i'm presently in london, lse hall with shimmie, in between holidays to italy and spain. having a one night rest in london before flying off again tmr for bright, sunny (hopefully) barcelona.

italy was AWESOME!! great food and gelatos (they're food, i know, but they deserve special mention cos it was our staple italian food together with pasta and pizza), great sights, and greater company! had loads of fun... evening entertainment with wine and crap food or sometimes homecooked pasta were always something to look forward to, as were all the heavenly places to eat. as with us chinamen/women, we walked ages to get to the cheapest but nicest reataurants for the best food italy has. someone was saying how it's good that we walked so much this trip and was replied with "we walk to get to food", so it actually doesn't count much. hehe. ok pictures should be up in a week's time together with those of spain. i need to sleep soon.

oh before i forget: visit http://cumsa.blogspot.com for what happened at the BOP! :) ahhh it all seemed so long ago now...

i should really get some sleep soon so i'm all prepared for a long day again tmr. nite.

hyper-ism.

for some reason, i'm feeling all jumpy and high this morning. i've not been this awake in ages! maybe it's because i haven't exatly started msoc revision for today yet haha. maybe. OR it could be that i'm all excited about +KUA SI MI!+ tonight! oooooo.. music's going to be great, company: check! all i have to get done is spray my hair blonde later tonight hahahaa.

skipped HOM prac today cos he's only going to be playing with the jeremy programme on EPIC. plus i haven't read the manaul well enough to ask any insightful questions. i don't actually know who coined the jeremy programme but i think it was just what we decided to call our virtual guinea pig. the last time we played with him it was quite interesting. he died in about 2 weeks cos we were letting him bleed during the haemorrhage. it was quite a long wait so we got impatient and added more factors that would speed up his reduction of blood pressure. hahaha. what good doctors we must make!

also, on the spur of the moment today, i walked into the library and got out the embryology book. i must sound like a total nerd but i'm actually looking forward to studying embryology during the hols.. the pictures were so nice in the book hehe.

till later after the bop!

retrospective...

hmm i was just reading through some of my past posts from 2006. i can't believe it's already a year since i started work at NUH and at novel! where did all the months fly to? well, i've come quite a long way from then; away in a new continent, new country, new school, new friends, new activities. feels surreal sometimes thinking back, but i'm happy and that's all that matters. :) all the stress and troubles come and go, and cliched as it might sound, we all just learn from that and move on.

well, some things haven't changed. i still pine for singaporean food. still listen to chinese music and feel comforted. still talk about missing home. like yesterday walking back from commonwealth reception with joe, we were just talking about how it's nice to find people from home, especially when u're just pining for home.

it's another 5 more months till i set foot in singapore again....

sigh, ok - reality check - have to continue mugging for msoc. had isbm revision supervision just now and went for a macdonalds indulgence. now it's back to gender and ageing population.. how exciting.

commonwealth reception

results from cumsa egm should be out today, but they're still not announced yet. well, jeremy did seem a bit stressed when i saw him at the reception...

this was a reception for all the commonwealth scholars that got money from the trust! i was surprised at the number of people that made up the international student body at cambridge! there were sooooo many people there all squashed in the dining hall at robinson. and as usual, pictures of the night:

the dress code was smart/casual. so i thought ok, wear office wear should be ok. but almost everyone turned out in dresses and like formal wear! :( owell. we didn't do much also, it was just stand around and talk and eat for 2 hours. don't see why it's formal attire also. there were some people wearing national costumes! whoa, those were elaborate i tell u. the korean national dress, qi paos, malaysian dress all out! aye but vee vian above broke the malaysian norm and wore a qi pao. haha!

this is joseph tan chong seng. he's from malaysia. he's half-chinese. he's funny. he's in my college :) haha.

michelle and yi chung.

junming refused to believe he's almost the same height as shireen. a photo always does the trick. so he is slightly taller (must be because of the hair)! ahh this reminds me of how junyang and i always take pictures to see who's taller! haha and there was this one time when we had a metre ruler on our heads and took a picture to compare it to any horizontal straight line in the distance. i found that i was slightly taller and he just wouldn't admit it. hahaha.

ahh, those were the times... i miss those rj times. :(

cumsa sports lunch!

all the planning from a week ago, and it finally came down to the day! the turnout was just nice i suppose, not too much, not too little. i wasn't that disappointed being thrashed by the guys at our own game, netball, cos to be fair, they were faster and well, GUYS. hahha when audry was refreeing, every few seconds there were whistles for fouls. haha. frisbee after at churchill was surprisingly fun! i should really go down for some of these frisbee sessions on saturdays and sharpen up my skills haha, if u can call them that. i finally know how to catch the frisbee! woooo :)

the traditional way of choosing teams. haha!

i love this picture. it's so funny, sootet's the main object when chris behind is making such a lovely catch hahaha! obviously not an action shot.

jeremy and i engaged in a photowhoring fight. him taking a picture of me taking a picture. everyone after frisbee and waiting for food to be done, sitting down at the pitches. it was such a lovely day to be just out and doing something active. :)

look at the dedication man! chris and his bashed-up knee from netball and he still continues with frisbee! wahh peifu!

ahhh xianjie! the guy i owe lots and lots and lots for today! thank you sooo much for sacrificing frisbee-playing-time and overcoming the tiny budget for food to cook such a lovely meal. i owe you big time man! and he cooks such a nice plate of chicken rice i reckon if he starts a chicken rice stall in singapore, he'll be famous! :)

the legendary chicken rice!! look at it! all tender and succulent! ahahha!

meng and i and THE FOOD. yum. this was after egm to choose our publicity secretary for cumsa. i thought the hustings were a bit frightening. questions and answers flying everywhere. sometimes being a nice, quiet person takes u away from the limelight. lie low during hustings and you might not be targetted. being pin-pointed is not a good feeling. you have to fight for what you think is right and be prepared to duck under the barrage of questions that will ineveitably follow if u say even one wrong word.
well, results are out on monday! we'll see...

the medics were out punting today. i couldn't join them cos i came back too late. ahh it would have been fun!

in the sun...

it's nice and warm. and it's a good idea to have lunch there with a group of friends too! yay the weather's finally starting to look good, i'm thinking of whether i should continue rowing just cos of the fantastic weather.

sports informal -
saturday should be interesting. i want to beat the guys at netball! and i can't wait for the chicken rice too :)

ok. back to work. msoc and isbm exam at the end of next week. :S have to start cramming. it's GP all over again!!

i need more time!

just thought i'd take a little break from HOM essay. it was getting a bit dry: water handling by the kidney. harhar.

i'm not looking forward to tmr (today actually!). there's too many things to do, and too little time. how i wish i had a time-turner, just like harry potter. it still amazes me that part of the movie was filmed in johns. well, it was a tiny tiny split-second part, but still, it's cool.

here's a timeline of what i shall be doing tmr (for my sake so i can plan my day.)

• wake up early to do essay (if i don't sleep too late that is)
• go for 9am lecture
• read through prac for MIMS test
• go for 12pm lecture
• sit for test (hopefully i'll know how to answer the questions. according to the rest, it was hardddd. :S )
• finish off HOM essay
• plan for CUMSA sports brunch, consolidate room bookings/kitchen venue/manpower
• go for 4.30 supervision
• rush to CUMSA meeting at queens'
• finish off HOM essay if still not done (which is a big possibility seeing how far i actually am now)
• have dinner sometime in between
• medics revue 11pm!
• SLEEEP. very important.

:(:(

Wish I could show you

Wish you could see through my eyes

Tomorrow shines through

But I'm missing yesterday

...

happy birthday daddy!!

here's a picture of the family:

at the merlion after dinner one day a few years ago.. can't believe how fast time flies... maybe tonight they had dinner somewhere there to celebrate daddy's birthday! ahhh take pictures and send them to me!

medic formal swap again last night. we're really into this formal swaps eh? this time, jesus, johns, a lone emma, and some other random people came to pembroke.

rich, alison and minh. across the table. dinner was fantastic.. some mushroomy soup, guinea fowl and yummmy lemon brulee pudding! :)

michael saggggggmeister. haha. i can't pronounce his german name.. don't have a german tongue i'm afraid. my dissection locker buddy.

balloon war across and down the table. ben must have brought the balloons. have no idea why. well, he's one crazy johns medic, what can i say. all johns people are nuts!


the cocktail umbrellas were being passed around and by the end of the night, everyone had one in their hair..

rushed off to morna's solo recital in the old library after formal. it was amazingggg. fingers flying so fast over the violin.. i'm inspired to pick up piano again!

and yes, highlight of today: CHICKEN RICE! self-made in my new rice cooker! wooo it was fantabulous! smelled like the original, tasted somewhat like the original.. good enough :) i'm happy.

:) just couldn't resisit copying this here from the PCBC website:

Saturday
Bumped FaT III

3 days, 3 row overs. It had been quite a disappointing week for the 4th women. Despite the impressive acheivment of getting on they had been denied the joy of bumping on every day so far. With one last chance it was clear that the potential to bump was there but whether it would happen was another question entirely. The gun went and the crew quickly picked up the speed of the boat. Coming under the motorway bridge and down first post reach I was worried that this row would go very much like the others. Pembroke closed 1/4 of a length on FaT but little more. It was coming towards the end of first post reach though that things started to turn around. Pembroke reached a length a little before the corner and were at 1/2 a length going into the turn. The distance was being closed on every stroke and coming out of the corner Pembroke soon got to a canvas. Pushing up on them every stroke it was half way down the gut when the signal was given for overlap (which incidentally took the form of an air-horn given the lack of a second bell). Pembroke kept pushing and it was just before grassy that the FaT cox conceded the very well deserved bump. Congratulations Pembroke 4th boat

-Adrian Potter

BUMP! dinner and eclipse! :)

yesterday was D day. we had to bump or else we wouldn't have forgiven ourselves. FaT just HAD to go down today. we needed that bump!

so here we are all ready in our brown boat to go out and kick ass! cat and emma came up with this cool little limerick for our dearest brown boat:

We don't mind the brown boat.

At least it stays afloat!

It's not really sat,

And it's heavy at that,

But stop us from bumping it won't!

everyone in the boat had their own limerick. haha evidently we had too much time marshalling at the railings. here's mine:

We all love our friend Jasmine Ho,

She really knows how to row!

She's at the seat seven,

And takes us to heaven,

By defeating all of our foe!

apparantly my name is too hard to rhyme, so that's why they all love my surname. :)

even before the race, rosie was tired. stretching out comfortably on my legs.

at the start of the race at the bottom of the lock. adrain had to push us out with his pole at the 22 sec mark. he did this awesome calculation of river currents, weights, boat weight etc and found out that we could have our best start if he started pushing us out at 22 sec to the cannon. the cannon goes at the 4 min, 1 min and start marks.

so counting down: 10, 9, 8, 7 (come forward), 6, 5, 4 (blades in and buried), 3, .... BANG!

this was taken from the FaT website. hah i love the irony of it. there u can see FaT W2 at the bank with their flag (which means that they have blades after bumping every day of bumps). at the top of the picture, there's FaT W3. and not so far behind u see US! pembroke W4 closing on on them! woopwoop! at this point i guess there must have been at least 2 whistles already. (the whistle system goes like this: if the gap between the 2 boats is 1.5 boat length = 1 whistle, 1 boat length = 2 whistles, half boatlength = 3 whistles, almost bumping = continuos blast of the horn) then after a few seconds, horn sounded and bumpity bump! :):) alrighttttttt! so now FaT are now the BOTTOM of the river ahaha! and have the humiliation of being bumped by a 4th boat. hahaha!

so we hurriedly stuck some greenery from the bank into our hair (it was the sign of bumping someone!) and on the row back, when we stopped for a rest by the peony, there was this group of school boys:

little boy: "can i touch your blade?"
me: "yea sure"
little boy touches blade with one finger, :"yay i'm famous too!" -wide grin-

hahahha

along the way further down, W2 was rowing to their start postition. everyone was so focussed cos they just had to bump once more to get a blade. peter went, "let's cheer for W2!". so we cheered up a storm. ellie (LBC) was in W2, we wanted to catch her attention the most cos we wanted to show her our greenery and inspire her too! she was so focussed she didn't even look at us but kept looking in front, then in a split second, she spotted some greenery in the brown boat and her face just changed!! it was amazinggg! haha she started like a madwoman! haha then it was back to being focussed as we got out of sight. ahhh. that was one of the best moments today!

after our race, we walked down the reach to tiger's den to watch the remaining divisions race. i think this is women's 2nd division. there was this hugeee crowd by the bank and the whole atmosphere was electrifying. ahhh i love rowing! esp bumps!

everyone loves pembroke! even the drain cover! so i couldn't resist taking this shot. hahaha. rich was walking by, he thought some one fell off her bike, then realised it was just the few of us fooling around, lying on the floor and posing. haha. the look on his face!

4th boat at boat club dinner!

"think of your animal! push with the legs!" haha peter's call around tiger's den when we were gaining on FaT. i think i was a frog. with strong legs for pushing and powering down. haha. but to pose as a frog wouldn't be so fun, so here i was some sort of scary cat. HAHA.

our lovely lower boats captains! it was maggie's birthday and it wasn't fair for her to prepare ellie's birthday present on behalf of the whole lower boats. she bought a super nice neckalce that ellie was eyeing all term and that brought her to tears. awww. so the lower boats thought of getting her her very own birthday present! awwwww. PLUS, since they are excellent fantastic LBCs, they each got a handmade PCBC pillowcover! complete with the martlet and blades (the PCBC logo!) ahhhh. sweet dreams of rowing they're going to have everyday! :)

during the dinner, LBC speech!

everyone up on their chairs! singing the PCBC song! all i can remember is the chorus which goes:

PCBC, PCBC!
PCBC, PCBC!
PCBC, PCBC!
Row on PCBC!

haha not very hard to rmb eh?

peter! our lovely cox whom we all couldn't have done without! he's such a nice guy too, always dancing and singing in the boat. :)

stern pair, rosie and me! i've been staring at the back of her head all term in the boat, and according to cat, i should know every bit of her hair now, just like how cat can recognise me from behind anywhere. hmm thinking about it, that wouldn't be so hard given i'm the chinese with the black hair! haha.

me, vikki, nicola, rosie. half of our boat!

we all knew something was going to happen at either 10.44pm or 11.20pm, depending on who was right, BBC or chris' sister. hahha. turned out none of the two was correct. and we waited in vain for the eclipse to happen...

in anticipation that the moon would disappear at any moment. all of us in black tie, waiting out in the cold. ahaha it was funny how all the boaties were there and random people just joined in to wait for the eclipse. lorna and hannah joined us. and before the end, it was too cold so everyone just retreated back to the JP. heh. gave up man, silly eclipse took too long.

ahhhh all in all, yest was FANTASTIC! i would do it all again if i could.

bumpity bumpbumpbump!

it's been rather tiring in bumps, although fun nonetheless! most possibly it's cos it's so crazily windy that normally even the university boats will not be allowed out on the river. we were laughing at the whole hilarity of it to allow a full-on RACE, bumps especially, to go on in this conditions! the boats were blown all over the place, not to mention that we were mostly novices in my division, crashing along the reach. at one point, the new hall boat was blown perpendicularly across the river, blocking even the men's boats rowing back from their race. haha.. we got caught in the whole big boat mesh at the end of the reach and everyone was just laughing! crazy marshall/non-marshall/kaypoh girl tried to instruct us what to do, but she was so obviously wrong and was giving contradictory instructions with our own bank-party and lower boats captain. hahaha. i think if we don't bump (choi!), this will be my most memorable memory of lent bumps!! :)

going for 3rd day of bumps tmr, chasing FaT II. fat FaT! we're going to bump u, u better watch out! hehheh. i reallyreally wanna bump somebody this time, it would make the whole experience so much better! and we deserve some sort of reward for working so darn hard this whole term!

on another note, I'M THE NEW CUMSA SPORTS SEC! yayyyy! wah the agm was quite disappointing leh, everyone kinda just left after the presidential nominee speeches and sootet was the ultimate man, came in jeans, t-shirt and jacket for a formal dress-code given to all the nominees hahah, came late summore! and throughout the whole thing, he was so incredulous at the seriousness of the process. actually, it was quite an eye-opener.. after the election and during formal yest, ben and i were talking about the elections and it seems that we're not that cohesive as we think we might be. hmm. i shall not say anymore, but it set me thinking about how we're going to run cumsa cooperatively. owell, come what may.

oooh, new cd from meng! :) listened to it and it's realllllly good! haha he wrote on the inside cover: for jash, there is more music in this world than that which has been written by jay chou. HAHA true, but i'm glad he's listening to zhou jie lun now!

OH TODAY WE CUT OUT THE GUT IN DISSECTION. it really is 6 meters long! hahhha, i'm loving dissection nowadays, it actually shows what it says in the notes and books! wonderful. that means i look smarter when i say the right thing! hahaha. we had a fatty tumour in our guy along the transverse colon, practically everyone came over to stare at it. ooh and these days, rich is doing most of the dissecting, with hannah helping, and the rest of us overseeing and pointing out structures/vessels/fatty-looking things. the amount of fat in our guy is amazing. hahha but in the abdomen, it's a good thing, for us at least. the greater omentum was well, visible! haha unlike the table beside us. can u imagine how their lesser omentum would have been? must use magnifying glass hahahaha!

ok first cumsa meeting soon! off i go.