jardine invited its oxbridge scholars to dine with them at noon, so i seized the chance to explore london, and in the process ponning 3 lectures =)

king's cross! view of the platform we disembarked from.

took the underground to leicester - where chinatown is!

den we walked to trafalgar square, which was nearby.. view from the back of trafalgar square..

and the view from the front of it.. shuai right =)

and apparently, the malaysian embassy was just across the road fr trafalgar square.. erps.

picture taken at the london bridge, with the tower bridge in the background.. and again, shuai right? =P pls dun comment abt my hair - yes it's getting long, and i'm not cutting it yet cos it cost me 10 pounds to cut it, which is darn ex..

after lunch, we went to westminster abbey..

no prizes for guessing when this pic was taken - it's the tower housing big ben (the name of the bell inside), but too bad i wasn't able to hear it chime..

had to rush back to camb cos i had a supervision at 6.. if i could postpone it, i would be eating dinner with a fren of mine in london.. darn =( but i can't deny this distraction of mine is a welcome change.. i'm getting accustomed to the unchanging face of camb i've been seeing everyday when i cycle to lects.. =)

found this on my senior's blog:

it's very funny, especially if u can decipher the meaning of the 3rd and the 7th smiley =)

it's snowed! and it was the first time i saw real snow in my life!!

sadly it ended as soon as it started.. probably snowed abt 15 minutes in all when i was cycling on the streets.. when i got back to my room, it promptly stopped, which explains the lack of a picture =(

but the feeling of snow melting on my face was a really really new experience!! and snow collecting on my gloves! so nice!! =D

i can't believe i have two sob stories abt hsbc in one single day..

i needed money today (well, to be more precise, yesterday), so i trooped down to hsbc's atm machine, and inserted my spanking new debit card (aka atm card).. the first screen asked for my pin number, which i entered.. i got the pin number sent to me a few days ago, so it was still the default number..

*bleep* *bleep* *bleep* *bleep*

the machine accepted my 4-digit pin no, and then i was shown the screen where i can get cash, transfer money, change pin etc etc.. i happily pressed the "get cash" button..

to be greeted with a screen saying "sorry, your pin number wasn't recognised. please re-enter your pin number.."

i was quite stunned when i read that, but i entered the same number in - *bleep* *bleep* *bleep* *bleep*..

to be greeted by the same screen. again and again.

after 3 tries, the machine decided i was a thief trying to hack into a poor student's account, and promptly blocked my debit card for 24 hours.

i tried changing my pin yesterday, only to be greeted by the same screen AGAIN AND AGAIN (well, okay, 3 times, cos after that my card was blocked until 12pm just now)..

so i walked into their branch to ask them about it.. i told them what i saw from the atm screen, but they KEPT ON REPEATING that i've entered the wrong pin number.. i tried to clarify matters by saying that i just got my pin number by post, and i've tried entering that number 6 times (3 per day), but again they said i've entered the wrong number..

YOU THINK I CANNOT READ NUMBERS PROPERLY ISSIT?!

so i had to request for my pin to be sent to me again.. and it'll reach me within 5 working days. cheeb**..

that wasn't the worst.

i went back to my room, thinking how idiotic this mess is, and then i thought of setting up an internet banking acct so i can monitor my cash flow without stepping foot in that place anymore. i needed this thing called a security number, which i had to get by calling them. ok lor, call den call lor..

the guy who was on the line asked me tons of personal questions - bday, acct no, debit card no, expiry date, full name etc etc.. i answered all of them properly, until..

guy: can you tell us the last transaction you've made, and what was the amount of money you've taken out?
me: um i'm not so sure, cos i've written a cheque for a friend last night, and i'm not sure whether the cheque cleared..
guy: (repeats the question in a slightly different manner)
me: ok ok i remember taking out 40 pounds..
guy: no, please do not quote transactions from the statements you have received from the bank..
me: erm ok, i don't think i've taken money out since that day, as i've been surviving on the 40 pounds since then..
guy: ... please tell me the dates printed on your statement?
me: xx october to xx november.
guy: please hold on.
(idiotic music plays for 2 minutes.. my guess is that he was consulting his superior)
guy: sorry blah blah, but for security reasons i'm unable to give you your security number, blah blah.. please go to a hsbc branch tmr to obtain ur number, and bring identification along with you..
me: .. ok fine, sorry for troubling you.

i think i've shown admirable self-control in dealing with hsbc.. i'm really really tempted to curse at the guy, but on second thoughts i've nothing against him, just the bank he was working for.. but on hindsight i'm kinda powerless, cos all my money is in hsbc now, and it's equally troublesome to set up another account in another bank..

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH THE BANKS OVER HERE!??! I'M SO FREAKING FRUSTRATED!!!

well i was basically dreaming of scoring a hattrick of A-pluses.. until during the e & b supervision just now:

supervisor: (in a disappointed tone) well, normally your group is the best among all those under me, but for this essay you've done pretty badly!
us (3 of us): *shocked*
supervisor: (turns to me) yi jin, you've done the wrong essay!
me: really? oh crap..
supervisor: (turns to girl A) and you sent me the wrong file, which made my heart leap for a moment..

apparently, girl A sent her the wrong word document containing articles that she was reading up for e & b (!!!).. erps..

supervisor: (turns to girl B) and you're the saving glory of this group!
girl B: (looks extremely relieved) phew..

then we got back our essays - and i immediately noticed why she said what she said to me..

i titled my essay "discuss the origin of life after development of eukaryotic cells."

she corrected it to "discuss the origin of life after up to the development of eukaryotic cells."

what the hell.. that error costed me and essay and 3 hours of depriving myself from sleep.. bleargh =(

but anw i got B for this essay - which shows that her "A+"es aren't that precious anw =) if i did this in hc, i'd probably get a F for it, if it wasn't shredded to bits in the first place.. so yeah i better count my blessings =D

and although it's optional, i'm compelled to re-do this essay.. sigh 3 more hrs down the drain =(((

it's what you feel when..

.. you sit beside bun everyday in the lect hall..

.. you're stuck drinking lemonade (25p for 2 litres) while others switch to ribena (2.62 pounds for 1 litre concentrate - which makes up to 6 litres of ribena)..

.. you read your supervision partner's essay and realise she knows so much (eg for rhodopsin, the ligand bound to it changes to the trans form when a photon hits it, and the ligand dissociates to activate transducin etcetcetc..) while u're still relying on hc bio knowledge..

.. you spend 30 minutes on a maths question and gave up on it, but when you asked someone else to do it, that person replied after 30 seconds with the correct answer..

.. you eat your senior's cooking, which tastes so much nicer than what you can ever possible conjure up =(

.. you cycle past a stationary garbage collector, and to your utter astonishment, the driver is actually READING a book, and you realise he probably read ten times more than you..

.. you walk past a couple kissing passionately, and another couple just in front of you decide to do the same and kiss.. envious leh =( i can only act as a 1000-watt lightbulb..

what i learnt in the evo and behaviour lect just now (in chronological order, ie page no =)

• "lock-and-key" doesn't just apply to enzymes.. it is one of the factors that impede cross-species mating =D
• the pictures given to illustrate the caption "behavioural barriers prevent lions and tigers hybridising in the wild" was one of Tigger and a lion from Lion King (i dunno the name of that lion) -.-"
  the botanical gardens in camb has 8000 species of plants (normally such an area would have only abt 1000 species) - in the lecturer's words "that's what you get when you throw strangers into bed together - things happen." (cos the botanic garden contains plants from all parts of the world, and as plants hybridize very readily..)
• there is a plant species called H. glabra and another called T. dubius.. the "dubius" is not a typo, btw.. so maybe some scientist, glabra after drinking beer, decided to call a plant dubius in a state of semi-consciousness..
• triploidy in most common cause for miscarriages in the third trimester of human feotuses
• oysters can tolerate triploidy - the triploid ones, although sterile, are larger in size compared to the diploid ones.. the one we saw on the lecturer's powerpt was so big it was squishing against its shell.. yum =P
• the equation cabbage + turnip = oil seed rape
• selfing of heterozygotes can give offsprings which are ALL heterozygotes
• polyploidy is extremely common in plants - 70% of angiosperms and 95% of ferns are polyploids
• wheat apparently came from Triticum degilopoides + Aegilops speltoides to give Emmer wheat, and then + Aegilops squarrosa to give bread wheat.. it CONTRADICTS what i learnt in jc - ironic cos camb was the one setting the a-lev syllabus..
• oh, apparently, bread wheat was tied to the spread of humans to africa, saudi arabia, europe and asia.. cos famers dispersed to cultivate wheat (selfishly) for themselves.. erps.

see why i like e & b so much? =D

you know that the weather's getting real cold when..

1. your breath comes out in puffs of mist - for the first time in my life i couldn't tell apart who was smoking and who wasn't =)
2. people start to wear their woollen caps and balaclava (without getting arrested for it)
3. cycling is impossible without wearing gloves =(
4. ur angmor supervision mates make doomsday predictions along the lines of:
   me: isn't the weather real cold nowadays?
   angmor 1: oh yes, it is.
   angmor 2: is it because of the warm autumn we had this year? (note: warm, in their context, is ~15 deg C)
   angmor 1: oh it's possible, since cold winters always come after warm autumns..
   me: .........
5. foolishly believing that wearing 2 layers (excluding the layer of fats i have) will insulate me from the biting cold - i nearly froze when i was cycling near kings college.. i have this theory that there is a direct connection of wind from siberia to that part of cambridge - it's always freaking windy there, and it's darn COLD =(
6. you leave ur heater on 4 hrs before you came back to ur room, to find that the room is only mildly warmer than the surroundings -.-"
7. it's impossible to shower under "7" anymore - the heater now has to be increased to halfway between "8" and "9"..
8. you can feel the dry-ness of ur skin - i have never had that sensation before =( time to dig out my can of vaseline..
9. you wish desperately for someone to magically buy you your college scarf (which costs 17 pounds) 7 months away from your birthday..
10. for once, all the friends you have agree on something..
11. you freeze your ass on the toilet bowl every morning, and your teeth everytime you brush it (can't they heat the tap water, for goodness sakes!?)
12. you look at the calendar and realise february's (the coldest month) approaching..

clockwise from top left: sainsbury diet lemonade, chicken with cashew nuts and hoi sin sauce, carrots and broccoli and cauliflower (looks a bit pathetic tho cos there's only one cauliflower =) and eggs cooked with baked beans =P

cooked this two days ago with sheila and bun.. we were tired of cooking the same staple dishes (sausages / stir-fried broccoli and cauliflower / egg + a meat (such as ham, sausage) / honey-glazed chicken), so i got a recipe from a book in a bookstore - being cheapskate, i had to memorize the entire recipe (!) so good thing it wasn't that hard to cook =) anw, i still have the recipe stuck in my head, so i think i better write it down in case i forget it =)

1. dry fry cashew nuts for ~1 minute
2. take the cashew nuts out, add oil into the pan, and when it gets hot enough, throw in the garlic
3. after a moment, throw in the chicken (properly deboned and de-tendon-ed by the ever meticulous a* scholar =D) and the red pepper in
4. cook until the chicken.. looks cooked =) and then add liberal amounts of hoi sin sauce into the pan =P
5. serve immediately

being very adventurous, i suggested cooking eggs with baked beans (!) cos i faintly remember my mom doing it a looooong time ago.. after i finished cooking it, i realised it was supposed to be baked beans and 肉碎, not egg -.-" but thankfully, it was edible (quoting sheila).

the veggie wasn't that different from what we're used to cooking.. guess our creative juices ran out =)

and a side note about the diet lemonade: it's a FREAKINGLY CHEAP drink - it's on offer now, its original retail price is 35p for 2 litres, but it's now slashed to 25p only.. it's even cheaper than most mineral water brands (with the exception of sainsbury's, which is 17p for 2 litres =)

oh, btw, sainsbury (which we affectionally call "sains") is a huge chain of supermarkets around UK.. it has this range of foods it calls "basics", which at best is edible, and at worst.. more fit for the dustbin =P the only common trait shared by the "basics" are that they are CHEAP - spaghetti at 88p for instance (normal price wld be ~2-ish pounds).. however, the diet lemonade is NOT under the "basics" range of foodstuffs - the "basics" lemonade costs only 17p, which is equivalent to the price of mineral water sold by them.. jokingly, bun postulated that they created the diet lemonade by adding some acid into water, and then someone down the production line will blow CO2 into it..

despite the "warning", i currently have 4 bottles of the aforementioned lemonade in my room right now... =PpPPP

i'm in awe with myself - i have the audacity to blog even though i have maths and a bio of cells essay staring at me waiting to be completed..

why can't i finish my work way before the deadlines!?

why don't i have an adrenaline rush when my homework is less than 12 hours away from it's due time?

why is it that deep down inside of me, i'm so tired of writing essays!?

why is it that i can berate myself online about being slack, but i can't just do the homework that needs completing!?

i'm getting the "fifth-week blues" one week later than the expected arrival date.. fyi, the fifth-week blues is what freshers feel after being five weeks into the term - fatigue, sianness when one is in a lecture theatre, unwillingness to bring oneself to do homework..

how apt.

a few weeks ago, in bio of cells lecture: "oh, watson and crick discovered the structure of dna a few buildings away from here..."

today, in bio of cells lecture (also): "the z-scheme of photosynthesis was discovered by hill in the biochemistry department on tennis court road nearby..." (map provided =P my cells lectures are in new museums site) the lecturer went to the extent of repeating it thrice..

i wonder why =)

it went pretty well.. magd won 7-2 this time round! yay i managed to win all three games i had, thanks to my partner =D

we just need to repeat this 3 more times to gain promotion into div 1... *keeps fingers crossed*

then..

35 deg C - very hot
30 deg C - hot
25 deg C - warm
20 deg C - cool
15 deg C - freezing (usually experienced in lt2 in hc)

now..

0 deg C - freezing (literally)
5 deg C - cold
10 deg C - cool
15 deg C - warm
20 deg C - hot
25 deg C - melting
30 deg C - boiling

quoting my angmor supervision partner when we were walking to our bikes after our supervision, "well, isn't the weather just cool?" while i was trembling and shivering beneath my rather thin jacket..

the basketball match i had yesterday was simply disastrous.

passing: mostly into opponents
shooting: rims were cleaned thoroughly by the ball
rebounds: rarely obtained
teamwork: *sighs*

how can we face better teams from other unis in the notts games on sat? haiz..

i never expected my debut for my college badminton team to be that interesting.. basically each college fields three pairs of doubles, and each pair of doubles will play all their opponents once, resulting in nine matches in all.. matches end quickly usually, cos it's decided by a set of 15 points only..

cut to scoreline one hour into the competition: jesus 4 magd 4, and i was playing the ninth game..

they first raced to a 7-2 lead, but my partner and i fought back to level it, and then raced to a 14-12 scoreline.. a short lapse in concentration saw us losing 4 points, thus we were trailing by 14-16..

then we got our serve back.. my partner said, "it's make or break"..

by a freak stroke of luck, we managed to squeeze 2 more points to level the score at 16-16.. at that time, everyone in the court looked nervous, me included - my heart was pounding really rapidly, and i bet my adrenaline levels shot through the roof.. i served, then there was a rally, and it ended with the shuttle inside their court. (oh, btw, i was the one who scored the winning point =PpP)

we won. we barely won.

as a result, i was pretty high throughout the night.. never expected college badminton to be so fun as compared to really competitive matches i had when i was in sec sch and jc.. guess it's cos i usually lose my matches, so there wasn't a chance for me to feel high =)

anyway, there was an unintended consequence - in a celebratory mood, i spent my last 5 pounds *curses hsbc and their extreme inefficiency* on groceries and my dinner.. darn now i'm in debt =(

this week is a horribly sport-laden week for me..

mon: badminton match against jesus college
tue: basketball friendly against cumsa
thurs: badminton match agains emmanuel
sat: going to notts for badminton, and hopefully, basketball..

where got time or energy to do hw? there are so many imminent deadlines tt i need to meet lor..

*groans*

well, after getting kicked from the varsity try-outs, there was someone else from my college who saw me play that day and he told the captain about me.. so i had to shift a supervision timeslot in order to turn up for practices..

today was the 2nd time i turned up for it.. and right after the practice (guys and girls play separately) there was a badminton curry (it basically means we go somewhere and eat curry).. so being sociable i indicated that i'd turn up, and that's wad i did..

at the start, the guys were outnumbered by the gals.. so i was basically surrounded by gals.. good thing i knew one of them who was sitting beside me, else i'll stone through the night =) but it turned out that the gals were very friendly, bad thing was they couldn't decipher my accent (sigh.. singlish that hard to understand meh?) else i'd yakked through the night.. the food was okay, i ordered a pretty spicy dish.. ate a pappadum, ginger nan, madras chicken and coke.. to my horror that costed 10 pounds, half of what remained in my wallet.. =( i'm facing a $ crisis right now - i've been making 50p sandwiches for lunch everyday to save $$ =P

then right after the social, the gals wanted to go clubbing, and they pulled the guys with them.. yes, it's not the other way round - the GALS were the enthu ones, and the guys were the reluctant ones.. so i was pushed and dragged by gals to the club, but in the end they relented (thank goodness!) at the entrance of the club and so i came back to my room..

after spending so much time in a badminton club, it never occured to me that a sports club can be that happening..

again, if you can't stand people haolianing, please siam..

the previous week's e & b essay topic was on sexual selection in humans.. so i happily wrote lame stuff for it.. for eg i said that as much as we want to believe in romantic stories, we are still subconsciously affected by sexual selection blah blah blah.. i quoted romantic examples such as romeo and juliet, and adam and eve.. see how lame i can get?

but in the end, i got another A+ =PpPPPP

my supervisor wrote, "...i really enjoy reading your work. you have covered all the points in a refreshing way and i totally agree on your stance on human sexual selection.."

she then proceeded to add more points abt human sexual selection in humans, for eg:

• production of different types of sperm in males - if the males perceive their mate as high-risk (eg if he is going to work in some ulu place and not come back often), he will produce a high conc of blocking sperm in order to prevent some other males from fertilizing his wife.. on the other hand, if a guy is having a one-night stand, his sperm would have high conc of fast swimming sperms, in order to.. spread his genes =)
• human males are blessed (or cursed?) with longer manhoods compared to some other primates.. being pretty promiscuous, males who can get his sperm far deeper into the cervix will stand a higher chance of getting his sperm fertilizing the egg.. and at the same time squeezing out (literally) his competitor's (or competitors') sperm.. more details in http://human-nature.com/ep/articles/ep021223.html (those under 18: please exercise self-restraint on certain portions of human biology =P)
• females have orgasms more easily if their partner's face is symmetrical (sigh, next time i'll carry a mirror in my bag)
• there was an experiment on body odour - male volunteers wore their t-shirts for a few days (eww) so that their t-shirts will have their BO, and female volunteers then sniffed at the t-shirts and choose which BO attracts them best (EWW!!).. but apparently females find males with complementary MHCs (major histocompatibility complex) more attractive - this is beneficial to their offspring as they would have a larger set of MHCs, thus having a stronger immune system.. cool right =)
• the most stable marriages come from males and females who are comparable in wealth, status, self-image, chio-ness, IQ (contentious..) etc.. the interesting part of this research wasn't its conclusion, but the method of obtaining the data - they asked volunteers to rank themselves, and then they were subsequently ranked by someone else.. they found out that females usually give more honest answers, but males tend to over-rank themselves.. i wonder why =PpP

interesting right? i really cannot understand why some people prefer taking physio over e & b.. =)

i hate my wednesdays - yes in total i have only 4 hours of lessons, but it's spaced out in such a way that i end at 5 =( why can't everything just stack together and lemme rot back home at say 2pm?

my wednesday will start of with a lecture at ten am.. this is so different from jc when i have to force myself to crawl down from my bed at 7pm latest.. now i can basically sleep until 9.20am and still be able to reach my lt in time, but the bad thing is that i always succumb to the pleasure of lying under my warm duvet and waste a lot of time lounging in bed..

and after one hour of lects, i have to wait 2 more hours for my maths supervision.. den wait another hour after maths to go to french, which starts at 3pm and ends at 5pm..

which reminds me i have only ten mins to cycle down to that place.. die liao!