Been watching many concerts lately.. Pretty much out every night, mainly because I'm not in the mood to study, even though I need to, and I'm don't want to stay in the dorm.

Chamber ensembles. Some were really good, some really bad. Was talking about how easy it is for strings to go out of tune, cos some of the string players were really really out. Then watched this Tibetan music thing today, and the guy played the Tibet erhu perfectly in tune and he danced while playing. I'm impressed. There was this violinist at the chamber concert, sy's classmate's roommate, he played a Paganini piece with a guitarist and he was so fantastic, the piece is technically extremely demanding, fast, lots of grace notes everywhere, pizz, spiccato, double stops, and he did all of them perfectly. Perfect enough for me at least. Highly enjoyable watching and listening to him.

Should be studying. But really sleepy for no good reason, I'm sleeping a lot, maybe not getting enough REM, slept for 8h last night, and took a 1h nap just now, but I'm still sleepy.. Anyway, I'm changing my studying schedule, decided to stop wasting time going for lects, and study and go for office hrs instead in the day, and rest, play, sleep, eat at night. For the next 2 days at least.. haha

A series of unfortunate events

1. Zip from bag fell off
2. Thumbdrive disappeared (still missing)
3. Sandal broke
4. Specs broke

I don't remember myself being this destructive when i'm in Singapore..

Show off my banana baked rice. Haha. As usual, my style of making cooked food (can't call this cooking) is to dump everything together and hopefully it taste good. This does. More because of the bananas than because of the cheese.

I forgot to say. I saw my first wild rabbit in UCSD yesterday. in ERC. Would have taken a photo but it was too dark.

Thanksgiving day
Not an extremely exciting Thanksgiving. In fact, not exciting at all. Went to the beach at Torrey Pines. The sand there glitters, the water there glitters, there are specks of glitter in the water and sand. I suspect it's gold. People did come to California to dig for gold right? My little cousin is extremely terrified of getting dirtied by sand or sea water, wonder who taught him that. Didn't do much.. Went for lunch, then did some grocery shopping, bought crabs, went to someone's house and cooked the crabs. Oh yeah, toured the area where my aunt's family rented an apartment. Looks quite nice, good location. Played with the kid while they made food. Food was good. No turkey, no pie, but there's curry chicken, pork ribs, coconut soup (first time i tried this, it's good), veg, crabs, mantou + meat (forgot the exact name of this thing). And cake for dessert. Hee.

That's all tonight. It's only 11pm, but I'm tired. Probably from making that owl just now. Will post a picture of my owl when I'm done with it, if I'm done with it any time soon.

Haven't laughed so hard for ages. Hahahahahaha. And it's really hard to laugh while eating a huge 10 cents worth of watermelon, trying not to spurt out everything. Don't know why, but was just so tickled by Sangyu and Fong Ming and Desmond cutting and eating watermelon over the sink. Dinner with the Singaporeans are so highly entertaining. Have I said before? I feel more "at home" (I mean feel like what I feel like when I'm at home, not necessarily more familiar or more comfortable) with them than with my friends in Singapore.. I speak more Chinese Chinese now than I did with my friends in Singapore.. Maybe cos there's Sangyu and Wan yue and Kenny and other visitors, and maybe because I'm getting confused over the many different accents I'm supposed to put on when I speak to different groups of people. Anyway they're a group of people in which I can hide when I want to and not get forgotten, meaning when I have something to say, they'll listen. Actually I'm quite surprised when I say something and people pay attention to it. Haha, I don't usually make much sense.

It's cold today. supposedly 5 degrees Celcius now outside. Wasn't that cold in the day, though weather report said highest temp was 20C. That's quite low for a San Diego highest temp. Didn't feel that cold because of the big sun. Finally went to the beach to study today. See, I didn't just say it, I actually went to the beach. Walked down the paved road from La Jolla Farms road or sth like that, walked to Blacks beach and came back up from the trail at Torrey Pines Gilderport. Happy with my exercise of the day/ week. Didn't do much studying.. more like sit and enjoy the sun and scenery. The scenery is fantastic minus off the naked Ah-beis around. Had to choose a spot away from the nude men. I had my camera and took lots of nice photos. As I was leaving, this naked ah-bei walked across my path. I was aiming my camera at one of the parachutes/ gliders. And the Ah-bei started talking to me.. "They don't seem to stay up today. Even though there's wind.." Blah blah. The whole time I was giving 1 word answers and thinking, what is this Ah-bei doing? You want me to take a photo of you is it? Anyway manage to shake him off and start my climb up that trail. Alanna was right, that trail will be a mess if it rained. It was dry today and wasn't that easy a climb, I'm just glad I didn't go down from there, even though the trail is much shorter than the paved road, it's going to take me forever to get down there. Oh yeah, my sandals broke. China stuff can't be trusted. Anyway, I was on the cliff, waiting for the sun to set, the Ah-bei climbed up and smiled at me when he left.. erps.

Will post photos soon. Will blog about Thanksgiving hols soon too.

Quote of the day:
"Watermelon is made of fruit, not vegetable."

Tried making brownies in the microwave. Failed. Made too many substitutions to the original recipe. Tasted too much of butter, not enough of chocolate, and was overcooked, ie hard. Between biscuit and brownie. Will try again next week, with more modifications and substitutions haha.

Took a music theory test.. very basic theory, so basic that i don't know how to do. Questions were like those in my Grade 5 fundamentals, which I haven't touched for 3 years. Anyway, think the reason why I took the test was more for fun than getting into the musical acoustics class, cos looking at the current situation, there's almost no chance of me getting the classes I want next quarter, which means that I won't have the time to take musical acoustics next term..

Which brings me to my next point, did I say how messed up my next term schedule is? I think I did. I'm no. 340+ on the waitlist for genetics. The class size is 400. Ultimate man. Don't think there's any chance of me getting into the class. And if I try for another class, I'll have a timetable that either starts at 7.30am or end at 8pm on MWF. Haiz.. shouldn't blog about such messed up stuff.

International week fair. It was fun, though kind of hot in the sun. (All the people in other US/UK schools will be bashing me up at this point.) Temperature is still in 20+ degrees Celcius. The Italians sang opera, the Koreans took photos, the Singaporeans spoke Singlish.

烦

烦死了，每天回到家就要烦这些琐琐碎碎的事。所以我尽量不回家，尽量在外头读书，不读书也在外面泡着。烦什么呢？都是些小事，一些在短期内解决不了的事情，非要把我烦死后才能解决。学费交得乱七八糟，到现在Orientation fees 还没交，我已经不管了，就相信Astar, 相信它能在未来的4天内交了这笔债，不要再让我去跟Billing office 吵个不亦乐乎。然后还有纽约的事，令一个让人头疼的事。当初就不应该那么积极，答应去纽约，应该留在SD或者去ulu 的肯萨斯城冬眠去。现在买了张极贵的机票，住宿还是个未知数。跟我一起去的人的计划又订不下来，一会儿变一下，让我也不知所措，最要命的是这纽约的破酒店在新年时期都被订满了。怎么办？

从纽约回SD回得早也是件好事。至少让我吃饱了，睡足了，再搬家，开学。开学了，问题还是一大堆。我现在只报上了一个课，其他的不是不让我报就是满了，把我放上Waitlist。开学后还要继续搞这些烦人的 admin stuff. 不知道对我的school registration 有没有影响。要是有一天收到一封信说“You have been dropped out of the school because you have not enrolled in the minimum number of classes necessary” 我就又有好玩的了。

Did I tell you the big news? I can't find my thumbdrive. Darn. And you know what else? I dropped my camera, and it rattles now when I shake it. double darn. 烦人的事，迟早都要解决，不如早点解决。。我只想倒头大睡，希望当我睡醒后一切都解决了，我又可以当一个轻轻松松的学生，每天只需要上学，考几个A，回家睡觉。人生要是这么简单就好了。

忽然间好想回家。家又在哪里？家是在夜深人静时可以痛哭而没人理的地方，家是在当天快要塌的时候唯一的避难所，家是在当我想一个人静一静的时候第一个可去的地方，家是我想要人陪时第一个去的地方。家人是一群不管我做出什么傻事后都还会接受我的人，家人是一群当我跟他们在一起的时候，我可以舒舒服服地作自己。我的家在哪里？这里是家吗？好朋友可以算家人吗？

明天眼睛会肿，跟金鱼一样，不过我已经不管了。。

Ohana means family and family means no one gets left behind..

Changed my template, cos my old one always eats words up when I put pictures on the entries, and the comments part was unreadable.. New template.. koped it from somewhere, will personalise it more soon.

If you think I've crossed the line, any line, with my following para, please let me know..
I'm amused, very amused at the enthusiasm of a certain American girl towards the singapore/ malaysian club here. To tell the truth, I still have no idea why I'm so anti towards her.. Best explanation I can come up with is that she broke a social custom that she's unaware of and we are subconsciously following.. A custom where you have to work your way up the supposedly non-existent hierarchial ladder, a custom where you have to at least gain some respect and liking before you can start organising events and activities and expect people to support. If you don't work your way up but plunge right in, that's fine, as long as you do it appropriately. I don't know how, but I'll probably recognise it if I see it. If she wasn't that enthu, there's a much higher chance that she'll be accepted easier.. If she had waited till the next major event before she become this enthu, there's a higher chance too.. I'm waiting to see her next moves.. A very bad thing to do I know, me just sitting and watching, instead of doing sth to stop the situation from worsening..

Actually it's quite sad that she's the most on person. And, since this is an official sch org, people have the right to join and be accepted.. I don't know what the next step is or should be. I'm not the most proactive person, in fact I'm extremely passive, as I've discovered from communications class today.

Talking about communications class. The more I learn about communications, the more difficult communications seem to be. In fact the more I learn about anything, the more difficult something seems like. I am more able now to um, analyse a conversation maybe, but until I manage to use the info I've learnt naturally when I communicate, comm is not any easier.

Last point of the day. I'm really sorry I couldn't be there when people need me, ok maybe don't need me but need somebody. I'm sorry that I've been buried in my own tiny world and detached from people in the world. I'm trying.. to lower myself on my priority list, I'm still trying to find the right position.. If you need help, ask.. Someone might just be able to help. (hmm, that sounds like an advice I need) And help whenever I can.

Ok that covered pretty much what I wanted to say. One last thing. Don't get the wrong impression. My life is not happening.

Quote of the day:
"Trust the stuff you are made of"

Wild duck

Some sort of hawk

Giraffes

Feeding giraffe

Panaromic view of the plains. Beautiful place..

Deer?

Open area where the animals roam

Elephant

gazelle? goats? Sorry, half the time I don't know what animal I'm looking at

Rhino

I'm still deciding how to blog this.. whether to write everything into 1 long post or to split into a few long posts.. Actually why should I care, I'm blogging for myself right? I am the audience.

Light-hearted stuff first. Watched Corrinne May sing. She's really good. Feel quite sad for her, cos she's playing in Borders, for free, to an audience of 30, she drove 2h to get here, with all her equipment, and had to set up everything mostly by herself. The conditions reminded me of how our Yamaha demos were, it's quiter here but there are still distractions.

Remember the zpop concert when we were amazed at how big Gigi was? Well Corrinne was even bigger. We actually went to talk to her, and talked about, um, RJ. Haha. I like her lyrics. Found her voice uncannyingly similar to Tong En's voice. She is good on piano.. and she's nice. =) Glad I went.

After that went to watch Big Fish DVD with the gang. Hmm.. I guess everyone wants to be a big fish.. Including the semi-drunk people watching it. Oh, saw a star-filled sky, ok not really star-filled, but at least the same amount of stars as in East Coast Park. Don't really see that many stars around here, don't know why. But I saw that star-filled sky at 1.30am..

Wild Animal Park. Nice sunny day today. Clear blue sky with sun, not too cold. Great tourist weather. I love the tram ride. It's an hour-long ride around the whole park, the best thing is that there's an actual driver, which is the tour guide, so it's like in a safari, stop the tram when there are animals to be seen. Only thing different is that there are animals everywhere. And the guide was funny. Saw many types of rhinos (they all look alike), many types of deer/ antelope/ gazelle (they all look the same).. saw many babies, and saw attempted courtship.. Haha

Ok, tried to post pictures, but blogger won't let me. So I'll add them in a separate post. It's a beautiful place.. Would have taken more photos if the cheapo batteries I bought were not so pok. I liked it. First time seeing things like that bustard thing and the zebra/ giraffe thing. And we could get so close to the animals. The parrot in the birdshow was really really good. It's probably the best parrot I've heard, it doesn't sound like a parrot at all. Amazing.

Quotes of the day:
On a male rhino: "That's a huge reproductive organ."
In a tropical birds aviary, warm and humid: "It feels like home."

Must blog abt this exciting night. Went to eat dinner.. in the very exciting school cafeteria. Then decided it's the night before a public holiday, we should do something, so hopped onto the cityshuttle and went Tapioca express to get bubble tea, i mean boba.. Isn't as good as it can be, think they use soya milk instead of real milk, so it tastes funny, and I didn't like the consistency of the pearls.. nvm.. walked around a bit in nowhere and went back to sch.

It's 8.30pm. There was a concert at Mandeville, so we popped in. Graduate Improvisation thing. The impro at UCSD is way too new for me. I don't get it at all. They have scores, but they're improvising. I wonder what's on their scores. I wonder what happens during rehearsals. Anyway, there was a tenor sax, an accordian guy who plays elec guitar as well, a flautist, a vocalist and a pianist who doubles up as vocalist. Didn't get it. There's a thin thin line between impro and noise. And today's performance was walking unstably on that line.

Went back to Revelle. That's 9.15pm. Sian diao, then realised that there's supposed to be some Revelle event going on. So we went for the best Revelle event ever.. in my opinion at least. Because.. only 2 people went. Haha. There are more RAs than residents. Anyway, it's Microwave 101, learn to cook stuff in microwaves.. Really fun, cos we basically mash around with the food and add food colouring everywhere and because there's so few people.. So we ended up with red and blue and purple rice krispies and red mash potatoes.. Taste good though. Yup, so i'm real full now. Haha.

Oh yeah, 1 more thing to cheer me up. I haven't broken my record yet. Scored amazingly decent on my psyc test. Yay.

A perfect way to spoil a perfect day.. Will not go at night next time, or just wish that i never see that woman again.

Living on optimism, and on autogear. Roam around sch, go to classes all by reflex action.. Study by reflex, fall asleep in class/ tests by reflex. Only class I'm still enjoying is Chem. Math has always been not easy, Ling and Psyc switch from fun to boring ever so often.. 1h20min lects are too long, that's all I can conclude. Hope I did fine for Psyc midterm..

Little things brighten up my day. A single informational meeting yesterday lifted my spirits, hopefully things will work out.. actually more good things than that happened, like the Chem dept finally found my petition and is processing it..

Perrin's office is so welcoming. A comfy couch, a clean blackboard, a view of the sch (ok, not very nice view), a nice rug, small group of students seated around.. 1 thing I like about uni is that the profs can give a satisfying answer to my questions. Remember sometimes when we ask Alfie stuff, he'll say things like go ask the molecules, or it just happens.. Now i'm actually getting reasonable explanations for such things. =) Think i ask really weird questions, cos he always has this amused look on his face when he answers my questions, and i don't see that look when he answers someone else's questions, maybe it's just my imagination.

Shall stick to talking abt good happy stuff today. Oh yeah, saw baby tadpoles and baby chicks and a bunch of dead baby frogs.. =)Yeah, the eyes in tadpoles/ frogs are really obvious. Oh, after I came out of the lab, I heard singing, in Chinese, from a classroom nearby, so I stopped to listen, Christian songs, very nice. Then this girl walked past and said hi. And I decided it's time to leave, then she chased after me and asked me to join them.. erps, sorry, I'm not interested to join in any religious activities.

Then I decided to go for the study break, which was a session on safe sex, da kai yan jie. Good thing was that there were banana splits. =)

Looks appetising? My attempt to use up all the chicken in my fridge

This egg, a bit failure.. Will try again some other day.

Chinese chicken minestrone soup

Pumpkin carved by first timers.. Good right?

A pirate, prince, monster bullying me.. if you can see anything in this yellow light.

Been busy.. logged into blogger today and woa, updates on all my active blogs.. So after I've added my entry on all the other blogs, I forgot what I wanted to blog here.. Anyway change of tone.

I will not get upset/ agitated when people talk badly of things/ people/ issues I am in support of.
I will give my opinion and my reasoning.

Studying efficiency is low. Been studying psychology the whole day. Coca-cola is made from coca leaves, which is where cocaine is extracted from. At least this was true before 1900s.. And it was manufactured as a cough syrup and alternative to alcohol. Well, my mom always tells me to drink Coke when I have a cough..

Went for a new music concert in school. Really really new music. Music without form, structure, time.. Music played by making all sorts of sounds from the instrument, conventional sounds and other kinds of tones, like singing while playing flute. I never knew so many kinds of sounds can be produced by the double bass. And they were good cos in all these sound-making, the sounds didn't sound like noise. There was a guided improvisation. What it means is that the conductor determines who does what kind of improvisation on the spot, so the conductor cues someone, and the someone plays something which sounds like it might fit the general atmosphere the conductor's trying to create. How exactly it works I'm not sure.. And it's new music, so there's no time, meaning probably no barlines, just notes going on and on and on.. Quite cool. I wonder what happens in rehearsals, will the conductor talk? and say "make some noise now"?

Loads of small irritating admin stuff junked up in my head.. eager to get them out.. My bills are as usual screwed, my nyc trip has no accomodation, my tix are amazingly expensive, i have no plans for other hols coming up or when my parents come, I still have to be a labrat for 2 more hrs and i'm trying to find time to fit them in, and my 2nd round of midterms are coming up.. Whatever, hopefully the boat will straighten up..

Being ultra-AS lately.. Went ASing in that concert on thur, AS-ed with my aunt on fri, AS-ed around clics and my dorm yesterday, ultimate today.. went to clics (oh that's the library btw) when my whole suite was still sleeping and stayed till 4.30pm.. haha.. then i'm going out for dinner now.. basically doing nothing with my suitemates.. oops. But seriously I can't study with people keep coming into my room.. Back to the point of my inefficiency.

Daylight saving.. supposedly to change time so as to match the circadian rhythm of the human body. Well, I'm feeling jetlagged, even though it's just lag by 1h, it's still lagging.. It's 11pm, I'm really sleepy. Was in a classroom with windows yesterday and wondering why I'm in class when it's already dark. Sunsetting an hour earlier means that if I want to see the sunset, I have to go to the beach an hour earlier. But my biggest complaint is still I'm time-lagging! My bio clock doesn't go according to the sun, it goes according to the clock. Grr..

My communications class. Realised the few days of predeparture activities is a crash course of my comm class. We did this personality test thing yesterday, kind of like the IFTG or whatever test we did during PDA. And..

My brightest colour is GREEN
I am conceptual.
I have an investigative mind,
intrigued by questions like,
"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
I am an independent thinker,
a natural non-conformist,
and live life by my own standards.

I like to do things that require vision,
problem solving, strategy, ingenuity, design and change.
Once I have perfected an idea,
I prefer to move on to a new challenge.

I value knowledge, intelligence, insight, and justice
I enjoy relationships with shared interests
I prefer to let my head rule my heart
I am cool, calm, and collected
I do not express my emotions easily.

Sounds like me? I know the last para does. First para I'm not so sure.
We split into groups, according to our colours, and that reminds me so much of what we did at PDA.. The blues are peacefully discussing, the golds are seriously discussing, the greens are um.. not talking much. Can't say much about the oranges, cos there are only 2.

Halloween! Some great costumes around.. Will post some photos soon. Our beautifully pumpkin carved using lousy tools and by first time carvers lost to a puking pumpkin. Walked around school at night uncostumed in a group of lavishly-dressed people/ monster.

Midterm today.. Bad feeling about it, felt like how I feel after rj bio paper 1.. If an A is 70%, I'll have no prob getting it, but there's no way it's going to be that low.

Eating increases amount of dopamine, so eating makes people happy. No wonder I'm so addicted nowadays.