Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme
Out of the doubt that fills my mind.
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TRICK OR TREAT Saturday, October 31, 2009 HAPPY HALLOWEEN! i'm slightly early according to US time but it is halloween in singapore so there. i got all the tricks as usual, nothing surprising. i cant wait for the treat come december so i'm just waiting very impatiently. anyways, school has been insane. i'm still not catching up but the workload just keeps piling. i'm making it sound like i have tons of homework when i really don't. just lots of reading to keep up with lectures and prepare for the final which isnt till another month and a half. but midterms keep me busy too. oh why am i talking about school again? well, nothing really special this halloween. nothing planned. sad that i leave away from campus or it's be more exciting and you wouldnt be reading a boring post. there was a couple of people dressed up in class today but i suppose it'd be cooler tomorrow when its the actual day. the funniest i've seen so far was a person dressed up in a p*nis and lube and condom. they were walking around sproul plaza passing out condoms. quite a sight really. alright im getting bored typing this out myself. nothing happening so yeah. i miss texas, well not the place itself but more the week spent there. heading off to skyline next fri to prepare for eyh. gonna do a workshop on finding a cure in the rainforest. something like that. sounds exciting. and it'll be my third year doing eyh :) for now, time to hit the sheets. i'll try to come up with something more exciting next timev :P sacnas 2009 Sunday, October 25, 2009  group picture on the first official day. me and my beloved poster on presentation day hallway when you walk into the room. how awesome is that. end of the hallway leads you to the beds. comfy comfy beds which i hardly slept in thanks to the late nights.  my abstract is published on page 156! my first publication! i've lugged home 5 copies. had to leave 1 behind in the hotel. around dealey plaza  fair park station-where the texas state fair was. state fair  saw this horse carriage. love the horse. i want to ride in one...  another one. i think the brown one is prettier  this advertisement was everywhere. i would have gotton one if i had passed by 7-11  our steak with onion rings and mash. so so good. the menu bull head in the restaurant  some sort of castle looking place (typed a while ago....) I’m currently at Starbucks waiting for my 12.30pm history class to start with my Grande green tea latte and lemon pound cake which I just devoured. What a great way to start off another crazy day. I don’t know why but I just lost all my motivation to study after coming back from texas. Then again, it could be because I’m just so overwhelmed. I’m so behind in my classes I have no idea how it is even possible to catch up. But somehow, it must be done since I have another endocrinology midterm next Tuesday. Oh when will this cycle ever stop? To compare, I don’t think I ever felt this way before when I was in skyline. Not this overwhelmed at least. Never. But then again, as I always say, it was skyline, this tiny little community college where everything was easier. For now, I guess I’ll just have to suck it up and get through this other round of midterm. Anyways, I did not plan to start out this post whining about school but rather to blog about SACNAS, the best 5 days I’ve had in a while. Basically, SACNAS /” SOC-NAS” is a science conference where students, undergraduates and graduates present their scientific research that they did. It’s supposedly for minority groups like the Chicanos and Native Americans but there’s no specific rule that forbid other ethnicities from joining. So skyline happily sent at least 10 Asians and there, we felt like we were the minority instead. It was pretty funny actually. So anyways, I’m just going to do a little mini recap. I have to type this down only because I had an awesome time. I’m sure everyone did. We bonded so much during all the late nights and crazy sessions. Wednesday October 14: Left for the airport at around 8 since my flight was at 10.30am. Saw a couple of others who were at the airport for the earlier flight at 9am. So apparently, I was actually very early. Well, I expected there to be a much longer line since it was in the morning which means busy airports. Still, it’s always better to be early than late. Sat around and talked to matt who was on the same flight and slowly others started to come too. Got on the plane and sat through the 3 hour journey. Surprisingly not as torturous as the last time I went to Texas. Arrived around 4ish since our flight was slightly delayed. Waited for baggage and caught the shuttle that was arranged specially for us travel scholarship people to get to the Sheraton hotel where we lived, sleep and breathed. Checked in the hotel and got to our rooms. We were scattered all over the place. Central and north towers and on different levels too. But it was alright. Only Ash and Nav were put in the same room so their room 2950 became the party room. I was in 2949 so it was very convenient for me to go over whenever I wanted to. Haha. The room was humongous. There’s a hallway when you walk into the room and then the 2 queen sized bed and around the corner was a small bar and the bathroom. I expected it to be much smaller. Some other lucky few peeps even got a suite. So in addition to the normal room, they had a living room. We were starving when we got to Dallas. Pity the few who got to dallas earlier than us and had to wait. So we unpacked, washed up and left to hunt for food. Went to this place (don’t remember the name) and I ordered soup. Somehow I was hungry but nothing seemed that appetizing. Sadly, the soup (potato bacon) was disappointing. It was salty beyond salty. But, we had fun during dinner with all the gossip and laughing. Headed to 2950 after. There were alcohol involved of course and it was just hilarious. With alcohol, there got to be drunk-ness. The rest is pretty self-explanatory. All I really remember actually is the gossiping. We just went on and on and on about the different professors. This is what happens when you put college students together. Got pretty late and people started leaving but we weren’t getting any quieter. Oh, we had our very own DJ, Ash. I believe it was already 2am when people started leaving. And they told us there were security people walking around so we decided to end the party somewhat. Went back to my room and finally met my roommate. Unfortunately, she barely spoke English which was quite appalling and annoying at the same time. Not that I look down on people who can’t speak English, but to not even be able to comprehend and start up a conversation, that’s pretty horrific. Plus, it’s not like she didn’t have an education. What made me say this is from what she asked me the next morning. So she got up before I did and used the bathroom. When she came out, I went in to wash up and she started asking me something in Spanish, which of course I couldn’t understand. Turns out she was asking me how to turn on the showerhead. I somewhat understood bits and pieces and told her to show me instead and I walked to the bathroom where she pointed to the showerhead. It felt almost as though I was talking to a little kid. I mean, seriously now, to not be able to ask a simple question in English, that’s pretty sad. So the whole trip through, we barely talked. Not like I saw her often anyways. I always got out early and went back late due to all the partying. Plus, when I tried to start a conversation and asked which school or major she was studying, all she did was smile -_- so obviously I gave up. Thursday October 15: Got up and went for breakfast. Surprisingly I could wake up even without much sleep. That being said, Texas is 2 hours ahead too. So waking up at 8 meant waking up at 6am in S.F. I barely wake up at 7am usually for school. Breakfast was horrid, definitely not appetizing. I sure did not eat a lot when I was there. But what can you expect from caterers especially when thousands of people are waiting to be served. Did a little bit of studying after in the study rooms and barely got through a whole chapter of biochemistry. Had to meet dr. case outside the room where we would be having dinner at 3.45 so we could all sit together. We had a huge group with us so we got split into 2 tables. During dinner, there were key note speakers which basically talked us to sleep. Even case wasn’t exactly paying attention. So when we asked her later if she was napping since her eyes were closed, she replied that she didn’t need her eyes to listen. Lol. She really is something else outside of class. After that, we decided to head over to 2950 again so those of us who were going to present our research tomorrow could practice. I’m glad I sort of practiced before I left so I had some sort of “script” at hand. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure I would be panicking. Got others to ask us questions as though they were the judges so we could practice and get to know our research better. It was really helpful. After we all went through a round of practice, we decided to head down to the “bar” in the lobby since we heard there was karaoke. Unfortunately, the two rooms were full. We asked the people inside if they were going to be done anytime soon but instead, they invited us to join them instead. By then, they were already pretty drunk and it was weird being around them. I left soon after since I couldn’t stand the drunked-ness, especially since they were people we didn’t know. Turned in at around 2am? Wasn’t the greatest idea since presentation day was the next day. Friday October 16 Set up my poster at 7am. Huge exhibit hall. There were rows and rows of exhibitors and poster presenters. I was at aisle 1600. Got shervin to help me since the poster was pretty big and my poster was right next to derricks too. When all of us got our posters up, we started to walk around and looked at the other posters. Throughout the whole walk, we were criticizing the other posters. Some posters were huge (didn’t fit the board), too many words, too plain, ugly pictures…etc. we were pretty mean. Thanks to case, we had pretty posters. After all, she is the expert. We had pretty backgrounds for ours and awesome clear pictures. We kept praising ourselves. Lol. Headed off to breakfast after. Met leslie, a representive from Johns Hopkins university and she gave us a lot of information about the grad school and medical school. It is one school I do want to go to but I’m not a pre med student so there’s no way im even going to try. I think my previous dermatologist was from Johns Hopkins. But anyways, after breakfast, we kinda headed off to do our own stuff. I went back to my room, studied a little, practiced some more and napped. Went for lunch and then walked around the exhibit hall when it opened. Tons of schools were there offering information about their schools. But since, we had to present, I didn’t walk around and talked to them that much. Left that for the next day instead. Got to our posters pretty early and I saw a judge looking at my poster. Ash told me to walk up to her and introduce myself, taking the initiative so maybe I could get some plus points. So we just talked and she asked mainly about my goals and all. Really got me to think somewhat. Since it wasn’t the exact judging time yet, she said she’d come back later and listen to me present. Got pretty nerve wrecking when the whole thing started. We didn’t get judged immediately. But there were passer bys who came by and asked questions. The first judge I got was mean. I talked about my research and he jumped in a few times to ask questions which I was fine with but towards the end, he kept going back to a question that I said I don’t know and he was stumped too. And he was like, you would think that snails have antibacterial properties, almost in a way like there’s no point in doing this research. Well, if there was, I wouldn’t be having so much trouble finding articles in the beginning. I forgot what I replied but yeah, I probably lost points from him. Plus, he was the first judge or person I talked to so I was nervous and not as prepared. It definitely got better after though. Towards the middle, I just had person after person come up to me. It became almost monotonous since I kept repeating myself somewhat. It was good though since I got the hang of it but I just got so thirsty by the end of it. And my back was aching so much too. Me and derrick were like we feel so old. The guy who was in charge of a booth opposite us was kind enough to offer us his chair but we couldn’t accept his kind offer since we weren’t suppose to be sitting-not professional. Wearing heels throughout killed me too. Well, it actually already did from the day before. My feet were pretty much dead by the end of the conference. I haven’t worn heels for so long or so many days in row before. Tons of blisters resulted from the conference! After two and a half hours of talking, we were done. What we came for was over. It was a relief but at the same time kind of sad since it marked the end of our research. Case told us to meet after so we could go for dinner and sit together. We just felt like we ate so many times every day. It’s like breakfast at seven, lunch at twelve, dinner at 5, supper at who knows when. We felt like pigs. But I know I got hungry often since I don’t eat much at the non appetizing meals. Sat through an hour of talks again. I was mainly just messaging James throughout who was sitting at the other table. Plus, he was sitting beside case too. I wouldn’t be brave enough to do that if I were sitting beside her. Went upstairs to change and all after dinner so we could hang out at night. Some of them still had to practice since their presentation was the next day. There was some unhappiness that happened that night due to anchi’s ridiculous partner but what’s a conference/trip without some drama? Still, it gave us some pretty good laughs. Ordered Chinese food delivery and that was just hilarious. It’s this restaurant(?) that delivers till 4am so since we got hungry, we decided to give it a go. Like I’ve mentioned, about half of us were Chinese, so duh, Chinese food. got a couple of dishes including chow mein which was the highlight. So when all the food came, we didn’t see any chow mein so we called them and surprisingly they were either 1. Stupid or 2. The customer is always right so they just said they’d deliver it again with no extra fee or infact, they didn’t even bother to ask any questions whatsoever. So we waited and they came with another order. But, instead of chow mein we got rice, which was the same thing as one of the other items they delivered earlier. So we called again and we’re like, we ordered chow mein, not rice. So they came by, no extra charge again, and guess what, it was the exact same order again, rice. So apparently, chow mein = rice in dallas. ???!!!!! we were all like wth. So much for calling and ordering chow mein. In the end, we ended up with 4 bowls of rice. We did feel kind of bad for those guys though. But seriously, what’s so hard about chow mein. Oh wells, it just made our night. Left their room and headed over to james room- he had a suite. It was awkward. I shan’t even elaborate. I thought it would be clear and over by now. It has been a couple of months but apparently, that’s not so true. I don’t know. Whatever. Headed back to my room around 1 and slept. Saturday October 17 Got up around 7. Don’t know why I got up so early even though I didn’t have to set up poster or do anything. But since I was up, went downstairs. Some of them were putting their posters up already. Went to breakfast with anchi and waited for the exhibit hall to open so I could browse through the different schools and get more information about internships and stuff. I desperately need more experience, especially veterinary wise. Went to most of the booths I wanted to go to-princeton, johns Hopkins, Columbia, cornell…etc. didn’t get as much free stuff as I wanted to though. Haha. Bought a sacnas shirt. I think I walked up and down the aisles quite a few times to make sure I visited all the booths that I wanted to that the people were looking as though I was lost or something. Or maybe it’s just my imagination. Met up with Stephen for a bit and he actually thought I went to Davis. Haha. Not surprising since that’s somewhat the default I suppose. Shrugs. But hey, it’s a big difference from Berkeley okay. I’ll leave davis veterinary school for later, but now, I’m a bear. When the whole thing was over, met up with case and the whole group again for lunch. There was some sort of drama again as usual. Decided to head out after to explore texas and this is where the adventure begins and probably the highlight. So we wanted to go to dealey plaza, where kennedy was assassinated but before we got there, we spent nearly 2 hours travelling on dart back and forth since we were given wrong directions again and again. Took dart and headed off to the ‘left’ direction since we were told the dart would go around. There were tons of people that day since there was a game between texas and Oklahoma. Every one was basically wearing either red or orange so we clearly were tourists. The train did turn around, it changed direction. So instead of the green line, it changed to the red line. So we had to get off and took another train. Somehow we ended up at the texas state fair. Huge huge event. Was quite pricey though and we only had about 2 hours to spare so it wasn’t worth it and the queue was awfully long as well. Decided to head back and finally found our way to dealey plaza. While walking there, we passed by a couple of restaurants and you can’t go to texas without having steak or barbeque so we went to hunt for a place to eat since we thought dinner wasn’t going to be appetizing again. But we were wrong, they actually served us steak for dinner. But anyway, we found a place and me and pearl shared a meal. Yum yum. Was so good. The onion rings were so good but I didn’t want my breath to stink so I skipped on that. Of course, unsurprisingly, there was a huge drama. Pam, anchi’s horrid partner left her clique somehow and was lost so her poor clique had to go look for her and didn’t join us to eat. Yeah, we were divided into 2 cliques. Well, more, but the others were back in the hotel or somewhere else. We never quite hung out with them anyways. We rushed the waiter so much since we were really pressed for time. We had to meet case at 5.45 for dinner (we just had to go even if we weren’t gonna eat) and by the time we got our food, it was already 5. plus, we had to dart back too. We practically gobbled our food. we saw the other clique at the station and they told us they lost pam again. She got lost twice! How in the world do you go missing two times??!! So we just left them there since we didn’t want to be late. Selfish I know but seriously now, that was pretty ridiculous. We all ostracized her anyways. Ran back to the hotel since we only had 10 minutes left to change and meet up. I know my roomie must be like what the hell is wrong with her since I went in, ran to the bathroom to change, grabbed my purse and left without saying anything. Turned out everyone else was slightly late so we didn’t have to rush that much after all. Still, it was pretty fun-ny. Im sure through all that bitching and laughs, we bonded so that was nice. I didn’t touch my food at dinner at all but i ended up having all my plates cleared. Case took my salad (we were served salad at every meal) and shervin got my steak. Of course, I got laughed at. Awards ceremony: none of us won anything which got us pretty disappointed. So by the end of it, we were gloomy and case got upset with us. We shouldn’t have been since winning was not the point. The point was that we all got our first publication and we should have been proud of ourselves. So she left. Took a couple of pictures outside and case called asking if we wanted to go out. She led us to this place (turns out to be her hotel) which was beyond spectacular. It was like a lounge bar with a pool and beds. She bought us each a drink and we basically partied there. The view and ambience was just omg. Totally did not expect her to bring us there. People got a little tipsy and drunk. By the end of it, it got pretty chaotic and crazy. People I didn’t think would smoke were asking for cigarettes and I got quite shocked and disappointed. I also knew it was over for him. ( I swore I would never consider anyone who smokes). Got back to the hotel, people fell over a fence, stepped on a nail, basically a bloody walk back to the hotel. Me and pearl were just limping behind. We were still in our heels. Got back and I packed up and showered. It was so hard to pack all my stuff back. I carried 5 abstract books back and a bunch of brochures and tote bags taken from the exhibit hall. So much for getting free stuff. Somehow I managed to stuff everything in, without destroying my baggage. Headed over to 2950 since we were going to pull an all nighter. Some of them had flights at 9 which meant they had to leave at 6 (the shuttles ran every hour) and by the time we got back from the lounge, it was already 1ish so there wasn’t any point in sleeping. Played movie charades for 4 hours. It was very entertaining indeed. Boys vs girls. We were all pretty much dying by the time it was 5 and some of them still had to pack. Also ordered some Chinese food from that chow mein = rice delivery place but made sure we didn’t order noodles this time. My flight was at 10.20am but me and matt decided to try to go on the earlier flight instead. We were up anyways and were dying to get some sleep. Getting back earlier just meant we could go home and sleep. Sunday October 18 Checked out of the hotel and took the shuttle to the airport. my bags were killing my back. Got on standby and the person told us that there was a good chance we would get on which was good and we did. Case was on the same flight as us too. Arrived at around 11 and we said our goodbyes. It was sad for me though cos I knew we got to know each other better during the trip but it was going to be a long time before I would see them again or even never. They all go to skyline still so yeah. (update: I’d be doing EYH next year and probably will be working with some of them so im excited and happy. I know I cant actually leave skyline even though I’ve graduated) went to have pho. Finally some edible good food. got home, unpacked, showered, checked my mails (damn, ive got jury duty! Urgh) and slept. My bro was here too but I was too tired to entertain him. Slept for a good 3 hours(I actually like hotels if I don’t have trouble sleeping. The big beds and nice bathrooms and room service…) Had dinner and slept again. Bummer I had school the next day. Good thing homework is a thing of the past. The only homework we have now is midterms/exams and papers. Problem sets if we want to do them but don’t have to turn them in. Well, that’s basically it about my trip. long long post. It’s actually been a week already since I’ve got back and I do miss it a lot. It was a lot of fun. The company was great, so was the experience. I definitely want to go again next year- it’s in Anaheim, florida (Disneyland!) who could say no to that. So I must somehow find a way to get to that. For now, its back to reality and it sucks. Im so behind. Theres a lot more I want to type but I think its time to go to bed. back from dallas Monday, October 19, 2009 i'm sooo sleepy right now my eyes cant stay open any longer so i'll just blog again later, hopefully, if i dont end up sleeping till tomorrow morning. basically, i didnt sleep at all for the past 30 hours. we pulled an all nighter. no, not studying but playing roughly 4 hours of movie charades and ordering chinese food to the hotel room. lol. update with pictures later... life's short as it is Wednesday, October 07, 2009 i'm sorry i wont be able to send you off. i havent seen u in over a year now and it feels like eternity, you've changed so much. though you might not remember what we talked about the last time we met, just remember i love you. i'll visit you soon, i promise. midterms! Monday, October 05, 2009 busy busy busy. trying to cram 9 chapters before tuesday night (why are my midterms at night?!!) trying to finish my history paper that due on the same day too. for the first time, i m actually doing my paper a few days of before (ie not monday night) update after crazy tuesday. then off to get my poster on wed. cant wait to see how it'll turn out. off to texas the week after. oh why do i need to have midterms? |
About a girl
when i put on a show.  nine-teen 100790 ilovepupsndogs @hotmail.com dogs! -i wish upon the star- more dogs=) hamsters cats a sack of gummy bears get into UC Berkeley travel around the world Bark
cause i cannot hear you. Cbox
Music & lyrics
find a way back into love. falling in love. jaime marlene huihui junhao kelly jervenne huiping crystal felicia diana
Layouts & credits
my thanks. Editor: shanggg!rong Basecodes: 1, 2, 3 Photobucket & DaFont
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