Uneventful Saturday...

It's an uneventful saturday.. haha.. having went to the sydney city, and was pretty tired yesterday. So, slept till quite late today! hahaha.. Yup, I will be putting up the pictures and videos of the walkabout in the city later on.. yup..

And wow, my annotation was like, left 29 of them to be annotated! haha.. yeah! But then, might have more coming up after I had finished those.. hmm.. Anyway, suggested to my boss to do some microarray stuffs, and DNA-binding proteins stuffs.. and guess what, he had a similiar idea on working on the nucleic acid-binding proteins of M. burtonii as well.. great minds think alike!! hahaha... no lar.. still got much much more to learn from him,.. I'm just a frog that jumped outta of well, bumping ard in the outside world! Anyway, back to the point, think I will be working on nucleic acid-binding proteins for the moment, under the big umbrella of regulation within the archaea M.burtonii... so things has been gog well so far..

And, yeah, my stipend hasn't arrived yet! Got to know from the GRS ppl that my first installment will be credited on the 22nd march.. oh well. Anyway just gotta keep on saving and shrimping to get by... =)

F1 racing car park right opposite my block!

As the title goes! Wow.. a F1 racing car parked just right across my block! Cool... certainly draws some crowds too!

Well, the view of Belmore Rd, Randwick from my apartment... Busy rd yeah..

Ghost town at night???

Received news that my poor catus died like 2 weeks after I left for Australia.. poor catus.. Asked my belove to transplant the smallest branch into the soil, and hopefully it can revive itself..

My new eeyore slippers send to me from my beloved, from singapore.. via singpost..

My dinner for today.. attempted a feat which I know shouldn't have! Cooking chicken wings! Argh.. should have known better than to try it, cos unlike boiling it, frying the chicken wings needs skills! Normally, the exterior of the wings will be cooked, while the inner portion is still raw! If u left it too long to cook the inner portion, the outer exterior will be charred! Argh.. Damn hard! Any tips anyone???

Antarctica sunset... beautiful...the best there is in the world..

Yup.. as promised, here are the piz of sunset in Antarctica...







Sun is setting in the South pole....








Do you see the 'black dots' on the white ice? Have a guess on what that is.... =)




My dinner for today, for the folks in sg.. black pepper seafood rice with egg.. hmmm.. looks like those chinese resturant's food? hahaha.. i think it sure does.. except the egg lar.. which was not well done this time round..hmm.. maybe I can go and open resturant already!.. =D

Cheap food!!

Well.. went over to Coles to do some shopping for food.. and guess what, it's a good bargain! haha.. I bought a dozen raw chicken wings for only $4.47! Cheap huh!? yeah.. and that 1kg of seafood mix (prawns, crabsticks, octopus, mussels) is only $10.99! wow.. I think it's superduper worth it.. can eat for at least a week and a half with the 1kg seafood mix! haha.. and their chocolate cookies are nice and cheap too.. only 99cents! yum yum...

Yup.. the cheap chocolate cookits that i talked abt..

My dinner.. looks delicious huh? yup it is! yum yum.. i just luv it!.

Sydney Sight Tour

Spent $30 on the Sydney Sight Tour today.. Was supposed to meet at the main gate in UNSW at 9am.. haha.. but as usual was 5 minutes late. Luckily they were still waiting for other latecomers as well when I reached. Anyway, 3 of the participants didn't turn up.. so off we went after waiting for 10 minutes.. haha.. I'm damn luckily to be only 5 minutes late... so let's go!




Hightlighted some of the destinations here in the map. The attractions where we stopped are Mrs macquaries Chair in Botanic Garden, as well as North Head, and Manly beach. We did past by Fingers Wharf, Rocks, Chinatown, and Wooloomooloo (i think the spelling is right??). Its said that the pie in Wooloomooloo is internationally acclaimed! Must tried it someday.









View of Opera house, and Sydney Harbour Bridge from Botanic Garden.










haha.. look like those pictures where you crop the person into a fake background..haha.. it's not ok!













View from Mrs Macquaries Chair, overlooking the other side of the river











Shores in the Botanic Garden













View while crossing the Spit Bridge














View from the North Head














More views from North Head














Group photos.... I'm the only participant from Sg...











Our friendly tour guide explaining to us..














Breadthtaking isn't it! still from North Head..












Yup, that's me.. looking a bit stupid..haha














Passes by the Manly Wharf.. where ferries from the Circular Quay land.. transporting ppl to the Manly beach











Manly Beach.....















And Babes....












Well, the walkway from the Manly beach.. lotsa shops here.. and food too!













The market in Manly.. they sell very nice paintings and photography.. so tempted to buy.. I like the one where they print the photography on to a 3D canverse.. nice..

Coach passes under the Sydney harbour bridge.. On our way back to UNSW.. pass by Rocks, Chinatown.. reached the main entrance abt 1.30pm.. shagged..

9 days into Australia..

wow.. time files, and I've been in Australia for 9 days already. well... this couple of days I have been busy with my annotation of M.burtonii... a total of 94 genes that I have to annotate! and thus far, I have done only 32, and 62 more to go! Argh.. hopefully, its worth the effort!

Anyway, my boss was showing us the picture of his scientific trip to Antarctica, and my god, it was fantastic! It's the most beautiful place to look at sunset, and it's so much more unpolluted as compared to other places in terms of water, air etc.. but sadly, there's abit of land pollution in Antarctica now. Back then (mid-1950s) when the Americans were handing over the current scientific base to the Australians, they left loads of drums of oil and others stuffs in Antarctica. Now, all the oil and rust have seeped into the land and ice of Antartica.. oh man.. that's bad.

Also what I like best about Antarctica is that there is this treaty where Antarctica is split into different territories managed by different countries. The whole Antarctica is to be used for scientific purposes.. so, co-existence is possible w/o war etc!

Anyway, my boss sent us pictures of Ace lake that was taken 1st March 07.. that's where some of our microorganisms that we worked upon comes from!














To let ur have a perspective of how big this lake is, can u see the little red ball at the bottom of the picture? Well, that is a tent for ppl to stay in!.. so, the lake is big huh?! And the lake is refreezing in this picture...

Hmm... maybe I should get the sunset pic and post it up for all to see, how beautiful the southern most portion of our planet is... =)

Well, some pic of what I ate for dinner, for my folks back home...

Annotations! Ant-no-take-sion

Argh... am gog nuts from all the annotations already!! Have been looking at the protein sequences, and the databases, cracking my head all day long on how best to annotate the signal transduction proteins.. oh man.. think my myopia is gog to be even worst after this.. 12 down and 82 more proteins to go!!! argh!!!!

Anyway, finally managed to get my student card and my ANZ atm card too.. haha.. i feel like laughing at my photo everytime i see my student card.. haha.. another toopid thing is that the student card will actually expire! It expire anually! Wtf. I wonder y? Wouldn't it be better and more convienent to expire only after we finish our course, like in NUS?? What are they afraid of? hmm... but anyway, the ANZ atm card looks nice yeah.. blue in colour .. my fav..

yup yup.. anyway, today tried a new dish.. haha..

And the ball starts rolling....

Finally, got to meet up with my boss, and discuss with about my project. Well, as of now, I'll be helping out with the annotation of M.burtonii genome, and towards the later stage to verify the annotation experimentally. Hopefully, I will be able to find some interesting proteins from the annotation, and take it from there. So, most likely I'll work from home these few days, as it's most computer-based analysis... which is good! I get to wake up late! hahaha..

Bought some food from Coles as well, argh.. keep on spending money... not wise not wise.. probably I should start plan my menu and ration my food, so that i'll not spend so much on food hahah.. yeah, a good idea to come up with a weekly menu and follow it.. so that I will not anyhow buy food stuffs that are non-essential... Anyway, i'm quite satisfy with my dinner.. after so many days of prawns, eggs, broccoli etc, I'm glad there is some new addition to my dinner. =D

Dull sunday...

Well, it's my first Sunday since I came over to Australia.. Having been to a couple of walkabout for the past few days, I had decided to give it a rest today. After all, I will need to meet up with my Prof tomorrow, and complete the rest of my enrollment. So, what did I do today? Wake up at ard 2pm.. chatted online with my beloved, washed my clothes etc.. quite a boring day ya? haha.. well, at least the tv down here is not bad.. quite good actually.. wanted to subscribe to Mobtv in singapore, but luckily I didn't....


My dinner today, which is very delicious... yum yum..


Hmm.. but I miss the chicken rice, the curry puff, the ice kacang.. oh man.. have to wait till next year b4 i can eat them again.. argh...

Video on me feeding the ducks etc in Centennial Park

Walkabout to Centennial Park..

Went to do my walkabout from my place to Centennial Park this afternoon... Took quite a bit of photos, but too bad, not possible to put all them into the blog, else the blog will take too long to load..


So, as usual, the blue route is the route that I took today.. think about 8km in total.. From my place, go into centennial park thru randwick gate, pass thru the ponds, and out thru paddington gate, and into wallaharu gate..and back to randwick gate, and back to home!

Along Alison Rd, on the way to Centennial Park...


















Went pass the Randwick Racecourse..
















Randwick Gate enterance of the Centennial Park












Learning to horse-ride within the park












Swans along the road.. looking for bread crumps..














Randwick pond












Fighting for the bread crump that I threw into the Randwick Pond













Duck Pond











Lily Pond
















Me with the ducks at the Busbys Pond

















Strange tree... with light orange flowers hanging down..

Oh.. what a strange species of duck? With red faces!

The good old pelican...

Hmm... Another interesting plant.. what plant is this??

Me with the Rose Garden at the background

People playing crickets at the field

Well..... well.. my dinner! Tried fried rice again.. but this time, much more delicious then the previous one! haha.. yum yum.. but can be better i think, probably with the addition of ham, and cut the prawn into smaller pieces.. hmm... must think how to improve it..