Random little thing my mum got for breast cancer awareness month; supposed to demonstrate how some lumps can be felt and how some can't; thus necessitating periodic mammograms, or so it seems. She kept asking me to press it lol. Haha; kind of reminds me what medical professionalism is supposed to be. Kind of like how there was a campaign a few years back asking patients with ED to signal that to their doctor with a thumbs down (N) and how my dad has a series of um...fruits?...indicating various levels of "hardness" xD Can't imagine getting to the point where I'd be able to maturely and tactfully discuss such stuff with virtual strangers lol.

 Came across this pic on FB, can't remember who posted it. Just putting it here cause idk; provoked some pretty visceral feelings for me. (Pun wholly unintended; at least initially xP) The insensitive caption is entirely mine; couldn't help myself. Google "hand of hope" if you're interested.

"Thanks for giving me a hand; but I'm really almost done with this operation"

A Procrastinator's Warning

"Time is elastic", The procrastinator's creed. Just don't let it snap. Spur of the moment haiku XD I can't help but be reminded of Rette's epic: The dead bird is red. The dead bird is very red. The red bird is dead. ...um yeah, those were more retarded times. Can't say I didn't have a shitload of fun, though >.<

TGIF (On a Saturday, no less!)

I'd love to talk, but that's not happening anytime soon, now is it? > <

Spent the last few hours or so after getting back binging on my laptop; which has been little more than a glorified paperweight - occupying valuable real estate on my table which I'd like to think of as being in a state of deshabille but is unfortunately just plain messy - these past few days.

I'm not sure when it was that I started to find a certain serenity during these exam period. The days kind of blend into each other; paper after another, very idyllic (not idle, of course!) Even when rushing to cram for the next paper; those desperate 2 hours or so between Econs Paper 2 and Bio Paper, as I just sat there alone flipping at frantic pace through that stack of 7 or so topics, there wasn't really much stress to speak of. Going home straight after the paper to catch up on last night's sleep; cram again, rinse and repeat. Very simple; kind of unlike the bulk of our papers up till now xD

Now for some random spam on the prelims xP (You've been warned)

I've already alluded to Econs; basically didn't manage to finish writing any of my essays; didn't really allocate my time fully and spammed too much on that Merit and Public good question, which compromised the latter ones.

Bio was pretty manageable; thanks to the separation of application and core syllabus; which makes that whole smorgasbord of topics marginally digestible. Heh I think I relapsed into my RI form for Bio; where I approached each question with a little too much enthusiasm; literally spamming everything I knew, with little regard to the actual nuances of the question. I'll term it the "shotgun approach" (not to be mixed up with that DNA sequencing technique). The metaphorical shotgun may have metaphorically backfired though; since I didn't manage to finish the essay despite having a solid 30 or so mins left to tackle it. I got a little too complacent towards the end, methinks. I actually spent awhile debating with myself which question to attempt by trying to mentally list down the points I had for each. Not an optimal approach; hindsight tells me. Death by choice indeed... Shouldn't do too badly; though it's always impossible to tell, with Bio. It's always the analness of the answer scheme that trips me up; though I do realize it's got to do with my general ineptitude as well.

Chem was a disaster, to put it simply. It's probably the subject that I have to pay the most attention to right now; since I should be able to do it, can't give myself excuses like not having practiced enough since that's all down to my general laziness. Lost marks left right center; the most I can hope for out of Paper 3 is a pass. It's quite telling that when the thing started and I was briefly scanning the questions (hoping to eliminate the toughest, you see) and I started crossing things out; I quickly realized that there were none that I was confident in dealing with...

Math was a mixed bag. Paper 1 had those standardly non-standard pure math questions that just made me go "WTF!" stare at them for awhile; scribble something onto the paper; cancel my scribblings only to rewrite them all over again along with those really run-of-the-mill questions that I should really have been able to attempt much faster. Chalk it down to lack of rigorous practice, I guess. Speed could be further optimized. Paper 2 was actually a little fun to do; while I was initially worried about the time, after spending way too long on the first few questions; the statistics part was a breeze, as there's really alot less thinking and alot more regurgitating to do. Should be fine even accounting for the fact that I probably messed up the probability questions. My paranoid side fears that literally everything could have been wrong and I would have still walked out thinking that I did fine; but I hope that wasn't the case lol. The pure math part was the "fun" part; since imo, it involved alot less technique than in Paper 1 and required more thinking and problem solving. Heh, maybe it was a no-brainer for the rest of you who did it, but when finding the points of intersection of the tangent in the parametric question, I was randomly multiplying and cancelling terms, and it felt so good after managing to whack out the answer :D Ditto for the last part of the AP GP question, where after staring at it for awhile - with the very frequent glances upwards at the clock to see how many precious minutes were remaining - I finally began to see the glimmers of a solution. As frenzied scribbling followed; with each line of working taking up like 2 lines of foolscap; the pieces started to fit together, and realizing the last part of the puzzle - to multiply by 3/2 - to get the answer was so gratifying. Hahaha I can see how that feeling of gratification could get pretty addictive; it's just that so often there's so little time under exam conditions that the stress overwhelms everything and I'm unable to think straight. I'm normally unable to "see" the solutions for such questions, so good job for managing it this time, Chris! XD The vectors question was a nightmare; though I'm pretty confident that all my steps were correct; they didn't give us any "save points" at all! So I was just doing, doing, doing; and hoping really hard that I hadn't overlooked any careless mistake that would doom the rest of my marks. Especially so given that I've got a bad track record with such mistakes.. Lost >7 marks in CT2 cause I was rushing and did the dot product wrongly, getting 5x5 = 5 instead of 25 or something like that. Even worse was that when as I was done with one part and was checking the working; I realized that I had made 1x1 become 2 lol. Not exactly confidence-boosting material.

Hahaha, that's it for the Prelims spam this week (Y) My predicted grades aren't looking too good atm; GP, Math and Econs are already decided; so all that's left are Bio and Chem (well duh). Bio looks fine, but Chem...urgh...very jialat alr, it'll be a miracle if I can maintain CT2 standard.

And now, a short (PSA) by a friendly, stoned lemur:

Credits SY for showing it to me so long ago :D

I need to write faster. Sigh. Maybe I'm comparatively disadvantaged when it comes to writing; having to forcefully push my hand across the paper when I write rather than the elegant gliding action that favors right-handers. My unfortunate affliction with sweaty palms means that at the end of the paper, I'm left with a blue stain on the bottom of my hand that would surely get me caught blue-handed should I ever decide to karate chop someone right after. Being unable to review what I'm writing as I write is pretty crappy too >< haha so should I concede this disadvantage and develop other areas of CA instead or continue to work at it? Answer seems pretty evident.

I'll end the random whining here

Let the season of daily sleep deprivation begin :P thank god for the distribution of papers.

The reason why blogger should have a "listening to:" field

Won't ever grow sick of this same old song :)

Some things have an expiry date to them; days, months, years? It is only those that carry emotions and powerful memories that remain forever in our hearts, even when everything else is turned to dust.

The interesting things one finds on the net xP

Focus on the "Sting Factor" column. I find it amusing how someone actually went to quantify the sensation of being stung by various bugs (not trying to be scientific here..) and actually came up with an index describing the exact sensation. I tried looking for the full article, but apparently that needs some paid subscription to some online journal library which I decidedly do not possess, so here's the wiki link instead: Schmidt Sting Pain Index

The scale goes from 0.0 to 4.0, with 0.0 being almost no pain at all, and 4.0+ being "Pure, intense, brilliant pain"; which does seem remarkably similar to that GPA system we had in RI, does it not?

Even more laudable is the way he goes about the business of getting stung by bugs like a true professional; going to painstaking lengths to describe each experience in excruciating detail. He seems like quite the connoisseur xP

One of the more interesting ones:
When describing an insect ranked 4.0: "...immediate, excruciating pain that simply shuts down one's ability to do anything, except, perhaps, scream. Mental discipline simply does not work in these situations."

As a Bio student, and one having to come up with those sickening SPA Planning answers at that, I can't help but wonder: Did he bother with the repeats and replicates? To check for reproducibility of results, y'know.

Haha, I was taking my usual detour home today past this badminton/sepak takraw court when this little girl perched on the referee seat suddenly exclaimed: "Look, there are flowers!"

I'm pretty sure it wasn't directed at me but chuckled nonetheless cause it was just that funny. I really didn't expect her to immediately shout/raise her voice at me, "Hey! What're you laughing at!!"

I didn't reply, of course, merely chuckled somemore and walked on.

It's quite a wistful feeling, seeing such child-like fearlessness. Kinda reminded me of what I was like when I was a kid; not scared of much; except the dark, the Monster Under the Bed and injections, obviously. A world of difference apart is the present me, obsessing over the barest hint of a frown or some other sign of displeasure.

The Game of Pretense.Donning masks, staring at masks, trying to see past masks, guessing at what lies beneath, don't you ever get sick of it? Well I do, thus I throw up the thickest of them all, then maybe the face beneath may never need to see the light of day, face a masked and gloomy world.