Woke up early enough to catch the changing of guards at Buckingham Palace. Didn't expect the crowd that was earlier than us there though..


Police clearing the path for the guards


Marching band in furry hats. Cut xh's hand and camera out of my picture. The band stood in the grounds of the palace and played John Williams for 20min. Bao says it's the queen's alarm clock.


Squeezed to the gates finally and got a rather decent picture of them marching. I can't believe they make such a big deal of changing of guards every single day. They are much entertainers than soldiers I feel.


The palace and the dispersing crowd


Green Park. Beautiful. and yeah, it has green gates..


Princess of Wales Memorial Walk in green park.


Lobster noodles. Beef's talked about it forever.. Pretty good, I agree. And unique. I've never had lobster noodles before. Dim sum was ok too. And wow, student discount in restaurants, why don't we have that in San Diego?


Les Miserable! We watched that in the evening. 10 pounds. Standing ticket. But we found some seats for the 2nd half, or we'll be miserable. Musical's good. And our seats/ positions were good. Wouldn't be able to get that for that price in Singapore. Theatre is also small and cosy. Esplanade is too huge. Met some other Singaporeans there. Recognised each other by accents.. Singaporeans are artsy. We go to London to watch musicals.


The National Gallery. We went in to take shelter from the rain. But I enjoyed it, there's explanation for all the paintings in English of course, and they tell you the highlight of the room, so dummies like us can just go for that one. And it's free. =)


Birds flying over national gallery


The new form of animal. Made of tubes. It moves when the wind blows, it walks when the wind blows actually. The wings flap, the legs move. I can't remember the name of this species but the creator hopes that one day they'll be an independent group of animals on the beach.


St Paul's cathedral. I want my crystal ball with st paul's and birds flying, like the one Mary Poppins has, but I didn't see anyone selling it.


A tile in the Underground.

Went to Harrod's and Oxford Street after that but no pictures. I was getting a bit tired of taking pictures. And a bit tired generally. Harrod's is enormous and more high-class than I thought it to be. Got a sandwich there for lunch. They seem to have something against backpacks, you can only hold them, not carry them on your back. Wonder if it's for their security or my security. Oxford Street is like Orchard. I need one in San Diego.

Then Phantom of the Opera! Can't believe it right? 2 musicals in 2 days. 25 pounds ticket for a 'restricted view', where the restriction is just a thin pillar. I loved this musical, it's so dramatic, lights flashing, chandelier crashing, colourful, great music.. just that christine's voice is a bit too piercing for my liking, but I can live with that. It's a marvellous choice to watch this. And guess what, people sitting behind us were Singaporeans. Singaporeans love arts, they just can't create art.

That's it. End of London. I don't feel that I've interacted with Londoners much, so I can't agree/ disagree with beef that Londoners are very gentlemanly. I feel like I'm in my little microcosm of Assers, and I don't need any interaction with locals cos there's always bao to do that for us. I don't have to read maps or be lost and walk through alleys to find the right way again. I like London, but I like any big city where it's convenient to go anywhere.. Busted some misconceptions about London. Speaking to let the british understand me is easier than speaking to let americans understand me. After all I have been half-brainwashed by the British system since kindergarten..

Was supposed to wake up at 9 in the morning, but of course we overslept and left the house later than we should..


Tower of London. Castle in the middle of the city. Went through a tour of the castle, guided by a yeoman, but because I know nuts about British history, didn't know all the Philip the fifth or Charles the second or whatever, and I had a hard time catching the yeoman's accent, so I was quite sian. But we saw the crown jewels, and many crowns without jewels. Crazy huge diamonds, must weigh a ton. Royals must have strong heads.


England match in World Cup that afternoon. So many people wearing England jerseys on the streets.


Full armour. For knight and horse. Ok, British knights and horses must be strong too, to carry so much metal on them and still charge and fight. No wonder they enjoy courtly love so much, it must be so much easier to court a girl than to fight.


Swords and rifles. Looks like what they carried in Pirates of the Carribean.


Narrow spiral staircase of the castle


Tower bridge. An excellent piece of engineering. The bridge can open up in the middle to allow ships to pass through. Apparently they're still using the original machinery today to lift the bridge. If I'm not wrong it's the first bridge built after London bridge was removed because it hinders ships. And heads of those sentenced to death used to be put on the bridge for public display.


Portebello market. Sells all sorts of quainty stuff.. but was closing by the time we got there. Peeped into all the overfilled pubs for the progress of the soccer match. Don't really need to watch to know the score, just hear if people cheer..


Eating a cupcake on the street


Just a nicely painted truck


Hyde park


Sat there until the guy came to keep the benches, ie sat there for a total of 5min. Then tried to take a whole bunch of jumping shots but I don't have any on my camera. After asking 3 different passersby to take for us, we came to a conclusion that we can't let others take this kind of shots for us cos they don't know what crazy things we want. Then we dai-di-ed on the grass till dark, listening to the horrible rock concert playing in the park. Oh the balloons are from Harry Ramsden's, where we had fish and chips for dinner. Mushy peas are good =)

After watching Korean variety show in Bao's comp cos I refuse to take a nap even though I was feeling light-headed, we went to Covent Garden. By then Hong King has arrived (joining us after he missed his flight to Germany) and beef has made her way successfully to bao's laundry shop. Korean variety show is even more maluating than Taiwanese ones. The celebs do absolutely ridiculous things.

Busker with a cool tie. Great tie to wear to a costume party

Guy on a ladder throwing knives.. Dangerous..


Silver lady

Golden man + bicycle

Good thing about these buskers is that they don't insist that you pay them if you look closely or even after you take pictures with them, not like those in US or Spain, who'll be rather angry if you don't tip them after showing interest.

Some form of new energy drink promotion. The drink doesn't taste good by the way. hong king was the cameraman.

flattened bottles

candles

xh and hk trying to get the golf ball to sit on the stand in the crystal ball in the toy shop. Plenty of cool things in the toy shop, like this reaction thing which gives you an electric shock if your reaction is slow and of course, this golf ball thing.

This is not easy k? The lady working in the store says that hk is the first person she knows who managed to keep the ball there and even she was taking photos of hk. Look at hk's amazed expression. haha.

Telephone booths, is this very special to London? Cos a lot of postcards have it and people are taking pictures with telephones..


Bao jaywalking, crossing a street diagonally.


Big Ben, at sunset


Chinatown, we went there to eat Jap food.. huge portions. I love this no extra tax, no tip thing. Whatever it says on the menu is the actual price..


The London Eye. Each cabin is huge, can take 25 people or so, imagine how much they earn each day. And we were finding ways to calculate how high it is and end up failing.


London eye carriage


mutants


Nice picture! We stoned on the bridge for a long long time, about an hour? waiting for the sky to get dark and the big ben area to look nicely lit


Long long escalator in tube, they really should have escalators in every station, at least have 1 set per station, don't need to have it at all exits. It's really a pain to be carrying a 23kg luggage up or down flights of steps. London is not disabled-friendly. At times like this (and when I'm pushing a noisy cart of glassware from 1 building to another in school), I really appreciate all the disabled friendly facilities US has, they suddenly appear to be so thoughtful. But well, London has the oldest subway system in the world..


long tunnel in tube


tube station

I've been back for a week and got nothing done. Cos I've been sleeping like nobody's business.. Sleeping day and night. Truly piggy.

Snowy mountains flying northeast from San Francisco. I don't know what mountains they are.. Rockies? We did fly over Salt Lake City.. I saw the colourful salt farms a little north of San Francisco too, colourful from the different kinds of algae and bacteria growing in the different salinity, but didn't take pictures.

Flying over London, or the outskirts of London.

London city and the river Thames, see if you recognise anything. London looks enormous.

The storeroom that bao's living in. I should have taken a picture of the upstairs storeroom. I had to climb over boxes to reach the bed.. Well anything's alright as long as we have a roof over our heads right? oh yeah, bao lives in a laundry store.. haha.

Final packing, haven't been packing very carefully. I hardly know what's in my luggage.. Hope I have everything I need + lots of room..
Leaving tomorrow for Europe. Will be up and blogging again in 2 weeks in sweltering Singapore. =)

Grades are up. A-. I don't know if I should phew a sigh of relief, or be aww-ly disappointed. But I shouldn't have expected anything more than what I got, since it's been a quarter of "I don't know what happened".
Congrats to all those with fantastic results, jiayou to others who want to do better.

Why's graduation a cause to celebrate? I wouldn't want to graduate, or rather, I wouldn't want my undergrad life to end, don't want to change my status from an undergrad to a grad.. yet. I'm a stayer, not a changer. Well, not like it's any time soon for me.. good.
1/3 of my undergrad life is over, in a whoosh.. Time should move sloower..

Went to school yesterday, as a commuter instead of a resident, felt so different, like I didn't really belong there any more. But it didn't affect what I do in sch, I slept in the student center for an hour. Strange to see people still studying when I was done with exams for a long long time.

The piece of 'rough paper' stapled onto my paper turned out to be a letter from French. Haha.

Final exams are tests of stamina. 6h of taking exams on Monday. Exhausted after the 120 T/F questions in Mamm Phys, and then Hum, 3h of non-stop writing. GP was 3h in total, Maths Paper 1 was 3h and I didn't feel so tired then. During Hum exam, I was just, oh man, I have 2 more essays to write, 1 more essay to write.. basically counting down. But as a concluding remark, I like exams, when I'm doing them, I wish that they won't end.. A levels were shiok, 2-3 weeks of prelims, then a month of actual exam. Now all condensed into 1 week. Too fast. Don't know how I did, but I don't really do well for finals anyway, so I don't count on them much, except Hum, where I'm still holding a B average. B+ at the most. Wrote a whole bunch of junk of my exam, but hopefully it's enough junk to save my grade..

Been through irrational cycles of ups and downs this week, for no good reason at all, getting excited over nothing and getting sad and depressed over nothing also. Must be the minute amounts of caffeine that I'm taking in. No more caffeine for me..

I have a whole bunch of things to talk about, considering I haven't blogged properly for almost 2 weeks but I've forgotten almost all of them.

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Hmm.. tie btw limbo and city of Dis. Quite expected. If I'm not careful, I'll end up wearing a leaden cloak and walk around with my head always bent to the ground. Wonder if anyone taking this test can get a result of "You don't have to go to Hell, go to Purgatory and ascend to Paradise".

I totally felt that the battle was lost on Friday, when I didn't know what was going on at all in discussion. Just felt like stop trying to swim to the surface.. then thought about it and decided to stop trying to figure out the problem and just solve it, in whatever way I can.. Why's society so complex? It always starts simple, and gets more and more complicated, more factors, more players, until everything collapses and everything starts all over again. Same with music, polyphony was invented in late Medieval period, but disappeared in Baroque in favour of homophony and clarity, then it becomes popular again in modern music. We just have to "progress" from beautiful harmonies in Classical to dissonance in modern.. I don't know if I'll be ready for next quarter or not. I don't feel like I know my work.

K: What I feel is quite a pity in Singapore is that it's all so modern, there's none of the 'old' left. I had to specially search for it to find it.
Me: Singapore is small, it doesn't have enough space to keep much of the 'old' if it wants the 'new'
K: Just take over Malaysia
erps..
That was a conversation btw me and a Canadian who's been to most countries in SEA

Grad dinner on Sat. I'll miss these people. La Jolla is beautiful, I should go there more often and explore more places and not just stay at the shores and play with sand and water..

Sunday/ Monday.. beautiful weather after seeing no sun for I don't even remember how long.. I found a baby grand, never knew it's there and the door wasn't locked, ha.. so played with it for a while, nice sound =)

Tuesday. Concert. Funny how I'm hearing the Stravinsky piece which part of the orch played for the first time in my life. Anyway, concert is pretty good, I guess half the Mus4 class was there.. haha, one of the only tonal music concerts that are free and not too long in UCSD. I enjoyed it, though there are many parts where the winds almost broke down. Geoff was literally poking the baton at them and mouthing ONE, 2, 3, 4.. and he was good with the cues.. He was supposed to gesture wildly to cue us in at points cos either we can't count or there are just too many bars of rests, and he gestured wildly gracefully.. One of the shortest concerts that I've played in, felt even shorter than Wasbe, it probably is, only 3 pieces.. Enjoyed myself, will take it again if I have the chance.
Felt super bad for wy. She was trying to help me.. and I just told her to go sleep. Well what's done's done, essay's out of my hands, whatever the grade is, it will be.. John was saying in class that he only wants A essays, if the essay's not an A essay, don't hand it in.. I sure hope I get an A..

Had an extensive discussion on grading today. Should effort be taken into consideration when grading? What's the best way to curve a class? And heard of Dan's many experiments with grades in his classes.. Grading a maths paper on impression, if you give a proof that makes the most sense, but couldn't get to the answer cos you think 2+2 = 7, you can still get more credit than someone who managed to get to the proof through some unconvincing way.. University is so different. And they were amused by the bao's sch method of confidence levels questions..
Talked about how some people feel weird getting a 70% and still getting an A, felt like they only know 3/4 of the work. I still prefer the 70% A thing.. cos it gives teachers a chance to spread the grades out, and I won't be screwed if I make a stupid mistake.. Didn't tell them that I've been struggling to get 70% in JC.
Talked about how unrepresentative grades are of a person's ability, especially CAPE.. I agree that CAPE is pretty rubbishy, and it's the first time that I heard that it affects the lecturer's promotion opportunities.. Unfortunately in this world, we can only use numbers and letters to represent our abilities..
Complained about how I'm always on waitlists.. Somehow conversation got to funding.. The state only provides about 20% of the money the sch needs. And there's an interesting point raised. If you go to a private sch like Princeton, you don't have to pay anything you can't cos of their no-debt policy. So if you're rich and you go to a private sch, you pay more cos you can afford to and FA won't cover what you can pay. If you go to a state sch, you pay less cos sch fees are less. If you're poor, you go to a private sch, you pay less. If you go to a state sch, you end up with lots of debt. So public schs are serving the rich. That's contrary to what they're supposed to be doing.

Last thing, about Hum and other university-level courses. Acc to Dan, it sets a bar that's higher than what people are used to in high school. It teaches people that there are some things in life that you just can't reach or have to work very hard to reach. I'm fine if you want to do that, but don't do it on a compulsory letter grade course. I just want it to serve as an indication that this is not the right field for me to go into, not as an obstacle in my path to a non humanities related career.. Sounds super selfish. Anyway they're looking to see if they should make Hum 3, 4, 5 compulsory to take in UCSD or if they should allow P/NP on Hum 3, 4, 5 cos a lot of people drop out after Hum2. I would gladly welcome P/NP.

Some entertainment
The Lion Sleeps Tonight - Google Video

"Trust your own instincts. Don't listen to what other people says."
Can I trust myself? What right do I have to trust myself? There are plenty more authority out there..

"Don't be disenchanted. Don't give up."

好想放弃。为什么想出一个像样的thesis对我来说这么难？One of the few times this school year when I'm really stressed. 好想好想不想它，不写算了。But that's not an option.
Total blank. Every time something seems to come up, it either doesn't work or vapourises before I grab hold and make something out of it. Previous essays didn't feel this bad. Same thing happens in class, I say something and I have nothing to back it up.. Talking to Prof Lee is not helping, I already know what he'll say in most cases.. and I don't know my problems well enough to ask questions, and not that he can provide a solution..
Just told my mom to hang up the phone and not talk to me tonight.. symptom of stress
Comparatively, genetics is much easier..
I'm going to sleep

Some really old video on Singapore, look at the buildings in the city hall area
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5325325268119529441&time=1830000

Read the blogs of reporters. Nice photos, some pieces of great writings..
http://mypaper.sg

2 pages of comments.. wow.
"This is perhaps the most mechanical/ robotic/ stiff/ unrevealing essay that you have written during the past 2 quarters"
"you seem to be going through a mini-slump"
shit

This is hum, not science, don't apply formulae, they don't work.. Mechanical, robotic, sticking to a formula.. what am I doing? But why can't I think of something worth talking about at all this quarter? How to get out of this slush??

On a separate note, quoting Geoff
"When you're onstage and the audience is all quiet and the cellos and basses start a piece with a soli, it's very scary." True, I've never played a piece where the soli lasted more than 2 bars.. actually I have, but it's simple things like Stand By Me or Canon. Here it's 16 bars of sleazy melody with glisses everywhere without anything else entering. Good luck to us.

"America is one of the most religious countries in the world but it is also one of the most insistent on keeping government and religion separate" ~ Dr Parrish quoting someone else, Tocqueville, I think. It's a conflict that's always going to be present. I realised how difficult it is for the leaders to decide that they would separate church and state, considering that religion has been such an important part of everyone's life. Most if not all of the Ivies are founded to train clergymen, each one associated with a particular religious domination, and that's funded by the government.

Loads of work to do.. work work work

This term is flashing past.. I haven't even felt settled yet and here I am, deciding on what to take next quarter.. I'm turning into a control freak, of my own life that is, but it's impossible to control all the variables. Reading Augustine. I like this book a lot. Making me evaluate my preassumptions and let me try to pinpoint at what stage of this quest for Truth I am, and if I'm moving towards the right direction. (I'm not saying what Augustine thinks is right is right for me.) I'll discuss this another day..

Sifting through my old emails, deleted 50 emails today, clear up some space. Don't know why I'm wasting time doing this but I found this
http://shareheaven.org/media/heaven_640_250k.html
Sent to me from Steve, my ex-PI. Never watched it till now. I find it rather hilarious, but what right do I have to comment on such things? nvm.

My MP3 player is gone. Really gone. Whoever wants a player that displays everything in Chinese and doesn't even have batteries or headphones? Return it to me.. I still want it.. And if you do happen to have it and don't want to return to me, at least delete my essays in it..

Things to figure out:
1. should i switch lab
2. and that will determine what classes i should take in fall
3. should i continue/ start on this music minor at all
4. I don't think I should list everything here

Good night.

Ice skating. Tiring. Cos very tense. And my hands hurt after ice skating cos the ice is very rough and cold and not very friendly to the hands after I fall and try to get up. Haha. Had dinner with the largest congregation of Singaporean I've been in for a long long time. And it was planned on the day if I'm not wrong. Amazing. And quite surprised to see Ivan, the Rwinds flutist with long hair. Remember during the pirates time, he was persuading me to not take Astar. Oh well..

La Jolla Symphony concert. I haven't heard such a big sound and such instrumentation for ages. They had 3 harps, a celesta which I couldn't hear, alto flute, cor anglais, bass clar, tubas.. Wow. Acoustics are not very good but the pieces are good. Very good compositions.

Sometimes, trying to 向人交代 helps me to 向自己交代. Talked to mummy for 40min helped me to get my perspectives straight.. I'll wait 2 weeks, if I can't get anything done, I'm looking again.

Ok, I'm braindead, talking cock.. night.. will work on this Jesus and Roman values essay tomorrow.

Flowering

Keeping busy with non-academic stuff.. Gives me good excuses to break from thinking about my essay, an essay which I should really start writing something.

Paradigm paralysis
A paradigm is a model or a pattern. It's a shared set of assumptions that have to do with how we perceive the world. Paradigms are very helpful because they allow us to develop expectations about what will probably occur based on these assumptions. But when data falls outside our paradigm, we find it hard to see and accept. This is called the PARADIGM EFFECT. And when the paradigm effect is so strong that we are prevented from actually seeing what is under our very noses,we are said to be suffering from paradigm paralysis.

Which is what I said in my previous post about expectations imposed by society, people around me, myself. Do I need to look and ask if I am trapped by these expectations and "logical steps to take next"? Lots of questions with no answers sort of defines me now. The spontaneous meeting with the bunch of seniors today helped a lot..

Honours banquet. Socialising. Pretty fun actually. I still don't know how they assign the seatings. I was talking to this Singaporean guy who told me he is taking 2 yrs off school in June cos he has to go back for NS. I sat at table with Perrin! And he actually remembered me, even though I've only went to his OH once. He knows my name, my grade and that I went to his OH before.. Impressive. He made my day actually by sticking around and talking to me. Haha. Dinner conversation was on environment, hybrid cars, "fossil" fuels (Dr Penner was arguing that fuels are not made from organic matter but from CO2 and H2O and my ochem prof obviously didn't buy that), weather.. yeah that sort of stuff. That's what happens at a Revelle intellectual social gathering.

That bubble in the Muir parking lot houses a spectrometer. It was supposed to go into NSB but there was something wrong with the measurement or sth, so it can't go in. So it's going to be temporarily placed in the parking lot, taking up precious parking space, for 10 years.
Oh and of course, Perrin told me I should take 140C.

I need time to straighten things out. I need advisors.

I found an organ in school! But it's not anywhere where I have free access to.

Hum doesn't have a more correct or more wrong answer. Everything seems to depend on how you argue it. Feel so sophist.

Mores maiorum. Was that the basis of my decisions? That's a terrible criterion.

Talked to niwa. Answer was not any time soon, until you're ready. I'm seriously considering looking somewhere else, at somewhere where I can learn more stuff. But kl is right, since I'm there, might as well talk to people more, network more, get ideas from people

I wonder how much of what I do is doing for my own sake and how much is so that it meets the expectations of others. Follow your own interest.. Can I trust myself to know what I'm doing? Why have I delayed the answering of all these questions till now?
In the meantime, keeping myself busy.

Wow, I got a bubble. Now I'm going to insensitise touch receptors of more fingers.

Election Day. Nope, not General Elections. It's a play that I watched recently. First play I've watched here. First play I've watched in ages actually. They are really pro. Everything in college is pro. Pro musical, pro concerts, pro plays. We couldn't believe that it's UCSD cos the majority of the cast is black. Not being colour biased, but it's not often you see so many blacks together. And they're really good. Play included smoking, partial nudity, all sorts of fondling each other.. Plot included burning up cars using home-made petrol bombs and having sex with the mayoral candidate.. And the play's choked full of ironies.. Enjoyed it a lot. The playwright is supposed to come talk about this play, hope he comes.

Baseball game. Another first. Never watched baseball properly before even on TV. Went to a real game. The stadium is very spectacular. If it wasn't so dark, I would have taken photos. Witnessed some amazing stuff, like a home run.. and tauntings and a catfight. And the efficiency/ fairness/ effectiveness of the security. I brought an opened bottle of water in and a friend brought in a lighter. And wow, there are nice people in the world, really really nice people. Will elaborate on this some other day.

I realise I'm wasting my time and I don't have a lot of time to waste. Need to get some thinking about my undergrad life done. Need the right mood to do it though. I'm turning into a huge procrastinator. sian. I'm in a mess. I'm rotting away.