed? is it possible at all to be safe?"). Even if i scoff at the damned things, it somehow makes its presence felt even after the euphoria of finishing the finals. 2 weeks on and waiting for the results, i will be subject to the full rage of its power, striking me when i least expect it.
"shit man, did i make a really bad gamble choosing history? its not a definite A you know..."
"... the worst thing is that i'd be freaking working as a lab tech if i get screwed, and all those smiling bastards, those that took the straight and narrow road, the it'd-better-be-easy-to-score-or-else-i-won't-take-this-course dicks, exactly the type that would take Introduction to Voice 101 or some shit course like Ballroom Dancing or Wine tasting 101.. they'd be traipsing off to grad school. goddamn*@)(u_*)_*@&(!^@^$!*()!)&$!*_!09

one of the profs told us "if you had to purely use statistics to do an experiment, then you're doing the wrong experiment"
so why the hell am i held at mercy by a piece of meaningless data? How do you tell one is a better scientist? By their freaking undergraduate GPAs, or by the number of papers they actually published? And they call themselves a scientific agency.

2005-01-16T05:57:00.000-06:00

at least this time i wanted to see the people i wanted to see, and the people i didn't expect to see showed up too.
weirdly enough, the people i wished were here were over there, and even still, idiots i wished weren't here, weren't here at all! hoho
of course, the more things change, the more they stay the same. I gained about 6 kgs this time gorging on food for the past three weeks, with the pigout-to-place ratio remaining the same. of course, i would have listed the places i ravaged as per last summer, but to do that now would require..er, like 4 page list, so to say i've grown into an absolute pig would suffice (for now). i picked up the taste of Mccellan whiskey from the Geleng (my poor liver) while i still realised that the variety and quality of Deutchbier over in Madison is still superior to here. ( For the record, Erdinger sucks. big time. yes it does. yes shaddup.)
therefore, if the plane doesnt do anything funny (like crash), i don't do anything funny on the plane (like die of DVT- i hate airplane toilets), i don't get mistaken for an Al-Qaeda operative in Minnesota/St.Paul, then its 5 months of Madison Madison Madison.
I miss you, and you too. ;) yes you :) (<--- see i even have a requisite :) here)
FRANSIKANER DUNKELWEISSBIER, HERE I COME!!!
(i thereby donate my liver to science if i die)

2005-01-14T20:29:00.000-06:00

so Geleng is stewing his ass on the plane now. Well enjoy the 22 hour flight, don't get any thrombosis and please, once you reach the airport, put on your cappy, if u don't want your ears to drop off. My Weatherbug reads -18 degrees Celsius, so i'm sorry if your first sight of snow is so traumatic. Keep walking man, warm those legs, if you don't want your balls to drop off after your ears. if you read this, that means you've survived. Good for you then. :)

(In other words, this is a belated bon voyage bitch :P)

2005-01-09T21:28:00.000-06:00

because that bloody geleng has anyhow linked peepur into my blog i gotta tell them peepur two things:
1. fat doesnt insulate against cold. (by implication, the reason why i'm eating so much is because i'm a greedy bastahd.) vodka or whiskey does the job. and of course, some decent down jackets. NOT LIGHT SUMMER JACKETS! (you hear that geleng? huh huh huh ? )
2. don't read my blog. cannot. no no . *shake shake* u lose your apetite not my fault ar.

anyway, geleng. its not just merely "-20 degrees" . the damned temperature over there (referring to the midwest as a whole) is like a, er...schizophrenic freak like you are, bitch. there was one week where it reached -33 in mid morning, then came up to -9 in the evening and the next day was above zero, and then the very next afternoon it dropped to -20.
so don anyhow play play. get a down jacket man! a good one! unless u wanna your ears to drop off or u wanna lose your nose via frostbite.
once u start minimalizing your layers, you're gonna minimalize your bloody sperm count my man. ooh, and pack some real vodka. please .vanilla flavored absolut vodka in a water bottle is for frat boys only. and it doesnt help against the cold. u aint a frat boy man, so get some premium vodka from DFS or smth when u finally fly off.
erm i'm talking thrash again.
bye

2005-01-09T07:42:00.000-06:00

*burrp*
been continuously masticating, regurgitating and rechewing old cud like a cow since Thursday.
it started when De Sleeping Buddha (the bugger that manages to put in at least 11 hours of sleep in the bunk everyday back in Alpha coy) MSN'ed me with his infinite wisdom:
"lets go to the quaint old places along Clarke Quay .."
quaint indeed. after escaping from the clutches of the overenthusiastic waitstaff trying to entice us into their waterside establishments tailored more to the whitey tourists than the locals, we ended up in Ellenborough Cafe at the Swisshotel.
yeah verry quaint. but it was a good spread and i got stuffed. *ooof* that my old platoon mates were experts at demolishing buffets didn't help things. about 8 full plates later and countless other small bowls of entrees, the end result was that er, i spent the night bleching and farting about the house, unable to sleep because of my distended stomach.
then i met an old classmate on Friday for dinner (breakfast and lunch was not necessary.. of course) and the pint sized bugger and me proceeded to demolish Tiong Bahru market with one fell swoop. ah just like the old days . and of course my stomach did its thang and after a whole night of mouth to ass clairvoyance, it said "no more of this shit or else.."
but nooooooo, when i went reached Muar the very next afternoon, all i did was to eat . continously. for 7 hours . wanton mee, satay, ortak, orluak ............. my jaw was sore after that man. i don't even wanna say what my stomach did to me that very night.
and now, after a very pleasant visit with yx to sample the best of Chomp Chomp, its really affecting my blogging. the rather huge paunch that was the result of my transient gluttony is affecting my thought processes by shunting so much blood to the GI tract, i guess. My mom thinks i look like a pregnant woman from certain angles, while my relatives find it hard to believe i actually lost weight back in wisc-y.
i don't really think i'd make it through the night without my stomach esploding. so er, if i don't make it through, jaby, you get my books. XM u get the lit stuff that's sitting in my room man. Ram you get my bitch bike. yx u wanna my music CDs? er, er, who else. GELENG! my chai goes to you. .. who else... erin! i gotta give u my present man!! blaaaaaain... er... i dono whatta give u though.. u get my beer stash in the fridge! tashi! you get my twin sister u dirty mutt you *wink* er.... my distended foie gras/liver should be delicacy for the frenchie frogs. i think my liver can be sold at a premium price and pass off as the world's largest piece of foie gras . hrm or rather, since its so full of HBV particles, they can culture my hepatocytes in a dish and name the cell line after me. some funky name such as..
er... ..... ZXFG.20895hdsfgns. or something. i wonder how they name cell lines man .
ok wth i think i'm rambling like a depraved dirty unwashed unwanted geekofockobeeyatch.
cya man.
i'm off to
"conduct a dignified tete-a-tete with my undigested food particles" *wink*

2005-01-02T06:33:00.000-06:00

went downtown to meet Des(sie) today. on the way, i had a full load of the tropical rainstorm dumped onto me, and squelched around in my wet sneakers downtown after that.
stepped into the typically bourgeois establishment that was Coffee Club, endured the bad service, perhaps made worse by our collective shitty attire which earned a " 'cuse me, are you two in the queue?" from a smartly dressed buggerette behind us.
the coffee tasted like black piss, while the whiskey in my irish coffee tasted like American beer, but we talked. perhaps this was my first meeting with Des for a year or so, and that was the reason why i wasn't compelled to do the funky stuff i used to do to him in camp, when he took the double decker beside mine and he had an entire stash of romance novels, of which the more colorful erotica were eagerly devoured by the rest of the depraved corporals in Bunk 3, Alm Plt, Alpha Coy, 35 SCE (shitworkers unite!). Since I gave him the address of this blog, i don't think i should say what exactly i (or the others) did to him on a regular basis. Sorry Dessie :)
but it still came to me as a surprise how much of us stayed the same even though we were released into the civilian world for almost a year and a half now.
No more camos and short-singlet-PT shoes, no more shitty camp food, no more bellyaching about being in the bottom of the foodchain in this kanina shithole/mangrove swamp. Perhaps the facades has changed, and much has happened, but the core in us are still preserved.
Perhaps only the inevitable hard knocks will make some perceptible impression. but anyway,
yes, i'm still the lonely loser that i am now, as i was then. and i still will be the lonely loser in the future, as i am now.
definitely, the climate and social settings are different, but the more things change, the more they stay the same init?
so thank you, poto, whoever you are, for reminding me of myself.
its nice to go back to your roots for awhile.

2005-01-01T19:09:00.000-06:00

erm, thank you. you've really hit the nail right on my head. i've always knew i was a lonely unwanted bitch/geek. Consequently, I don't think I'm that cool ley. perhaps its my id doing funky stuff again. i will speak to it again tonight regarding this issue.
however, i can't find anything to bite into.
how about your head, beyatch?

2004-12-30T18:48:00.000-06:00

more old fashioned hawker center swarming yesterday. descended upon Adam Rd (old haunt back in JC), got temporary confused by the circular layout, but proceeded to gobble down 3-4 courses. looked down after the meal and discovered my paunch is back.
met up with The Geleng, after the bugger had graduated and gone off traipsing in India for a while. Of course, being my best brlader he is, he gave me a souvenir from Darjeeling. No it wasn't their famed tea. It was a box of Kama Sutra brand condoms, free with a tiny bottle of cologne ("practice safe sex dey.. and ribbed for comfort ley" he said).
....
not that i have prior experience with those things. and in his bag, he had a small box of the famed Darjeeling tea i would have killed for. He wanted to give it to his scholarship officerc/zampolit ("never hurts to carry the balls of my breadmasters") , but after she chewed his ass upside down over the F-1/J-1 visa screw up Purdue somehow pulled off, I think the tea leaves are going down his own cup in the near future. *shrug*
bugger is in love though, i can tell. but he's balless, so i spent the whole afternoon/evening convincing him to do something about it.
it was nice and rainy too, so i also spent the whole afternoon telling him why the tropical drizzle (not the full fledged pail of water splashing down on you type that leaves you totally drenched within 3-seconds of exposure) was and still is my favorite weather back home.
it aint hot, and it aint wet. sure it might be gloomy, but you can't be completely happy init?
and maybe thats my state of mind now.
i might be enjoying life here with no looming lab matters nor the ceaseless midterms threatening to chew me up, but even so, i sorta miss people and places back in Madison.
but then again, we all make tradeoffs don't we. its good and bad. and well, my life (so far) has been a bloody patchwork of good and bad.
but still i miss somebody.

2004-12-29T09:26:00.000-06:00

what makes a meal good- half of it depends on the food alone, and half of it depends on the company. and today, i had a shitty meal, because the company was utter bullshit.
perhaps its because i've yet to learn the art of small talk- on the other hand, this skill was elevated to an art form judging from the conversation (or lack thereof) throughout the three hours of repartee purgatory.
the weather seemed to be a favorite subject.
you're from wisconsin? brrr it's cold there. then the buggers from california will chime in and say 5 degrees is cold already, what more -20. this theme was repeated in various variations througout the goddamn 3 hour long tea session.
other favorite topics include : how's your GPA and is it holding up? when am I graduating?
and the grand old game of who's who: oh do you know X in your school? how is he/she? (de rigeur exclamation follows) i heard he's doing _______ (fill in the blanks yourself). not bad huh. yes i know Y too, yes hes/shes ____________ and the cycle repeats.
not a single word about what am i doing in the lab. not a single spit about happenings in science. not even a single whisper about research in singapore.
in short, what a boring collection of farts. of course, i lost my appetite and never really regained it until 4 hours later even though the fare was more than half decent.
you idiots
do you know why i sit silent looking at all of you speak like a bunch of synchopant-fools?
because i've got nothing to prove to you
nothing at all.

2004-12-28T20:06:00.000-06:00

yesterday wasn't in vain though.
went out with Wind and Whitemoon. ate our way through downtown. and realised that there are no NYDC-s in NYC ,(and only in Singapore), no Seoul Garden-s in Seoul (will they be able to stand the travesty to their culture?). Portions are pathetique. 11 bux for 3 scoops of ice cream with sprinklings of barely edible shit i myself can add if i just make the trip down to the local Copps. hell, Babcock serves bigger scoops than that. maybe i'm too accustomed to american portions, but even so people standing around pretending to be wait staff isnt what u exactly call service init?
and so we bitched.
recced the stuff we wanted to give to the people back in madison. i know wot i'm going to get now. i hope she likes it :)
(rambling like Ram on pot. sorry folks. speaking of which, where the hell is Ram. i haven't said my goodbyes yet.)
(oooff. goddamn. i havent said my goodbyes.)

2004-12-28T08:08:00.000-06:00

erm, while it is apparent that my purpose in life for 3 weeks here, is to meet up with friends, catch up, and eat/ravage all the hawker centers here, implicit in my presence here, was also to find good books and classical CDs at prices considerably lower than what i might get in amazon and/or the bookshops in madison.
while the former purpose has already been, or rather, in the proces of being fulfilled, the second aim has, disappointly fallen flat on its freakin face.
for the past two days is've been browsing at all the chain stores for books and CDs. history of sovs might be a pain in the arse, but i was all ready to continue my love affair by trying to read stuff by Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, Pasternak et al, but wtbmf, there was freaking jackshit at all the stores i tried. ditto for the classical CDs i was looking for. Tower's collection was truncated to say the least, while HMV collection could merely be considered classical-lite only. and what the hell happened even to the duke ellington compilations?
........
chillingly, is it me, or is this place overrun by chain stores? what happened to the mom and pop usedbookshops? even in a small place like madtown, there are at least 6 at last count, each catering to a genre. i could easily find the stuff i want there, albeit at slightly higher prices (blame it on the exchange rate). but here....
what the bloody hell is happening here?