Thursdays

it's thursday again, the evening of the day that i look forward to in the week. besides it being the start of another week, ie another milestone reached in the term, it also marks the end of the weekly supervision crisis and the necessary stress.

i have physio and cells supervisions on thurs. and both supervisors, particularly the one for cells, are very enthusiastic in giving us assignments to help us learn. and both set deadlines at wed lunchtime. so on mon, tues and wed i am in this frantic state of reading and writing, on top of trying to juggle two practicals and two supervisions at the same time.and thurs is the unusually long day for me. so the cumulated sleep deprivation only makes thurs mornings all the more dreadful.

but come evening, everything is good, like the sense of relief i am indulging in now. on top of that, there's the weekend to look forward to. not that weekends are free, but eventful enough to be away from essays and textbooks and to just enjoy the company of like-minded people. there's malaysian nite this sat, then there'll be the chisoc variety show performance on the next. and in the following weekend, there's spring salsa ball, and then i'll be in oslo on the one after. then it'll be easter break! didn't realise how eventful lent term actually is... maybe because i'm always in this daze from lack of sleep!

i must say i have been fairly enjoying myself this lent term. for one, the plant physio lectures are amusing, not that i understand plants any more than animals (in fact less because there is so much individuality in each species), but because of the enthusiasm that the lecturers exude, sometimes to the point that borders eccentricity (think dr hanke, and no less, dr griffiths). i wish i had the time to elaborate what i meant, but not this evening as i want my sleep and i have thermodynamics to mull over before the evening deadline tomorrow.

i think i should just end here by saying that the plant sciences department in camb is cool, like the shady spots under the Fagus sylvatica =).

Happy Chinese New Year!

chinese new year wishes from camb:

like how all sojourns form enclaves in a foreign land, we camb first years gathered at st john's for reunion dinner when home is half a world away. we tried to bring the flavours of that part of the world which we are so familiar with to this dinner of special significance, and i must say it was done beautifully, largely owing to the mega effort jinyang and ryan put into planning the steamboat dinner and lugging all the groceries back from chormei. so it was an evening of scooping fishballs and wantan from the soup, eating kangkung (which i have not seen since last october) with thai chili sauce, and seeing pan-fried japanese tofu, all in the midst of the oh-so-festive chinese new year songs.

dinner started late at 8pm because the people with the food (we from magd) came late-- like how dinner at home starts late because my family reaches my uncle's house late. the food was great, and everyone was stuffed full because the cooks (ryan, jinyang, jiechao, weishen) put in long hours to prepare it and to make sure that it is in abundance--like how my aunt will prepare the dinner and all the chinese new year cookies to last us kids for the next few days. jit ern's room was filled with laughter, the loudest being dingdong's-- like how the living room at my uncle's house will be, especially when john laughs at the funny movies. all in all, the reunion dinner was great, and was as "chinese new yeary" as it could be. why, we even had lo sang:


video is courtesy of jinyang =)

this was the first time i didn't have new year eve reunion dinner with my family, and there is indeed that strange feeling that something is amissed. when i was in primary school and had to write essays about cny celebration, all the model essays i refer to would definitely include lines about relatives who work abroad rushes back just in time for dinner, or something similar to emphasised the reunion dinner. even tv adverts stress on the dinner, like the one in the elders' home where the old ladies all sat around the table bragging about their sons' achievements only to hide their pain that these sons don't even visit them on new year's eve, or the funny one about the old-fashioned grandmother who made sure everything was in the auspicious red and had the family around the dining table waiting for her grandson from america, only to find that he was red from head to toe but brought back a black girlfriend! these remind me again and again how family togetherness is a strongly rooted chinese tradition, and how blessed are those who have a family to share a meal with. but it has never hit me this hard before now that i have been through a new year without the precious company of family. how much i miss all of them suddenly!

it is unlikely that i will be at home for cny for the next two years. then, hopefully i get to spend a nice long one during my year of attachment, and hopefully nothing much has changed yet, and that cny at home is still the same cny as i know it. then it's five years of abroad living again. by the time settle down properly in a place not too far away from home, i might already be someone's wife and be eating reunion dinner with his family instead. is all this part of growing up, a reminder of how precious moments are transient?

anyway, it is indeed by god's grace that there is still a new year for me, and that this new year is a challenging one, one in which my weakness is apparent and that i can rely on his strength instead.

happy new year eveyone! xin1 nian2 jin4 bu4, shen1 ti3 jian4 kang1, wan4 shi4 sheng4 yi4

Cambridge turned into Narnia

Pepy's Library

and its magical allure brought out the inner child of 9 twenty-year old nat scis. during the break between chemistry lecture and physiology lecture, we ran and snow-ball fight each other with no inhibitions on the icy lawns in downing college.

video is courtesy of jinyang =)

when the temperature gets too cold, the rate of chemical reactions slows down-- so we learn in chemistry. and i am going to blame the lower metabolic rate in the brain for the lack of urgency to go for lectures that morning, haha. before qb, i took the pleasure to capture the icy beauty of magd:-

view of magd from basing

bright's building

first court

then in between qb and chem, we idled around downing site to gasp and awe at the snow ( inviting curious stares from the angmohs when we asked them to help us take pics) before snow-balling each other all the way to chem lecture, thinking that the first thermodynamics lecture will very well be on why it feels colder when snow melts.




so, today was a day of snow-fun, a welcomed break in the otherwise work-loaded week, not that any supervisions were cancelled due to the snow though...anyway, =).

me, yi lun and jie chao with the snowman guangyuan built

me, siew kit, wei shen, jin yang

Sandstorm

"The wind whips up a sandstorm, leaving you fighting through the blindness. Force against force..."

that was the blurb mandy wrote for our piece for elemental. but somehow it seems to more aptly describe the post-elemental week i had. my room was in such a state as if it had just been through a sandstorm; and physically and mentally, i felt i had just survived one. i am tired; the acne outbreak and dark eyebags on my face are just too evident to miss. i feel like going on an escapade, shut myself away from work, emails, rehearsals, socials for a day or two, but the camb schedule just don't permit it! now that physio prac is on every week, it feels as if there can be no moment to lose- slack and risk being left behind, or buck up and catch up.

it was strange how elemental seemed ages ago when at this time last saturday i was still listening to sandstorm on repeat mode. i didn't have high expectations for brilliance performance of our piece; we were after all from the beginners contemporary class, a group consisting mainly of people who were on the stage to dance for the first time. friends who watched it said it was good. perhaps we were indeed, or they could just be too polite to say otherwise. last wednesday's class with mandy had an unusually large turnup. maybe we did impressed the crowd who watched the show. but to take into account all possible explanations ( as we learn in practicals), we could have done so badly that people think they could do better than us! haha.

i did feel sorry for myself for not being able to join other more 'pro' dance groups. but at the same time i felt relief not being put under the pressure to meet high expectations. camb has opened my eyes to a world of much higher standards than i have previously been aware of. a good dancer here generally refers to one who can do a myriad of dance forms- from ballet to tap to contemporary to streetdance to social to lindy hop to baroque to greek (i have not even heard of the last two prior to this...) , has participated in national competitions, has been with a dance troupe or trained at a performing arts school at some point in his/her life, and can choreograph. wow... i can never be one of them.

on the other hand, i see people who are not afraid to try, like some of my fellow sandstormers. i should too. i think being less self-conscious and more thick-skinned will do me good in exploring new things. perhaps it is what it takes to admit that others are better than you.