Getting pretty sian of bio.. and even more sian of lab, even though I've only done some form of work for 1 day. I'll give it another week and then voice.. I said sth about having no models/ inspiring people around before. I really really take that back. I need to know where to look.

Sometimes I wish I'm a guy. Just pick up my stuff and go when and as I like, don't have to wait for slow-poke girls, don't have to make sure there's someone to want to do the same thing that I want to do.. But then I'll live my life as an as. It's been almost a year and wow, so many people have gotten attached. Bateman's principle implies that a female should just sit around and wait for flashy males to exhibit themselves to her. Guess humans don't follow many principles.

Sometimes I wonder why and how I decided to do bio. I remember that in sec sch, I was pretty certain that I won't want to do bio, cos I never had a good teacher teaching bio in sec sch. There wasn't much bio in sec 1, my sec 2 science teacher is a physics teacher, sec 3-4 bio teacher isn't really good. I remember Bio as being exceedingly dull, loads of memorisation and no good grades. But I chose to take bio again in JC. Then things began to be more fun, but they're fun only if the teacher's good. I didn't like any of the plants stuff, maybe because the teachers are dull. Sometimes I wonder what is the force that drove me to apply so certainly for bio courses. Interest? Med fac? Teachers? RJ? Parents? Govt? Simply because I'm good in it? (That's quite rubbish cos I'm not)
Whatever it is, the thing to do now is to rediscover that it's my interest, and not go on just because my "fate" is laid out in front of me.

Realised very recently that cello has a very nice sound. Maybe just because I've been hearing good cello players often nowadays. Geoff's sound is really good.

Random stuff:
1. The eucalyptus trees in school are once part of a eucalyptus plantation.
2. The building with the neon flashing virtues and vices is an earthquake testing building and it's almost empty inside
3. There's a toxic waste dump a little off Point Loma
4. The change in colour of sea water after rain is due to water (with mud and soil and stuff) from storm drains flowing into sea
5. Some guy in Queensland tried to steal a koala from the zoo or sth, and the koala kept scratching him, so he gave up and stole a 1m crocodile instead
6. Sympathetic autonomic system start from nerves from T1-L3, Parasympathetic from head and sacral.
7. Geneticists have estimated that approximately 1 in 5 babies has the wrong father (ie child of mother and another man)

These are what I learn in classes. Gosh. K wish me luck, music listening quiz tmr and physio midterm.

Balboa Park

Think it's some greenhouse thing in that metal cage

Artistic ground in the artist's village

hairy flowers

Doesn't this place look like some palace?

Ok, my camera is tilted again, something wrong with my hand maybe. Anyway that building houses the organ. This is the outdoor "concert hall".

Blogger ate up my previous entry.

My attitude sucks. Totally. I was too lazy to check through my exam even though I had the time. Darn, I just checked my grade, it's lousy. I just handed in the lousiest hum essay I've written so far. I didn't know the answers to half the jeopardy questions today. What is wrong with me? I should do what zijun used to ask me to do, go stare at the wall until I can see my reflection.
And because I've been doing I don't even know what, I haven't done anything about Spain yet. I'd better do sth soon..

I play terribly. Sounding like a slush of mud when I bow and sound too classical when I pizz. I should take advantage of the opportunities around here and stop chickening. I should go ask Mark for lessons. A virtuoso right here in school and I'm not using this chance. What is the matter with me?

"There's no such thing as a stupid question. The stupid thing to do is not ask questions when you have the environment and opportunity. I know it's hard to ask at first, I have the same problem." She's so nice. But it's all up to me ultimately.

Come on. Stop being a bum and Study properly!!

I should stop living in my own fantasy, sheltered by my imagination. Get back to the real world girl, your classes are not supposed to be slack! Don't get slaughtered by the midterms and don't write a crappy essay! Start working!

Dance class is quite boring. Probably will switch class, ie crash some class, or just drop. If I do start work in a lab, I'll be quite busy.

Went to church on Friday. Good Friday. I'm so glad my aunt dragged wy there, cos if not, I'll be utterly bored. The speaker was really good, good as in he has good public speaking skills. His title was "It's Friday, but Sunday's coming" and he looked at a few groups of people present on the crucification day and see how they felt and wanted to tell them that Sunday's coming. His point was that people today should live like Sunday's already here, that every day's Sunday and not Friday. I'm not commenting on whether I agree on that or not, but he did a good job in bringing the stories of all those people together, gave me a good intro on the NT.

Talking to wy also showed me that I could never be like her. She's way too zai, too outstanding.. Absent-minded, but very talented. And though I've heard much about it, I nv knew their relationship was that close. I agree with everyone. (jia4 gei3 ta1 suan4 le)

Muir Musical. I thought it was really really good. It was extremely pro. The actors are so pro! I just didn't expect it to be this pro. Ok i need a different adjective. The story was funny, it was hilarious the part where they pulled out a UCSD sweater and said that would be the wedding gown for the princess. I'm sure they all had fun. The orch was, well, not that impressive. The fanfare wasn't power enough and soloists could have been more confident of their playing, but I believe they all enjoyed themselves. I enjoyed the musical. =)

zoo pictures

Bunch of cactus in the zoo.. Wah I look real sian.

Peacock! Wonder who he's showing off to. Bateman's principle and Intersexual competition.

Rhino

I like this thing.. meerkat

feeding

What's impossible is impossible. There isn't a way to find a way through something impossible. fullstop.

Summer told me today that her roommate's moving out and she's looking for someone. If she asked me last quarter, I would gladly say yes. But I asked them last quarter and they didn't say anything.. oh whatever, I'm not eligible to rent anything anyway..

Loads of things to do.. I'm losing track of everything.

I got into chamber orch. Yay. The great thing abt having a 30 people orch with a horn, a tpt, no trb, no tuba is that I can hear every single note I play. Quite shiok. And playing with experts means I can learn fr the pros.. Darn pro.. Wish I can sound like that. Dresser said hi to me, wonder if he actually remembers who I am or just saying hi cos I'm carrying a bass. And I finally realise that the conductor's accent is not British but Australian. Good break fr all the Amer accents.

Scores are recycled through the years, so there are many markings. And at a particular place on the bass score where we're supposed to blast, if blasting is possible, some guy wrote 'balls'. Must be written by a white male. Not being racist or sexist, but almost all the bassists here are white males. Anyway, so now, any time strings are supposed to be strong, conductor will say balls.

More on spring break.. After Mexico, wang ning stayed in san diego for a couple of days and I went to the zoo with him. Yup, the world-famous San Diego zoo. Very disappointing.. A rather educational place, but not very entertaining. Maybe it's the weather.. cloudy weather makes everything gloomy. There are many pig-like creatures, hogs and boars.. not enough big charismatic predators. Maybe they're all in the wild animal park. We didn't even see the pandas cos there are too many people queueing up. aah, if I want to see pandas, I'll go Sichuan. The zoo was flooded with kids on fieldtrips.

Balboa Park was good though. Buildings are very photogenic and we bluffed our way into the Natural History museum.. ok not really bluffing, just looked innocent and walked in. Saw the organ pavilion, the organ is not really outdoor, it's in a small house that I believe one of the walls can be removed and the organ exposed. Must go back on one Sunday and see it in action. Balboa Park is worth going again. It's just too inconvenient.. Learn to drive!!

Anyway, here are some pictures..

Baby alligator

The zoo seriously need more charismatic big mammals like this one and a male counterpart to get people to come here and to promote conservation.

Chimp family

One of the more pretty pigs

This is a good picture =)

Camel at the circus. I'm quite scared of it.

Llama like creature at the circus

Shuai horse.

Mexico slum on hillside

We drove on these mountains, right next to the cliff edge. And did it after sunset too. Scary. But we made it through, safe and sound. =)

Temptation Gentleman's club

This is a better picture of the flag

Some random thing in the park

Diner where we tried to communicate to the spanish-speaking waiter. Very funny. Ordered cactus salad for the heck of it. Rather gross, it's sticky, and tastes like pickles. No one ate much of it.

Beach bummers

I know half of my discussion class before class even started. What are the chances of that? Anyway, I switched out of that class into another one, and I didn't know a single person. Thought someone I know was supposed to be there, but well guess he changed his mind. End of 1st week, seems like school has been going on forever. Even though I'm taking more units and doing more stuff this quarter, I don't feel it.. yet.. Cos there's less homework, and I've decided to not read textbooks if I don't need to and now I haven't even got the books, more reason for me to slack. Anyway, used this break to get my air tickets finally settled. Swiped almost $2000 on my card today. I'm poor now..

It's all in the mind. If you go for something thinking that you'll enjoy it, you'll probably do. Do things with the right mentality. Pay attention in class!

Huge Mexican flag.. It doesn't look huge in the photo but trust me, it's bigger than any flag I've seen.. probably bigger than the flag they fly using helicopters during NDP

Horses on the beach. We rode them. Very bumpy. And have to watch for their shit when walking on the beach.

Ferrero Roches

cool shop/ restaurant

People in middle of road, at stop signs, asking for donations to red cross. Many many of them doing this. Think it's official red cross work. Try doing this at Orchard Rd traffic lights. Wonder how much more money you can get compared to flag day outside Lido.

My teacher was asking what we did during spring break. I said I went to the zoo and it was a disappointment. And he asked if I've been to any better zoos, and I said, yeah, Singapore Zoo is very good. And he smiled and said, of course.

Beach at Rosarito

Alcohol in the middle of the day

Entrance to a club

Guy selling fruits, especially coconuts, drawn by horse

I took back my Hum final paper. Maybe I'm used to Singapore grading, cos I'm surprised that my mark is so high, and I'm surprised that such a high mark didn't get me an A. I don't see how I can get more marks in a final exam.. But next time I'll try harder to write a decent essay. My essay was terrible. Haha.

1st day of classes. Chaotic, trying to get all my books and course packs and classes and air tickets.

It's good to get rejected now and then, kills my ego a bit. This school is not doing much of that. I need to be surrounded by people who are really zai and inspire me. 3F was pretty zai, there were many brilliant people around.. There were plenty of people to inspire me. Now.. hmm, I need to seek out these inspirational people.

Actually I take that back. Everyone is inspirational. Maybe it's me who has stopped paying attention to these..

Inspire me.

Dog racing in TJ

View from the hostel. This is what Mexico looks like. Crowded on hills, houses don't look very strong and steady. And this is nowhere near slums.

Trainers showing off their dogs before the race

The racecourse and houses behind on the hills. Didn't manage to get any good pictures of the meat or the dogs running, ran too fast for my camera.

I always look at the wrong things, the factors that affect my decisions are always minor things which shouldn't even matter. Look at the BIG picture.

The trip. Shows very much that I don't care about who the company is, went out with people I barely know. But ended up knowing each other quite well. Same with the way I'm looking for a roommate/ housemate next year, I'm grabbing anyone. Gosh, is that even good? This holidays, also shows how impt the company for a holiday is. These people are fun, yet not too crazy. I had fun even though seriously we didn't do much, mainly driving around, getting lost. haha. And then I went to the zoo, maybe it's because the sd zoo is not that great, maybe the weather was terrible or just maybe the company is not so good, but sd zoo was a disappointment. Shall go back to Balboa one day. Preferably on a Sunday afternoon at 2pm. I want to see the organ being played. =)

Be enthu. Be willing. Don't be selfish.. I need to do these. and lose weight.

Stuff on revolucion in TJ

lizard masks

tequila skins, with donkey hooves?

small kid selling stuff, many of them here. Karen taking photo of the kid.

I wonder what's in the bottles, but viagra and other drugs are very commonly displayed in pharmacies. There are many pharmacies, opthalmetries (however you spell this), dentists in the border towns in Mexico cos these are so expensive in US.

Played the whole spring break away, didn't do anything constructive. sigh. Had fun though. =)

Mexico
I'm waiting for people to send me photos so I can post some stuff. In the meantime, here are the texts.

Went Baja California with let me count, 3 fr Berkley, 1 fr Stanford and 1 fr Oxford. It's tough to drive in Mexico, not every street has a street name and not every street name is labelled in the right direction, so sometimes you see a street name and have to guess if it's talking about the horizontal or vertical street. So got lost a million times, made a million u-turns, seriously, it's a trip to practise u-turns. I'm very impressed with our driver zhong yu. I'll be so tired after driving from 1 place to another after all the u-turns we make. But he drove us around for all 3 days. Rocks.

First day.
Crossed the border. I didn't even realise that we crossed the border, all we did was stopped next to this immigration officer. He glanced at us and let us pass. Wow. No passports nothing. Anyone can get into Mexico from US. Then after a few u-turns, we found the hostel, a house with a tiny tiny sign. We found it anyway. Guess what? The 6 of us practically booked the whole place. Not a bad hostel, considering it's only $10/ night, great view from the roof. Just that there's no heater and need skills to keep warm at night.. Haha. Went to change money and had our first meal in Mexico, and our first encounter with Spanish-speaking only people.. Any how order, seriously, we don't know what we ordered until the food arrived, and got some great food.

Went around Tijuana, ended up at Revolucion. Got persuaded by this mexican girl to braid my hair. They're really fast, finished with my hair in less than 10 min. Walked down Revolucion and looked at the many many Gentlemen's clubs, many many souvenir shops which need lots of bargaining, and all the Mexicans calling us Amigos and beckoning us to drink their margaritas, buy their souvenirs. Many of them can say something in Chinese, Japanese, Korean. Haha, totally touristy place.

Went to this oops I can't spell his name, Gorje? Anyway it's pronounced as Horhe. This guy's a millionaire and he owns a dog racing place. So we went to tat place and watched greyhound racing. The dogs are big. There's this piece of meat that is dragged along by a machine around the track, then the dogs will be released and they go chasing after that piece of meat until the meat stops and the dogs devour it. We were saying that the dogs will be much better off if they run the other way around the track, can catch the meat faster.. Went back to hostel to play bridge and dai de, of course, that's only after getting lost and circling the roads around the hostel many times.

2nd day
Drove to Rosarita, another popular place for spring breakers. The restaurants actually have banners that say welcome spring breakers. Went to the beach. Long vast beaches and we decided to ride the horses on the beach. Fun, just that none of us could control our horses, the guys want the horses to go faster and karen and I want the horses to not gallop, cos when the horses gallop, the rider is thrown up and down, basically bouncing on the horsie. ouch. Every time the guys ask their horses to move faster, my horse starts running. sian.. then i'll try to stop my horse and the guys' horses stop too. haha. Had my first magarita and tequila sunrise there. A cool drink in the sunny morning. Conclusion: I don't like alcohol.

Then drove to Ensenada hoping to go visit a wine shop and do wine-tasting, but the guy giving the tour was sleeping or something, basically we couldn't do anything there. So bummed around at the waterfront, played at a playground. There are swings! But I didn't dare to go high cos I'm scared that the swing break under my large mass. Didn't get much done at Ensenada, so drove back to Rosarito. The drive has beautiful view of the ocean. Went back to the "best bakery" in Rosarito and bought 30cent breads, they're pretty good. Wish US had bakeries like that. Then went back to TJ for dinner. Wanted to go to Los Altos, this seafood place recommended by Lonely Planet, but was a bit off our budget, so went to this diner across the street. Discovered that I was sunburned by the sun in the beach in the morning. Anyway, the cute young waitor at the diner couldn't speak english, so we all practised our communication skills. Think he's so frustrated at us cos we don't know what we're all talking about, but he's sweet about it all. He looked like he just wanted to die when we called him over time and again. Haha. I ordered a cactus salad. Was terrible. More like pickles than cactus, not like I know what a cactus is supposed to taste like. Anyway, we finished and bought alcohol back to hostel to feast. Some coconut alcohol. My conclusion again: I don't like alcohol.

Day 3
Plan was to go to national park, but weather wasn't so good, so went Mexicali instead. The drive was fantastic. Big rocky mountains. Drove on the cliff edge, quite scary actually. Oh yeah forgot to mention, we were listening to Chinese, Canto, Jap pop and older pop songs throughout the journey, so was quite funny driving through mexico listening to happy SHE songs. Got to Mexicali, and got a glimpse of the bullfighting ring, cos it's not the season and the place is closed. Then went to a shopping mall to eat. They had Panda Express there. The shopping mall is huge, can pass for one in US. Saw a circus on the way to the shopping mall, so we checked the circus out, there's a really handsome white horse and a camel and llamas.. roamed around a bit and went back to TJ. Got really really lost this time in Mexicali, couldn't find the highway, circled until the sunsets before we made it back onto the mountains and drove back in the dark. Phew.. Respect for the driver.