pop =]

Woah. Long time no blog D:



Post 16 of 2011 =]

"A smile is the best makeup"
-Random place in Japan

Listening to: Flathead - The Fratellis

A youtubeful post

So today is last week of Uni before midsem break, and also my last week of the exercise thing hopefully!! ^^ Have been quite consistent with it, doing it in the morning, except on Wednesdays because of the 8am start =-=

Anyhoo I've recently (ok not recently but this is the first time I've remembered to do it) found out how to embed youtube videos properly! Finally a better way to convert you guys with my music!!! xD But before that some....extremely varying videos ^^"


Tankdrift - because it was the first lol video I found this morning =] I thought OJ and Hungy might like it, if noone else ^^



Steve Jobs - This is one of the speeches I have youtubed over the years, and since alot of my friends will be graduating this and next year I thought it is slightly relevant =] Anyway it does have some nice meaningful parts, if you're willing to trawl through it for 15min ahah, also he makes a better case for crashing lectures than I do xD


Lisa - I found this girl online a little while ago, and shes the person I was telling you about last night Elaine ^^
I like her for three reasons:
1: She smiles when she sings, and it always makes me smile too ^^ You know how they say smiles and yawns are catching etc. Oh oh I read something somewhere about your brain 'mirroring' the brain of someone when they do something, for example facial expressions =] Anyway since it makes me smile it cheers me up ^_^
2: She's actually not a bad singer...I think. Hahah I can't say I'm the best judge of singing ability :x
3: I seem to remember clicking around her links and finding a bio-video. From what I recall she moved from California to Japan to pursue her love of singing. I'm not sure why Japan, maybe a side dream or something ^^" Anyhoo I kind of admire her for having the guts to go and do something like that for what she thinks she wants =]

*I'll put a footnote here to remind me to talk about optimism next time*

Post 15 of 2011 =]

“There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self."
Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963) (Brave New World Guy)

Listening to: Your Song - Elton John

Check in

So I said I'd get back to you guys about my attempt to do that pushups/situps program. It's been about 2 weeks now, today was Day 1 Week 3 and I'm happy to say I've been keeping to to schedule pretty well ^_^ Only two more weeks to go =]

Yesterday was a day of uberfail for me =[ Well, it started off pretty well, with me waking up at 5.30am to see if I could/go for a run. Btw it was also an initial trial for the 3mile in 18min run thing, I got 26min hahaha >< It equates to just pass on the grading scale =.=" Anyhoo after that went out and ended up eating lunch at Nandos. Do you think the sauce hotness varies between establishments? I swear I couldn't take hot flavour in Melbourne but here it's like =\ Maybe it's just because everyone else around was like from Malaysia/Singapore/Indonesia and they were making fun of the 'extra hot' flavour lol.

After that I went home and my day of fail began. I spent about an hour shortening my uni office pants, which worked out pretty well considering I was using a $2 sewing kit (apart from breaking a needle, cause I'm tank like that =.="). But after when I tried to iron it to make the edges straight I managed to melt a freakin hole in the leg >__>" Apparently highest setting is a nono. I should know this, as it's happened to me once before ==" So now I've ripped a piece of material off the pants, to use to test the melty-ness of the iron before I use it on anything else.

After that I decided to play some Starcraft to you know...de-rage from my loss of pants. Teamed up with two guys on NA for 3v3 goodness, and we won 4/5 matches of placement. The fail was the last game, against diamonds, where we couldn't even deny ONE expo. So by midgame they had like a billion things flying around the map and my whole team was still onebase =-="

After that slightly sad ending I decided to make dinner because you know...food =]. I was going mega ceebs that night, so dinner was buttered wholemeal toast with leftover curry in omelette + spinach. 15min start->eating ftw!! xD Anyway I managed to burn my tongue on the curry/omelette thing which resulted in me closing my mouth and scraping my hard palate with hot, hard, toast (with added pointy wholegrains!). It didn't help one bit that I know exactly what the bits of mucosa I had scraped off were called =[(rugae).

Do you reckon by being able to better verbalize your pain you increase the pain? Kind of like when you don't want people to start a revolution in your country you don't let them have a word for revolution in their language - it makes the concept harder to grasp.

*sigh* So that was my fail day, which started off so well =[ Now I have to deal with having only one set of un-melted pants, an embarrassing SC2 replay and a very smooth hard palate =_=

And no more curry!! ;__;

I hope today's going to be better xD

Post 14 of 2011 =]

“It’s quite hard to soar like an eagle when one thinks like a turkey”

Listening to: Mother, We just can't Get Enough - New Radicals

Not a Monday

Recently I've been trying to eek out a post every Monday.
Today it's only Friday :O

The reason I felt like posting today is because the girl I sit next to in Preclinic (the class where we drill into plastic teeth in fake people) said something I thought was really nice. Also because I have time to kill while my chicken defrosts. I'm not sure how we got to it, but the quote was was "Time spent enjoying yourself is never time wasted".

I just thought that was a really succinct way to remind yourself what is important in life, and that you should not feel guilty/regret the times you've enjoyed yourself (with the exception of all the weird fetish people). The most important goal in life is to be happy. Happy with yourself, and what you've done/accomplished in the past, and where you're going =]

In Preclinic right now we're doing Class V cavities, which is basically cutting a smiley face mouth into the outside surface of the tooth near the gums. It looks super simple on paper, but it is omfg hard to angle the drill properly >__>" It turns out it is helpful to actually get the patient to close their teeth together when doing these preparations, because it takes tension out of the cheeks, meaning they don't pull your drill in random directions when you bump them.
Nevertheless, I think I'm doing quite well in Class V's, which is good because we have an assessment on them in a couple weeks ><

In other news I finally watched Dorian Grey, the movie adaptation of the book, almost exactly 2 years after it came out. Lol. I've been meaning to get that story into my head somehow for ages, so yeah ^^ I knew the general idea but never went through the whole thing. There was probably a nice philosophical lesson in there somewhere if I think hard enough but I've already rambled about that other thing today ^^"

Post 13 of 2011 =]

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.
Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)

Listening to: Nothing - The Script

Saturday Night

Was Riverfire. It's basically and annual event that involves and airshow in the afternoon and fireworks at night =] It signals the opening of several weeks of art shows and other random stuff. Anyhoo I went down to Southbank (same general idea as the Melbourne one =]) with a couple of people to watch, and I've gotta say, fireworks still amaze me ^^ They also has this whole laser light show that synced with music that they were playing out of speakers all along the bank.

I wonder where I'm going to end up in 10 years. I read a quote ages ago that said something like "as we become older, we become more like ourselves unless we make conscious changes". I.e. angry people stay angry, if you have bad habits you'll stay that way, unless you do something about it. Things won't just change themselves. I hope I end up being somebody I'd be proud to become.

Watching everyone run off on their chosen career paths makes me sad. The whole 'road not taken' deal. I'm pretty sure we read some kind of poem about it in year 7 or 8. It's like when you're playing some kind of RPG and you want to try out the stories of all the character classes at the same time, but you can only pick one because you cbs playing the game through like 6 times. Irrelevant of which one you choose, you're always going to wonder if things might have been different/better if you went another way. I guess the only thing to do is to be happy with the boat you're in after you've cast off =] (Necromancer F.T.W)

Post 12 of 2011 =]

True humour is fun - it does not put down, kid, or mock. It makes people feel wonderful, not separate, different, and cut off. True humour has beneath it the understanding that we are all in this together.
Hugh Prather

Listening to: I'd Rather Be With You - Joshua Radin

Pushups

I'm not sure why people go to the gym. I suppose all the equipment means you can work one muscle at a time, but compound exercises are much better I think =] Maybe it's because of all the other hot people and mirrors. Meh.

Anyhoo I found this website and I thought since I've got a bit of spare time around here I'd give it a try. Today was week 3 day 2 ^_^. I'm also just starting a 200 situps one at week 3. Check back in a couple weeks to see if my usual ceebs has gotten the better of me, but I'm hoping this time can hold it down for awhile haha.

Those two are kind of part of my greater goal of completing this other fitness test I found online. Basically the test is maximum pull-ups, max crunches in 2min and a 3mile (4.8k) timed run. Doing the pushup/situps program kind of feels like mining for iron in Minecraft, so I can make a bucket ... to milk a cow ... to make cake xD. I think I respond better to gaming-achievement style goals.
The 'perfect score' for the above test is 20+ pullups, 100 crunches and 18min run by the way, if anyone wants to try and get there with me >_< It's going to take awhile haha.

Hmm what else, we just had our drilling competency exam at dent school. Was a bit stressful since we only had like an hour to drill. But if you think about it a professional should be able to do it in 15min lol...so not that hard. I know a couple people who restarted midway through and still finished on time =]

Sorry I haven't had alot of interesting thoughts lately lmao. Had one about the nature of religion but rather not open that can of worms :x

Anyhoo that's it for me; hope I will think of something more interesting next week haha ^^"

10 points if you know where I got the idea to do that -->
Maybe this one is too easy =="

Stay awesome kids =]

Post 11 of 2011 =]
If you really do put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.
-Anonymous

Listening to: Hey Man (Now You're Really Living) - Eels
These are the guys that sing all the awesome music in Shrek ^__^

I wonder...

If my grandkids will be using Facebook, if I ever have grandkids.
In the depths of their procrastination time, would they decide to fb stalk me?

It's such a weird thing to think that after about a century, if the Internet still exists, and still has a facebook, you might one day be able to 'watch' a person's entire life by clicking through their photos. From the day they took their first steps, through their parties in highschool and uni, into their bigkid holidays and first house. All the marriage photos, photos of their own kids.

I doubt the Internet or Fb will still exist that far into the future, and I think I harp on about it too much, but the idea just amazes me ^^''

6 years in 6 minutes

A day in California

These videos kind of are a taste of the feeling I think you'd get looking at that lifetime worth of photos.

Anyway no excuses, big gap cause I was lazy about updating this. Probably should do it more, but I haven't felt like doing it in awhile ^^"

Post 11 of 2011 =]
“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest
loneliness, and say, 'This life which you live must be lived by you
once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and
thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The
eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust
of the dust!' Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and
curse that demon? Or would you answer, 'Never have I heard anything
more divine'?”
~Nietzsche

Listening to: Marching On - OneRepublic

Back to the mothercity

.....Soon ><
I'll be back Saturday night!!!

Quite happy now that all my midsems are over - we had three, one for immunolgy, one for tooth anatomy and one for microbiology. Microbio kinda sucked because I thought tooth anatomy was actually the last one and was in like celebration mode before someone reminded me about it >__>"

I used to suck so bad at poaching eggs. Like all the white never seemed to stay in one place so I got all this fluffy stuff boiling over. Awhile ago though I heard of a good method. When the water is boiling, turn off the heat and stir until the water looks like a whirlpool. Then you just carefully pour the egg into the centre and as long as you don't disrupt the motion of the water too much, it'll nudge all of the eggy goodness to the centre, leaving you with an intact poached egg!

Hm so I'm trying to get rid of all my perishables before I come back, which has led to alot of nights where dinner is meat et randomstuffinmyfridge. I suppose it is pretty fun experimenting though ^^ As long as you're willing to eat whatever you make haha.

I should really do more exercise =_= feeling quite out of it after all the nerding

Anyhoo somehow I managed to stumble upon this on youtube. The words are very confusing, but what I gathered is that they reckon the phosphorylation sites on the tubulin protein can be used as an on/off switch - effectively acting like a computer bit. And then it went on to some random stuff about quantum theory to try to explain the circuitry and used the whole system to explain how we store memory and cell tasks. It's rather dense but it really blew my mind that the idea was a combination of biology, IT and quantum physics.

Post 10 of 2011 =]
"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it."
George Bernard Shaw, Candida (1898) act 1

Listening to: Taxiride – Creeping up slowly
I first heard that song back in primary school at camp - makes me happy ^^

OH OH and Fast Car - Tracy Chapman. I used to think she was a guy lol =_= She used to look somewhat unisex I believe. Anyway I found her version of this after seeing a guy sing it on Britain's Got Talent. He walked out on stage looking like a friendless hobo and then wowed everyone. I know that story is a bit cliched by now, but I can't help but smile when people are proven wrong when they prejudge others.

Sometimes...

I think that I live in the past too much. Today is one of those days.
Cue the very first episode of Pokemon The thing is so old the character's mouths don't even move all the time when they talk :O It's stop motion goodness.

"Spearows! do you know who I am? I am Ash from the town of pallet, and I'm destined to be the world's NUMBER ONE POKEMON MASTER! I can't be defeated by the likes of you! Do you hear me? I'll catch you allllllllllll!"

I spy a gyarados, magikarp, spearow, pidgey, rattata and HoOh in that ep.

I read this article in a Psychology Today about how everyone tends to focus on a certain time in their life, i.e. back then, right now and in the future. Also the views of these times can be coloured negatively and positively. I think I'm one of those people who's a little bit stuck in the past; always looking back and wishing I was past Steve for a little bit longer. That's probably not the most healthy thing but it gets me by =] A little happy nostalgia never hurt anyone xD The article mentioned that it thought the best type of person to be was to take all bits positively - well duh.

Anyhoo I suppose technically watching that pokemon episode doesn't count as living in my past, since I never actually watched the first episode until tonight =] So excited to see the HoOh bahaha !! ^^

Speaking of nostalgia, I found a scan of page 97 of my very old art book. I think I started it in year 7 haha =] I know it's a bit small, but try spot all the swords...and the Kakashi - even back then I had a thing for awesome ninja-y stuff xD Pretty sure the thing at the top is part of the view from the balcony of my grandparents house in Malaysia ^^ Good memories!

Post 9 of 2011 =]
Listening to : Jian Dan Ai 简单爱 (Simple Love) - Jay Chou 周杰伦, because everything should be oldschool tonight ^__^

“In life we sit at the table and refuse to eat, in death we are eternally hungry.”

Happy Day

Thursday has turned into my do random stuff day now that I've gotten credit for biology =]

I really really hate thongs. For some reason the side of my foot always gets rubbed raw when I walk with them on =[ I'm wearing them out more because I'm soaking my runners because they're a bit dirty from that day I cleverly decided to go running in the rain ^^"

I'm feeling my cooking skills levelling up ^^ Made chilli spaghetti the other day!

Got an OPG scan at the radiologists to check my wisdoms, visited the dentist to discuss it, bought lunch and some fruit and then ambled home to do washing and nerd it up ^^ Met and played with a random baby in the waiting room - I love how they're amazed by everything =]

Oh oh and the girl who served me gave me an extra mini muffin!! Always feels good to get free stuff xD Anyhoo I've got a butterscotch muffin that I bought with lunch sitting next to me right now and the smell of it is making me...well dizzy I guess but totally in a good way hahaha =]

At uni we're currently doing a block on immune response in 1020, which is all well and good, but I've been warned they expect you to read outside the lectures quite bit...so I'll grab that book I bought when it comes in next week and grind I suppose ==" In other news we've started poking teeth and around in fake heads in prac now which is much fun xD Quite enjoying using all the pointy dental tools haha =] In 1010 it's all been tooth memorisation, which is like learning the distinctive features of each tooth and being able to recognise them through wear and natural variation...which is actually kind of fun in practice but the theory is rather dry >_>

Hmm the other day talked to Alex about perception and social norms and a blob of stuff. I got quite into it, and it made me miss all the philosophy I did in year 7 and 9 =[ It's very refreshing to have conversations like that every once in awhile ^^

I dislike slightly how these recent posts are largely recounts of what I've done here in QLD. I will try make sure future one is a bit more thought-full xD I do miss Melb quite alot, despite how nice qld is =]


Post 8 of 2011 =]
“Laugh every moment you live, for you’ll find it decidedly difficult afterwards” – Nicomo Cosca

Listening to: Lighthouse - The Hush Sound

Decisions decisions

Clever TED lecture that made me think about my choices a little more.

Awesome youtube video from kegs


I had oreos and milk for the first time in ages last night ^^

Post 7 of 2011 =]
"Ghandi, as you know was barefoot most of the time, which created many large calluses on his feet. He also didn't eat very often which made him very thin and fragile. His unusual diet also gave him bad breath, so i guess you could say he's a super callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis"

Listening to: Drops of Jupiter - Train

Food =]

So lately I've been experimenting with cooking etc at home. Made some yummy spaghetti a couple nights ago as you can see on the right=] I think it was my camera but it looks a bit sickly in colour right =\ I think that might also be because we only used like three tomatoes in the sauce, so wasn't very red. It's kinda cool watching them shrivel up and disappear when they cook though =]

We've had to keep a food diary for uni prac soon, and I started yesterday. I never realised but I eat quite...random food =_= So yes, without further ado here is all the food I ate on Saturday (this is totally not filler XD). It's a little more random than usual because I had linner/dinner at a friends house.

Breakfast - Bowl of cereal and milk. Glass of fruit juice.
Brunch - 2 funsize chocolates (cherry ripe and timeout ^^)
Lunch - bunch of grapes. Wedge of camembert cheese and biscuits.
Linner - Gummy bears.
Dinner - Lasagne, garden salad, glass of water.
Supper - oreo truffles, grapes.

I'm a little worried that I eat so much sugar in one day haha ==' Have to make up for it somehow XD

Hmm, lately a couple of my friends have been playing Pokemon black/white. I wonder who comes up with all the new ones, and do you reckon they have like this super serious board of pokemon coolness that vets all the designs? Best job ever yes hahah ^^

Anyhoo I think I'll end here; not alot of interesting stuff floating around in my head of late ^^"

Post 6 of 2011 =]
"If you are what you eat, then Lord Voldemort was a unicorn"

Listening to: A million years - Teddy Geiger

Toothbrush

Yes. Indeed today I am bringing my toothbrush to uni. Aren't I a good little dentist haha =]
Also I'm worried I might have to get some booster shots to bump up my immunity =[ Yucky needles.



I think I'm going to look just like that kid =[

Anyhoo Post 5 of 2011 =]
“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” – Dr Robert Schuller

Listening to: Human - John McLaughlin

Van Helsing

....is probably not the best movie I've ever watched =\ In fact I consider it a couple hours wasted =_=. But yes I'd never seen it before and I wanted to exercise the power of my new library card OKAYY?

ahem. So...
guess who recently:
-ran 8k VERY EARLY in the morning while REPEATEDLY dodging deadly bicycles
-learnt the alphabet backwards in a day (I finally resolved to do it after seeing a video on youtube. You can listen here =] Now I'll be prepared if boost ever has another free reciting the alphabet backwards competition (fwahaha)
-spent today looking at pictures of mouths and (sadly enough) enjoyed it xD
-pretended they were superman when the lift in their apartment building took them upstairs
-and finally cooked a badass chicken soup XD

I am oh so cool I know I know =p OH BTW if you cbb pleeeease gimme ideas for stuff to cook over here haha. So far I've tried scrambeled eggs, spaghetti, chicken soup, two types of stirfry chicken + veg and banana milkshakes. Someone suggested sushi but I'm not sure I trust myself to make it; it's quite hard to get the rice the right consistency right?

Eh anyway onto the slightly more think-y bit. I was having a conversation with my friend the other day. The basic point of debate was, "Assuming that all religions essentialy are different ways of worshipping the same God. Without this God, humans would have no sense of good and evil." My initial knee-jerk response was, no. I know plenty of non-religious people who live lives with good morals. But I guess, if you say those morals are derived from the society the people in question were brought up in, and the laws of...well pretty much every society were set out in a time when religion was pretty much ubiquitous in society. So the other persons argument was that, even though you don't account the values you own to a higher power, by taking them from the society you live in you've indirectly used the Gods morals, and hence without them your values still wouldn't exist.
This sounded a bit weird still to me. I mean, given that pretty much every culture in the world ever had a religion at some stage in their history means that whatever morals you do have would have to be attributed to the higher God. It pretty much means the argument is unbeatable right? How do you crack something like that?

Anyhoo, in my opinion, religion developed because humans have an innate need to feel like they have someone to look up to; someone to pray to and believe is watching over them...and maybe to explain things that seem unexplainable at the time. Also, having people believe there is a badass thrower of thunderbolts watching if you're being bad is also probably very beneficial to a stable community. The term the person used was that in a godless society everyone would be running around killing each other and basically living the hedonistic life. Anyway would be interested if any of you guys have anything to say about that.


Plah anyway to finish off here's a video to reward you if you managed to read/skip down to this far. ^^

Post 4 of 2011 =]
“Use what talent you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best”

Listening to: This Ain't Goodbye - Train

lala

I wonder if anyone will recognise/understand this random picture I found on my internet wanderings.

It's from a wikipedia article about Lagrangian points and Hill spheres. Basically Hill Spheres are countour lines of gravitational pull. So the closer lines are together, the larger the increase in gravity in that direction.
Lagrangian points are kind of special points in the orbit of two objects in space. In a nutshell the nature of the points is that if you put an object of negligible mass on that point, the combined gravitational fields of the two initial objects would keep it in the same position relative to both of them. I thought that was a little interesting ^^"

Post 3 of 2011 =]
“What is today, but yesterday’s tomorrow” - Spongebob

Listening to: A Contre Courant - Alizee

Six days later...

So I've had no internet for six days. Many apologies to you my beloved readers ><
It's been an interesting experience indeed!

I slept between 10 and 11 every night. Woke up between 5 and 7 every morning. Albeit that might have been due to the early traffic than any improved body clock ^^"

Anyhoo I got up to some weird stuff during my internetless (and tvless) period. Watched about 20 eps of how I met your mother. Watched Iron Man. And then again the next night +.+". Then some Igudesman and Joo. And did a teensy bit of exercise. Actually Alex pointed out that given the situation I should have done much more exercise. I've found some nice routes to run around here, haven't gone running yet though, as I've been moving in etc all week =_= hurah. It's also kind of my excuse to be a little antisocial this week eheh ^^" Need to fix that hey!


Something I was thinking about today. When you're young, everything is up in the air. I think of young things as being a source of hope in the world. When you're young you have all this potential, both in terms of your ability to learn and how much time you have to do it in. As I've grown slightly older I've found that potential has diminished somewhat, and the gap between the polar ends of your peer group widens more and more. And it's a pretty depressing feeling, knowing that that time you could have been using to do something awesome is lost...

But then again you can look at it as we're still about 20 and have at least thrice that time again left to live =] The potential there is still amazing. It's kind of nice to look back and be a bit regretful you didn't dedicate all your time during the past years, and then appreciate how much time you've still got left ^^

Anyhoo that's just something rather incoherent that was floating around my head today. Stay motivated and active your whole life; tis important =]

Post #2 of 2011 =]
"Attitudes are contagious.
Is yours worth catching?"-Author Unknown

Listening to : Matchbox 20 - How far we've come

Boo !

I told you - new motivation every year =p

So I've moved to Queensland now.
The first couple days I didn't really enjoy, since I was still a bit sad about leaving everyone at home I suppose. Also they were like 35 degrees and I was basically roasting walking around the city all day.
The uni here is...kinda like Melbourne High a little in my head - they really value their public image, and also the quality of education. Which is a good thing I suppose, but it's also a bit of a worry since it means they're going to work us like probes the four years they have us. Apparently the pressure comes down alot more in second and third year though, so perhaps I've got a bit of a honeymoon year coming =]

Anyway, enough about me. How've you been dear reader? In this long long....looong absence of mine from this blog xD I'm not sure this is a healthy relationship we have, but as long as you only care about interesting stuff to read I figure I might as well not put my entire life and soul into this, as there is enough interesting stuff already on the internet (see blogs listed on the left) =] And if that's not enough for you there's always New Scientist, xkcd, amirte, cracked and world news. And iuno...^^"

Lastly, over the years I've collected something like 42 pages of quotes that I think are pretty good. I'll probs chuck one in with each post. This way each post will become one of those super short tumblr type things if you skip over the blob of text ^^

Anyhoo here's post #1 of 2011 =]
“The Sun never says to the Earth, "You owe me". Look what happens with a love like that; it lights up the whole sky.”

Listening to : Dancing with myself - Billy Idol (because I haven't met people I don't feel awkward dancing around here yet =p)