Meme: 8 Random Facts About Me

The rules of this tag:


1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.

2. List eight (8) random facts about yourself.

3. Tag eight people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).

4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving them a comment on their blogs.

Fact 1:

I can't cycle. Yeah, I can neither ride a bicycle nor a motorcycle. When I was little I never learned and when I grew up I just didn't see the point. Jumped straight for my car license when I hit the appropriate age.

Fact 2:

I was the teachers' pet. No, I did not go around asking the teachers if they needed help carrying their bags or something. Apple polishing is much more a subtle act than most people think. I was articulate, attentive and I asked the right questions. Wouldn't hurt to mention I had good grades too. :)

Fact 3:

I had alley cats for pets. When I was young I used to feed the alley cats behind my house with scraps and they always eventually flocked to my house, bred and I had a whole family of kittens to play with. My father hated it though and said they were dirty. Maybe so, but I grew up into a healthy young man anyway.

Fact 4:

I am not very particular about food. I always say that when you're hungry, most food will taste great. What enters through your mouth comes out the exact same thing the other end. I eat to keep myself from feeling hungry.

Fact 5:

I can't converse in nor write and read any Chinese dialect. I'm a Straits Chinese and my grandparents spoke Malay. Why haven't I learned? Same reason lots of people can't speak English properly either. It's a matter of pride.

Fact 6:

When I first started reading when I was young, I started with Malay story books. I didn't know how to read English until a lil' later. Maybe because Malay words are easier to mouth and pronounce or something but until I picked up the skill of reading English, my mother read Enid Blyton to me every night. :P

Fact 7:

The only animal I have fear for is the crocodile or alligator. Fear as in the feeling bordering phobia where a picture of a crocodile is enough to get me to shudder and flinch. I really don't know why. Must be a manifestation of a childhood trauma. Probably got bitten by a cicak when I was a baby.

Fact 8:

I love watching Spongebob. LOL. In league with reading Enid Blyton, it calms me alot. Reminds me of my childhood days where everything was so simple and life was void of worries. My favourite character in the cartoon? Squirdward.

There, all done now. No tags from me. Just too lazy I guess. All me mes will of course end here if it reaches me. :)

A lil' adult magic

What with all the hype about Harry Potter I still think that it's so much still a children's book no matter how many adults do rave about it too. People running around waving little sticks calling out "Ava Kedavra" is plain comical if you think about it . Here's a taste of a little adult magic with much more practical uses. ;)



Excerpt from Dime Store Magic by Kelley Armstrong:





I whispered a spell and a small fireball appeared in my hand. Cortez looked from it to me and tilted his head, eyes, questioning. I grinned and cast a dampening spell, putting out the ball and leaving only my fingers glowing.

Interesting," he said. "But I don't see - "

I pressed my hot fingers against his chest. He gasped. I traced the heat down his chest, then slid my hand under his briefs and stroked him. He moaned, closing his eyes and leaning back.

"See now?" I asked.

"Teach me that," he said hoarsely.

I grinned. "Maybe."

I peeled off his briefs and slid one hot hand under his balls, caressing them, as I stroked his shaft with the other. He arched back moaning. I continued, measuring his breathing until I heard just the right tempo, then stopped, still holding him tight.

"Do I win?" I asked.

"Yes, God yes." He paused, then pulled free of my grasp, eyes flying open. "No."

"Changed your mind?" I said with a grin. "That's okay. You're right, maybe it isn't such a good idea. " I started backing off him. "We should keep this professional. After all -"

He lunged for me, knocking me onto my back and stretching over me.

"I meant 'No' as in 'I don't concede defeat'. Not yet."

He kicked off his briefs and grabbed me by the hips. We rolled, entangling ourselves in the linen. The soft sheets and clean scent of lemon engulfed us. As we kissed, I felt Cortez's lips move and opened my eyes to see his hand arc above us. A low thrumming drowned out the radio, then a fog of purple and blue light rose from the floor.

"Tell me that isn't the koyut," I murmured against his mouth.

He chuckled and slid his fingers between my thighs, teasing. I arched back and closed my eyes. When I opened them, the fog was wafting toward us. I touched my arm first, sending a tingle of energy through it. I gasped. Cortez chuckled again and pushed his fingers into me. The fog wrapped around us. Every hair on my body rose and I pressed my head into the sheets , luxuriating in the sensation.

"That is-" I gasped after a few minutes. "You have to teach me that"

He smiled,pulled out his fingers and slid on top of me. "I'll teach you anything you want."

Everybody hates viruses!

I think I have to say that I certainly hate my advance medical virology class. The assignments are the worse lot I have ever had in history. It isn't so much that it is difficult but more of the fact that you feel cheated of the self-satisfaction that generally awaits you on the completion of an assignment. If you have worked hard on an assignment and produced a good paper, you get a wonderful feeling, knowing that it is a job well done. However in virology assignments, it isn't the same. You struggle and you toil over a span of a weekend, trying to understand and explain the whole bloody complicated information on a particular topic and what do you get? Three measly pages which in other subject matters could be done in an hour.

The time and effort invested does not pay off with the result. You take over three hours to write a single short introductory paragraph because you need to find that elusive journal article from which you want to quote from and another twelve hours to explain it because it is so complicated you yourself find it impossible to understand. It doesn't help either that the lecturers are giving assignments on topics that are so thinly researched that the experts themselves have no clear idea on it but just speculations.

You know it's gonna take a whole weekend again when you google something and all that comes up are three results....

Sway with me

Yeap, it was at about 1 am. I felt the whole building swaying and shaking rather violently. Probably another tremor felt from a far off earthquake in a neighboring country. It's rather frightening when you think about the fact that I'm living 14 stories up. That's a very long way to fall...

MIKA - Love Today

His songs are rather too perky in my opinion and you don't usually find me and the word "perky on the same page but I love all of his songs.

Doom da da di da di Doom da da di da di

Everybody's gonna love today,
Gonna love today, gonna love today.
Everybody's gonna love today, gonna love today.
Anyway you want to, anyway you've got to,
Love love me, love love me, love love.

I've been crying for so long,
Fighting tears just to carry on,
But now, but now, it's gone away.

Hey girl why can't you carry on,
Is it 'cause you're just like your mother,
Little tike, like to tease for fun,
Well you ain't gonna tease no other,
Gonna make you a lover.

Everybody's gonna love today,
love today, love today.
Everybody's gonna love today,
Anyway you want to, anyway you've got to,
Love love me, love love me, love love.
Girl with a groove with the big bust on,
Big bust on, big bust on.
Wait till your mother and your papa's gone,
Papa's gone
Momma, momma papa, shock shock me,
Shock shock me, shock shock.

Everybody's gonna love today,
Gonna love today, gonna love today
I said,
Everybody's gonna love today, gonna love today,
Anyway you want to, anyway you've got to,
Love love me, love love me, love love.

Carolina sits on ninety five
Give her a dollar and she'll make you smile.

Hooker, what a looker, walk away!

Carry dresses like a kid for fun,
Licks her lips like there's something on 'em,
Tries to tell you life has just begun,
But you know she's getting something other
Than the love from her mother!

Everybody's gonna love today,
Love today, love today
Everybody's gonna love today,
Anyway you want to, anyway you've got to,
Love love me, love love me, love love.

Girl with a groove with the big bust on,
Big bust on, big bust on.
Wait till your mother and your papa's gone,
Papa's gone
Momma, momma papa, shock shock me,
Shock shock me, shock shock.

I said,
Everybody's gonna love today,
Gonna love today, gonna love today
I said,
Everybody's gonna love today,
Gonna love today,
Anyway you want to, anyway you've got to,
Love love me, love love me, love love.

Doom da da di da di Doom da da di da di Doom da da di da di Doom da da di da di.....

Everybody's gonna love today,
Gonna love today, gonna love today
Everybody's gonna love today,
Gonna love today,
Anyway you want to, anyway you've got to,
Love love me, love love me, love love.

Doom da da di da di Doom da da di da di Doom da da di da di Doom da da di da di.....

Help wanted - Many positions available

I was getting off the elevator of my apartment building, rushing to get home when I saw this ad, and I laughed. I mean who in their right mind is gonna respond to it when it sounds so very, extremely dubious. Did you notice that the word 'free' was repeated twice? Light house keeping? Relative to what? Slaved labour? Then, there's the part about giving 'personal assistance' to the Professor and immediately this picture came to my mind.

Feeling sea sprays on the sea shore!

You know it was something you will always remember when then mere thought of the phrase "sea sprays" makes you laugh.

Nicht Besonders

Been rather busy lately with lots of things happening that seemed to pull down my mood substantially. This, of course, caused a minor disruption in my blogging activity (which was not very regular to start with), resulting in a drought that dragged on for almost a month.

Anyway nothing much happened in the past few weeks and now it's the new semester again with new classes, new first-year students and new feelings of self-afflicted laziness. As I never had a holiday to begin with, I feel morosely drained and not at all enthusiastic for starting a new semester of lessons. Bah!

Yeah, the two things I wanted to comment on and somehow was put off due to the above mentioned circumstances, are the two highly anticipated movies, Transformers and Harry Potter. What do I think? I thought that Transformers was rather average because I had a high expectation for it and I thought Harry Potter was average because I did not expect anything from it. Which was better then? Do the logic. Lol.

However, there is something I like about the Harry Potter movie and that is that they took on the fantastic Helena Bonham Carter to play the maniacal Bellatrix Lestrange. I think she did a very good job embodying the character, carrying herself as Bellatrix Lestrange down to pat. Pity she had so little show time and lines in the movie as I couldn't get enough of her in it. She's now on my list of favourites villains. :)

Nasty

Nastier

Lab Series 2

Our little Miss Photographer has been harassing me to post this batch of pictures up but I've been rather lazy. Well, here's the second series featuring DNA extraction from blood specimens using the phenol-chloroform reagant method. I was extracting nine different blood specimens and I had to stop to pose all that time. One word, "cramp"!

There are alot more pics but it takes a rather long time to upload so I picked out the beautiful ones :)


Starting with transferring the blood to another tube and washing it with tris-EDTA.


To incubating them on ice.

You can see the pellet containing the DNA after blood has been washed out.

A side view of the pellet.

Adding phenol chloroform to further isolate the DNA.

Shaking the contents with phenol chloroform turns it milky.

After centrifugation you can see the two layers of where the lower layer will be removed.

Removing the lower layer with a syringe to get as much of the contents of the layer out.

After precipitation with sodium chloride and 100% ethanol you can see the DNA floating in the solution.

And after the long steps of drying and solubilising, the DNA is ready to be quantitated using a quartz cuvette in the spectrophotometer.

Priceless

The Qaigen HotStarTaq DNA Polymerase cost RM 672 for 0.05 ml and the mistake in calculations this morning almost caused me a stroke but the feeling of joy when you see the exact DNA band you desire appearing in your gel is simply...

-priceless-

Simply divine

Michael Buble – Everything lyrics


You're a falling star, You're the get away car.
You're the line in the sand when I go too far.
You're the swimming pool, on an August day.
And you're the perfect thing to say.

And you play you're coy, but it's kinda cute.
Ah, When you smile at me you know exactly what you do.
Baby don't pretend, that you don't know it's true.
Cause you can see it when I look at you.

[Chorus:]
And in this crazy life, and through these crazy times
It's you, it's you, You make me sing.
You're every line, you're every word, you're everything.

You're a carousel, you're a wishing well,
And you light me up, when you ring my bell.
You're a mystery, you're from outer space,
You're every minute of my everyday.

And I can't believe, that I'm your man,
And I get to kiss you baby just because I can.
Whatever comes our way, ah we'll see it through,
And you know that's what our love can do.

[Chorus:]
And in this crazy life, and through these crazy times
It's you, it's you, You make me sing
You're every line, you're every word, you're everything.

So, La, La, La, La, La, La, La
So, La, La, La, La, La, La, La

[Chorus:]
And in this crazy life, and through these crazy times
It's you, it's you, You make me sing.
You're every line, you're every word, you're everything.
You're every song, and I sing along.
'Cause you're my everything.
Yeah, yeah

So, La, La, La, La, La, La, La
So, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La

When angels sing

Thumb it

Most of us don't really notice how large a role our thumbs play in our daily lives until you hurt it that is. I had a cramp when I was preparing a 19 tube PCR mix and now my thumb is all sore. When it hurts everytime you use your thumb, you realize how frequently you rely on those babies everyday. Fortunately for me, I'm an amateur typist and I don't use my thumb at all when I type. Strangely I realize I don't use my thumb either when I'm using the mouse. Does that mean, a primitive animal with no opposable thumbs is able to operate a computer? The opposable thumbs we all so proudly possess is hailed as a very significant evolutionary change that sets us apart from the primitive animals that are lower on the evolutionary ladder. Thus it is ironic that something so advance like the computer does not need an evolutionary advancement like the thumb to operate.

Spare a thought on why animals hump trees and you'll realize another important use of the thumb. Too bad, no playing with my..... err.... shoes tonight. :P

Being sick!

I'm no longer considered as a healthy person... I was accepted as a subject for a drug bio-equivalence study and they were paying me RM310 for it but now I'm rejected because I have alpha-thalassaemia. Ok, maybe they would not have found out if I had not told them about it since I passed their haematological screening and all but it would still be a responsible thing to do. If I kept back that information wouldn't it be considered that I did not disclose everything on my health history?

How nice it would have been if I had found out that I had alpha-thalassaemia earlier on in my schooldays. I wonder whether I could have gotten a doctor's note exempting me from sports. Imagine no pendidikan jasmani sessions for me and all those ujian tara I hated so much during sports day. I admit, I'm not a very physical person at all, but that only applies when I'm in the field ;)

Lab Series

Photos courtesy of little Miss Joyce, avid photographer extraordinaire who excels at snapping almost any object except moving ones. Yes, those are my hands. I almost had a cramp in my arms because it was taking so long to snap those pictures and I had to freeze each pose :)


Micro pipetting DNA into the PCR mix.

Operating the thermo cycler used for the PCR reaction.

Removing the gel after electrophoresis of the PCR products.

Resolving of the products by viewing the gel under the UV transilluminator.

Updates

I've been rather busy with the research for my undergraduate thesis lately. Learning new things, perfecting techniques and overcoming 'shaky hands'. Here is a picture of my very first passable duplex PCR products run on 1.5% agarose gel. =)


On a side note, I found out that I'm α-thalassaemic... I extracted my own DNA from blood and run it in the diagnostic test of the duplex PCR and found out that I'm carrying a SEA double deletion for α-thalassamia. Maybe I'm destined to be taking this research project on. What am I working on? I'm working on the development of multiplex-PCR for detection of α-thalassaemia.

And yeah, I haven't been online much as my streamyx connection has been down since last week. Right now I'm typing this entry at my faculty using the free wifi which unfortunately is extremely slow. This is my third week of research work, hope I can survive till the end. Haha.

Happy International Thalassaemia Day

It was yesterday but it's never too late to create awareness I guess. In conjunction with the International Thalassaemia Day and with the research I'm doing for my undergraduate thesis, I'll be featuring a few links for my readers to read up on Thalassaemia. Thalassaemia is the name of a group of genetic, inherited disorders of the blood and it is widespread all over the world in certain regions and also in Malaysia. A lot of us are carriers of the gene but we do not know that and ignorance in this case will certainly not bring bliss in the future when we have a family.

The 8 May is the International Thalassaemia Day, dedicated to "Quality Treatment for all" in 2007.

On this occasion, the Thalassaemia International Federation, National Thalassaemia Associations and thalassaemia Medical Centres across the world, organise activities focused on public awareness with regards to Prevention and Clinical Care of Thalassaemia Major.

Yay?

My exams are finally over after these long, long, long weeks. Yay? Strangely, I feel rather disgruntled and the usual euphoric, 'I'm walking on air' kinda feeling is absent. Maybe it's because my exam duration was too long. Six paper spread out over three weeks with many many intervals full of boredom.

Now, I feel like I'm cheated of the opportunity to celebrate the end of my exams. Oh, people have been saying that I have celebrated enough in between my papers by going out and all that and having a very much relaxing finals but if given the option of choosing I would have chosen otherwise. It isn't the same enjoying during the exams as you have a dark, gloomy cloud hanging overcast and guilt of course just spoils all your fun. I very much rather have a concentrated dose of all that study stress rather than a long drawn out malaise that seem to kill you in episodic bursts of ennui.

And to make matters worst, I'm starting my research for my thesis on Monday. No rest for the wicked. Isn't my life full of fun?

Visual DNA would actually be chromosomes....

Got this in the mail I simply like the pictures :)

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Double traumatized

Happy Labour Day to all you labourers out there. I thought everyone would take this opportunity, getting off from work to stay at home and relax but apparently not. Where do all those hardworking people go? They congregate and form huge ass mobs in shopping complexes. I was at Mid Valley this afternoon and I tell you, people were there by the millions. Ok maybe I did exaggerate a tiny bit but there were so many people there that all the outlets selling food were full to the brim and getting an empty table was almost next to impossible. Of course, the Mid Valley fashion week didn't help lessen the crowd but whatever happened to good old fashion 'relaxing at home'? I, a semi-pseudo-sociopath, am dreadfully traumatized...

Then of course I had to go watch a movie and what did I watch? I watched The Hills Have Eyes 2 which is the single, most disgusting movie that I have ever watched. It even manage to beat The Mortuary in my opinion in its degree of graphic grossness. The gory killings with all the wanton splashes of blood were ok but the rape scene is simply disgusting. Everyone watching will forever have their sex live ruined and I am now double traumatized...

Nevertheless, I still had a good time there. Thanx very much ;)