This week has been a busy and tiring one, with lots of time being spent on preparing the Cell Bio presentation that my group had to do today. Up till this morning, we were still editing our slides when our presentation was at 11.30am, and we had an hour’s lecture right before that. I’m the kind of person who likes to get my work done early so that I don’t have to rush to complete it at the very last moment, and so that I get to check though my work at least once before I submit it. Thus, it was worrying to still be editing the slides on the day of the presentation itself. (Maybe I worry too much about things like these?) In times like these I tend to get snappy, so if I accidentally said something not very nicely, sorry about that! Good thing we managed to get everything sorted out before our presentation though!

Generally, our presentation went smoothly, and even though I’m sure all of us were nervous, we managed to get through the presentation without any major problems. The prof said that we did a good job, and that was something we were all very happy to hear. At least all the time and effort we spent was not in vain! Hopefully our presentation was clear enough such that most people (and not just the profs) could understand it.

After losing so much sleep this week, I can finally repay my sleep debt tonight, and I am certainly happy about that. Can’t slack tomorrow though, since there’s the Muscle Bio test on Monday to study for. But after the test is done I can finally relax a bit more. Come to think of it, I guess it’s a good thing that we only get a week to prepare for our presentation, because even though the time is short, at least once you’re done with the presentation you can concentrate on other stuff. Plus having more time to prepare for the presentation means spending more time on it and losing more sleep, and the losing more sleep part is really not appealing to people like me who need at least 8 hours a sleep per day.

This week is such a busy week for me - a presentation this Friday plus a written assignment to hand in, a Sunday school lesson to prepare for, and a test on next Monday to study for. The presentation is going to take up a lot of time, and since every group is only given a week to prepare, we can’t take our own sweet time to discuss, edit our slides or to rehearse. I just want to get this over and done with! Presentations are most certainly not something I like to do, much less a presentation on a research paper. (I’m having research paper overload this semester!)

In the midst of all this busyness, there are fun moments as well. I went over to Denise’s place with Jasmine Lim and Han Fang last Saturday. It was a farewell party for her, and she had invited us interns and her church friends as well. The house is huge! It’s the biggest I’ve seen so far, with 4 levels including a basement. Her 3 dogs are super friendly, and they gave me a shock when all of them suddenly ran over when we stepped in. Good thing they’re small and have good temperaments, because I’m afraid of big dogs. I always forget which is Cookie and which is Elmo though! I hope that as a group we’ll continue to meet up from time to time.

I was looking at this online store selling stationery, and I thought this was really cute! I hardly use such things though, so I shouldn’t waste my money on it. I still have yet to finish those post its I bought in primary school! The small ones with pictures of the 7 dwarfs. It’d be nice if I could own a stationery store one day, because I love to look at pretty stationery.

Meeting Christine, Jun and Winnie tomorrow! I guess most of us will be tired, but let’s enjoy our last gathering with Christine before she flies off.

It’s been quite a while since the last post, hasn’t it? Other than school, most of my time has been spent watching the Olympics. Mainly athletics and swimming, but I’ve also caught a bit of gymnastics, cycling, horse riding (what’s the proper term for this?), archery, and of course, table tennis. I guess most Singaporeans would be happy with the silver medal we got for table tennis. After a 48 year drought of medals, getting a gold would be icing on the cake, but let’s be realistic here. A silver is certainly not bad, and losing the the world number 1 team is certainly nothing to be ashamed of.

Watching the athletes compete in all these different sports, sometimes I just wonder how they do it. Running the 10km race in approximately half an hour and still being able to finish the last lap in less than a minute (and not look too exhausted after that!). Setting a 100m world record while coasting through the last 10m or so (makes you wonder what his time would be like if he didn’t slow down). Winning 8 gold medals in a single Olympic games (I’m sure everyone knows who this person is). All that and so many more.

When we see the athletes winning medals or even breaking Olympic or world records, we tend to think of how great an achievement that is. We see so much news coverage and attention given to these people as we celebrate their victory. But I think that we must never forget about the effort the other athletes have put in as well, which could be just as much or perhaps even more than those who won a medal. That also applies out of competitions as well. In this world, there is so much emphasis placed on achievements, and sometimes we tend to forget about those who worked hard, but didn’t manage to achieve what others did. Don’t they deserve some encouragement and acknowledgment as well? It’s so sad when one puts in so much effort into something, only to be asked why they didn’t achieve a good result.

Anyway, other than having my eyes glued to the TV set, I’ve been meeting up with friends quite a bit, mainly for farewells. So many people are leaving this semester! Some will be back by the end of the year or early next year, while others will be away for a much longer time. It feels kind of weird that so many people are missing at once.

It’s once again that time of the year, where the freshies come in, and everyone else that has not graduated moves up a year. Come to think of it, I didn’t see anyone holding a map and finding their way around today, which is a common sight for the first couple of weeks each new school year. However, I’m sure I’ll be seeing those maps being held around soon. 4 year ago, I was one of those freshies who tried to find my way around school with my map in hand, hoping that I can get to the right place in time for the right lesson. Now, 4 years later, I’m already part of the most senior batch of students.

3 months break from school, and meeting everyone again today, like what Sherry said, doesn’t feel as though we haven’t met in such a long time. I could certainly take some time to get used to having lectures once again though! Reading research papers, having discussions, doing presentations and the like, these are things I won’t be able to avoid this semester even though I don’t quite like them. But first, to finalise what subjects I’m going to take.

This version of a monthly calendar is about GTD (”Getting things dropped”) on your desktop: you can use the calendar to drag all the files on your desktop to certain days, when you expect to (hopefully) be working on them. If you didn’t make it - no prob - just drag them to the next day! For the time after August 2008, you can use the wallpaper for weekly “getting things dragged and dropped” on your desktop. It’s easy - and I hope it’s efficient.

Smashing Magazine

I saw this wallpaper online, and thought that it was a great idea to make something like that. While I like my wallpaper too much to change it, I thought that this might be of use to someone else.

学生生活最後の夏休みが終わった。この三ヶ月に仕事をしたり、おいしい物を食べたっり、久しぶりの友達に会ったり、遊んだり、友達の卒業式へ行ったりした。　

あぁ、まだ学校へ行きたくない・・・ o(´^｀)o

明日から、学生生活最後の年が始まるよ。どんな年かな？