term is halfway through, and it's amazing how in 3 weeks one can accumulate as much a workload as i have. i'm so behind in reading snell that yesterday before prelab i knew NO cranial nerves whatsover. and i'm sure my lack of knowledge totally enhanced my lab experience of skillfully avoiding damian's dirty gloves (which were precariously near my face throughout raj's prosection lec) and inhaling Cadaver Juice. i swear, i'm not the only one who noticed that the brains have a different smell altogher. they're like in a class of their own =p i went out after that and i couldn't help but think that people were giving me dirty looks everywhere i went because my clothes just smelt so bad.

on tuesday i have to make this stupid FRS presentation on the effect of hypnosis as an analgesic in the procedure of lumbar punctures. i don't even know what friggin hypnosis is! and my groupmates and i just spent our last working day stoning on the coffee grounds sofa, and writing things like "Methodology: Do Tests And Confirm That They Are True". we're screwed!

the other thing is that i've rediscovered a love for rainbow cakes. it's so fun to peel them layer by layer especially the colourful ones! i don't understand why people still make white layers though. don't they know it's not a colour of the rainbow????

it's almost 1 in the morning, i have endless anat work to do before prac tmr, but all i can think of is: CHEESECAKE. compulsively, i've been trawling for perfect cheesecake pics, only to find a multitude of blasphemous entries under google images, and a few gastric-juice-stimulating ones. why i'm torturing myself like this is entirely unknown to me :( nonetheless, to make the effort of at least some use:






and finally, the one we've all been waiting for... Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf's Triple Decker Cheesecake!

lately i have been beginning to think that i might be a much sicker child than i always believed, and i blame this directly on all the lectures we've been having in school.

for instance, i am POSITIVE that i have a hypersensitive nose which causes me to start sneezing everytime i enter the LT. the only other explanation is that it could be a nervous allergy induced by the thought of mental work, which come to think of it, might also be highly possible.
then, i suspect i might have hypothyroid because i have like the metabolism of a hibernating mouse. and also, i might have been deficient in growth hormone when i was a growing kid, which explains why i am now stunted for life. oh, and finally, i might be mildly autistic.

i don't know why all this comes as a surprise to me, since i come from a family of dysfunctional people. my sister sings her lungs out till she tires herself to sleep every night; my mom is so uptight and compulsively overpunctual that she arrives 15-30 minutes early for almost everything except picking me up from school, which is only because she hates to have to wait for her daughter like a maid; and my dad, at his ripe old age, still frequently sneaks bags of junk food up to the attic in order to avoid detection from the mom.

i bet all this will have some kind of permanent psychological effect on me later on in life.

mark helped arrange a little farewell dinner for iris yesterday at his favourite restaurant of all time: tsubaki. the reason the guys love it is cos there's this ala carte buffet which has like all kinds of jap food, and so they just go and eat and eat and eat until they have to go home. in order to fully abuse the buffet, they actually try to starve themselves the whole day, which me and iris have agreed is ridiculous. i tried it once (the buffet, not the starvation) before with mark and ate till i wanted to burst, so i decided to have kimchi ramen instead last night. if you've never heard of it before, this is what it usually looks like:

Spicy Kimchi Ramen Makes Your Tummy Gassy!

it was spicy and tasty while it lasted, but today it lives on as acne on my face. i don't know why my face is so sensitive to things- if i eat anything heaty or oily i immediately see the effects the next day. it's unfair :(

anyway today i was again supposed to go jogging but you'll never guess what's happened- it's raining! i am totally destined to be flabby for life. sigh!

for those of you who were concerned, my weekend picked up greatly after friday. and it involves the promise of cheesecake and a velvet rose! yay :)

then, on sunday... ARSENAL TOTALLY KICKED ASS!!!! it was like the best win EVER! i can't believe they were 1 down up till the last 10 mins, when van persie scored on a chio pass from henry. then, in the 3rd minute of injury time, henry headed in the winner!!! it was recorded as 90+4 on the table- can you imagine, 90+4?????? omg i was like so happy i couldn't fall asleep after that even though it was past morning and a school day the next day. i think mark was heartbroken though cos man u is his favourite team. oops =p

anyway, i guess this goes to show that no matter how crappy a friday it might be, there's always some reason to TGIF :D oh and i saw this boy in school yesterday with a tshirt saying 'i hate mondays'. that would like totally be my ideal shirt. except i'd also have to get 'i hate tuesdays' and 'i hate wednesdays' and 'i hate thursdays' and then i suppose everyone would think i'm an eternal grouch. but of course that'd only be because they don't know how much i love the weekend! that, and the fact that i am actually a nice person deep down. it's just too bad that people are so superficial!

ok, time to get down to some work now. my new motto is WORK MORE. it includes studying for school stuff and also exercising. you know, as in work OUT. i'm like getting too flabby and too unfit for my own good. the last time i actually went running was so long ago that i can't even remember it, so i dread to think what my cardiopulmonary function has deteriorated to, and how poor my anaerobic threshold is. hah, i learnt that in pbl today :D i told you, i'm getting smart!

toodles ;)

today i've been feeling really down about about some things, and i haven't been able to concentrate on anything. it's like i keep thinking about what i can do about it, and then knowing that i can't really. it feels like drowning in a glass tank while people watch you kick and scream, knowing that they care and yet not enough to save you.

speaking of which, i really hated that scene from the prestige. nobody should have to watch hugh jackson die, especially not over and over again.

oh and for anat today, it was face and scalp. which is like not only gross, but also freaky because many of the cadavers had their eyes half open and faces contorted into painful expressions. for the first time i felt genuinely spooked by the thought of being around the dead bodies, and started thinking about where their spirits were hovering, and particularly prayed they weren't anywhere near the anat hall. if i died and saw a bunch of pipsqueaks molesting my naked body, i would definitely feel totally violated. i wouldn't like it a single bit.

to make things worse, one of the girls (i think maybe hide or olivia) had to point out that the layers of scalp look exactly like chicken. the connection is like sick beyond words and it's ruined my appetite for chicken forever and ever. i think it just might be time to consider going vegetarian. i could be one of those who doesn't eat anything which walks, so then i could still enjoy prawn and fish and stuff. that doesn't sound too bad at all now.

yesterday i watched the finals of So You Think You Can Dance, and felt sad to say goodbye to travis, benji, and heidi. i think benji winning is like the coolest thing ever since he claims he's never been classically trained, but yet everything he does is incredibly tight and well-performed. he's like the criss angel of dance, minus the weird hair and rebelliousness and dashing looks. as for heidi, she was never one of my favourites from the start, but now i've got to admit that she's probably the best female dancer in the competition, and by far the most improved. plus, she has got an AMAZINGLY STRONG BACK which makes all her lifts look effortless even though she's clearly carrying a good amount of her own body weight. she may not be as pretty as natalie, but she sure can dance.



i never cared much for donyelle, because she never points or finishes her turns properly, and that's just ungraceful. in fact, that's exactly the reason why i never cared much for hip hop. anyway, the show has inspired me to take proper dancing classes again. everytime i look back on the years i spent in gym and ballet, i feel regret that i didn't commit enough of myself to either of them to be proud of anything i did. i always sorta muddled my way through trainings, especially when it became apparent that catching flying things is NOT one of my strong points. i think if i'd taken dance from the start instead of rhythmic gym, i'd have enjoyed and got a lot more out of it, as compared to making mostly panicked scrambles to finish each movement while trying not to let anything drop or touch the floor. i was really quite useless as a gymnast, haha. anyway, when i start my salsa and classical jazz, that will not be the case. after all, it's high time i grew up and committed myself to at least one thing that i love, and focus on doing it well for a change.

speaking of dance, channel 5 will be airing The Dance Floor soon, which is like a cheapskate local version of So You Think You Can Dance. i predict it will suck so much that it will ruin everybody's impression of singaporean dancers, which is not that great to start with. such a pity really, that dance will go down the same road that debate has with the other new channel 5 programme, The Arena. it's like the most phony debate series anyone could think up, complete with nonsense motions and corny titles and taglines. it goes out of the way to prove that debate isn't always a nerdy thing, which is again total rubbish because everyone knows that debaters indeed take great pride in being nerds. who cares if we're uncool, at least we speak well and know lots of things. and i think it's a travesty that loyang beat RI, because the guys were obviously more intelligent and making more sense than any of the whiny and annoying loyang girls. in fact, it just about reveals the screwy judging behind the show, and that is precisely the reason why i shouldn't be blamed for coaching vishal's girls to a loss against uwc. not that i even feel that it's my fault or anything, of course =P

i just followed the link on sarah's blog to generate my random new year's resolution, and you'll never guess what came out:

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Watch more TV. Get your resolution here.

this must be like, the sickest joke ever.

The Nerdy Dr Adam Lockwood

and then 2 years later, when he transformed into michael scofield:

Hello There, Gorgeous

i still, however, believe that he is incredibly charismatic... and hot!

today and yesterday have been spent recovering from the festivities of the past few weeks. i wonder why merrymaking always involves food and alcohol. do we not know of other ways to entertain ourselves? perhaps the reason God invented food was to prevent adam and eve from boring themselves to death in the garden of eden, which would be bad cos then abraham would never get to have children as numerous as the stars, and then you and i would never be born :( that, and the fact that we need nutrients to survive i suppose. the gastrointestinal tract is an amazingly efficient little gizmo when you come to think of it, so it's a good thing God thought of it. plus, imagine if we had to have all our meals intravenously: why would we even need a mouth? would there be a big hole in our face instead or would we just have a super big nose to take up the space? how boggling.

the first effect of the festive feasting is nothing surprising: pimples have invaded my face. this happens inevitably everytime i get to eat chocolate for more than 2 days in a row, plus the devil curries and salsa dips and roasted cashews certainly haven't helped. also, i suspect that cheek kissing when greeting friends/relatives is another secret culprit to my pimply plight (alliteration count = 2!) it's bad enough that you have to plant your lips on a stranger's face, but it's even worse when that fat grimey face reciprocates. this is disgusting and unhygenic. hello, do you know how many germs there are in a foreign secretion like saliva? it's like drooling all over your pillow and then rubbing your face into it while you sleep, except that you're wide awake and it isn't even your drool. ew, SICK! yet another hazardous holiday tradition that ought to be banished from the face of the earth, together with processed fruit cakes and eggnog.

the second effect of the season is that my stomach has shrunk. indeed! it appears that with all the visiting and spreading out of mealtimes, i've become accustomed to eating many little portions of buffet food instead of one great big portion like i normally have to. this adaptation has allowed me to improve on my food sampling skills, which in turned helped me to zone in on the really tasty desserts right from the start and not waste any more time on the lesser offerings. however, the suffering began today when i attempted to wolf down my dinner after a 2 hour long afternoon nap. oh, The Pains of Indigestion. it felt as if my stomach had a life of its own and was just expanding and stretching and bursting against my abdominal wall. it was a most nauseating and uncomfortable situation, mitigated only by the fact that i had access to my bed for the purposes of groaning and rolling. i guess you can't have your cake and eat it too. although, maybe you can have many cakes and eat them too... and endure indigestion later.

oh, and today i had lunch with my mom at the soup spoon in raffles city. i had clam chowder + asian tofu salad. i thought the asian tofu sounded like a funky healthy thing which would work well with my resolution to eat more veges, until i saw that the salad was actually 95% deep-fried tofu and 5% carrots and measly sunflower seeds. i counted there were like 50 cubes of tofu in all, and each was like 4 times the size of a regular dice. i hope it they used organic soy in the process, because otherwise i'd have upped my risk of breast cancer exponentially. incidentally, the soups there are always tasty, although if you don't like chunky creamy soup then you should probably stick to chinese food courts and stuff.

lastly: the donut factory has opened at raffles city! my mom pre-ordered a box of 12 but when she picked it up today they had run out of apple cinnamon. apple is like my 2nd favourite fruit in the world, behind watermelon or mango or longan, depending on the season at NTUC. so i was quite disappointed about that, but luckily the glazed orange donut was surprisingly nice plus according to my sis, so was the peanut butter hazelnut. i tried the glazed chocolate fudgey one too, but i was totally grossed out when i bit the middle and discovered that they had filled the donut hole with fudge. this is a perversion of donuts! people eat donuts because they obviously like the taste of dough, and if they wanted the taste of chocolate, they'd be eating a chocolate cake instead. d'oh! nevertheless, these have got to be the prettiest donuts i've ever seen:



Yummy Yummy Yummy I've Got Love In My Tummy

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

wow, it certainly seems like 2007 has sneaked up on me like a thief in the night, robbing me once more of my youth and vitality. i am indeed growing old, and i like it not!

since the new year is a time for new resolutions, i suppose i'll join the other 3/4 of singaporeans who are resolving to exercise more in this coming year. unlike them however, i say this without hope or eagerness, for i know that this is one resolution which will never be fulfilled. every year without fail i get lazier and lazier, i eat more and more, and sleep longer and longer after meals. it seems like my only chance for a healthy lifestyle would be to shop more (exercise!) and eat more organic veggies. eventually all the veggies will wash the toxins out of my body and i will be restored to good health again.

also, i have decided that it's time to start dealing with my many fears. the other day mark and i were talking about certain phobias and he said that he worries about how fearful i am of so many things. while i find this very touching, i also think it is a sign that i should stop being such a big fat baby. and thus, in the spirit of the new year, i'm going to list down all my fears! this will be helpful because everyone knows that acceptance is key to overcoming problems. therefore:

My Fears:

1. lizards, especially FAT BLACK lizards and ALBINO lizards and lizards with stripey tails
2. dust and hairballs
3. bodily harm due to an accident
4. terminal illness
5. fighting in a war
6. bombs
7. shark attacks
8. swimming in deep oceans
9. fires, including flames from bunsen burners
10. dogs, especially those which bite/lick

many nights i go to sleep and pray that God will keep me safe from lizards crawling on me. when i was young i stepped on a lizard in the kitchen and it squirmed beneath my bare foot for a full half minute as i just froze and screamed my lungs out. since then, i have lived in fear. and then of course i also pray for peace and health, which are like the 2 smartest things to pray for when you come to think of it, because they kinda encompass almost everything.

well goodnight then, and a good year ahead!