Definition

Kev (abr. Kevin)
name
Irish, Gaelic orgin. Caoimhin.
1. adorable. 2. gentle one

Walkabout (walk-a-bout)
noun
1 (in Oz) - a walk in the Outback by Aborigines that lasts for an indefinite amount of time. 2 (chiefly British) - an informal stroll among a crowd conducted by an important visitor e.g. a monarch. 3 a walking trip.

Tuesday 31 July 2007

Hot water at last!

Finally the gas heater is back! Hot water once more in this cold freezing winter is a miracle! LOL.. ok maybe not really a miracle, but u get the idea. The gas heater broke down two days ago, a Saturday. Blasted... a weekend, who the hell works in the weekend in Australia? We (my housemates and I) did try to call the number shown on a sticker on the gas heater that Saturday night, and no one picked up the call. So, we search through the yellow pages, and came across this advert as shown in the left. And it says clearly "24hrs emergency assistance". Great - which is just what we needed! Called it on the saturday night as well, and guess what? no one picks up the call! Argh.... maybe they are busy or what...

Anyway, I tried calling them again on the Sunday. This time round, managed to get through. Told the receiver of our predicament, and guess what he said? "We can't fix it now". I was like dumbfounded at the back of my mind, totally stunned for a few seconds by his reply. I mean, it's a 24 hrs emergency assistance and what the frag you tell me about not be able to come down now?! After gathering my thoughts and 'ahhh-ing' during that couple of seconds, I asked if he is able to come down on Monday. And he dare to tell me, he can't be sure, and will give me a ring if they can make it! My gosh!!! Are there that many people with spoilt gas heater that we have to queue up till Monday morning to wait our turn?? And why the frag did the company put down 24 hrs emergency?? It's grossly mis-advertisement!! Gosh.. these people are idiots!! And we have to endure like 2 days of winter without hot water at all! Doing dishes with cold water, and bathing with freezing water for me is really a hell of an experience! Anyway, if anyone out there who is intending to obtain their services, don't! Go for others hot water company or maintenance company if possible. Avoid such lousy company that don't even know what 24hrs mean! And they have a website as well! I'm not going to post the URL here... I refuse to link back to them to give them free publicity. Frag! And the icing on the situation came when they ask if we are the owners. I was like "no, we're the tenants". And he asked us to get the owner to get in touch with them instead! Argh.... After the call, I was thinking "You look down on us tenants is it? We got no money to pay you meh??!" Argh... Frag!

But luckily, this morning (Monday) JM manage to contact the housing agent, Taylor International and got a repairman number from them. And the repairman came in to fix the gas heater and heard from JM that the repairman commented that our gas heater can be sent to the museum for display already! LOL... yah.. our gas heater is damn old liao, and it's been three years since it was last serviced! And what's wrong was that on Saturday evening, the starter fire within the gas heater suddenly went out. With no starter fire, water that is passing through the heater will not get heated and thus will remain as freezing cold water!! We did tried to reignite it but to no avail, and the rest is history. (Left: our not so trusty gas heater. See the black hole? The starter fire in the hole.)

I'm glad the hot water is finally back, and no need to trouble Aaron/Linus by going over to their place to bathe. =) Life is finally back to normal.





On another topic, Cat just came back to Sydney yesterday, and she brought this BBQ pork all the way from Singapore! Actually, she brought it to her mentor, Lily lar... but Lily gave us some to try it as well..=) Anyway, was really quite shock to see that nowadays 'bak gua' come in such small packets! LOL.. just like chewing gum.. and simpler to what was shown in the movie 'I Not Stupid'! LOL... I wonder if the company copy the idea from the movie.. lol..

Monday 30 July 2007

Advantage Auto Quotes

And you have learnt to drive recently. Naturally the next step is to purchase a car – and of course, vehicle insurance is a must! Choosing a vehicle insurance company can be a daunting task with so many insurers to choose from, and not knowing the best type of coverage for you.

Advantage Auto Quotes can help you to choose the best insurers according to your needs e.g. most affordable. Essentially it means that weather you need insurance for a car, truck, SUV, or whether you are a teen or senior driver with good or poor records, Advantage Auto Quotes can help you to get the best insurance quote online. So do check it out.

This post is proudly brought to you by Advantage Auto Quotes

If only I really have $1 million!

Wow.. I guess this is the best tag ever! LOL... was tagged by babyfiona on what I will do if I have like $1 million dollar! Simple!

If I have $1 million, I will spend like $20,000 on travelling to Europe, Australia, States, and relax at some high class resort, enjoying fine dinning!

As for the rest of the money, I'll just put everything into a fix deposit bank and earn interest from it. Imagine putting like $980,000 into a fix deposite with an interest rate of conservatively 1.7% per annum (based on DBS bank)... that would amount to about $16,660 per year, which means I will get ~$1.4k monthly just like that! Isn't it great!! On top of my monthly income from my job, (assuming ~2.5k per month), that will be a total of $4k every month! wow!... I'm seeing all the dollar signs already!! LOL... but haiz.. it's something that will never come dream.. my bubble has just bursted.. =(

*************************************************************************

Instructions :

**Start Copy**Proposition: If you Have $1,000,000.00…………………………

Requirements: continue above sentences

Tag Mode: 5 blogger
1st - You leave their blog and post link and add to the list below.
2nd - Let the blogger you want to tag know they been tagged by comment in their blog or etc.

What They Do With Their $1 Million

1. SYH will spend for Family.
2. Miche will give to the needy.
3. Montessorimum will keepsake
4. Lovely Mummy will spend & save
5. MummyInVain will fullyutilise
6. Babyfiona will buy house and open business
7. Kev will travel and put in bank to earn interest

and now, what will these guys and gals do with so much money?? Build a statue under your own image? LOL...

1. Colleen
2. Jun Jun XVII
3. Chic & Yummy
4. Criz
5. Brainybimbo

Sunday 29 July 2007

Masterseek.com

What is MasterSeek? Well, basically Masterseek.com is an online search engine that allows one to do searches on companies, their services and products with ease! So far there are already more than 45 million countries from 75 different countries that have already signed up with Masterseek – which means that no matter what type of company, products or services you are searching for, you are bound to find one that you like! And of course, for those companies that haven’t signed up, sign up now to be heard in the World Wide Web!

This post is proudly brought to you by Masterseek.com

Weekend update

What have I done in the past few days?? Hmm.. ok, I have been at home most of the time! However I wish I was slacking away at home in the past couple of days. But, I was not. It's just that I'm doing some in silico work, and I prefer to do it at the comfort of my own home over the lab. Gosh, those lab people must be thinking that I'm damn slacking!! Oh well, I don't really care lar... I mean, what's wrong with working at home lor? =) I had been reading journals and looking through several genes etc, identifying which are transcriptional regulators that are expressed in Mbur. Why? That's because I need to clone it out, and see how it interacts with the DNA element, as well as the basal transcriptional machinery in Mbur... Anyway, this is gog to be one hell of a big project! haiz.. i really hope that this will go well, and not be like that EMSA thingy that I had worked on - no results at all despite 2-3 months of work! Anyway, had designed the relevant primers etc for the cloning/expression work as well... Think m gonna order them tomorrow (Monday)... I just hope Invitrogen will deliver the primers etc early! The last time I ordered from Invitrogen, it takes them like 8-12 days to deliver the primers!

Yesterday our gas heater went 'ko-yak'!! It's like totally spoilt - which means that we do not have hot water at all! Arghhhh.... it's in the middle of the winter, and there is no hot water! Frag! How are we going to bathe?? And can you imagine doing your dishes with icy cold water?? Anyway, OP and JM went over to Aaron's place to bathe, while I decided to try braving the icy cold water! After all, if those Japanese can swim in the sea in the middle of a winter, I'm sure bathing in cold water should be ok... And so I decided to try it out. And oh boy! It's fragging cold!!! I couldn't put my whole body under the shower head - too fragging cold! So what I did was to bath part by part, e.g. wash my arms first etc... And even so, I can feel the sting of the cold water when it hits my skin. My body is still far from numb, but imagine your body being sting by jellyfish!! LOL... gosh.. I really admire those people that go for winter swim!! Anyway, I had enough experience of it.. and so went over to Aaron's place to just their hotel style bathroom as well..=)

So, today I decided to whip up a dish or two. =) I had actually planned to whip up this dish quite sometime back. Bought the green bean and prawns for about a week but was just feeling either too lazy or too sian to do any major cooking. So today being Sunday is a good opportunity to cook it! After all, the green bean will be expired in the next couple of days. So, I had initially wanted to use chopped onion, but I had run out of chopped onions. These days, it's so difficult to find chopped onions in Coles. Anyway, I used garlic instead, and cooked garlic prawns with beans and mushrooms! It's quite yummy, and will definitely repel you if you don't like garlic at all! LOL.. look out vampires! I'm coming to get you! LOL... overall, quite nice.. but the beans still has abit of grass taste.. but, I'm ok with it. =)Beggars can't be choosy!

Saturday 28 July 2007

Drink your veggie

I am sure many of us know the importance of eating vegetables. It is part of a balanced diet, providing the fiber and essential minerals for our healthy living. Hmm… I remembered that we need 3 servings of vegetables in a day?? Sad to say, I don’t really adhere to that. It will be a miracle if I even have 2 servings of vegetables a day! LOL… by the way, how much is 1 serving? I might have eaten 2 but I thought it is 1 serving!

Anyway, for those who do not have time to really bother about counting the servings (like me), or those who are always on the go (e.g. camping food), wouldn’t it be good if you can just drink your vegetables? It will be quick and it can fulfill your daily vegetable requirements! ‘My Daily Veggie’ is produced by LaneLabs, where it is a delicious blend of 95% dried vegetables (not juice) and 5% vegetable extracts. One can just mixed it with water and drink it (simple isn’t it?) or just put it together into your meals to supplement your diet!

I think one aspect that is good is that ‘My Daily Veggie’ still retains the fibers etc as it is merely dried whole, and not meshed up as in vegetable juice. So we will still get the most out of it as compared to eating real veggie. Hmm… so do drink ‘My Daily Veggie’ from LaneLabs and stay healthy!

This post is proudly brought to you by www.drinkyourveggies.com

How do you eat your muffins?

So there I was... munching away at my favourite muffin minis... and then, it suddenly occurs to me! There are actually many ways to eat a muffin, esp a muffin minis!! And so, following up on my muffin minis craze, I'm gonna do a survey on how people eat their muffin minis, if they have one!! Think this is gonna be interesting!!

Ok, so I think there are basically 4 ways of eating a muffin mini:
A - Bite from bottom OR
B - Bite from the top OR
C - Bite from the side (therefore biting both top and bottom at the same time) OR
D - Put the whole mini in mouth and bite!
E - No preferences (Jus bite it!)


So, tell me how do you eat your muffin minis!!! Jus click on the poll on the sidebar and be part of the fun!! =) And I'll have the result out in about a week's time!! =) Come tell me and I will let u know how I eat them soon!! =)

Friday 27 July 2007

Reading with SCORE

Besides Maths, I guess reading is a pretty important skill too! Or rather, I should say reading and understanding – because everyone can read. It is weather one can understand the depth of the passage etc that is important E.g. in newspaper or legal documents. Therefore it is important to start engaging your child in reading as young as possible to pick up these good habits before the child grows up and enter into the society. In Score, reading tutors will help your child to pick up and enjoy reading and understanding – preparing your child for the world of words ahead.

The is post is proudly brought to you by SCORE Education.

Wednesday 25 July 2007

Mini muffin craze

Have been caught up in a craze lately… every time I would yearn for it when I come home, unless I’m really full. No, even if I’m full, somehow, I still couldn’t resist it. One moment I’m looking at my screen of my laptop, the next moment I would suddenly awakened to the fact that I am holding it in my hand! LOL… it’s so small that I can easily finish it in one mouthful! What is it? It’s the mini muffins from Coles! I’m someone who doesn’t like muffins… but these muffins are so small and cute… and smell fragrant too! So one day I decided to part with AUD$2.50 and bought a packet of chocolate chips mini muffins (8 minis in a pack) to try, and I’m hooked on it! I wonder how long more before I will get sick of it… LOL…

Cooked one of my favorite dishes today. =) It’s yummy and spicy… and I love it! =)

SCORE in Math

The understanding of Math is so crucial to everyday life that I feel the need to blog about it again. My friend’s brother will be having his major exam soon, and his Math is just a flop! He told me he hated Math, and don’t see how important it is! I hope he can change his mind on Math and scores in this dreaded subject of his, after getting help from the math tutors from SCORE! Education.

This post is proudly brought to you by SCORE!

Tuesday 24 July 2007

Morning post

It's abobut 9am local time, and guess what? I'm already in Uni!! LOL.. surprised!? Yeah, I would too... Well, basically I didn't really sleep last night. Slept like from 10pm till around 2am this early morning, and then spent the rest of the time online, as well as chatting with Limin. Limin went to sleep at ard 2am Singapore time, which is 4am local time. So spent the rest of the time watching the UK series 'Doctor Who'. Left home for school at around 7.15am in the morning... LOL.. this is the first time that I leave home to Uni so early!

Now why did I wanna leave home so early for school? Basically, and probably, I wanna prove that I can go to school early to do work too! Ok, I've been slacking quite a bit and have been going to school only from noon onwards. Somehow I always can't really wake up in the morning despite all the wake up calls.. argh.. So, I decided that I should do something different! So I decided to not really sleep and come to school early to run my experiments, and hopefully, go home early as well!

It's really great to be awake so early, and walking along the street where there isn't much people. And oh, when I walked along the streets, I realised that there are 'smoke' coming out from my nose or mouth when I breathe air out! LOL.. Despite not have much sleep, I'm feeling very good! Maybe it's the adrenaline rush!

Anyway, reached school at around 7.30am, and started to set up my experiments etc.. and guess what? About 45minutes later, the fire alarm went off! Oh man.. I was like 'why in the world did it choose to go off when I came early to school???' Argh! But but but... luckily, it's a false alarm, and we are allowed to come back into the building after standing outside in the lawn for like 15 minutes.. Oh well.. luckily it's not a real fire...

Anyway, got to go continue my experiments now! =)

Sunday 22 July 2007

How to get to Sesame Street?

"Sunny Day
Sweeping the clouds away
On my way to where the air is sweet

Can you tell me how to get
How to get to Sesame Street”

Ah… this song, it just rings a bell in my mind. In fact, many bells! Remind me of the days when I was young, and the days when I used to watch Sesame Street on the television and go humming along with the tune of the Sesame Street theme song. Sesame Street is one of the most successful TV series I might say, targeting mainly pre-school children (and even adults like me love it!) and educating them at the same time! So far, there has been a total of 36 seasons – a whooping 4,134 episodes have been shown!! Certainly this is by far one of the longest running TV series in the world!

Though a lot of people likes Elmo or Oscar, I personally prefer Ernie! He is so adorable and mischievously innocent and never fails to piss Bert off! LOL… I would just love to relive the days of Sesame Streets and do counting together with Count von Count. For those who want to relive the good old days of Sesame Street as well, you might want to check out beartoday.com. In the website, you can get toys of your favorite Sesame Streets characters, as well as beanies, hand puppets, mugs and birthday figurines – perfect gift for that little kid of yours (or that little kid within you!)

There are also fun and interesting stuffs to do in beartoday.com besides purchasing the items. There are Sesame Streets Oscars crossword puzzles, and word search games to play. In fact, they even have these very nice Sesame Street desktop themes, wallpapers and screen savers as well! Very nice.. I might just change my desktop wallpaper to Sesame Street’s wallpaper. =)

This post is proudly brought to you by beartoday.com

Flybuys card

And I thought with this flybuys card, I can earned alot of points and exchange it for something good! Well, yes, I had applied for flybuys card recently. It's sorta like a reward card, where if you shop at the participating merchants, you can earn points. So, got myself a card, and it arrived 2 days ago, Friday. I was pretty excited... another card! Yeah! yes yes yes... I'm a sucker for all these cards... I like to collect them all! But too bad, not a whole wallet of credit cards - in fact not even a single credit cards! Only debits... No credit after all! LOL..

Anyway, kinda disappointed when I saw the card,... eee.. so 'orbit' looking! lol... Luckily my debit cards are much better looking! So, with the card in hand, I put it to the test when I go to Coles just this afternoon. Bought my groceries and handed the flybuys to the cashier. Just swiped it, and that's it! Quickly came back to check my points, only to find that it need like a week to process the points. Why so slow one ah? In fact, why are all these points system so slow? It's the same when I purchase air tix from Qantas as a frequent flyer member. I think the same goes for SIA kris flyer too?! They take money so fast, but reward points so slow!

Anyway, checked how much I'm gonna get.. according to the flybuys site, I will earn only 2 points for every $5 spend. So my groceries was like $27, which give me a miserable 5 points. Fine.. I don't mind 5 points as long as the points redemption aren't high.. and guess what, the cheapest reward requires 2,500 points to redeem! And that is for a $20 flybuys gift card! hmm.. so 2,500 points would be equivalent of spending AUD$6,250 on groceries or at its participating outlets! Assuming I spent like $200 per month on the groceries, that will take me 2 years just to earn that miserable $20 gift card! LOL... They sure know how to make us spend! I wonder how many points I will have accumulated come end of my studies in Oz 3-4 years later... worst stills, points will expire! Argh..

Keepcash - Home Bistro

Have you heard of keepcash.com? Yes – good for you! I’m sure you are enjoying the great discounts they are offering. And for those who have not heard of it – well, keepcash.com is an online portal that helps you to keep as much cash in your pockets as possible when you are making a purchase! LOL… alright, seriously, it has lots of online coupons e.g. discount or free shipping etc for a whole range of merchandise! The site is updated daily to make sure you have the best coupons available at your disposal! Cool huh!? So do give it a try.

A particular merchant that I find of interest within the keepcash.com is Home Bistro. Basically Home Bistro is sort of like those food catering services where you don’t even need to sweat to have a decent delicious meal. In Home Bistro, they cater chef-prepared meals with the finest ingredients to your doorstep, and all it takes is 10 minutes from freezer to table! What’s more, Home Bistro offers a whole range of food e.g. healthy meals, soups, special diets like low carbohydrate diet, and even dessert! If this is not enough, keepcash.com even has Home Bistro coupons that offer $15 off for every $100 of purchase. So, do check it out!

This post is proudly brought to you by Keepcash.com

Boring boring update

It’s been quite a couple of days since I really last update my blog with my daily ranting… Well there isn’t really much to rant about anyway. This couple of days has been pretty standard and boring… oh man, maybe I have come to a stage where I do not know what else is there that I can blog about. What is so special that is worth remembering when I read back this journey of mine ten years later?? In fact, I don’t even know where I’ll be ten years later… life is just so unpredictable.

Probably one of the highlights of the past few days is that I have spoken to my PhD supervisor, Rick on my consistent failure to generate any result for my gel shift assay. So, we’ve decided that it’s best not to put all the eggs in one basket. Thus I have chosen to take on another 3 projects on top of the DNA-binding proteins that I’m looking at currently. Gonna be tough to do so many things all at once… but what to do.. haiz… the current experiment I’m doing is not going to give me any result at all! Can’t just sit and wait to die right? Troubleshoot? I don’t even know where to begin! I’m gonna try out using the exact (well, as much as possible) protocol from Kimberly and see what happens. Haiz… call me a pessimistic, but I think it isn’t going to work. Then for the past few days have spent lots of time doing research online on the upcoming projects till like 5.30am local time! Hardworking huh? no use lar... got result then got use! LOL...

On a more joyful note, my PPP has earned me US$164.99!! Yeah!! That’s quite a lot considering that I didn’t really need to do much except to just sit by my laptop and just type. And it’s in US dollars!! But, pity that that Australian dollars had risen in the past few weeks, else I could gain more from the exchange rate! =) And oh, both smorty and bloggerwave had earned me some money as well – not a lot though at US$6 and US$10 respectively. But PPP is still the best with lotsa more opps than either of them! Another good news is, the opps are coming back in PPP after weeks of drought for me, and I hope it stay this way!! =)

Saturday 21 July 2007

Ashop Commence

I have notice a trend where people, such as stay at home mums to students etc are engaging themselves in some small business. To be exact, making their own jewelries etc and selling them off online in their own website. As such, I believe that a secure shopping cart program is essential in these websites to safeguard the customers’ interest.

Ashop Commerce provides such shopping cart software – allowing merchants to build a professional online store with shopping cart properties. Why choose such ecommerce software from Ashop Commerce? Simply because it’s affordable and can be set up in a breeze. There is no restriction to the design of your online store when using the software, and if you faced any problems, you can give a call to their customer and technical support as well. It allows your store to be listed in search engines, as well as providing safe online environments for shopping cart transactions. So, give it a go, for you can now try it out for 10 days for free!

This post is proudly brought to you by Ashop Commerce

Fill in the blanks meme...

Well, got tagged by Colleen again! Argh!! Though she's in Wuxi now, never fails to tag people whereever she is! LOL... ok, emm.. according to her, this tag is for a good cause. By doing this meme you are contributing RM127 to the Darul Izzah Orphanage.

The meme is about completing at least seventeen out of the following twenty seven sentences........ When you are done, just drop Idham a comment over at the tag’s original page.

1. A person is only as good as ................................... how he treats his enemy.
2. Friendship is always .............................................. true if the parties involved are sincere
3. To love is to............................................................. to give your heart to that person.
4. Money makes me................................................... go crazy with joy!
5. I miss ...................................................................... Limin
6. My way of saying I care is by ............................. telling you to do what I think is right for you.
7. I try to spread love and happiness by................ laughter?
8. Pick the flowers when..................................... no one is watching.
9. To love someone is to.................................... love someone lor!
10. Beauty is .................................... skin deep.
11. When I was thirteen, what I remember the most was the my sec1 days
12. When I was twenty one, I remember spending it in the police academy.
13. I am most happy when ................................... I go on travel
14. Nothing makes me happier than ...................... having lotsa money!
15. If I can change one thing, I will change........... to be richer.
16. If smiles were banned then I'll not be affected since I don't smile much.
17. Wouldn't it be nice if we could............................ not die.
18. If you want to ask me to smile while taking my picture then you have to tell me a joke or something.
19. Money is not everything but............................. without money I'm nothing.
20. The most touching moments I have experienced is.................. I have no idea
21. I smile when................................................... I see my Limin.
22. When I am happy, I...................................... like to treat myself to good food.
23. If only I don't have to be in Australia, then I can be with Limin everyday.
24. The best thing I did yesterday was........................... doing literature review on my project
25. If I ever write a book, I will give it this title,"My life, my walkabout"
26. One thing I must do before I die is............... to tell Limin I'm sorry that I have to leave her first.
27. Doing this meme, I feel like ............ if it's really true that donations will be made just 'cos I do this meme.

So now, gonna pass on the tag.... BokJae and spookygrace, your tagged!! =)

Friday 20 July 2007

Troux Technologies

Troux Technologies is an IT company that has developed three softwares that primarily serve as information aggregation and management solution, as well as providing tools for architecture design. Metis Architect, for instance is a tool that allows visual modeling of people and their relation with processes and technologies, as well as projecting to the future – thereby enhancing business efficiencies. So, if you want to mitigate risk as well as reduce cost of your business, be sure to check out what Metis Architect, Server, and Collection can do for your business!

This post is proudly brought to you by Troux Technologies

Diversifying my eggs

Feeling very sleeping.. it's now 4am in the morning.. Drank a can of Bourbon & cola... but not totally groggy yet..=)

Anyway, I had spoken to Rick already, and I will still be working on to elucidate the nucleic acid binding proteins that regulate the RNA helicase. However, I will be doing other projects concurrently as well. I think this is pretty good, in that I'm not putting all the eggs in one basket! So, I think I will be handling another 3 project simultaneously, and hopefully, at least one of them will lead me somewhere!

Basically, I will be working on tata box-binding proteins, the RNA helicase, as well as a very basic protein that is expressed by the archaea... wow.. I foresee this is gog to take up a lot of work and time.. gotta work extra hard!

I was taken aback during the meeting, cos Rick was telling me that he had come up with a long list of what other projects I can embark on after reading my email. At least this shows that he really care about his students and make an effort to come up with the list. He could have jolly well just think up of something during the meeting, or asked me to go think about it... and for that I'm in a way, touched... and am fortunate enough to have such a good PhD supervisor.. though I already more or less have, in my mind, what other project I intend to do as well...

Anyway, let's hope that things will turn for the better! =)

RailShopping.com

Besides planes and coaches, there is also another way to travel when one is in Europe - by rail of course, and get to see all the sceneries that you would otherwise have missed! RailShopper.com provides a one-stop online portal where one can get information and tickets for rail travel in Europe. From single to multi-country pass, to student Europe Rail pass for us students or senior pass, there is almost a pass for each and every need. So, you might want to check out RailShopper.com when you intend to travel in Europe!

Wednesday 18 July 2007

BeanBastic!

8 random things u don't know about me!

Was tagged by a fellow blogger, or rather bloggeress (female of blogger), colleen on 8 random things you do not know about me. Hmm.. I remember doing something similar! It asked for 7 random things about me! Anyway, I shall be a good sport and reveal somemore secrets about myself!! LOL... But, no big deal lar.. it's not as if i'm some big star.. if I'm then I can sell off my secret and earn big bucks!

1) So.. hmm..ok.. I always count from 1 to 60 everytime i brush my teeth! LOL.. sorta like a timer so that I'll not brush too fast and not clean my teeth properly.

2) I hate the dentist, which is why I make sure I clean my teeth properly as in no.1

3) I only have one occasion where the dentist needs to pull out my teeth. Luckily it was a milk teeth..and it grows back! So, the teeth in my mouth now are real ok! not fake one!

4) I have never finish a book since donkey years ago. Can't bring myself to sit down to read - too preoccupied with other things e.g. watching tv, blogging etc. In fact, I'm almost done with my death note comic with just one more book to go, and it's been 'almost done' for the past couple of months!

5) I'm gonna name my first son as EJay (don't copy the name ok! Use ur brain to think of a different name for ur children.. =P)

6) I'm gonna name my first daughter as ZiNing

7) Limin and I have the intention to go ROM on the 9th Sept 09... is it too early now to start planning?? Argh.. first time gog thru this.. how ah? need to plan so early? feel like a headless housefly bumming ard!

8) ok.. finally.. I used to eat cod liver oil everyday when I was young... I still remember the cod liver oil adverts - cheng zhan cheng zhan, wo yi cheng zhan. Shi ke duo mi yu gan you, pei ban wo yi qi cheng zhan! LOL... I'm gonna feed my children with cod liver oil as well in future!

Alright.. now to tag another 8 bloggers.. wow.. 8 wor.. ok ppl, here goes!
1) Rinaz
2) Sylv
3) Tenchiwei
4) Kimiki
5) Amelia
6) Jacey
7) ECL and finally
8) Minny

Tuesday 17 July 2007

Finally finish all the 20 episodes of 'Switched' & Daily rattling...

Oh hoo!! Finally finished all the 20 episodes of 'switched'! In case I've forgotten what it is ten years down the road when I read back at this post, 'Switched' is a TCS production starring Fann Wong, and Jeanette Aw among others. It's about two sisters with every different life and characters, having their souls switched. And thus, they have to live life in each other's shoes and experience all the sweet and sad experiences of their characters and learnt to to live life in a different light. =) All right, I'm a fan of Fann Wong..=) And I must say that both Fann Wong and Jeanette Aw portray their characters very well...

Ok, for those who are into 'Switched' there is nothing wrong with me saying I've finish all the 20 episodes! I subscribed to MobTV, and they have sneak preview! But then, I'm sure you can read it in the I-weekly as well on the plot... Hmm.. should I review the ending to you guys?? LOL... Well, in the end, both Fann and Jeanette got married! =) That's as how as I'll go, you have to see the show for yourself.

Anyway, for my daily rattlings, my pocket is burning a big hole!! Just spent AUD$73 on a french dinner last week, and today, spent like AUD$35 on groceries, paid my hp bills at AUD$57... The hole is getting as big as the ozone hole over Antarctica! How? How? Still need to save up for my walkabout trip in come this Jan'08 with Limin! And my payperpost doesn't have much opps for me to earn!! Argh.. I don't ask for money dropping down from the sky, but bless me with more opps pls!! Already spent AUD$250 for domestic flight to and fro Sydney and Melbourne for Jan'08... and am expecting to spend like another AUD$1000 on hotel accommodation and tour trips in Melbourne!! And oh, will need to bring Limin around in Sydney too!! I need more opps!!

And not to forget the return air tix back to Oz after going back to Singapore for CNY next year!! Arghhh!!!! Maybe I can sell my backside! LOL.. anyone wants?? LOL

Monday 16 July 2007

How do you know you are in the middle of winter?

Now, it's very easy to know if you are actually in winter or not. Besides the obvious where you feel the cold, harsh wind blowing at your face when you're in the street, or from the thermometer, there are other ways as well. In case you are so oblivious to your surrounding, there are two other ways to know if you're right in the middle of winter. First, look at the trees!! As you can see in the picture, all the leaves are gone. The leaves goes from green, to orange, to yellow... and you must have thought that they just fall from the tree after they turn yellow? Wrong! They will only fall when a strong winter wind blows, and thereafter you can see the whole ground turned yellowed with leaves. Ok, in case you stay at home all day throughout the week and months, and no contact with the outside world... the second way to know you are in the middle of winter is to open your tap! Try washing ur rice using normal tap water (not hot water), and soon you will find your hand in immerse pain from the cold tap water - analogous to using your hand to hold on to a couple of ice cubes!

There you have it, the solution to know if you are in the middle of a winter!

Sunday 15 July 2007

Bid4prizes.com

Have you ever heard of bid4prizes.com? As the name of the URL suggested, it is a website that allows one to bid for a prize or item that is on auction. However, unlike your usual auction bidding system where the highest bidder wins, it is the lowest unique bidder that wins in bid4prizez.com! Cool right?

So what do I mean by lowest unique bidder? For instance, person A bid for a ipod for $1, and person B bid $1 as well. And then person C and D comes along and both bided $3. Finally you placed a bid at $2, and another chap placed it at $4. There are thus altogether only 6 persons (including you) bidding for the ipod. So, since you are the unique bidder (only bid with $4), and you are the lowest unique bidder, you will get to win the ipod! What’s more, there is no actual need to pay $4 for the ipod – in fact it’s free! The winner does not need to pay a single cent – sorta like a free gift to you huh?

If you visit bid4prizes.com, you will see that there are a lot of prizes to be won e.g. HDTV, I-phone etc. And currently they are asking voters on how to give away a $1 million cash prize in bid4prizes! Imagining win it! The website is user-friendly as well, making it easy to place a bid in this sweepstake-like system, and there’s a new winner everyday!! This is extremely enticing!

This post is proudly brought to you by bid4prizes.com.

AUD$73 le diner in Ciel Rouge

It's Bastille Day today, and so Sabine suggested that the lab go to Ciel Rouge, a french restaurant located in Victoria street (near Kings Cross) to celebrate. Well, even though we're not french, but it's an excuse to get together and eat good food! LOL...And the good food comes at a good price too! A 3-course Bastille dinner (excluding beverages) set comes at a whopping AUD$60. It's the most expensive dinner set in my life!

So as I have not been to Ciel Rouge nor Victoria street before, I did my homework on the route to take etc... This my scribbling... I think only I can understand this messy map!!

Anyway, took bus 373 from Randwick and it reached Taylor Square in like 10 minutes!! That's pretty fast - kinda expected it to be like a 20 minutes trip. Anyway, Huifen wasn't there yet, so gotta wait a while for her before going over to Ciel Rouge.

This is the entrance to Ciel Rouge... Reached there at about 5.45pm, and waited for like 30minutes for the others - Charmaine and her bf, Lily and her bf, Sabine to show up. Finally, Dom and his gf, as well as Davide arrived as well... and thus let the feast began!! Anyway, the whole restaurant was like fully booked for customers for the Bastille day - Many customer went into the restaurant but come out minutes later only when they realised it's fully booked! Sabine was quick enough to place a booking!

Ok, the whole restaurant was rather small and cozy, and besides the table candles, is only lighted up by two of this chandeliers. See that even the chandeliers are decorated? Yup, it's a french restaurant, and it's Bastille day! What do you expect?

The Bastille dinner set menu... we only get to choose 1 dish from each category. If only I can order all of them! LOL... All these words looks rather foreign to me...What's Gruyere? What's cornichons? What's Suzette? Oh well, just have to follow my instincts to order.

While waiting for our entree, we were served with bread and butter, and we had some red and white wine as well...

Finally, my entree was Chicken liver pate with red onion confit and cornichons. I was like 'huh? so small a portion?' in my mind. LOL... Anyway, it's eaten with bread, by smearing the chicken liver pate onto the bread. It's extremely delicious, and the taste of chicken liver wasn't very strong which is good. The pate was smooth and rich. It's the most delicious food that one can used to smear on bread to eat. I would have given it a full 5 lobsters stamps if not for the red onion confit and cornichons. The cornichons are sour, which I hate, and the red onion aren't exactly that appealing either. Oh well, 4 lobs stamps for my entree!


Now the main course for me is Silver Dory Meniere served with boulanger potatoes. This dish is absolutely superb - the outer layer of the dory was grilled till golden crisp, but the meat of the fish itself is soft and succulent with the olive oil-based gravy. In addition, they had added a slight tint of lemon/lime juice into the gravy as well. Excellent - not too sour, and goes very well with the fish. And Together with the boulanger potatoes, this is definitely worth 5 lobs stamps, but I'm only giving it 4 lobs stamps as the portion is too small. I could have easily eaten two dory fish portions - but that is going to cost me!



And finally, for the desserts - which is supposedly to wrap up the whole Le diner set, is disappointing. I order a crepe Suzette not knowing what a Suzette is. Apparently after searching through wikipedia, Suzette doesn't have any significance in terms of food. Back to the crepe, it is an orange crepe. I'm not really sure if it's an orange or peach, but based on the sourness and bitter aftertaste of the sauce and crepe, my money is on orange. Anyway, the crepe is nice, nothing spectacular and I would have given it 2.5 lobs stamp. However, I do not like sour food and yet I have to force myself to finish it (it's worth $60!!!) and thus I'm only willing to give it only a lobs stamp instead.

Overall, I find that the food in Ciel Rouge is quite to my liking except that the portions are small, and thus isn't really worth the AUD$60 (including wines - AUD$70+) The price is definitely on the high end, probably capitalising on that fact that french cuisine is generally considered to be a refine and elegant way of dining, and that it's Bastille Day. Well, I guess I'm going to sum up my experiences in Ciel Rouge with just one sentence - I'm going to make myself some noodles later. =)

Saturday 14 July 2007

The curse is still lurking...

Despite being Saturday the 14th, the curse of Friday the 13th is still lurking... waiting for the chance to strike once again... and it did, and quite successful I might say...

So there I was, running the whole expt again - PCR, running of gel etc... and guess what?? I'm so blur today that I put the wires for my DNA agarose gel tank into the wrong polarity! The black wires are supposed to be put into the cathode, while the red wires to the anode of the powerpac.. but I just did the opposite! Argh... how can I be so blur!!! Frag.. another few hours wasted... and a wasted saturday too!

Arrgh... feel like just banging my head into the wall...

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Friday 13 July 2007

I'm cursed by the black friday!!

Argh.. it's friday the 13th!!! I woke up knowing this awful date... I pondered on weather I should go to the lab to do my work... but I tell myself, just be careful with whatever I do, and I wouldn't be under the black friday curse.

So, there I go about running my experiment. It's some basic stuffs - running of DNA agarose gel after PCRing it overnight. And guess what? Fragging black friday curse!! Frag! Something goes wrong with the gel running, and my DNA simply disappear leaving just a very very thin trace!! Argh!!! Fragging hell... 3-4 hours of time all wasted!! and now my work schedule is disrupted!! Argh... I feel like trashing stuffs all over the lab.. but I can't... else I will need to be the lab cleaner for eons before I can ever pay for the things/equipments that I trash! Argh... frag to the power of frag!!

Fragging friday the 13th... remind me to sleep through it on the next friday the 13th!!

Thursday 12 July 2007

Linky Love tag

Ok, I was tagged by sweetpea to do this Linky Love tag...hmm... abit difficult to understand what the tag requires of me... but since I'm born in the year of monkey, monkey see monkey do!

The blogger who tagged me is a full-time mum that stays in Melbourne, Australia. But... she isn't an 'Ang Moh' cos she's from Malaysia!! Hmm.. maybe can ask her to bring Limin and Me around when we go over to Melbourne in Jan 08! LOL... anyway back to the tag, sweetpea has an adorable kiddo named Aidan. Hmm..I wonder what's the significance of the name though... Anyway, being a full time mum means that she has to sacrifice her time and social life to take care of her kid, but she's enjoying it. Then again, she isn't totally outta touch with the world, 'cos she still has a blog to interact with the world. Best of all, since her blog is PR3, she can do lotsa payperpost opps , and money will just keep rolling in(*envy*)!!LOL...

So now who shall I tag?? and I wonder what those blogger whom I tagged will say about me!? LOL

*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
1. Write a short paragraph at the beginning of your post and link back to the blog that put you on the list in the paragraph. This isn’t a suggestion. You need to break up the duplicate content. Someone took the time to add you so the least you can do is give them an extra link back.

2. Copy the list of originals below COMPLETELY and add it to your blog. If you would like a different keyword for your blog then change it when you do your post and it should pass to most blogs with that keyword.

3. Take the adds from the blog that added you and place them in the “Originals” list.

4. Add at least 1 new blog that you KNOW is using the DO FOLLOW plugin to the list in the “My Adds” section. (Add no more than 5!) Let the people you’ve added know, so that they can keep the list going!

My Adds:
Little world of thoughts
A great pleasure
Renisphere

Originals:
mott's island
Kev's Walkabout
iBubbs woof
Down Memory Lanes
Woof & Arf
Lovely Mummy
Bubba Stuff
Mommibee
Moments in My Life
Rambling Moo
All about Zara & Zaria
Hip n cool momma
Random Thoughts of a Blur Mommy
Mylittleanelqianyi
Bits & Pieces
De’moments
chinneeq
Giddy Tiger
Huei Rabbit
Rinnah
Simple America
Niceheart
Ethel
Sanna
The Queer Chef
Shoshana
Leah
gina>
Haze
Ghee
Neng aka Sirena
Angelo
Ju aka The Border aka Juana of Femjo
Tina
Keep the Faith
jsonvlog
Suncoast Scribe
Blogging Kenneth
My 2 Centavos Worth
Manila Mom
3 Dogs, 3 Pigs and A Family
Cafe Romanza
Earn Global
Credit Ability
Macuha
Flee the Cube
Smart Wealthy Rich
MomReviews.net
Fellow Eskimo
Pajama Mommy
Amanita.net
WebStyle
Meredith’s Weight Loss Blog
Pink Blog
Tricia’s Musings
Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot
Midlife Musings
Utterly Geek
Whatever I Feel Like
My Dandelion Patch
Surviving NJ
GeekySpeaky
Simple Kind Of Life
3DayMom
BuyMeBlog
The Hockey Dad

Smorty - paid to blog

I’ve always been on a look out for ways to earn money online with my blog. And so when I saw my fellow blogger bokjae introducing http://www.smorty.com/ in his blog, I decided to give it a try.

So what exactly is Smorty?? Simply put, it’s a website where advertisers and bloggers come together to mutually benefit each other. But for us bloggers concerned, Smorty.com is where you get paid for blogging about certain products or services. Isn’t it good to be able to earn while blogging? And blog advertising allows you to do just that! So, after you registered with smorty.com, you will be able to see the job opportunities that are available to you in a marketplace. All you need to do is to accept the job, and blog about what the job requires (advertise on blogs)! Simple isn’t it? One of the best feature about Smorty (unlike other similar sites) is that you get paid weekly instead of monthly through Paypal – meaning that I don’t need to wait for so long for the money to be credited into my account! =) So, what are you still waiting for??

This post is proudly brought to you by Smorty.com

Wednesday 11 July 2007

Blogging rants & food!! yum yum

Hmmm… what have I been doing this couple of days?? I didn’t do very much. Most of it has been spent lazing at home. Aren’t I supposed to be in lab doing experiments?? My experimental set up has been failing me time and time again. I simply don’t understand why other researchers with similar set ups are able to get results and not me! Is it because I’m using a different organism as compared to them, so it’s giving me all these problems? Or that my proteins are basically inactivated when I sonicated the cells to get the proteins?? Or is it the buffer solution that is sub-optimal? There can be 1001 reasons! I very much wanted to troubleshoot, but with so many possible reasons of failure – and not even a hint of where the failure lies – it’s like finding a needle in a haystack! I’ve been trying out slightly different set up, but these trial and error-based experiments aren’t getting me anywhere. My boss isn’t back from his holiday yet, and thus not possible to discuss it with him. Haiz… at this rate, I will most probably suggest a change of project focus when he comes back on Monday. LOL… he’s gonna get a shock!

Lately, I’ve been having this craze over Stephanie Sun (孙燕姿)’s 逆光 (against the light). I find the music rather appealing and catchy. I quite like the title of the song too, sorta remind me of the predicament I’m currently in. My experiments somehow is against the flow – instead of generating results, it generated worries and troubles for me. Instead of hope (as in light), I’m seems to be going against it. But philosophically, to be against the light is a good thing. Against the light would mean facing the light, and thus a person would be able to see as light shines into the eyes. By facing away from the light, light will just travel by you and you would only see darkness as light (travelling in a straight line) will never make a U-turn into your eyes! Eh? So it seems it’s good to be against the light!! Does this spell hope for my project since I like this song so much?? LOL… I doubt it… But just for the fun of it, I’ve recorded myself singing the song… and yucks! It further proves that I should never ever step into a karaoke!

Lately I’ve been buying a lot of food stuffs… LOL… maybe I’m to stress so I eat and eat even though I’m not hungry at all. For instance, I bought this garlic bread from Coles and it’s really fragging delicious! It’s even better than the pizza hut’s garlic bread I think! Furthermore, it’s fragging cheap as well, at AUD$2.99 for 3 loaves of bread. As the loaf is long, I break up the loaf and put the portion that I want into my microwave oven. After 40 seconds, you can smell the fragrant of the garlic bread, and the succulent buttery garlicky bread caressing your taste buds… I just feel like stuffing all the bread into my mouth at one go! LOL….

Well, I tried something new for today’s dinner as well. Cooked green bean stirred fried with mince pork. It’s my first attempt, and it turn out to be pretty ok, delicious I must say! LOL…. But if the green bean can be a little softer, it will even be better. And too bad I didn’t have black beans, else it would be great too! Anyway, I processed the green beans, and throw them into the pan (already fried with garlic and chopped onions) and cooked it. Gotta cook for quite a bit of time, else the green bean will be hard on your teeth. Meanwhile, prepared the mince pork – marinate it with cooking wine, pepper, and cut chilly (yeah, I love spicy stuffs). So, when the green bean is ready, add in the pork and stir fried till done! It’s that simple and nice… yum yum…

As for dessert, I had black sesame paste from Nissin! Yup, you heard right… desserts! LOL… I can really eat huh! Anyway, I made a wrong choice for buying the black sesame paste! It cost me AUD$4.08 per box – and thinking that it have like 3-4 packets within a box, the price is alright! But when I open up the box, there are only 2 packets! Essentially it’s like AUD$2.04 for a bowl of black sesame paste! Argh… super expensive black sesame! The Oriental supermart that I bought it from must have mark up the price by quite a lot!! Gosh, imagine eating a bowl of black sesame paste for $2! Other than the price, the paste itself has this bittery fragrant, but I’m quite ok with it. I just find that it isn’t sweet, so I have to add it in on my own. One thing good about the paste from Nissin is that it’s very convenient to prepare. I just need to pour out the contents into a bowl and heat it up in a microwave oven and that’s it! But still… AUD$2.04 per bowl??? I wouldn’t have bought it if I knew there are only two packets per box!!


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