Hm. Whee. First lab for Gen Bio today.

So... we were told we were gonna make beer and observe bacteria.

First, the beer.

To be exact, *we* didn't make it, the lecturer did while um... about 5 lab assistants... helped. Which kinda made me think. How many people does it take to open a can of malt and hops concentrate...??

(One lecturer and about three lab assistants, apparently. C'est bizarre.)

It seems that the beer will be done fermenting by our next lab session on Wednesday next week, during which we can bottle it, and after it's bottled, it'll be ready to drink in six days, but it can be stored in the bottles for up to 3 months.

And the most interesting thing is that this whole home fermenting kit can actually be purchased in Singapore! Except if you start making the stuff, you'll have to get a license for selling alcohol. Which my lecturer says costs just ten dollars, so you could probably recover what you've spent by brewing just one batch of beer. (23 litres of beer)


Bacteria was quite interesting to look at.

I remember the last time I was supposed to look at cells in Sec 2; we were supposed to scrape cheek cells from the inside of our cheeks and put them on slides and look at them, but I never saw anything and to this day, I think all that I managed to get from the inside of my cheek was just saliva. :P

They gave us yoghurt culture to look at. And we were supposed to stain it and observe it. But later some of the lab assistants walking around told us to make a new slide and *not* stain it, and that way we'd actually be able to see them moving around.

They're actually kinda cute. Tiny wriggly things that bump into each other as they go about their business. ^_^

And now I have no idea how to explain the answers that I have for my assignment. Sigh...

NUS Indoor Shoot.

Which was semi-weird because it's the first competition in which the club is participating wherein I'm not shooting.

But it's kinda refreshing to be standing by the sidelines for once. Not to mention that I've always preferred behind-the-scenes work, so helping to set up and helping the comm to run the show on the days of competition itself wasn't such a bad thing.

First day was individual events, and Joseph won gold for Standard Male Individual. So proud of you, baby. ^_^

Linette, Sylvia and Yvonne won third place for Standard Female Team on the second day as well.

Nothing for our Open class people, but oh well. There'll be a next time. :)

As for me, time to get back to training and push-ups; to build strength and get rid of the strange shooting problem which I've developed recently.

Archery chalet last week.

In which Gerri learned that her baby managed to make a fool of himself and that the commando camp has a strange sort of celebrity status.

The chalet was at Aloha Changi, 3 days and 2 nights.

I didn't stay over on the first night coz I still had French class the next day and I didn't fancy the idea of travelling all the way back to school from the east.

So I went home after the barbeque on the first night and came back on the evening of the second day.

The thing about the chalet is that the area it's in is only accessible by one bus, and that bus comes from Tampines Interchange. For the first half of the journey, the bus goes through normal HDB estate area, passing apartment blocks and schools; the second half of the journey however, winds around military bases, on quiet two-lane roads lined with wire fences with green weaving and two rows of barbed wire.

A little freaky.

And it didn't help that when I was on the way there with the bunch of them who were checking in on the first day, Connor mentioned: "Imagine if you got lost and had to find your way out of here alone at night."

-_-|| No thanks.

So, on my way there on the evening of the second day, I was on the bus and this group of about um.. five to eight guys got on the bus and happened to sit right behind me. I was just kinda staring out the window and stoning, and when I got back into my own headspace and "tuned in" I suddenly realised that in their very loud conversation, these guys mentioned the phrase "commando camp" in almost every other sentence.

For a second there, it felt like I was on a tour bus. -_-

(Insert mental image here: "And on your left, you will see.. oh, another army camp! And oh look, hot sweaty men." XD)

Yes, it turns out that the commando camp is the camp which is nearest to where the chalets are.

So when the bus stopped at the bus stop right outside the camp, the guys behind me got even more excited and started talking even more loudly. Seems it was because the lights were all on and there were plenty of people in the parade square. Later Joseph told me it was probably coz one batch was POP-ing.

And when I reached the chalet, everyone there told me that the night before, Ervin, Wai Xin and Joseph had been very um... entertaining. Lol.

I suppose the club tradition of embarrassing people during the archery chalet continues. XD


And here's a group picture from the first night.

Four generations of NUS archers. ^_^

Silly me forgot to blog about my first French lesson yesterday.

The funniest thing about it though, was that I actually didn't realise that my French lecturer was taking attendance at the beginning of the class until he'd called about 5 names. :P

And then as usual, I started worrying and wondering how my name would come out.

After 3 years in NUS, I can count the number of tutors who *haven't* mutilated my name on one hand. Some of them seem to have a problem with names which exceed two syllables, some of them seem to have trouble with English itself (what the hell??), let alone English names, but what I hate most of all is when only some garbled, half-assed version of my name stumbles off their tongue; something which, most of the time, sounds vaguely like "Jehr-deen?"

My hand goes up; "Um, it's 'Geraldine', sir. Or you could just call me Gerri."

Better that than have you ruin my name for the rest of the semester.

But hey, surprise, surprise (although thinking back on it, I shouldn't have been surprised...).

My French tutor *enunciates* EVERY *SINGLE* letter of my name perfectly. And hell, my name sounds *fantastic* with a French accent. XD

The day I check out of Eusoff Hall for good.

Had to head back to school for my first French lesson today-- Special Term 1 starts today-- so just before my lesson at 10 am, I dropped by Eusoff to return my transponder.

Before that, I stopped by my room one last time to make absolutely sure that I hadn't left anything behind in the room. After which, I locked up room C301 for the last time and said farewell to C Block of Eusoff Hall.


My room door during the last week of exams, with 3 PhD comics stuck to it and a postcard with my theory that studying, not curiosity, killed the cat. XD


The C3 long wing corridor from my end of the corridor...


...and this is the view from the other end, where the double rooms are.

I think some of the things that I'll miss most are the room itself (Eusoff rooms are pretty big), popping over to other people's rooms just to chat, seeing people whom you know during mealtimes in the dining hall, and the view from my room window. After the tree just outside my window had a lot of its branches pruned and cut my room became a lot brighter and the port was much more visible-- I could see the cranes lifting containers through gaps in the rooftops of the private houses just next door.

C Block isn't too noisy; or maybe it's just the fact that I'm at the end of the corridor which puts me far away from the noise which usually happens in the *middle* of the block, be it mahjong in the block lounge, people talking loudly in the kitchenette at C2 while making themselves supper, or the C4 guys yelling expletives at each other while kicking a football around upstairs.

A good number of the C4 guys were also part of the Hall band, so sometimes there'd be singing accompanied by a guitar at night; most of the time I'd think it was Sham, since it seemed like it was coming from his room-- directly above and to the left of mine.

Other things that I'll miss?

Waking up just an hour before class, getting breakfast from the dining hall, washing up and getting dressed and slowly strolling towards Arts. Late night trips to the 7-11 round the corner at Fong Seng for munchies. Block suppers and Hall suppers and free food (heehee). And during exam period, if you're lucky enough to have one of your exam venues be in your own hall, you also get the satisfaction of strolling out 15 minutes before the start of the paper, and not have to stew and panic with everyone else who's waiting.

And one of the most entertaining things is also when there's a 9 am paper at Eusoff and I wake up at 8.30 to get breakfast; walking to the dining hall (and passing all those panicking crammers on the way) while barely half awake just rubs it in-- "Haha, I just woke up and you had to wake up an hour and a half ago to get here and cram for your paper." XD

But once again, most of all, I'll miss my bright happy room with my bright happy bedsheet.


My room before packing...


...and my room *after* packing.

But I suppose all good things do have to come to an end.


Goodbye, C Block.


Goodbye, Eusoff Hall.

Please help.

If you're a poor undergrad like I am, we can't do much financially, but the least we can do is spread the word and raise the level of public awareness.

I don't read or watch local news much, so I can't really say that I know it's been featured very much in the local media, but this is something we talked about in my Social Memory class a few weeks ago, and watching the numbers of deaths and displaced peoples climb in those last few weeks has been heartbreaking.

But you know what would be worse?

It would be even worse to think that after the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide, the human race still hasn't learned, and that we could let something like this happen all over again.


Help spread the word.

Wikipedia page for background and details of the Crisis

The International Crisis Group's page on the situation

Sign a Petition:
To bring Darfur's war criminals to justice or,
to demand that the UN Secretary-General take action.

Donate; see a list of websites to which you can make a donation here at BBC news page; UNICEF and the Red Cross are among them.

Wristbands, being sold by Save Darfur.

Please do not do nothing.

So... I can finally catch a breather.

Three papers down and one more to go, plus I just turned in that final report for XD3102 this morning, so that means that now, I have a whole week to study for my SC4212 paper next Wednesday.

Earth Day was just a couple of days ago, and I figure now's about a good time to put down the things which've been running around in my head for quite some time now.

Global warming is a hot issue at the moment (pun intended). No reason why it *shouldn't* be. And lately I keep seeing all these pleas to the public to help save the Earth, to save it for your children and for the many generations which will come even after them.

And it kinda made me wonder about how fast kids seem to be growing up nowadays and how fast change happens from one generation to another now.

I see ten-year-olds playing with their handphones when I only received my first handphone at the age of 17. I see girls who look about twelve years old wearing lipstick and one-and-a-half inch heels when the first time I wore a pair of pumps was in secondary school.

And when I work during the holidays, I notice quite a few overweight kids (mostly boys) walking around with their parents, obsessed with their handheld games.

And that last one, most of all, makes me wonder.

It seems that what most kids do for fun nowadays is play on the computer; I had a Chinese tuition teacher whose son did that all the time-- he kept wanting to play on the computer and she wouldn't let him.

And I thought maybe that was why the small playground at the base of his apartment block was always empty, except for a few youths sitting around and chatting.

An entire generation which grew up in the "digital age", while the previous generation--mine-- still "went out to play" when we were allowed to play.

And one thing leads to another.

I wonder if soon, playgrounds will be the only space in which children have to play.

I wonder if, as Singapore and the rest of the world continues to develop, there will be less and less space to run around and lose yourself in.

I wonder if cities will become vast tracts of streets and tarmac and concrete jungle while parks become tiny spaces of isolation lost in all the smog.

I wonder if the children who are born twenty years from now will even be able to run outside and play; will there be anymore "outside" left? Or will the world just be a series of rooms and spaces enclosed in glass and plastic and metal?

I wonder if, with all our "upward development", and the recent fad of "aerial gardens", will these be the only green spaces left? Will the only space that your children can run about freely in, be a space that is sixty stories up in the air?

Will the only space that your grandchildren can run about freely in, be a space that is eighty stories above the ground, shielded by a plastic and glass bubble which contains manufactured "fresh air" pumped out by hidden vents?

I wonder if the world just a hundred years from now will be an alien one to those of us who know it now.

And I wonder if all this will simply be a fairytale for my children, yours and everyone else's.