When you're in oxford for awhile, the grandeur of it just fades, you take all the shit for granted. Hell, people aren't even all that smart anyway.
Until you meet Mr Bean in person.
Tinkling champagne glasses, silk dresses, high heels, suave dinner jackets and sexy hair, the smart kids looking good in the Upper Library. An ancient treasury of leather-bound, dusty books from antiquity, guests chatting around the corridors, miles below the arched ceiling of fine art.
And then there's me, wearing a random top and tights and hoodie (not noticing "black tie") trotting in with my friends- who thought not telling me would be a joke, and were right - and banging into Rowan Atkinson, looking like, hm, a slightly aged Mr Bean in black rimmed glasses, and surprisingly not in a brown tweed jacket. I glance up in embarrassment, nod in apology, and get a twitch of a smile in return. and THEN realise who it was, but not very surprised since he's a Fellow at Queens anyway.
Dash back, changed in 3.5 mins, swanky.
5 course, choir sings the prayer in latin, trumpet blower is noticeably on form, polite chat to big old important men over serving after serving of fantastic food. Taught a philosophy professor about the neuroscience of perception (: [on hindsight, got it fantastically wrong. He hopefully will not remember my name]
Drank out of an ancient Queens treasure, the Loving Cup -poculum caritatis- passed around to everyone around the table, with a pretentious little ceremony of standing and bowing to the left and right. It was actually a very weird-looking 800ish year old horn-like thing, that certainly smelt like its age. It was like the black death instead of swine flu going through people's minds with the communal sharing of drink.
Found something in common with an old physics fellow - we both think Wikipedia is the greatest gift to mankind in our subjects.
Free dinners were never so good. Pity banned cameras was an unsaid courtesy.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Help
I'm pissbored trying to do a neuro essay. You wouldn't think that awful convoluted grey lump in your skull had so many annoying parts to it with different annoying circuits of neurons crossing here and there for no apparent reason.
Though it was cool to clutch (and almost drop) a wobbly grey human brain and imagine it pulsating green and purple if it were still alive. It's well heavy too, or maybe just choloroform-soaked.
At a thai restaurant where the waiter thought I was thai because he saw me being forced to explain the entire menu to clueless ang mohs. (I purposely put the picture up cos in the camera you can see the purple in the hair, but not quite here innit. Urgh)
I'm bloody bored and feel like binging but cleverly have emptied my entire room of food now. That's enough binging for a week I reckon.
Bicester + lacrosse on saturday, can't wait!
p.s. I HATE BRAINS.
AND BACTERIA.
p.p.s Recently in labs we've had to grow our own bacteria like from tonsils, nose, fingers, head etc, and my plates were the most digusting in the entire cohort, like completely festered in zillions of grey-brown-green, haemolytic or not, bulging out pops of bacteria colonies. And, I wasn't even sick.
I remember Pearl saying mushrooms could grow on me. I find it slightly less funny now.
Though it was cool to clutch (and almost drop) a wobbly grey human brain and imagine it pulsating green and purple if it were still alive. It's well heavy too, or maybe just choloroform-soaked.
At a thai restaurant where the waiter thought I was thai because he saw me being forced to explain the entire menu to clueless ang mohs. (I purposely put the picture up cos in the camera you can see the purple in the hair, but not quite here innit. Urgh)
I'm bloody bored and feel like binging but cleverly have emptied my entire room of food now. That's enough binging for a week I reckon.
Bicester + lacrosse on saturday, can't wait!
p.s. I HATE BRAINS.
AND BACTERIA.
p.p.s Recently in labs we've had to grow our own bacteria like from tonsils, nose, fingers, head etc, and my plates were the most digusting in the entire cohort, like completely festered in zillions of grey-brown-green, haemolytic or not, bulging out pops of bacteria colonies. And, I wasn't even sick.
I remember Pearl saying mushrooms could grow on me. I find it slightly less funny now.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Brain
I'd have blogged 5 mins earlier, if not for the fact that I was trying a million and one computations of my blogger username and password, just because i havent logged in in gazillion years.
It's the end of week 1, and it feels like ages already. I've got a year crammed into 2x8 weeks this time, so it's a 9am every day and labs like almost 4 times a week, but it's fun being a second year nonetheless.
For starters, i dyed my hair purple, which is hardly obvious now, it's becoming more pink.
Dumbshit.
There. As usual, doing work. Defo.
Oh shit uploaded the wrong picture. Well this is just a random cake I baked for Ailene's birthday. As awesome as everything else that my hands touch.
Hongkong with Chris, Afz, Alex
Some awesome cooking. Ditto the statement about my hands.
My family, although the front row is incestous love between grandpa and mom.
Oops another wrong photo. That's not even my dog.
Okay well, back to physiology of exercise. Fun times. I want huay shan to come now!!
It's the end of week 1, and it feels like ages already. I've got a year crammed into 2x8 weeks this time, so it's a 9am every day and labs like almost 4 times a week, but it's fun being a second year nonetheless.
For starters, i dyed my hair purple, which is hardly obvious now, it's becoming more pink.
Dumbshit.
There. As usual, doing work. Defo.
Oh shit uploaded the wrong picture. Well this is just a random cake I baked for Ailene's birthday. As awesome as everything else that my hands touch.
Hongkong with Chris, Afz, Alex
Some awesome cooking. Ditto the statement about my hands.
My family, although the front row is incestous love between grandpa and mom.
Oops another wrong photo. That's not even my dog.Okay well, back to physiology of exercise. Fun times. I want huay shan to come now!!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Hong Kong vs. Singapore vs. Oxford
Hello everyone.
I'm back from an epic three week holiday in HK and Singapore with Queens friends. Afz and Chris in HK for 12 days, with the legendary Alex Meyer the angry man.
12 days in HK is, contrary to majority belief, is not that long a time. Besides the standard shopping and eating, there was also island hopping on kayaks, windsurfing, signal no.8 typhoons, waterfall climbing, sitting in a massive cloud on the Peak, watching 4 epic football matches with about 20 goals in total, having free dinner in the Grand Hyatt, losing/gaining money in macau, and general getting very black lounging around secluded beaches where you can walk a kilometre out to sea.
It's quite a bit scruffier, cheenafied and polluted than in Singapore, but hm, there's a lot more gui ling gao.
For blogging's sake, I shall put up a random story.
Afz, who is part of a set of Pakistani-Brit twins, is a massive flirt, who finds sport in chatting up anything from roadsweepers to indian salesmen to china girls and obese beer-bellied Irish gits. Well one day, we were having dessert in this crowded place, and Afz, Chris and I had to sit with this Hongky girl. She apparently was quite pretty, (though i thought her a bitch cos she accidentally stepped on me) so Afz got warmed up. Using his God-given talent of relentless chat, he got her talking, and she turned out to be some tacky actress who does magic tricks at bars in the night. And, is also shite at card tricks and whatnots.
Communication consisted of quick brit rambling, followed by hongky "hah? speeek slowar!" and "ta zai shuo she me??" in mandarin to me and cantonese to Chris. Nevertheless, he, or we, got ourselves invited to a movie and clubbing the next day.
So we went to watch The Orphan, where Chris was scared so I, the most charitable spirit, screamed a bit and so *both* of us had to leave because *I* was scared, thus leaving Afz on his own, with Kylie (the cmi actress) and her 2 guy friends who also came to the movie.
The next thing I knew, when I woke up in the room, was a naked man next to Afz, and cigarettes on the table, in the morning.
Turns out Afz went out after the movie with the lot of random hongkies, got himself pissed drunk, and the naked man (Jeff) sent him home. To make matters better, he was wearing underwear.
Massively scary at the time, but now it's just funny laughing at what a dumbshit Afz actually is.
Just one of the very many stupid things that happened in hongkong.
In Singapore, I was tour guide, and boy is it stressful. All in all, I brought them to Sentosa, East Coast lagoon, Batam for cable-skiing, had a pool party with my friends, Chinatown, the zoo, and of course eating the usuals like katong laksa and chilli crab and things.
Now that they've gone, life is meaningless. Also, I've recently found out that I've got collections in immunology, and the only book I've touched in the last 4 months is Facebook. And, Hashir's bro's wedding to play for tomorrow. And I'm going back on Saturday night.
To Oxford. Depressing or not I can't tell. It'll be fun to see my friends again, play lacrosse and eat cereal and milk, and escape the sufforcating heat; but am not looking forward to labs, lectures, essays and boredom.
Oh well. Massive picture upload when I collect them all.
I'm back from an epic three week holiday in HK and Singapore with Queens friends. Afz and Chris in HK for 12 days, with the legendary Alex Meyer the angry man.
12 days in HK is, contrary to majority belief, is not that long a time. Besides the standard shopping and eating, there was also island hopping on kayaks, windsurfing, signal no.8 typhoons, waterfall climbing, sitting in a massive cloud on the Peak, watching 4 epic football matches with about 20 goals in total, having free dinner in the Grand Hyatt, losing/gaining money in macau, and general getting very black lounging around secluded beaches where you can walk a kilometre out to sea.
It's quite a bit scruffier, cheenafied and polluted than in Singapore, but hm, there's a lot more gui ling gao.
For blogging's sake, I shall put up a random story.
Afz, who is part of a set of Pakistani-Brit twins, is a massive flirt, who finds sport in chatting up anything from roadsweepers to indian salesmen to china girls and obese beer-bellied Irish gits. Well one day, we were having dessert in this crowded place, and Afz, Chris and I had to sit with this Hongky girl. She apparently was quite pretty, (though i thought her a bitch cos she accidentally stepped on me) so Afz got warmed up. Using his God-given talent of relentless chat, he got her talking, and she turned out to be some tacky actress who does magic tricks at bars in the night. And, is also shite at card tricks and whatnots.
Communication consisted of quick brit rambling, followed by hongky "hah? speeek slowar!" and "ta zai shuo she me??" in mandarin to me and cantonese to Chris. Nevertheless, he, or we, got ourselves invited to a movie and clubbing the next day.
So we went to watch The Orphan, where Chris was scared so I, the most charitable spirit, screamed a bit and so *both* of us had to leave because *I* was scared, thus leaving Afz on his own, with Kylie (the cmi actress) and her 2 guy friends who also came to the movie.
The next thing I knew, when I woke up in the room, was a naked man next to Afz, and cigarettes on the table, in the morning.
Turns out Afz went out after the movie with the lot of random hongkies, got himself pissed drunk, and the naked man (Jeff) sent him home. To make matters better, he was wearing underwear.
Massively scary at the time, but now it's just funny laughing at what a dumbshit Afz actually is.
Just one of the very many stupid things that happened in hongkong.
In Singapore, I was tour guide, and boy is it stressful. All in all, I brought them to Sentosa, East Coast lagoon, Batam for cable-skiing, had a pool party with my friends, Chinatown, the zoo, and of course eating the usuals like katong laksa and chilli crab and things.
Now that they've gone, life is meaningless. Also, I've recently found out that I've got collections in immunology, and the only book I've touched in the last 4 months is Facebook. And, Hashir's bro's wedding to play for tomorrow. And I'm going back on Saturday night.
To Oxford. Depressing or not I can't tell. It'll be fun to see my friends again, play lacrosse and eat cereal and milk, and escape the sufforcating heat; but am not looking forward to labs, lectures, essays and boredom.
Oh well. Massive picture upload when I collect them all.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
I'm So Happening I can't be bothered to blog.
Indeed.
It's been rather epic a holiday I suppose, in short, weekends have been crazily busy and very entertaining, and the excitement drops drastically minimal toward mid week, and escalates again nearer the weekends.
Just to justify the "happening-ness", i recall (after the very long blogging absence), in no particular order
- keane concert, which was grossly sweaty and very very fun i lovekeanetobits now
- baking, came up with the healthiest and moderately edible fruit cake soaked in alcohol
- zouk with hl, german dude and half a hot twin. don't rmb much, though phone drafts told me i met iggy's friend who sent me back in a cab, and woke up with puke all over, and with no bag/wallet/everything. Not fun in the least.
- mini cooper's car convoy, cute cars
- performing at weddings, offertories in church, with timmy the little genius.
- night cycling; home-newton circus- bukit timah al ahmeen - ion orchard - home, with FOOD.
- suppers at mainly 85/simpang
- sentosa beach volleyball in epic thunderstorm, food RAGE at chinatown, district 9 at cathay with oxfordies, and nat for a bit.
- 24 big bang theory episodes in a span of 3 days.
- harry potter 1 to 7 in reverse order
- meeting mother's wedding planner. yes, my brother is getting married.
- waiting to go to hk, therefore "shopping" has not been happening very much.
It's getting progressively less happening, not that it was very much so in the first place, but i daresay i've been more or less satisfactorily entertained.
been a bit lazy with the camera, too frivolous on food, very reluctant on the exercise. Many a times have pangseh-ed poor nat for runs, which is very bad.
Now that the blogging block has been finally broken, I promise to update as soon as possible.
P.S. I CAN'T WAIT FOR HUAYSHAN TO STAY OVER AT MY HOUSE
It's been rather epic a holiday I suppose, in short, weekends have been crazily busy and very entertaining, and the excitement drops drastically minimal toward mid week, and escalates again nearer the weekends.
Just to justify the "happening-ness", i recall (after the very long blogging absence), in no particular order
- keane concert, which was grossly sweaty and very very fun i lovekeanetobits now
- baking, came up with the healthiest and moderately edible fruit cake soaked in alcohol
- zouk with hl, german dude and half a hot twin. don't rmb much, though phone drafts told me i met iggy's friend who sent me back in a cab, and woke up with puke all over, and with no bag/wallet/everything. Not fun in the least.
- mini cooper's car convoy, cute cars
- performing at weddings, offertories in church, with timmy the little genius.
- night cycling; home-newton circus- bukit timah al ahmeen - ion orchard - home, with FOOD.
- suppers at mainly 85/simpang
- sentosa beach volleyball in epic thunderstorm, food RAGE at chinatown, district 9 at cathay with oxfordies, and nat for a bit.
- 24 big bang theory episodes in a span of 3 days.
- harry potter 1 to 7 in reverse order
- meeting mother's wedding planner. yes, my brother is getting married.
- waiting to go to hk, therefore "shopping" has not been happening very much.
It's getting progressively less happening, not that it was very much so in the first place, but i daresay i've been more or less satisfactorily entertained.
been a bit lazy with the camera, too frivolous on food, very reluctant on the exercise. Many a times have pangseh-ed poor nat for runs, which is very bad.
Now that the blogging block has been finally broken, I promise to update as soon as possible.
P.S. I CAN'T WAIT FOR HUAYSHAN TO STAY OVER AT MY HOUSE
Friday, August 21, 2009
P.S.
I'm alive.
Will update soon about most things, when I've had a very long nap.
p.p.s. are your left quadriceps meant to cramp from depressing the clutch??
Will update soon about most things, when I've had a very long nap.
p.p.s. are your left quadriceps meant to cramp from depressing the clutch??
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Perfect. Scary?
Hi everyone I would just like to announce that my life is perfect.
It scares me very slightly.
As of now, every day fills itself up so nicely, there's always stuff to do and people to meet despite looking as if I'm completely free on the outset. Like, there's Daniel's wedding to play for, and planning music and exploring the arrangements with timothy is really one of the things i enjoy doing most. Or, there's baking that needs to be done for various occasions, rock climbing, cable skiing, sentosa, exploring new places in town, ogling at masses of food, going back to vj for soccer girls, chilling at home with family, going random places with mom to do things for the brother's wedding, having intensely busy weekends crammed with fun stuff, earning money from tuition and having my boy say he learns more from me than he does at school (which sends me beaming over the moon, really, am SO happy), going for good suppers with long enlightening talks, dissecting Life in general.
I dunno. It's good. All that worries me now is how fat i'm getting from being in Food City, and how I'm going to fit into the dress I'm wearing for the wedding this weekend. Which reminds me, I've gotta seriously run, there's that annoying army marathon crap on sunday which my mom signed me up for. Thank God it's just 10. Though i expect 10 doesn't warrant a "just".
But oh well. Three important people's birthdays tomorrow, some massive baking coming right up.
That being said, though, I actually miss oxford a little. My giant cookie, patisserie valerie scone, paninis from Olive's (roast beef onion marmalade, or the nutella one), people's leftover lunches, hanging out with chris or chunlong or CU or medic friends, and complaining about various lectures/labs and crap.
Hm. In retrospect, this is as good as it gets. Off to soak in the pool, the weather is is determined to suck life.
It scares me very slightly.
As of now, every day fills itself up so nicely, there's always stuff to do and people to meet despite looking as if I'm completely free on the outset. Like, there's Daniel's wedding to play for, and planning music and exploring the arrangements with timothy is really one of the things i enjoy doing most. Or, there's baking that needs to be done for various occasions, rock climbing, cable skiing, sentosa, exploring new places in town, ogling at masses of food, going back to vj for soccer girls, chilling at home with family, going random places with mom to do things for the brother's wedding, having intensely busy weekends crammed with fun stuff, earning money from tuition and having my boy say he learns more from me than he does at school (which sends me beaming over the moon, really, am SO happy), going for good suppers with long enlightening talks, dissecting Life in general.
I dunno. It's good. All that worries me now is how fat i'm getting from being in Food City, and how I'm going to fit into the dress I'm wearing for the wedding this weekend. Which reminds me, I've gotta seriously run, there's that annoying army marathon crap on sunday which my mom signed me up for. Thank God it's just 10. Though i expect 10 doesn't warrant a "just".
But oh well. Three important people's birthdays tomorrow, some massive baking coming right up.
That being said, though, I actually miss oxford a little. My giant cookie, patisserie valerie scone, paninis from Olive's (roast beef onion marmalade, or the nutella one), people's leftover lunches, hanging out with chris or chunlong or CU or medic friends, and complaining about various lectures/labs and crap.
Hm. In retrospect, this is as good as it gets. Off to soak in the pool, the weather is is determined to suck life.
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