I dont have to resize my pictures and cause them to be pixellated in future! My camera has a blog mode which resizes the pictures for me :)Yay
My camera is packed with lotsa function which i should learn how to use them asap. There's a slight learning curve, but for pretty pictures, i think it's worth it :)
Oh, btw, my student is in sec 3 and she is learning about dative bonding! I only touched on it briefly in JC.
This is a super backdated post tt i should have published a long time ago. Blame it on patho! :) This post took me quite a long time to compose cos i tried to make the pics less pixellated too :)
Where did i go? My family went to Xiamen for a respite when tours everywhere were fully booked because we didnt plan our trip earlier. Interestingly, my dad chose Xiamen cos he was curious abt this city after we transit at its international airport last yr!
I love window seats but the downside of it is (1) Sometimes the windows get real hot if it's facing the sun and it burns! (2) It's very inconvenient to go to toilet
Have u seen distinct beams of sunlight peeking out between clouds? It's a lovely sight i've seen but not lucky enough to capture it on camera :) I think the 1st picture has a bit of the effect if u look closely.
Our first destination upon arrival was the temple. It's supposed to be famous in history.. but i cant rmbr the story :( If u look closely at the picture immediately above, there's the sun beam out from cloud thing again :)
My parents were posing in between 2 lion statues. Interestingly, one has its mouth opened and the other is closed. Apparently, they both are laughing, one is hahaha-ing, the other is heehehee-ing :)
Food! (clockwise) Baby squid, fuzhou fishballs that were really good, their siew mai and bingtang hulu :) I was so happy to see the assorted fruit bingtang hulu.. cos i dont like the real bintang hulu :)
Food above were from the night market:) There were really all kinds of food, but my tummy had limited space to try only some of them :) My dad really likes the fuzhou fishballs :) So much tt he bought 2 bowls!
Top right photo shows some people cleaning a big ball which u can go inside and walk on water as the ball floats :) Pretty interesting!
Those of u who received all sorts of bings from me.. Most of them has "gu lang yu" 鼓浪屿 on the box. It's quite a pretty island next to xiamen, pretty much an equivalent to our sentosa. The biggest difference is the only form of transport there is by ferry and no vehicles are allowed on the island. In fact, there are only TWO cars on the island. The rubbish collecting car and firemen car.
The island is famous for it's music school, the famous musicans they've produced and also it was previously chosen to build embassies of numerous countries before world war II :) I enjoyed the Piano Museum the most! I've never seen so many priceless antique pianos and collectibles at one place before! Unfortunately... photos were not allowed. There was even this piano u can play by paddling with your feet :) Cool right?
Oh.. i have to mention tt i really like the ball-shaped bush! :)
I like these close-up shots of flowers with my trusty fujifilm F40fd. :)
海阔天空 stone. Good reminder for everyone!
Free roaming chickens! The tour guide found it hilarious when my parents told them that kids in singapore only see featherless chicken, either in supermarket or on the dinning table :)
The usual oleaginous food in China. I wonder if metabolic syndrome will catch up with their population in a few years! On a whole, i thought the food was OK. Not fantastic, nothing special too.
When i saw the road name fuxing lu, i got reminded of kristy :)
Interesting bread i saw at Walmart :) They sell durains too! But these durains are genetically modified to be 'odourless', so the locals enjoy it for the sweetness and texture :)
I know wenhui likes hay-po, which is also called slipper prawns (wenhui, did i rmbr correctly?) But these hay-po look alikes are called hay-gu. So one is 虾婆 and one is 虾姑.. supposed they're related?
The bottom right pic is live abalone :)
We ate one of our lunches in a food court. I asked my dad recently and he said that it is only in SEA tt we have the concept of kopitiam and foodcourt prob originated from sg. Wonder if it is possible to 'patent' this idea.
Dont you think the idea of several vendors in a shopspace is a good idea? Families eating together can eat a variety of things, unlike the cafes overseas where there is only 1 menu :) Well, unles the cafe offers a wide variety of choices. :)
Before we headed for the airport, the driver drove us to the beach. They have our equivalent of our ECP :)
My mom was insanely interested in this leafless tree and told me to take so many shots of it :)
Homeward Bound I enjoyed the night flight back home cos i could see so many pretty stars. Belt of Orion actually looked closer too:) It was a pretty sight but my camera was too chui to capture it. Also, the plastic window had reflection of the passenger in my row who had their night lights on :(
Btw, Singapore looks really pretty from air at night. I took a video, but the battery died and my camera didnt save the video! :(:(
My account of this trip seems rather short, cos there was really nothing that i was terribly excited about. It was just nice to spend a few days walking around a foreign place.
Something that was a pleasant surprise about this trip was how the tour group was made up of my family and my family alone only. I've never been on a guided tour in such small numbers. It was interesting how we travelled around in a family car. The downside however is how the tour guide kept 'forcing' us to buy their products as there was no one else we could direct their sales attention too!
Most interestingly, we were driven to a company that sells fish oil. You wont believed what i'm about to tell you... Ok, first we were told that the fish oil made in China is better in quality than fish oil produced elsewhere in the world including USA, Norway and Australia. Then they said that styrofoam which we use to do our primary school projects is chemically similar in structure to the atheromas in our arteries. They then broke pieces of styrofoam in wine glasses and squeezed capsules of fish oil produced by different countries into them.
Do you know? The made-in-China fish oil dissolved the styrofoam right before our eyes. I really wonder if the experiment would increase their sales. Cos from the people i've already surveyed locally so far, all of them think that the fish capsules they're selling sounds corrosive and would not try it. Also, they also marketed the efficacy of their product by adding that their product is so effective in removing the 'debris' in ur blood vessels that u only need to take in once in 5 years. Unbelievable not?
Y'know, i couldnt help but think of UHU glue through out their presentation, cos i rmbr my group members burning holes in syrofoams in pri sch when they applied too much of it on styrofoams.
Of course, my family did not buy the fish oil. It was terrifying to imagine the kind of damange the fish oil could potentially cause!
I heard from Wanzhen that she went to a Hotspring in Taiwan. My family went for one too! The water was insanely hot though and most people there looked like steamed lobsters :) Instead of finding the hotspring shiok, i felt super hypotensive probably from all the vasodilation. I felt fainty! My mom enjoyed herself thoroughly though, cos she went from one hotspring to the other continuously, trying different types. She liked the herbal, zesty lemon and milk bath, but there was also curry, coffee and pineapple bath :)
Before i end this post, i should also post 2 videos.
My mom likes the Xiamen airport toilet cos their toilet seats are covered by a layer of plastic which u're supposed to press a button to replace before each use. It seems more hygenic but how if the plastic is recycled continuously? :) No one would know right?
Check out the English instruction. I thought 'colourful button' sounds quite amusing :)
Crab fight! My dad and i was spotted a very angsty crab and we were trying to disturb him in the video :) [edit: There seems to be a prob with youtube.. my video is missing!]
Last but not least, my favourite photo :) Pretty yellow flower.
I realised quite a lot of my friends have not heard of 'dyslexia' so i shall devote a post to it :)
I've always had difficulty in spelling since young and it was only till the TIME issue on dyslexia tt i realised that i might have dyslexia. By that time, i was already in sec 4 or J1 and it was too late to diagnose it with the singapore dyslexia association. Anyway, i'm thankful tt i didnt cos i found out later from the family physican clinic i was posted to that it cost about $4000! I discussed this with my dad before and he thinks that if i have sort of overcome and survived this problem, i should just leave it alone :)
I always use this analogy to explain to my friends. I learn the spelling of words not in text files but in image files. It's like taking snapshots of pictures in my head and I rmbr the rough shape of the words this is why i have difficulty recalling the correct spelling if a long word has a string of letters of the same height. My favourite word to illustrate this is restaurant. It took me ten thousand years to learn what comes after rest-, cos auran is abt the same height. Thank goodness that aura is word and i overcome the difficulty to spell restaurant after i knew the existence of aura. :) Till now, restaurant to me is rest-aura-nt. These are little ways i use to help myself spell.
Of course, it is terrible tt i'm in medicine and my textbooks are packed with bombastic words. This is where i have to use sound to help me. For example, graafian follicle. graafian follicle to me is Gra-A-fian follicle so i wont forget the 2nd a.
Since i'm surviving ok with my spelling difficulties, i sometimes think that maybe it's just a maybe tt i have dyslexia. I've kinda forgotten abt it until lately actually. When i was posted to the gp clinic for my family medicine, the doctor had children with dyslexia. It was wonderful opportunity to bounce my 'symptoms' with him and he thinks tt i DO have it. I rmbr reading the writing i did when i was young. it was not only filled with bad spelling, it also had letters that are inverted!
I only managed to find one though... The J is written the wrong way around and i also wrote some non-sensical things.. what is 月石胖? haha.. and if u noticed, i had the gou or 'tick' in the 月 the other way around. I also rmbr how to write chinese in image files :)
Ohyes.. the GP told me that in singapore, if u're diagnosed with dyslexia, u're exempted from chinese cos its characters are more difficult for dyslexics to cope. The interesting thing is i rmbr telling my mom that i like chinese words with symmetry, it makes it easier for me to rmbr how to write them.. like 黄 口 空 王. My mind will dissect the words with vertical and horizontal lines, which aids me in my learning :) Bet u nv knew tt!
When i see this picture, i rmbr i didnt do well for a sec 3 chem class test cos i spelled all my silver as sliver. Today, i have to pause and spell steroids in my head to decide if it is steroids or steriod.
I guess my mind has really worked around the problem. I rmbr in JC when we had bombastic bacteria and fungi names to rmbr for biotech, i could spell it backwards cos it's an image file in my head because all i had to do is read the letters backwards from what i 'see' in my head. One of them was saccharomyces cerevisiae :)
On an interesting note, this spelling backwards thing has revealed interesting things. Most of u know tt stressed is desserts backwards but i'm not sure how many of you noticed tt the evian the mineral water brain is naive backwards?
In a way, i'm thankful that i have a developed visual memory. Some pple rmbr tt i have gd memory for patient bed numbers. If you thought i was gd with numbers, u're wrong cos i rmbr them by the position of the beds :) Tt explains why i cannot rmbr the range of normal blood investigations :)
More validated symptoms of dyslexia below.. Thankfully i only have some of them! There is no single pattern of difficulty that affects all dyslexic people. A dyslexic person might have any of the following problems:
She might see some letters as backwards or upside down;
She might see text appearing to jump around on a page;
She might not be able to tell the difference between letters that look similar in shape such as o and e and c ;
She might not be able to tell the difference between letters that have similar shape but different orientation, such as b and p and d and q ;
The letters might look all jumbled up and out of order;
The letters and words might look all bunched together;
The letters of some words might appear completely backwards, such as the word bird looking like drib ;
The letters and words might look o.k., but the dyslexic person might get a severe headache or feel sick to her stomach every time she tries to read;
She might see the letters o.k., but not be able to sound out words -- that is, not be able to connect the letters to the sounds they make and understand them or prounces it with the wrong syllable sequence;
She might be able to connect the letters and sound out words, but not recognize words she has seen before, no matter how many times she has seen them -- each time she would have to start fresh;
She might be able to read the words o.k. but not be able to make sense of or remember what she reads, so that she finds herself coming back to read the same passage over and over again.
It is important to understand that when a dyslexic person *sees* letters or words reversed or mixed up, there is usually nothing wrong with her eyes. The problem is in the way the mind interprets what the eyes see -- like an optical illusion, except this mismatch between what illusion and reality happens with ordinary print on a page.
I rmbr in TIME magazine, there were few things mentioned that is not in the list above. A dyslexic has difficulty differentiating left and right. I havent really asked my friends but before how they tell it is left or right. i always have to look at my hand or move them subtly to remind myself which is "left" and "right". For example, if i'm driving and u tell me to turn right, i usually have to grip the steering a little tighter on the left and right to confirm that the right is right :)
Also, about the incorrect syllable sequence... i used to wonder if it is certificate or cerfiticate.
Wenyang, i hope u understand more abt dyslexia now. U can read abt it.. cos it's really interesting! Then maybe u'll understand why i have trouble reading the lyrics in time to sing a song :) Then u'll also understand why when i see 门 and i sing out 窗 and why i sing out words in inverted order :) U're the one who is interested in neuro.. fill me in if u discover anything more interesting!
edit: when i read my post again after i published it.. i realised tt i typed mineral water "brain" when i mean brand. Yup.. there u go... i'm bad with words and there's clearly sth wrong with the circuitry in my brain.
I was so happy to 自然醒 today! Unfortunately i'm aching all over now either from sleeping in an awkward position last night or ystdy's swim. More likely from the swim since i last swam like 2 yrs ago?
I didnt even blog properly on my bday cos i wasnt quite in the mood cos there was the stupid cmps report at the back of my mind! I'm so glad it's over. Although i must say i felt quite chui when my report is relatively simple compared to those who spend 60 cents per page printing in colour! Their pictures were so nice can? Amongst the pictures, one of them was a top-down shot of a table scattered with syringes and a cup filled with what looked like crystaline things. I swear the picture really looked like drug addict's table but the caption read,"cupful of white sputum in sputum mug." haha
Tuesday was a terrible Terrible day, hopefully the worst of the week :) I rmbr tt i was in sch early to do my report but it turned out tt my laptop became cranky. I couldnt login and it was a terrible feeling when i was faced with the threat tt i could possibly lose my report. In a hurry to get my com fixed after my meeting, i didnt even use my head to think when i was asked to pay for my carpark when i didnt need to cos i'm a season pass holder. i should have buzz the intercom to tell them! Thankfully my laptop got fixed, but they removed the whole fingerprint recognition program which i'm already starting to miss :) Oh wells, if it's for the better, i shall just get used to password typing :) Anyway, i went to the place in charge of the carpark to ask them why i had to pay for carpark. Then it turned out tt the system mismatched my car plate no. with someone else's IU number! WTH.. it wasnt even my mistake and they couldnt refund me. It wasnt the money tt i was unhappy abt, it's more abt trouble they caused me and whole working attitude of the staff.
On attitude of the staff...GUESS WHAT? On Wed, the same thing happened again. They asked me to pay for carpark again??? This time i was thinking and i buzzed the intercom. I especially have to tolerate tt guy behind the intercom voice. The first thing he said was,"JUST PUT YOUR CASHCARD IN THE READER, U MEAN U DONT KNOW HOW TO DO THAT?" Seriously, does every intercom button presser have to be someone who dont know how to slot in cashcard? It was his tone tt i couldnt stand. plain rude. It almost made me raise my voice, which most pple know tt i have a pretty high threshold for :) I didnt want to let this thing spoil my new day, so i controlled and told myself it's dumb to be angry at the intercom / carpark machine :):)
On the whole, i think Wednesday is a good day :) Hopefully not the best! Best is yet to come like what an AC boy will tell u :) Anyways, it was a gd feeling to see a completed report. Although i had to wake up early and and start driving at 6+ am to send my mom somewhere and there were 3 accidents along PIE which resulted in my 1hr long drive, i actually had the motivation to swim! Each time after i swim, i'd swear tt i wont swim in the next 3 years cos despite it being the exercise tt's best for ur joints, i dislike smelling like chlorine for a few days! My hair will feel funny for a few days too! All these despite shampooing 2x, soaping 2x. Maybe i should increase the no. :)
Alright.. here comes the better part of my day:) It's been such a long time since i had breakfast at my own pace and also accompanied by my favourite books. After my swim ystdy, i had the most interesting bun which contains soft boil egg inside and cheese on top :) I managed to read my 500 muffins muffin book from cover to cover and i tabbed those recipes i want to try in the near future :) How does cookies n creme muffin sound? :):)
Initially i intended to hand up my report and head home to start my baking. But because wanzhen, wenyang and ronnie are free. We ended with an impromptu baking session :) I like spontaenous arrangements! Unfortunately yang had to leave early and so isnt in the photo :) Wanzhen and i agreed tt ystdy was like a pseudo holiday cos everyone felt super relieved that cmps is finally over. I'm not as lucky as her to have today off too, but one day was seriously better than none :)
I actually have more to post, but i have to head off to school. Post again soon! :)
Thanks Chun hui for organising this class gathering. It was soo nice to see everyone and ennie who had midnight flight to catch turned up too!
While eating popiah the other day, i was thinking how cool it'd be if i could invite my friends over and we could make our own popiahs and coincidentally, Chun did exactly that! I've got so many things i want to do, but just no time :( -sigh- Wish i could organise a popiah making/sushi making or baking day :)
My productivity is almost near zilch as the deadline draws closer.
Why cant i have a brain tt's interested in rmbring uninteresting facts, or at least find something interesting out of the uninterestingness. Help!
I was so bored tt i went to play with the hamsters, take out my tarnished flute to try to polish it and now here i am blogging again. -sigh-
I wish relevant things i have read will surface tmr! Please!
Really.. am i not trying hard enough to make myself remember things? Somehow i cant force myself to do it cos i know my my brain remembers best when i dont make it remember. That's how it's choked with unimportant things! eg rmbr bed numbers of patients back in ttsh??????
Ramblings ramblings.. i shall try to go back to my patho :(
Just when i was going to bed, i got a call from my Kor in San Francisco!!! The first best thing tt has happened to me for 2008!
It was such a conincidence cos i just told qiantai earlier the day tt i miss him:)
Anyway, i've been itching to bake. But i have no time :( I think i should work harder for patho.. but as the test gets nearer, my productivity also gets nearer to zero too (explains the more time spent online.. haha)-sigh-
I hope my kor doesnt mind me putting this up. He visited the HQ of facebook. According to him, it only occupies the space of a shop. It's small for sth tt's so international, dont u think? And i like his caption,"At the HQ of this amazing piece of technology which causes any free time you have to disappear!"
Anyway, Happy New Year everyone :)
Come to think of it, Yingheng will be celebrating new yr only in a few hours time!
