my cdb (cell and developmental biology) supervisor's trying to get us to find scientific papers on our own, but for this week, he suggested papers for us to read, and one of them was:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/25/9512

and a brief look through the citation reveals that two of the authors are from a*'s imre. wow. and after reading the abstract, i must say that this work is rather impressive. the lecturer had just discussed this topic today, and i must say that this paper did address one of the big question marks in nuclear transport.

cool.

anw back to my essay writing, am tempted to sleep now and wake up early to write my essay..

if u're wondering what we do to our synthesised crystals, we subject it to IR spectroscopy to deduce the functional groups in the molecules.. last week, i got a really chio IR.. once i hand up my work, i dun get to see this for a year, so i'll just post it for the fun of it haha =)

what makes a good spectra? one that doesn't have stray peaks, and also the peaks (that jut downwards) are really deep.. and i think this spectra fulfills both criteria hahahaa.

off to write an essay.. dun think i can sleep before 2am haha.

after making numerous odd requests to the various offices in my college, i have arrived at the conclusion that:

- the college office (which handles college bills and other odd requests) is frightneningly efficient. 6 minutes after sending in a request to change my university cards (cos they are !@#$ badly faded), i got a reply saying that my request would be forwarded to the current person-in-charge of any card-related matters.

- the domestic office (takes care of any room-related stuff) is rather efficient too. when i moved in, i sent in a request for an oven (cos the kitchen in my side is absolutely barren) in the morning, and the clerk of works came down to check it out personally a few hours later. wow. but on the downside, i was informed that the oven will only come.. in dec -_____-". but anw for now the prob is solved, cos my neighbour brought her personal microwave oven, and doesn't mind me using it =D

- the conference office (takes care of booking of common rooms, conferences and.. weddings) seems to be operating on a different level.. i needed to book a common room to accomodate the 27-strong visitor contingent that came for the nat sci dinner, and i had to continually email them to ask them about the progress. thankfully, it was sorted out the day before the cookout was organised. pretty efficient at times, but at times i had to paiseh-ly send an email asking whether the previous one got lost or not. haha.

on a general level, the efficiency of my college puts large corporations to shame - hsbc for one. haha this is my personal favourite grouse - who can bear the wait of 3 weeks for a student account to be set up!? if i had 5k pounds, i'd have opened an account in other banks (cos one of them needs 5k to open a student account; another needs me to maintain 2k in my account, else they'd levy a 5 pound charge per month). sigh, if i was only richer..

totally random post, i know =)

randomly discovered a few songs that i've listened and enjoyed before, but just didn't know the names of the songs.. but after randomly downloading sampling a few songs from dc somewhere, i discovered that some songs were those i've always wanted to listened to!

first of all is lene marlin's "sitting down here". think i heard it when i was in sec sch when it was the theme song of some advert..

and the other cheesy song is "happy" by alexia.. it goes like this: "happy, sha la la, it's so nice to be happy.." and repeated countless times, but to me it's nice nonetheless, heh =)

since we're on the topic of songs, sidetracking abit - utada hikaru's "ultra blue" album is worth a listen to. yes, i don't know what she's singing about, but to heck with lyrics, i like the tune and her singing! this album is much much better than her previous "exodus"! if the title of her previous album hinted at her departing from her usual style, i'm glad to hear that she's back singing what she's best at =D

sch terms' started for 2 wks already, can't believe how tired i already feel!

the first week was more like a social week, attended cumas and cumsa squashes, cooked for kids (twice) and attended a delicious dinner courtesy of my generous scholarship organization =P

work started pouring in the second week - haven't penned any essays since june, so i had to overcome the urge of writing in conversational english (like what i'm doing now) and adopt a serious biologist tone. speaking about work, i really do feel that the lectures this year are of a much higher level than that of last year.. lectures about dna and the nucleus are rather cheem, and incorporates a lot of recent research.. they even want us to read through journals (haiz, what a chore) cos spoonfeeding's going to end real soon ><

i'm now going to labs 4 times a week (2 more than last year), and they do take up a lot of time.. although i'm taking one less subject this year, i still feel that i had more free time last year - heard from a senior that he has a very slacky timetable for his third year specialization, hope it applies to me next year as well haha =)

hmm can smell pizza from the oven in my kitchen, will makan now haha.

i have a habit of spinning pens during lectures, and occassionally they do drop on the ground, and some even roll to the seat in front of me..

that happened to my g1 pen today, and being a *cough* gentleman, i decided to get my pen after the lecture.. and proceeded to forget all about it when my lecture ended.

now i have abt 25 g1 refills.. without a pen to refill it with. i have another lect in the same place in two days' time, hope my pen sits tight till i find it ><

EDIT: found it already. yayness :D

had a really really busy week - work's starting to pour in, while lectures are getting cheemer and cheemer. activities are also in full swing - there's no respite for returning students i guess..

anyway, as to welcome the new bunch of nat scis, i organised a mass cookout - it was my first time doing such a mega thing, it's good that i've learnt the procedures of booking a common room in magd (which included the continual email pestering of the person in charge of it), and that i shld never underestimate the amount of stuff to cook for 28 hungry people.. asking every second year to cook stuff with a portion size of 3 pple was a mistake, the correct figure should be about 10. (warning: maths. in one dinner, one person cooking for himself would cook like 3 dishes (of portion size 1), so if one wants to cook for 3 pple, one must cook one dish of portion size 9).

i had a pot of leftover rice, and as i didn't want to waste 5 cups worth of rice, i cooked fried rice (without any packet sauces) and treated 4 of my "kids".. i had to split the cooking into two batches cos of the sheer volume of the rice.. but in the end, it was edible enough to be completely finished by the 5 of us =P

need to catch up on sleep - tomorrow's gonna be a busy mugging day to complete 2 essays due on tue. *yawn*

during our chemistry b (aka organic) lecture today, the lecturer used sildenafil (more commonly known as viagra) to teach us about some key organic reactions..

.. and then he proudly declared that the invention was very much a cambridge thing - it was synthesised in the chemistry department in camb..

no wonder there's a "pfizer lecture theatre" here la.. probably to thank camb for their commercially-successful invention =)

note: i checked out wikipedia about it, but apparently it doesn't tally what my lecturer said.. hmmmmmmmmmm

today was a rather !@#$% day for me - not only i forgot to set my alarm clock (i wound the metal thingy to the correct time, but i forgot to pull the top plastic thingy up), i ended up forgetting that i had to meet my chem supervisor in my haste to go to the next lecture (cdb).

haiz.

although i've been back for a week, it was only until today that i finally decided to do something about my bike. my bike tyres were quite flat, as it hasn't been used for quite some time (its tyres were last pumped in.. february).

i borrowed the bicycle pump from the porter's lodge, and proceeded to unscrew the cap that sheathes the valve.. and i was faced with a rather odd valve, which looks like this:



it looked weird cos it was the first time i was dealing with this kind of valve, and at that time, i didn't know i was dealing with a different kind of valve. i stupidly unscrewed the top, and thus succeeded in deflating my tyre even more - it's now completely flat. i wasn't able to fit the bicycle pump over the valve after repeated tries, and i gave up after it.

that was when i went back to my room and did a google search about bicycle valves.. and found that there were actually two kinds of valves. the other one looks like this:



this is called the schrader valve (the previous one is a presta valve), the one which i think is more commonly found. no wonder the pump couldn't fit over the valve! took me 10 mins to figure it out.. grr.

now really dunno what to do with my flat tyre.. think i'll go buy a pump that fits over a presta valve..