Fastforward in time

To those of you that still visit my blog, thank you for believing that my life could possibly be interesting enough to provide some type of entertainment. =P Well, now that D is here in Boston with me, life has changed significantly, and thus, so should the content of this blog.
Life is good here.. we've settled into a comfortable rhythm. I'll go into that when I have a little more time. Well, to bring this blog up to speed, here are a couple of pictures from the past 2 years, a glimpse into my little life.

So D's in Boston! I must have looked at over 10 apartments before settling on this one. Boston is a pretty historical city, so many of the apartments are..um... 'charming' (read: old). Ours has elevators, on-site management, garage parking, and a pool (which unfortunately has a creepy lifeguard, but that's another story) etc. It's only an 8 minute walk to school, so we wake up unbelievably late every morning. Well, guess i'm a spoiled little princess! Here's our dining area all neat and uncluttered - not anymore, unfortunately.

Just as with great power comes great responsibility, with big kitchen comes big meals. We try to experiment with different dishes and cuisines. Yum! We have every common kitchen appliance imaginable - hand blender, juicer, george foreman grill, slow cooker, deep fryer. We have managed to convince ourselves that some of these things may come in handy some day. Here are some pics which explain why my face is now as round as a fishball. =(

japanese-inspired dinner: grilled miso cod and shitake miso soup

a feast with friends: 'claypot' chicken rice, carrot cake, kung pao chicken and sambal kangkong

ma la hotpot heaven

okay. this is making me hungry. We have many, many more pictures of food. Eating is our favorite pastime. I could share 3 pictures with each post for several posts! Must move on..

Glorious summer...
...and fall (Halloween with labmates)

Winter came....

...and refused to leave...

Signs of spring (in Chicago, the windy city)

Finally, summer weather has again descended on Boston. Kayaking, sailing, windsurfing, picnics, fruit picking... can't wait! Boston gets cold pretty early (Sept-Oct) in the year, which doesn't leave me with many weekends to enjoy the sun. Another reason to love summers is to have friends and family visit. Already this year, Daryl's friend V, my old friend YS, and a senior from RGS have stopped by. I enjoy having visitors. Not only do I get to know Boston a little bit better, but I get to spend some time catching up and sharing life's stories.

Be warned
A very good friend once called me an 'ice-cream girl' (ala The Teenage Textbook) - Sweet, but cold.


The Wild Rose
Random Brutal Love Dreamer (RBLD)

Colorful, but unpicked. You are The Wild Rose.

Prone to bouts of cynicism, sarcasm, and thorns, you excite a certain kind of man. Hoping to gather you up, he flirts and winks and asks you out, ultimately professing his love. Then you make him bleed. Why? Because you're the rare, independent, self-sufficient kind of woman who does want love, but not from a weakling.

You don't seem to take yourself too seriously, and that's refreshing. You aren't uptight; you don't over-plan. Romance-wise, sex isn't a top priority--a true relationship would be preferable. For your age, you haven't had a lot of bonafide love experience, though, and this kind of gets to core of the issue. You're very selective.

The problem is them, not you, right? You have lofty standards that few measure up to. You're out there all right, but not to be picked up by just anyone.

"You're never truly single as long as you have yourself."


Link: The Online Dating Persona Test @ OkCupid - free online dating.

the calm before the storm
Tomorrow is the big day. I don't know how to feel. A part of me feels all twisted up in knots, a big worrisome mess. There's limitless information out there...without a fixed syllabus, i could be asked absolutely anything. Yet another part of me feels a strange calm, simply because i know there's nothing much more i can do. I've studied perhaps 80% of what i planned to, maybe it's enough, maybe it's not.. Anyhow, i just have to take a deep breath and plunge right into it. I know i can do it.
I just want it to be over. I'm tired of feeling stressed and tired and lifeless everyday. I want to enjoy life again. I want to have a life again. To spend weekends at the beach, to watch plays in the park, to shop to my heart's content. but most of all, i want to go home.

the final stretch
3 more days to go. Feeling slightly better now that i've finished up a chunk of stuff from BE567. I was feeling thus suffocated and demoralized partly because of non-linear systems, which i took last fall. It was hard grappling with all the equations and definitions that i very quickly chucked out of my memory all those months ago. Oh well, welcome back into my life you confusing Hopf, transcritical, pitchfork, and saddle-node bifurcations. Welcome back all ye wonderful differential equations, vector fields and phase portraits. I would say that my brain is somewhat chaotic right now, except that chaos is defined as aperiodic behavior in a deterministic system that exhibits sensitive dependence on intitial conditions. I don't think that i'm exactly a deterministic system (behavior determined by only the state of system and initial conditions) since several external stresses are currently acting on me and threatening to drive me into a state of insanity (a stable fixed point, which is not possible in a chaotic system).

See, i have been studying. =)

Now that i'm pretty much done with this part of my revision, it's back to physiology and biochemistry, which is much more interesting and also easier to revise. I feel a strange attraction (oooh..i can define a strange attractor too!) towards thick biology textbooks (remember Campbell in JC?)...i actually look forward to having some time to sit down, put on my thinking cap and plough through them. Gonna take a short break to grab some food and water so i don't die a horrible death at home alone.
I can't wait to have a social life again. So many good things lined up for the next month or so. *shoves thoughts away* For now, i'm a hermit! 3 more days to go...

lost
As each day goes by, the feeling grows stronger. In the past month or so, this strange emptiness has taken root in my heart, and it slowly, very slowly gnaws at the core of my being. I don't know what's wrong. But sometimes i just sit there, not motivated to do anything. I am loathe to move, to eat, to enjoy the sunshine. I sometimes feel like life has lost its meaning. Why am i here? Where is the joy in living where i am now? What am i trying to accomplish? I feel lost. Not having anything to look forward to each and everyday except for the day i finish my PhD and return home. Home. So close to my heart, yet so many thousands of miles away. but then again, I'm not ready to go home. I want to live life to the fullest, experience all that i can, and receive the best training in the sciences as possible. Yet, alarms are sounding.. well, not really. Actually, nothing is sounding. It feels likes a vast, empty vacuum yearning to be filled.

I think i'm just tired. Tired of doing it all on my own. Motivating myself, making decisions on what to do, where to go. Seeking out new things to try, meeting new acquaintances but making few lasting friends. Moving from city to city, dealing with any problems that crop up. Exploring a new city, discovering its beautiful secrets but not having anyone to share them with...

It's been five years. I've been away five long years from all the people that matter. I've seen so much and learnt so much that I would never have had I remained in Singapore. But now that I know how much there is out there, and that i've seen how other people lead their lives, comes the realization that so much is lacking in mine...

I've been dealing with so much crap recently. god knows how much money i've wasted in bills, parking tickets, rent and the such. The housing search took freaking long and uncovered some problems with my credit..which leads back to the money issue. Someone put a dent in my car and drove off (i suddenly noticed its appearance one morning). Add to that a broken refrigerator, and worse, clogged kitchen pipes which caused water to backflow into my apartment, flooding the kitchen floor.. gross. This doesn't help my studying for the PhD quals, which is scheduled for next week. Too many shitty things at once makes xiao an unhappy person.

I need to change my attitude before i screw up the exam. Everyday i sit in front of the computer (as i am now), willing myself to study, but not moving an inch towards the books. There's so much more to study.. right now, i feel like doomsday is approaching, but i'm not doing anything to salvage the situation. Ha. I feel like yelling at myself to "WAKE UP!"

But i have faith that everything will be better soon. Thanks to Kat, i feel like I have some semblance of a personal life. Thanks for involving me in your life, and for sacrificing some of your precious 'alone time'. Also, boon will soon be in Boston for a visit, and i'll be more than happy to show her around boston. Then comes a much awaited trip back home. A chance to spend some quality time with family and friends and really recharge my draining energy. Perhaps most importantly, D will be flying back to the US with me....a dream come true.

Give me a month to bounce back. Life will be good again. Hear me roar.

mirror mirror on the wall, who's the silliest of them all?
Just found out about the World Stupidity Awards 2005... With categories like "Stupidest Man of the Year", "Stupidest Statement of the Year" and "Stupidity Award for Reckless Endangerment of the Planet", it's no surprise which big name world leader is heading the list of nominations.

To quote:

Bush dominated last year's awards, taking the stupidest man prize and the award for reckless endangerment of the planet. Nerenberg admitted the organizers do limit the number of categories featuring the controversial Texan.

"He would essentially be nominated in every category had we not interfered," Nerenberg said. "We want to give other people a chance. We just feel some of the other great stupidity in the world would go unrecognized if Mr. Bush was allowed to run rampant. But he is doing very well."

Lewis Black, the award show's host, agreed about Bush's contender status.

"He's always a big one and it just gets worse every day with him," said Black, the biting commentator on TV's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. "His stupidity is almost on a Hall of Fame level."

Nominations and voting are done on the World Stupidity Awards Internet site and Nerenberg said it's not easy to make the cut.

"People usually nominate their exes so we eliminate those first of all," he said. "You can't just show you've done a few stupid things in your life. You have to show some dedication, that you're a professional."

Who will win the coveted "Oscars of Idiocy" and get the recognition they deserve for stunning achievements in global stupidity and ignorance? Check out the official site for the full list of nominees. If i'm not wrong, it's too late to vote since the awards show was scheduled for July 22nd...tonight! Heck. It's still a fun read. =)

The Motto of the Academy:
The Academy believes that everybody is stupid, some
people just need to have it pointed out.

gastronomic chronicles
This is shear torture! Thank god i'll be back in a month or so..
http://onokinegrindz.typepad.com/ono_kine_grindz/singapore/index.html
oh, just look at the beautiful pictures... *drool*

what the *#$@(&@$!?
Got this link from someone's blog. Thought that some of you refined mid-twenties folks out there might be interested. How to insult, swear, cuss, and curse in 165 languages! Very useful for travelling, haggling, and picking fights. They even have our favourite Singlish swear words, noting that "Singapore recognizes four official languages: English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. Singaporeans also speak a peculiar brand of English called "Singlish". This mixes English with Chinese dialects (mostly Hokkien) and some Malay." Seems like Singlish is gaining international repute/infamy. Played Trivial Pursuit (American Edition) with a couple of s'porean friends last night, and one of the questions went to the tune of: "Which city state's main language is known as Singlish, a mix of English, Malay and Chinese?" We certainly did not have trouble with the answer. =P The other questions however, were much too difficult for us, simply because of the american slant. Gosh, it was just like watching Americans stumbling on world affairs/geography questions on game shows. We ended up asking each other the easiest questions we could find in a stack of cards rather than the specific category on a given card. haha. Had a great time though. A yummy sashimi dinner, followed by Trivial Pursuit, Cranium, Trivial Pursuit (round II) and finally 'Mafia' (a game something like polar bear and murderer). Wah, hang out with Singaporeans very mentally stimulating...every thing must use brain one leh. =P

the countdown

"Distance is just a test to see how far love can travel"
- Anonymous

I think we've done pretty well in this test...don't you?

For those of you who haven't heard, D was accepted into the exact same PhD program at BU. I'm his TF for BE505. Scandalous. He'll be here in the fall. 3 more months! 3 more months! 3 more months!
Here. Boston. Daryl. Xiao. Together. FINALLY!!!!!! (excuse the sappiness...but i believe i've waited long enough ya? =P)

You'll Never Walk Alone

The Champions League final 2005 was certainly a night to remember. Perhaps the best European Cup final of all time? Tears of despair changed into tears of hope and again transformed into tears of pure, unadulterated joy on this roller coaster ride. Miracles DO happen after all. This game will be surely be talked about for generations to come.

Liverpool Football Club, Champions of Europe!