:: talfryn.net ::

I've gained a lot from tonight.

Lots. In all senses of the word.

But I also felt that I've lost something tonight.

And I'm going to try hard to get it back, for it is something that I hold dear to me.

There's nothing like an online game of Soldier of Fortune with a random bunch of UK gamers with nothing better to do on a Saturday evening. Shootin's fun.

Though I should be doing some research in preparation for my poster presentation on Tuesday. We're done with the Animal and Plant Physiology module and we're gonna top it off with a mini-conference with a scientific poster exhibition...

I wonder what time I'll be sleeping tonight. I napped the entire arvo away.

Wahey!

First cinema night out in London this term. An Emperor's Gate affair... a whole lot from our two flats went to catch Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. I'd say Colin Firth's far more dashing than Hugh Grant! And the amount of weight Renée Zellweger has put on for the role was astounding. Viv has written a review on the film... which sums up my opinions towards the movie as well.

Our two-for-one Wagamama vouchers were close to expiring, so once again we found ourselves choosing between chicken chilli ramen, wagamama ramen, yaki soba and the likes...

There's some S'pore student symposium tomorrow at the London School of Economics. Being ICSS comm members... we're obliged to attend. “Shifting Paradigms: Viewing Challenges as Opportunities” - keynote speech, panel discussion, etc. Hopefully it'll come in beneficial (networking, mainly). Don't wanna have lost my Saturday morning sleep for nothing. :P

Yesterday's musical was one of the best, by Marv's standards, of Singaporean plays. A whole gang from ICSS (which was for a while known as Imperial College Secret Society) went to watch Pagoda Street, a production of Singapore Playhouse London. The effort was there, definitely, but I still think the standard's not quite. Singaporeans are still better suited to the academics rather than the arts, methinks.

'Soft' chilled out at KFC with the remnants of the gang, and thereafter tagged along to Holbein...

I think I need more time out.

Gone were the days in Linstead when every weekend was spent going somewhere, doing something non-mundane, or at least eating out. I miss hall life.

Lately every time I've been out, I've been in a high spirit. Lacking punching bags, the chance to poke at people with sabres, or shooting blank my ammo in CS, I squawk out into the damp chilly London nights.

It's all practical reports after assignments and tutorials after essays. Nothing much to do for SingSoc at the mo, which doesn't make sense at all, and there's nothing much to tackle anywhere else.

And I think I'm a lost husky. Baaa...

Those lyrics I posted just now... don't be worried, lol. Had a friend expressing alarm. It's not the way I'm feeling, just the way I feel the world perceives itself.

Mad World , Gary Jules

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere

And their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
'Cos I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen

Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
'Cos I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World

Why am I always the go-between?

I'm always caught up, somehow.

I want to help, I know I do.

But what if it comes to a point when I can no longer do anything, everyone's down and simply depressed?

Sometimes, some things have gone too far.

And once again you'd wish there was a Ctrl+Z undo button in life.

If not for yourself, then at least for the others.

No blog for a long time, mah bad. Am showing a tad of favouritism... been blogging more in my other blog hehe.

Friday's prac was fun - crustacean chromatophores... we toyed with Scottish shrimps and made them change shades.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Sat was a full day out, after 3 weekends of being cooped up at home. Went to Windsor Castle with a different gang of trippers... Marv, Joe and the freshers. A very touristy thing to do, visiting castles and chapels. But somehow I didn't have the zest anymore... it wasn't with the usual enthusiasm with which I expressed when I usually go tripping... different gang of people I suppose. + chilling out at Holbien. It'll take some while to get used to. Heh though the day went by not without it's little snippets of surprises...

My mobile registered 10 missed calls from home yesterday morn while I was having lectures.

Alarmed, I called back.

It was Jane's doing. "Ga-jie, I caught a Flying dragon!"

I knew that my sis, although being only 10, was not one to get flying dragons and geckoes mixed up.

"Draco?" I questioned.

"Yes!!"

She found it outside the apartment lobby after the school bus dropped her off. She caught it with her bare hands, and I grinned, thinking... heh... influenced

I was elated... but I wondered if my mom knew. 'Cos if she did, she should've gotten rid of it by then.

Apparently, she didn't. So I told her what Jane, found, and did a little sweet talk about how wonderful this find was... how it was different from the normal geckoes that we get... how this was not the normal sort of lizard. This was a 'flying' lizard... and it's a beautiful and cute little thing.

The plan was to get her to let my sis keep it until, at least, Thiha came round the next day to take pics of it while he was on his errand shoot for my mom's porcelain paintings...

And here it is, taken as a test shot by Thiha using Nikon DSLR, the D70 (my dream digi):

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Btw, pics from the bio dinner can be found here.

I don't know why we still call it a "bio dinner" even after we had unanimously agreed that a "bio dinner" was the worst name that anyone could give to a dinner gathering for biology students. It conjured up images of a less-than-pleasant nature...

So we had a bio dinner tonight. The S'porean bio gang - freshers, seniors, and us. Dinner + a chatty, "tok-cocky" night while enjoying gelato ice cream.

The fact that I found tube worm casts on the shells of my Beat-the-Clock mussels does not help the fact that I was reminded of my marine ecology field trip, and when I mentioned it, Eunice went, "Oh my, why am I sitting next to you?"

Unfortunately, the 'pure' biologists don't really like what the ecologist likes (note the singular form used). They find EBE... ecology, evolution & behaviour... difficult and a bore. *shrugs* Beats me.

Anyhoo... never knew that Belgo was a Belgian restaurant... the mussels were nice, but for the price, I'd prefer those from Fish & Co. in S'pore, anytime.

Thanks Xiao for organising this though. Getting just the 10 people together was difficult enough. This was our first successful gathering since ... since the freshers came...

Yeah, so I've been a-bummering this whole weekend. Didn't go nowhere. How b-o-r-i-n-g... Viv was away up north visiting friends, and Fidel and them sportsmen chaps went to Nottingham on Sat morn when the skies where still dark and freezy and I was still dreaming... some to get their behinds whacked and some got to do some serious whacking. SingSoc managed to garner quite a few medals. Good on'ya maties. Only disappointing thing was that nobody paid the resident Notts squirrel a visit while they were there.

Marvin and Marc (hmm... m&m??), apparently, must've thought life in central London a tad too plain. They went gliding. Yep - in engineless aircrafts. With Imperial's gliding club. Try as they did to persuade me, I wouldn't budge. No way... me parents're gonna give me a heap of a whooping if I ever do. Besides, I like to believe that we can get a kick out of life from other activities without that risk factor... aye, I be a cautious one. Taught and drilled to weigh the risks. Marvin returned with some cool pics to show off - some taken from the cockpit - and somehow I was reminded of Holly Smith of Abbotsleigh... my Abb friends will know. :/

Amar dropped by London for the Hari Raya weekend. I hid at home... working a bit and letting the urge to draw kick in. I drew a few sheets of the most uncharacteristic, randomnest things.

Prac took up a good 7+ hours today. Plant stuff, cell stuff, microscopy stuff... not my stuff. Investigating stomatal movements. The inconvenient timings of the prac forced me to skip my lunchtime Politics lecture... *sniff*

Events always find a way to play on us...

Just when there's all this hype about Remembrance Day and freedom and human ideologies, Yasser Arafat, one of the key figures in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and the 'Father of Palestine', passed away.

Add to that the unfortunate suicide of Iris Chang, author of the best-selling The Rape of Nanking, shaken by the knowledge that she had gained in her research for the book. I suppose the atrocities and cruelties of mankind... are too harsh a reality for us to fully comprehend.

Today's practical - "Electrophysiology of nerve excitation and conduction - the earthworm as a model system"

In layman's terms, it's more-or-less about electrocuting earthworms.

Eeewwwww.

I mean, the electrocuting part is eewwww...!

We were to investigate signalling in a simple nervous system, and the principles of nerve function.

Them poor things. I know they're just worms, but seeing them thrash about and tearing themselves up in a struggle to free themselves of the needles, and the juice that oozes out of the gaping holes in their bodies, you can't help but feel 'ouch' for them, despite the fact that they can't process pain. The stimulus-response reactions look so... painful.

Martina had refused to work with her worm, and joined another pair and shared their worm instead. When she saw Xiyu and I going for another worm (unfortunately, electrocuting Worm #1 didn't produce the results we wanted, and furthermore, it had died only after half an hour), she was imploring. "I saved my worm's life, and you guys just went to get another one killed!" :|

Worm #2 withstood a few cycles of 2+ volt currents before it succumbed, and it, too, did not give any significant results.

So... time for Worm #3. We slipped out front to get another worm without Martina seeing us. Like the rest, it kinda extended the length of its body by, like, 40%... when XiYu poked in the first of five needles, and it was really violent. First sweep. 0 volts. No response... good. There wasn't supposed to be. Second sweep: 200mV. The graph on the computer screen showing its response to the stimulus was total randomness. Ok, push it higher... and higher... and higher... 6 volts. Still no clear results. Righto... lunchtime! 2 hours or so later, it was still wriggling. Bah, nobody cares... let's go for 10 volts. Once, twice, six times. It's still alive! But the graph is still crap. Hmm... another worm? Nah... time was running short. Lucky Worm #4. We didn't get a Worm #4, but joined that 'other group' in the end and used their results. Stupid worms... even our lecturer (whom I still think looks like Greg Kinnear) and the demonstrators couldn't get our worms to display some form of response to the stimuli after countless tweaks to the experimental system settings. We must've picked some super-electricity-resistant earthworms or something. Bad luck.

Poor wasted worms.

Remembrance Day

Walking back from college, it was heartwarming to go past groups of schoolchildren holding giant self-made paper poppies in their hands; some cars even had poppies attached to their bonnets. Two kindly old ladies and I exchanged nods and smiled when we saw each other's poppies... it was a different atmosphere on the streets today.

I know I've gone on enough about poems and such but this is really a lovely one...

Why wear a poppy

“Please wear a poppy”, the lady said
and held one forth, but I shook my head.
Then I stopped and watched as she offered them there,
And her face was old and lined with care,
But beneath the scares the years had made
There remained a smile that refused to fade.

A boy came whistling down the street,
Bouncing along on care-free feet
His smile was full of joy and fun,
“Lady”, said he “May I have one?”
When she pinned it on he turned to say,
“Why do we wear a poppy, today?”

The lady smiled In her wistful way,
And answered “This is Remembrance Day,
And the poppy there is the symbol for
The gallant men ands women who died in war,
And because they did, you and I are free,
That’s why we wear a poppy, you see.

I had a boy about your size,
With golden hair and big blue eyes.
He loved to play and jump and shout,
Free as a bird he would race about.
As the years went by he learned and grew
And became a man - - as you will too.”

He was fine and strong with a boyish smile,
But he’d seemed with us such a little while
When war broke out and he went away.
I still remember his face that day
When he smiled at me and said “good-by,
I’ll soon be back, Mon, so please don’t cry”.

But the war went on and he had to stay,
All I could do was wait and pray.
His letters told of the awful fight,
(I can see it still in my dreams at night.)
With the tanks and guns and cruel barbed wire,
And the mines and bullets, the bombs and fire”.

“Till at last, war was won,
And that’s why we wear a poppy son”.
The small boy turned as if to go,
Then said “thanks, lady”, I’m glad to know.
That sure did sound like an awful fight.
But your son – did he come back all right?”

A tear rolled down each faded cheek,
She shook her head, but didn’t speak.
I slunk away in a sort of shame,
And if you were me you have done the same,
For our thanks in giving, is oft delayed,
Through our freedom was bought – And thousands paid,

And so when we see a poppy worn,
Let us reflect on the burden borne
By those who gave their, very all
And asked to answer their country’s call,
That we at home in peace might live.
Then wear a poppy. Remember – and Give!
~ Don Crawford

Also, posted on 4th Nov: What's with the Poppy?

*sweat drop*

I grabbed some computing notes from the teaching drive, just to see what kind of stuff they'd be teaching us in the upcoming Computing module.

I think I'll be wagging lots for that module. Going through the pracs and lectures will be such a torture! Just look!!

"Each item displayed on the screen is a “window”. Every program is associated with one or more windows although they may or may not be displayed at any one time."

"The desktop is essentially a blank area that contains a taskbar and some icons."

"The taskbar contains a button for every running application. You can run several applications simultaneously and swap between them simply by clicking on taskbar buttons."

"Memory is volatile; the contents are lost when the power is turned off. Use is therefore made of more permanent forms of storage such as disks and tapes."

"In Microsoft Word: When you come to the end of a paragraph, type “Enter” to force a new line to start with the new paragraph."

*another bored sweat drop*

Windows, the desktop, running applications, organising folders, using Word, using Excel, copying and pasting, printing...

That and learning the simple R program... 25 hours of it... arrrrhhh!!

Lab session = digi[micro]scoping

Again.

But... gone are the protista, the amoeba, the bacteria and the fungi.

Say hello to plant cell walls!

Dendrocalamus asper (bamboo)

Picea sitichensis (spruce)

They're all just 20 minutes each -

Naruto... Gundam... FRIENDS...

And now... Darwin Centre Live, presented by the Natural History Museum. Fascinating presentations, those. Lots can be learnt, and it doesn't take a naturalist to appreciate them.

talfryn.net has been going without a frontpage for a very long time. The default index page automatically redirects the browser to this blog, and I'm not sure if I like that. There're things and links that I'd like to add and I'm squeezing them all into this one page... plus I'd like to have some form of uniformity among all talfryn.net pages, just like before. The very, very long time ago's 'before', from when it all started and my html pages looked like a lower secondary school student's IT project. Not that it's advanced much now but at least now there's some form to it.

So here you go... www.talfryn.net revamped.

MacRitchie TreeTop Walk Launched!

The Straits Times, 6 Nov 2004 - Take a stroll in the treetops

Ria's wildsingapore has more info on this new 250m suspension bridge o'er the canopies...

Can't wait to get back to S'pore to try it out.

Also: NPark's introduction to the Walk

There're so many things to do.

There're so many things I need to do.

There're so many things I want to do.

So many thoughts.

I'm tired.

But loving it.

What's with the Poppy?

The First World War ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.

In Flanders, Northern France, the lands were completely devastated after battle after bloody battle. The red poppy was the only thing which was found living and growing on the fields. Inspired by the sight, John McCrae from Canadian Armed Forces wrote this poem in 1915.

In Flanders' Fields

In Flanders' fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders' fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high,
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders' Fields.

Armistice or Rememberance Day, which falls on the 11th of November, is also known in the UK, Australia, Canada, and elsewhere, as Poppy Day. Prior to Rememberance Day, the Royal British Legion has been holding its annual fundraising event - the Poppy Appeal - since 1921.

www.poppy.org: "More than 11 million people are eligible for the Legion’s support which extends to all men and women who have served in the British Armed Forces as their dependants. The charity undertakes a wide range of welfare and resettlement work including grant-making to those in need, pensions and benefits advice, counselling and job retraining, home and hospital visits as well as the provision of full nursing care.

Remembrance transcends all boundaries. The Legion seeks a small yet important individual and collective act, a rare moment when the Nation can stand together and reflect on the price of freedom. That price is still being paid. More than 12,000 British Servicemen and women have been killed or injured on active service since 1945.

If we are to maintain our peace and freedom, we must always remember."

What with the conflicts in Iraq and wars still being fought, the Poppy is as relevant today as it was 90 years ago. The next time somebody approaches you with a Poppy, buy it. It's not so much of how much you give but how you wear it. Wear the Poppy with pride, and remember those who gave their lives for freedom.

Today's BUSA match was cancelled. That makes four in a row. We haven't had a single bout to date. Bah. Last week was 'cos of Commemoration Day, and today was 'cos of the Careers Fair. Had a little kick out of pretending to be everything - from a chemical engineer, to a computing geek, to what I actually am... a biologist - just to engage in some 'meaningful conversation' with the recruiters, and to get their cool freebies. It was rather discouraging to discover that out of the 35+ stalls there, biologists are only welcomed (ie. useful) in 3 of those companies. And furthermore, they're mostly welcomed in the lab as R&Ders; there are few opportunities for work in the field. People ('people' = undefined) tell me that I'll have to stick to the government sector or work for some educational or non-profit organisations then. Or pursue another degree in another discipline. Management and bizzo sounds good... but have I left that path only to go back to it again? Dunno... it's just a thought. But I like what I'm doing, and I know that I'll like what I'll have done knowing that I can do something with what I have learnt, and that's what matters now.

So Bush has been re-elected. Hmm. Hmmmm...

Damp, wet and cold walls will always attract denizens of damp, wet and cold worlds. On my trips to the household downstairs I'll usually encounter half a dozen slugs on the stairs and walls outside, and perhaps a spider or two. Two weeks ago, Fidel found a hairy House spider in his room. A week or so ago, Lionel passed me a stink bug, and Lu had a gigantic buzzing fly (and a rather annoyed one at that) wrapped in a piece of tissue.

Winter's coming, but funnily, so are the insects.

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Friday, November 26, 2004

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Monday, November 22, 2004

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Monday, November 15, 2004

Friday, November 12, 2004

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Remembrance Day

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Monday, November 08, 2004

Sunday, November 07, 2004

Saturday, November 06, 2004

MacRitchie TreeTop Walk Launched!

Friday, November 05, 2004

Thursday, November 04, 2004

What's with the Poppy?

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Monday, November 01, 2004