I'm Alright Now!

I just aimlessly picked at a zit again and my blood is back to normal and can clot again.

Thank you for your concern!

= )

This Band Should Be Bigger

I didn't really like Sanctus Real when I was studying, but just chilling around, their music in "Fight the Tide" is pretty good!

The music may be more alternative, rocky, and edgier than mainstream christian music like Jars of Clay, Switchfoot and The Paul Colman Trio, but my heart still sings to it! Go Santus Real go!

I got this off Mina's blog. = )

Copy these questions and add them as a comment if you are game. ; )

1. Who are you?

2. Are we friends?

3. When and how did we meet?

4. Do you have a crush on me?

5. Would you kiss me?

6. Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.

7. Describe me in one word.

8. What was your first impression?

9. Do you still think that way about me now?

10. What reminds you of me?

11. If you could give me anything what would it be?

12. How well do you know me?

13. When's the last time you saw me?

14. Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?

14.5 if you came to visit me in person, would you share my bed, or insist on the guest room ?

15. Are you going to put this on your blog and see what I say about you?

Homecoming

After a whole lot of rushing to get home, I'm home! Yay!

I think God really likes me on planes, this time, and the last time on really full flights I get 3 whole seats ALL TO MYSELF! = ) Of course later on some guy took up the seat on the far end from me. I wasn't really sure if he wanted to get past me. He just stood next to my seat on the aisle looking ambivalent. After I got the idea he wanted to get past me I gave him way. A simple "excuse me" would have got him what he wanted.

Other than that I'm really happy to be home. Really happy to see the YMers having a sweaty time at camp. My heart and mind really wanted to be with them and stay the last night with them but my body was shutting down from all the stress and strange sleeping (or NON sleeping) hours I've been getting the past week. I figured I'd better go home to rest. Rest I did by sleeping 20 hours. My sleep debt had better be paid off and my body clock set back to NORMAL. Yes Kelvin I CAN be normal. (He says my sleeping patterns have never been normal. = P )

WARNING GROSS MEDICAL DETAILS ON WHY MY BODY SHUT DOWN YESTERDAY. People who are easily grossed out or faint of heart should stop reading NOW.

What are you still doing here? It's going to get really gross from here on out, well, you have been forewarned...

Before takeoff just after they passed out the hot towels I felt what I thought was mucus flowing out of my right nostril. I happened to look at my hot towel and there were bloody spots. A NOSEBLEED? I'VE NEVER HAD A NOSEBLEED IN MY LIFE! Nosebleeds in my family were mainly the domain of Al. Anyway, I hit the "attendant" button and a nice "Singapore Girl" airline stewardess came by. I calmly asked for some tissues as I had a nosebleed. She looked slightly flabbergasted and asked how much I needed. I looked pathetically and said "I've never had a nosebleed before...". She went off to get a handful for me. I felt a bit embarrassed for bleeding on their hot towel. Oh well.

By this time I was making a self-diagnosis. Hey I've learnt a thing or two in vet school. Hmm, the hot towel must have set off some vasodilation (dilation of blood vessels) in the arteries in my face and the stress I've been having the past week must have made my body more prone to bleeding. Nothing to be worried about, or so I thought. I passingly noticed that the blood coming out of my nose was quite fluid, and that the bleeding took a longer time than normal to stop. It eventually did and I did not think more of it the rest of the day.

I touched down around 7am and followed dad to help out at the youth camp at 10am. My job was basically to guard the "disgusting food" station. A station where the groups were to choose random numbers of food and to consume the whole combination.

Out of bordom, and a little carelessness, (the game was running from 10 to 2), I picked at a tiny pimple. Then BLOOD started gushing out of it like there was no tomorrow, I was afraid the YMers would think someone had stabbed me in the face. In the process of trying to stop the bleeding I realised the blood was very fluid, much like the kind when I had my nosebleed. The bleeding carried on for a few minutes. (A normal person would stop bleeding from such a small wound through clotting in under 30 seconds, maybe up to a minute). My medically trained albeit fatigued mind started to kick into action. I'm out of clotting factors! ARGH! Probably due to all the stress and non-sleep I've been pushing my body into. I was initially going to spend the night with the YMers, but after realising I could bleed totally out if I got a cut, or even worse start bleeding from every orifice, made me realise I had to go home to rest if anything. I still have 3 months to hang out with the youth.

I think I should be fine now. I still haven't poked myself ro see if my clotting factors have been renewed.

And that was my truly bloody homecoming. = )

Oooh...

You Are A Lily

You are a nurturer and all around natural therapist. People see you as their rock. And they are able to depend on you. You are a soothing influence. You can make people feel better with a few words. Your caring has more of an impact than even you realize.

What Flower Are You?

Your Personality Is

Idealist (NF) You are a passionate, caring, and unique person. You are good at expressing yourself and sharing your ideals. You are the most compassionate of all types and connect with others easily. Your heart tends to rule you. You can't make decisions without considering feelings. You seek out other empathetic people to befriend. Truth and authenticity matters in your friendships. In love, you give everything you have to relationships. You fall in love easily. At work, you crave personal expression and meaning in your career. With others, you communicate well. You can spend all night talking with someone. As far as your looks go, you've likely taken the time to develop your own personal style. On weekends, you like to be with others. Charity work is also a favorite pastime of yours.

The Three Question Personality Test

My Run-in with a Drunk at Mcdonald's

Sometimes it takes a drunk to make you really trust in God. In that case, I was looking more at the storm rather than Jesus. I should have looked totally to Jesus.

Me and Carol had a sudden urge to go to Macca's (Aussie for Mcdonald's) at 2am last night.

The 24 hour one was closed but the drive through was still open. While we got into the car to drive to the drive-through a guy drove up and parked right next to my car. His window was open and I wanted to tell him "Hey mate! It's not open!". Then something in the way he was looking was really off. He just stared at me in a disjointed way. In a reflex action I central-locked all my doors. In the next split-second he got out of the car and FELL on my side of the door. I immediately drove off towards the drive-through. I later saw him take the long cut to the drive through and come up behind me in the queue.

Me and Carol eyed him through the rear-view mirror out of the corners of our eyes. He seemed to be talking to the air around him, at times he would come out of his seat holding a bottle of booze and talk to the air again or gesture and shout random things to the cars behind him. He got more agitated because the line was long and he started sounding his horn and making louder noises to the staff in front.

And then it hit me. His CAR hit MY car from behind. I was like "What the?!". From the rear-view mirror he looked suitably sorry for himself, waving his arms in the air, holding his head in frustration. Maybe he was thinking "How could I have done that?" or "Oh no this isn't even MY car!Mum/Dad will have me for this!". I calmly told Carol whom I knew carried her handphone with her EVERYWHERE to please call the police. And she didn't have her phone on her. Right.

I then prayed asking God to protect me, Carol and my car. I also asked God to make sure that guy got home safely without hurting anyone else on the road.

When we got to our turn to order the Asian guy at the counter dropped a coin on the ground when he returned the change to me. I was reluctant to open my door to get it then did it in a flash. We warned him about the drunk behind, counter-guy didn't look very fazed at all. He said "If he gets aggro (Aussie for aggressive) I'll lock my window". Right.

We got our food, Carol got her Happy Meal Care Bear and e were off. A police van drove off just in front of us. I should have honked or something to get their attention. That guy shouldn't have been on the road. He couldn't even stand properly.

On the way home my car felt just slightly LOOSER than normal. Especially the accelerator. I guess the jolt pushed something out of alignment. I'll go get that checked out the next time my car has to be serviced. My car can still function thank God. And nothing worse happened to me, Carol or my car.

Somehow I'm quite thankful alcohol is so expensive in Singapore.

In that whole incident I wanted to look to Jesus fully, not at the stormy incident going on, but my human heart was stuck fairly fast in the danger of the situation. Sometimes it takes something like that to remember Jesus is always there for me, asking me to keep my eyes focused on him. Once I let go of my gaze the storm seemed to overpower everything else, and Jesus' power didn't seem to be there anymore even though He was there in the storm the whole time. I was looking at the storm most of the time instead of Him, and I was falling deeper into the murky water because I did not see that Jesus was there within arms reach to pull me out of it.

Another lesson learnt in this journey called faith.

Jumping Start Your Day

I've found that a fatty, oily, meaty breakfast is the best way to wake me up in the morning. Cereal, muesli or oats with Nutella just don't cut it.

I think the fat and protein somehow turns on my liver, which starts to jump start everything else in my body.

Eat more fried breakfasts!

Sharon's Guide to Making Life Simple

How to Make a Simple Fried Breakfast in One Pan

This idea was originally Jamie Oliver's as far as I know. Due to necessity I've put in some of my own twists to it.

Get a pan or skillet, preferably non-stick.

Fire up the stove, warm the pan on the fire til its dry. This lessens the scary crackling when water from the food hits the hot oil.

Put some fatty lubricant in the pan. Oil (I use olive), butter, animal fat, ghee...whatever you fancy. A non-stick pan doesn't need so much. Make sure the whole bottom of the pan is lubricated. LUBRICATION is important!

In the meantime if you are a meat-eater, pre-cook your assorted meats (sausage, bacon, ham, gizzards eeew...) in the microwave for a couple of minutes until they are almost fully cooked and toss them in the pan. Turn the fire to low. The meat wil flavour the oil. YUM! Meat-flavoured breakfast.

If you are a vegie or omnivore toss in some mushrooms, thick-cut tomatoes or whatever else takes your fancy. Make sure you use fairly fast cooking vegetables. Hard vegetables like carrots and potatoes are generally not a good idea unless you want to spend more time at the stove. Remember, we are trying to keep things simple and FAST.

When you figure the meat is almost cooked turn up the heat to the highest, wait until you think the heat in the pan has gone to the max and break one, two or a dozen (if you are a sumo wrestler) eggs into the pan, making sure you immediately tip the pan so the egg goes everywhere. You will get a circular flat structure of egg encompassing the rest of your ingredients. When the egg has cooked to your liking (raw, runny or rubbery) flip the whole concoction onto a plate. If you have LUBRICATED the pan properly everything should slide off properly. if you want to make things evn simpler eat off the pan. One less thing to wash up afterwards.

Eat one-pan breakfast with your choice of sauces and condiments. I find Worchestershire sauce quite nice. Or you can go with tomato sauce, tabasco for some zing or the quintessential Aussie "sweet chili", something that should be a dessert rather than a condiment. To be even more Aussie eat with a big dollop of Vegemite.(Apparently only 50% of Aussies can actually stomach the stuff. Oh well.)

Washing up instructions: in between cooking wash up things here and there, like the chopping board, knife, and life will be much simpler after that with the washing up. If you have used enough cooking LUBRICANT and you had good control of the fire, the pan should be fairly easy to wash with a lot of soapy water. on the other hand if you have a lot of black encrusted stuff in your pan try using a scourer. WARNING DO NOT USE SCOURERS ON NON-STICK PANS (or your mum will hit the roof if you ruin her favourite Teflon pan). If the black encrusted stuff is not coming off no matter how much elbow-grease you are using, pop it back on the stove with water and boil the whole thing. This should soften everything. Watch it or your entire pot will turn black. If you really don't have time to wash up just leave it soaking with water in the sink and wash it later.

And that is how you make a simple one-pan breakfast.

Heh heh, true true. No?

You Are A Good Friend

You're always willing to listen Or lend a shoulder to cry on You're there through thick and thin Many people consider you their "best friend"!

What Kind of Friend Are You?

I'm supposed to be studying!

And I have a pore-pack on my nose. The fantastic Japanese invention for getting rid of black-heads and white-heads.

This is so true!

How You Life Your Life

You seem to be straight forward, but you keep a lot inside. You're laid back and chill, but sometimes you care too much about what others think. You tend to have one best friend you hang with, as opposed to many aquaintences. You have one big dream in your life, and you never lose sight of it.

How Do You Live Your Life?

Jiamin is playing violin!

Lets go wave banners like groupies!

http://followthelight2005.tripod.com

June is getting squishier and squishier on her overseas staple diet of thousand island and KFC.

More June for Lynette Lee and I to squish!

I'm willing to give, more reluctant to take.

Maybe I should change that on some accounts.

Spam comments, I do not like. = <

Tiger aka "Meow Meow" goes to the loo.

I'm also available for consultations on cat toilet-training. = )

Happy Al.

Incriminating photo of Val palpating Carlton the grey greyhound. ; )

If you ever wonder what we get up to in palpation classes...

Brian feels like KFC while dissecting our greyhound during lab. o_0

Me the halfway angel, Leruo the KKK member (?!) and Mayu the anime witch at halfway day. = )

The members of the "clergy" at halfway day. There are many things wrong with this picture. Can you tell?














(Male nuns, pregnant nuns, the devilish reverend with red eyes, the grim reaper, and where did cat lady come in?)

At the Esperance museum on my off day from Olimarena. = )

Holstein-Friesian (milk breed)mooey at Rob and Libby's Peter's & Brownes dairy farm looking hornily at the tiny Angus (beef breed) bull next door. Rob says the bull needs a step-ladder to mate, but somehow he always manages!

The first calf a Holstein-Friesian has is usually by this black Angus bull to facilitate birth. (Moral of the story? Girls, find a small husband to have easy childbirth. = P) It's also easy to identify these babies as the Angus black gene is dominant. So all the black calves and male black-and-whites go for beef.

Oh yeah there are no Holstein-Friesian bulls on the farm, if they want more milking cows they draw a vial of frozen sperm from deep-freeze and artificially inseminate a fertile cow with it. Rob and Libby like to experiment with different pedigree bull sperm, sometimes it's like a lucky draw! Or a box of chocolates...

These bulls that donate their sperm well...they are bred/trained to LIKE mating with an artificial cow so their sperm can be collected.

Oh for somebody to squish, and for somebody to squish me back, and tell me everything will be ok. ; P

Who would have known I would watch "The Second Raid" only last night and not the night before even though I got the series on Saturday?

I planned to do some things in the city but ended up sleeping. And not getting stuck in a 6 hour freak jam on the freeway caused by a diabetic driver and a big truck. Coincidence? More like a little miracle. Thank God!

Look around, miracles DO happen. = )

After watching the latest Full Metal Panic "The Second Raid" in one shot overnight with no breaks in between 13 episodes of 20 minutes a pop, I declare TSR THE best Full Metal Panic ever. It had just the right amounts of action, comedy, drama, "almost" romance and now even some risque scenes thrown in! Woooh....

I was just left hankering for more at the end of each episode. I don't know what I would do if I had to wait a week between each one. Cheers to Ziyuan and June!

*Swoon* Sousuke is so cute. In a socially-challenged sort of way. Those eyes, that haphazard hair, the character with such a sad history...What can I say, I live vicariously through the lives of fictional Sousuke and Chidori.= P

There seemed to be an extra unidentified character thrown in in episode 13, I really REALLY hope that another season of FMP comes out to resolve that. Me thinks she is Sousuke's long lost older sister. Hmm...

There BETTER be another season, the "will they?/won't they?" theme just makes you want to yell at them "IT'S JUST SO OBVIOUS YOU LIKE EACH OTHER, JUST TELL EACH OTHER ALREADY!" I can't believe they are still playing this game after over 60 episodes of this romantic tension. But I guess the producers know it works SO well.

It is now almost 9am. I think I shall check on the pre-walkthrough flat and go to sleep. = D

While watching a musically inclined kid on "Australia's Brainiest Kid" I realised why I never really made it big on the piano after years of regimental practical and theory exams. I just can't keep in time. It's just way too restrictive on me. Not too good if most of the songs for exams are classical and one note out of beat means a piece sounding a little off. I guess I just walk to the beat of a different drum. = )

That's where jazz and blues come in. In my last practical 6 years ago an optional piece was "Blue Note" which I loved to pieces. I can still remember most of it by heart even after my piano fingers have gone a little rusty. After I left the piano on a hiatus to concentrate on the "levels" the Royal School came out with a whole jazz syllabus. D'oh!

Maybe I'll get back to jazzy numbers back home. I've got a few beginner jazz books stashed away. Oh yeah!

All girls are pretty in their own right, but not all guys are handsome. Hmm.

Humans are probably the only species where the females are the flashy ones. = )

I had a really scary dream last night. I dreamt that me, Al and dad had to translate English stories into Mandarin orally under the tutelage of some random old guy. It was horrible. I couldn't do it!

In real life I probably couldn't have a properly intellectual conversation with anyone in Mandarin. Probably due to the fact I didn't have much of a Mandarin speaking environment in the first place. Maybe I should live in China for a couple of years. = )

It always rains on Triple Crown night, apparently. Is God crying at the hundreds of people giving themselves away to the effects of alcohol?

Triple Crown is the major drinking event to the end of each semester. Basically a slosh-fest. This was the first one I've seen up close in all my 3 years here. Lots of really drunk people stumbling everywhere, a girl had to be resuscitated, people randomly pashing people, skimpily dressed girls (it was definitely 15 degrees or less) and long queues of people waiting for the porter-potties clutching their crotches (maybe they shouldn't have waited too long to go to the loo, or maybe they were busy pashing a skimpily dressed girl somewhere ...). Seeing Triple Crown up close reminds me that lots of very drunk strangers make me feel uncomfortable, which is why I probably don't attend many of the vet school socials where drinking until you can't remember anything is the focus of the day. Hey I'm not against drinking per se, even Jesus turned water into wine! Excess anything can be bad for me, I don't really like the feeling of drinking too much. 1 drink keeps me warm, which could be a fallacy as blood vessels dilate, quite possibly losing heat. It also makes me dopey, which can be a good thing if I want to sleep. Anyway....off on a tangent again...

After the Kelly Clarkson concert I went to with Carol who had an extra ticket, we rushed (within the speed limit of course) back to the tav where Carol had a ticket to meet her friends. We came 15 minutes shy of 11pm and the strict security guard didn't let her in even though the party stops at 1am. He even told us to clear the area. Which we did. While Carol was trying desperately to call her friends who were either too drunk to hear their phones or it was too noisy to hear anything else in the first place we hung out outside the main entrance which happened to be under the tav balcony on the 2nd floor. Some dodgy semi-drunk guy smoking near us tried to stare at me, I looked the other way and prayed "Dear Lord please protect me and Carol".

For some unknown reason Carol decided to stand next to the entrance under shelter and I followed her. 15 seconds later, in the exact spot where we were standing, a plastic picnic TABLE came crashing down, followed soon after by its legs. Simultaneously Carol went "O MY GAWD!" while I went "Thank God!".

That was how God saved Carol and I from a falling table on Triple Crown night. = )

'Tis better to be self-controlled rather than to be other-suppressed.

Gasp! It's already two thousand and FIVE!

It seems like just yesterday it was 2001 and I was starry-eyed, beginning junior college with hopes of a new start and here I am now in 3rd year uni wrestling animals to the ground, knee deep in brown goo. Happiness. = )

I think I need a softer touch. When typing. As my brother can attest to with his annoyance at my late night one finger pecking outside his room. My laptop is suffering because of it, the more pressure I place on the keyboard the more my mouse cursor goes haywire and the more time I spend wrestling with my mouse to make it go the way I want it to. = (

I reckon I've grown. No not into an Aussie. Although I find myself using Aussie words such as "reckon" (think) and "U-ey" (u-turn) like I've used them my entire life in front of Aussies like Mara. Those words were like from a different planet the first time I set foot in Aussieland.

Trawling through the pages of Friendster because I feel especially "boliao" (Hokkien for nothing better to do), and I'm still high on caffiene, and I'm finally succumbing to Friendstermania, and I'm turning nocturnal again, I starting to find long lost friends and just so happening to look at their profiles to see if I actually know them, looking at their various status, or "stati"? (Jialin please correct me if I'm wrong my dear upholder of the English language), it doesn't bother me to see that they are in a relationship. In the thought processes of Mara "Meh! Well...". Four years ago I would have felt utterly lonely, now the fact that people are attached and I am not doesn't even get a physiological reaction out of me. I'm like "Oh cool! Some of them my age and younger are trying on wedding gowns!" and not much else. I know some of my friends are even having babies, got divorced (!)... I can't imagine being there because I've never been there but I think "Somebody my age? Married? With kids? Amazing!".

I've been on both sides of being "post-single/pre-attached" now, which may have helped me to see things with a more balanced perspective. God showering me with His love by HOLDING the rain for me really helped too. All I can do is revel in who God made me to be, not bother about my "status" and be happy for everyone else. That's my worry-free philosopy! Hakuna matata! = D

Oh for a human friend I could randomly talk to about anything under the sun, or just to be with and simply revel in each other's company in silence at any time of the day...

Oh wait, I can't even do that with a hypothetical boyfriend. Not unless I totally want to be selfish and eat into his hypothetical sleeping time. Oh well. = P

It's my CAFFIENE speaking! The cups of tea (chai, instant lemon and white if you must know) I attempted to take to cure my headaches. Caffiene seems to work, as we learnt in pharmacology taught by the very nice Scottie, because it causes vasoconstriction (constriction of the blood vessels)in the central nervous system, opposing the vasodilation that is supposed to cause migraines.

"Mediclish" is a language unto itself. At the moment it seems to be faring better than my Chinese!