ive never been one for change. idk if its my year of goat plus capricorn= doubly two feet on the ground nature, or wtv it is, but i enjoy constants and i enjoy commiting to one thing.
but somehow or another, im not sure what, i think it time for a change.
so im moving (: im still sticking to blogger cos i like the whole tagboard thing. the new url is open-skyes.blogspot.com, i hope you guy can visit me there instead.
its about time too. i love this url, i do, and i love my blog. its been with me for a long long time (since 06!) and gone through lots of things with me, but i think this year, with all the emo posts and everything its really been boughed down with a lot of emotion that i dont want to carry into the new year.
this is the 710th post at this address, and its last. in the meantime, i would like to thank all you readers out there, most of whom i dont actually know visit this place, but if you do and have always been doing, thank you so much (: youre my inspiration!
the first post at the new url will be on the 1st. hope to see you guys there!
Escaped
{1:51 pm}
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Tuesday, December 29, 2009
twas blog and fb surfing just now, and idk, i guess once again it struck me how different we all are now.
just last year we all led similar lives. we had the same classes, were part of the same programmes, lived in the same cities. and now, just a short year later we all different. sort of like pick up sticks, you know, we used to be a bundle and now we are all scattered around. the focus of our lives have shifted until... until its almost like some of us have nothing in common anymore!
i wonder how far a shared history can bring us, but there is no doubt things are never going to be the same anymore.
some of us are in better places, some of us are not so lucky. dont get me wrong, i like where i am now. sure, occasionally i feel like i could be so much more, occasionally i wonder if i regret the decisions ive made this year, but oh, why fret? life has so much more to offer, and jc is merely a drop in the ocean (:
in less then a week, i turn 18. the party itself is a testament of the strange assortment of friends i have made over the years, all of them equally precious to me. i think its going to be a treasured 18th, because, for that one evening, we are all together again. together again at the start of a long and tiring year, after which we are certain to be so far scattered it may be impossible to any of us to meet up ever again, not in the physical sense, but the emotional one. yes, if we are already so different one year into jc, imagine how far apart we will be when the bonds of school are broken and we are scattered across the world!
Escaped
{4:51 pm}
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Monday, December 28, 2009
this is storylines fault. THE SONG. IT IS STUCKKKKKKK D:
Escaped
{11:08 pm}
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Sunday, December 27, 2009
i know this is completely random haha but i love my igoogle theme!
I AM THE SHEEP OF DESTINY. BAAAAA.
(and then it goes on to say: He smiles because he sees your future! And oh, how happy that future shall be!)
so adorable right, there another one that says LOVE MONKEYS. insanely cute.
i am missing people ): (like ram. ramramram come home quickly!)
Escaped
{12:07 pm}
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Friday, December 25, 2009
merry xmas darlings!
theres a giant blister on the bottom of my foot that forces me to hobble around everywhere but MY AM I SATISFIED.
ytd was spent entirely outside SHOPPING at the best boutiques in townnn! (seems like what everyone else had in mind too cos omg were the shops filled with people! almost like the stuff were FREE.) omg the sinfulness of luxurious clothing. the highlight of which was that $5000 burberry coat (yes! i went coat crazy! in burberry! SINFULNESS TTMMMMMMM) felt like a piece of heaven ~~~
ONE DAY I WILL BE AFFLUENT ENOUGH TO BUY A $5000 BURBERRY COAT WITH MY OWN MONEY.
teheehee. daddy is back. i am perfectly happy this christmas ((((((((((((((((((: in the meantime haha
Escaped
{10:50 am}
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Wednesday, December 23, 2009
our school has a desert.
A FREAKING DESERTTTTTTTTT!
with all those cute little cacti that ive always wanted planted all over it.
srsly.
why cant the put the money into wiring up the canteennnn T.T
i want one of those cacti -pouts-
daddy suggests i hold a party and mommy says she can cater. rargh idk. i like the idea of a party because hello have not seen some people for very longggg but at the same time gah i have no idea who to invite and THAT is too much trouble to sort out.
SOMEBODY PERSUADE MEEEEE.
Escaped
{2:08 pm}
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Monday, December 21, 2009
im currently stuck at power series question 4 and all this math.
is.
driving.
me.
insane.
I NEED VERAS HELPPPPPP. helphelphelp DDDDDDDDDD:
this is perhaps a sign that i will not be taking h3math next year for very long after all. and thus should not invest in graph theory textbooks.
but we shall not condemn myself before we have reached the bridge now, shall we?
i am tres bored. math is boring. having no one to talk to is boring.
oh where oh where oh where is the world?!
Escaped
{4:12 pm}
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Saturday, December 19, 2009
I KNOW WHAT TO ASK FOR FOR MY BIRTHDAY ALRRRR
instead of a branded handbag, i wantwantwant an ICE CREAM MAKER OOOOO:
Escaped
{11:38 pm}
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Friday, December 18, 2009
for someone who is going to turn 18 in a couple of days, this is a perfect christmas song for this year.
to be honest, i wasnt looking for anything like this, i was looking for one of those happy classic christmas songs (think winter wonderland) that i completely adore and that we can all sing and be merry to. but i stumbled across this song on youtube and watching it made me tear a little.
with all the crisis, financial, environmental, terrorism etc. that have cropped up (im not sure if my memories of a more peaceful time were simply due to my ignorance of the world around me, or that all these accumulated issues did only start to become unbearably pressing after we turned 10) perhaps its important for us to rmb, even as we celebrate and laugh and bake and give presents, that the ultimate christmas wish is peace.
hopefully, the succesful end of the copenhagen talks today will be the first of many things to rejoice about this holiday season.
(sadly, despite my mightiest attempts, i am unable to make snow fall on this blog. perhaps this is a sign that i need to go somewhere colder.)
Escaped
{7:48 pm}
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Tuesday, December 15, 2009
jeanettes recent completely unexpected annoucement on fb has caused this question to bug me since:
when/how do you decide youve found someone you trust enough to love?
claire says the spikes in couples come in seasons: j1 june hols, j1 dec hols, j2 pre-prelims, j2 gradnight.
i wonder how many new couples are there on the rumour mills.
HMM.
Escaped
{11:43 pm}
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Monday, December 14, 2009
"Its only a matter of time now," she whispered, giving him one of her secret half smiles.
"I know." He replied equally softly, his breath catching a little. They had been waiting for so long, and now it was finally here. It was the right time. It was the perfect time.
She felt him put his hand on her belly, the calluses under his palm prickly, but gentle on her thin skin. The cool touch of his nose followed, and she felt the cool air brush against her as he inhaled.
He breathed in the scent of her skin. Underneath the blanket of smells that belonged to the hospital and its sterility was the familiar warm fragrance of her sweet skin, mingled with the thin salty flavours of sweat. And just underneath that thin layer of skin, he imagined, was the child they will soon see.
He closed his eyes, and together, they waited.
--
Pregnancy was nothing like how she ever imagined. She remembered how her friends and her used to play in elementary school, how they used to strapped their backpacks up front and hold up their backs with their hands the way pregnant Mrs Winter does in class, how they spread their feet outwards like she did. And how they raced down the Main Street that way, screaming with laughter at the awkwardness of each other. Eventually they would give up the false posing and just run, past the drug store at the corner, past the sheriffs office, past the grocery stall, their backpacks thumping violently against their chests, until they stopped, panting, sweat shining off their foreheads, at the park swings. Once Sarah tripped and fell, sliding belly down a few feet on the pavement, still wet from the mornings rain. They laughed the hardest that day.
That was how she thought it might be, like carrying a sack upfront. But it was nothing like that. Pregnancy was personal. She felt her baby grow within her, felt her belly expand to painful proportions to accommodate the growing child. She felt every kick and before she drifted off every night, heard the beating of his heart, synchronised to the thumping of hers. Sometimes he was still, but never silent. She felt everything. The pressure of his weight against her bladder, on her swollen ankles. She even felt his appetite coursing through her, pushing her to eat more and more, until she shocked even herself with the amount of food she could consume.
That morning she felt her water break before the water came pouring out of her, and she knew that their wait was almost over. She screamed for her husband then and he came running, already armed with the bag they had prepared for the hospital and the car keys. It only took minutes for them to get to the hospital, but everything after that was a blur. She did not register when it was that the nurses had lowered her into the wheelchair, when it was that she was brought into her room. She was too busy feeling the pain ripple through her, faster and harder each time, but most of all, too busy feeling the certainty that this was it. That she and her child were ready.
--
When she first told him the news he stopped breathing for a second. She was looking at her with those eyes, filled with excitement and nervousness mixed and for the shortest moment he was transported to back then.
He was young then, and he was confused. Scared. Now was different. Now he was ready, now he had the means to deal with it. Now he had her.
But as he put on the thin, rough, disposable blue suit handed to him by the motherly nurse, he could not help but wonder, for the slightest moment, if she had made it to this day. If she had been alone that night. If she had smiled when her baby, their baby first grasped hold of her finger.
If he should have been there.
--
When she pulled away from the anesthetic she felt immediately, empty. There was a brief flash of panic that sent her heart racing against its cages before she registered where she was and what had happened and calmed.
Then she noticed the quietness of the night and her husband's absence.
Then she noticed something was wrong.
Escaped
{9:18 pm}
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Friday, December 11, 2009
i am a poster away from being done! yay!
today at lunch (sushi buffet D: the food itself makes it worthwhile to come to the lab xD), someone asked me two questions:
1. What is Science? 2. When do you become a scientist?
and gave me the weekend to ponder. interesting to think about, but...
I AM BAKING TONIGHT MUAHAHA.
Escaped
{4:25 pm}
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Thursday, December 10, 2009
its her 18th birthday, its her first little blue box.
shes a lucky lucky girl (:
Escaped
{9:03 am}
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Wednesday, December 09, 2009
sry for the absence heh. ive been pretty tired/ busy lately, so the internet usage has pretty much gone down to almost zero.
surprisingly. curbing internet addiction is actually possible!
anws, hope you guys are all enjoying your hols muchily ^^ i cant believe its going to be christmas alr! i loveee christmas heehee. everyone is happier at christmas.
going to the lab everyday has pretty much been sapping up all my time and energy. i really need to bake and study and shop (in that order of urgency, with bake being much more like BAKE), but grr. at least my weekends are very nice (although extremely packed)
last weekend started off with art, so i have a pretty nice piece coming hopefully soon. sunday was spent at standchart, which was exhausting. but it was quite fun to be part of that experience (esp when you read about it on the newspaper the day after), plus everyone camwhores like crazy haha. maybe i'll go again next year ^^
quote of the week from standchart: Harder than they say, easier than you think.
also, pic from the lab! haha terrible eyebags, but you can get a peek into how wonderfully organised the shelves are xD
Escaped
{10:21 am}
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Thursday, December 03, 2009
its been a very very long week, but instead of complaining about it i thought perhaps ill talk about something more interesting :D
ie. The Economics of Research Laboratories.
a normal lab like mine takes about at least a million dollars a year to run. there are at least 4 labs per floor in imcb alone. there are about 8? buildings in biopolis. so think about all the money floating around! majority of the money goes right into buying things: chemicals/media, disposable equipment (usually things that are required to be sterile, like pipette tips, an astonishingly wide range of containers/ tubes), non-disposable equipment (micropipettes, stands) etc.
which means theres a lot of money to be a making in the market of scientific equipment.
i met my first sales agent on my 2nd day. she spent an hour trying to convince my mentor (who, incidentally, is in charge of ordering stuff) that her pipettes were better then those of the other 10 companies vying to sell the almost same product. if you ask me, classic case of monopolistic competition. as expected, the attempt at product differentiation fails (because like i said, essentially the same product; the differences were too insignificant) and she moves right into price discrimination, except her pipettes were MORE expensive. case in point? market for pipettes very price elastic, usually my lab orders whatever that is cheapest.
these companies have also resorted to freebies to hopefully gain some customer loyalty or cut into the markets of the other competitors. gradually, my lab has accumulated in calenders of all sizes. there are other kinds of freebies too, but those are better left unsaid.
as in all markets based on science and technology, there are also many monopolies and those can pretty much charge whatever they like, since their products HAVE to be used for that certain experiment. also, many companies have exploited patents to their fullest advantage in order to keep the barriers to entry as high as possible.
as we all know, biopolis itself is a classic case of external economies of concentration. the biopolis shared facility is a textbook example of how all the labs in biopolis get to have combined glassware washing, media preparation, product ordering sites which cut costs and makes everything more accessible for everyone.
so yeah, its pretty interesting to see how the market works, even in the field of science. this internship has been more enlightening then i hoped (:
Escaped
{3:17 pm}
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haha blogging from the lab again! i think this is against some kind of rule, but heck. anws, its lunch soon.
ytds bio o prac was pretty much exactly what i felt it would be, minus the animal dissection (luckily): almost 9 full hours of science. the killer question was classify crustaceans using a dichotomous key. not fun at all and it was my FIRST prac. (there were 4 in total, 1.5 hours each. yeah, ikr) by the time it was all done and over with i have done a lot of weird things, like stare at flies, play mark and recapture with beads and paper chromatography. yeah. very tiring, very very screwed up (HA IF I PASS.) 0% of me getting selected, but hey, it a twisted kind of way it was fun. i like this experience, it really helped me twist the bio side of my brain a whole lot and integrate all those concepts we learnt in class all tgt.
so yes. i enjoyed myself.
now lunch. maybe later on ill blog about something more intellectual and worth reading.
