Some things about me... (1)

I have this problem where I start something but can never follow through till completion. I have wanted to do sooooo many things but always stop halfway once the going gets tough or I lose interest. Here is a list of ten things which I have wanted to do but never managed to do it till completion.

1. Finish reading the Bible
2. Get Fit (jogging, swimming, pull weights, sit straight, etc)
3. Learn Mandarin
4. Learn the Piano
5. Learn the Flute
6. Do gardening/farming
7. Write a book/story longer than 50k words
8. Helping around the house
9. Learn shuffling
10. Improve my singing voice


Let's start with no.1. When I was young, I read the children's bible. That bible had 365 stories, 1 story a day. I am glad to say that I have finished that, so at least I know most of the most important Bible stories. But that children's bible is not enough to get me to heaven, so I decided to read a real Bible. A few years back, I managed to read up from Genesis right up to Chronicles. Then suddenly, I just lost interest and never read the bible for years. Now I am reading the bible again. This time, the old testament. I am at Matthew, and I wonder how far I will get this time.


I've always had this super thin scrawny body which I hate. So, every once in a while, I will try to get fit. I will go exercising and even increase my food intake (like eating several eggs a day). Usually this will last a few weeks and then I will see (and feel) no difference, and I will gget lazy once again and stop exercising all together. Recently, I went swimming after months of not swimming and I had lost everything I had gained before. I used to be able to swim 10 laps non-stop, and I couldn't even do 4 this time. That's what I hate about exercise, it has to be constant!


No. 3 is learn Mandarin. Epic fail. Self learning a language is hard.


No. 4. Learn the Piano. Epic fail. Self learning the piano is hard. Till now!! I have discovered a wonderful teacher on youtube. His name is Andrew and his username is Lypur. Go search "learn piano" and you will definitely find him. I am at lesson 7 now, only 33 more lessons to go. I was surprised that what I had learned in the Introduction to Music course I had taken in my second year of university actually came back to me, so this time, learning the piano should not be *that* hard. But I still wonder if I am going to make it to lesson 40. Give me some encouragement okay....


Which brings me to no5, learn the flute. I know the recorder very well, so how much harder could a flute be? But a flute is sooo much more "professional" than a recorder. A recorder is for kids. So I asked my mother to buy me a flute, instead she bought me a picolo. Anyway, I never managed to make that clear flute sound, so slowly I gave up. I still play the recorder on a regular basis, it's so easy. Not like the flute. (Fullstop).


No.6 is gardening. At one time, I decided that I wanted to spend less time online. This was the time when I was playing "farmville" on facebook. So I decided to make my real-life "farm". I started planting tomatoes, ladysfingers, various herbs, dragon fruit and even tried planting papaya. My tomatoes and ladysfingers yielded one AWESOME harvest, then they died (annual plants-what do you expect). The various herbs (oregano, basil etc) slowly got overgrown by weeds and died. The dragonfruit plant fruited several times and then got overgrown by weeds and never fruited again. The papaya remained stunted and eventually died. And so did my interest in gardening.


No. 7. Writing is so much harder than reading. I do writing on and off, ocassionally having an outburst of creativity and stories to tell. I can write severak thousand words at a time during those times, then slowly I get lazy and stop writing. Months or sometimes even years later, I will continue the story and thankfully, I never actually forget these stories I am writing so I can just continue where I left off. Sadly, nothing is near completion and many of my earlier stories have just stopped-dead ended. You can see by my blog also how I initially posted lots of stuff, then eventually just stopped writing here, and now I am back. This pattern keeps repeating in everything I do huh?


No.8. Sometimes I will do the housework, especially when I pity my mom doing all the difficult chores like watering the plants. Usually I will take over for a few days to several weeks and then I will get lazy and stop. My mom will have to takeover again. How lazy can I be huh? Recently, the house maid stopped coming so I have been helping with the house work once in a while. I wonder how long I will continue to help around this time. Perhaps indefinitely? Hopefully.


No.9 is shuffling. Long after the shuffling craze had hit, just a few months ago, I saw someone shuffling on TV and decided it was cool. Before that, I had not even known what shuffling was even though it was all the hype. So I opened youtube and decided to learn how to shuffle. I did it once or twice, and it was good exercise too! Unfortunately, my feet started to blister and so I quit.


No. 10 is to improve my singing voice. I love to sing, but unfortunately, I dont have much stamina and can't hit the high notes well. Once in awhile, I will sing more often than usual in an effort to improve my voice, but because I can't see any improvement, I end up quitting. What a surprise huh!



So there you have it, ten things which I have always wanted to do, but always fail. Are there any labels you can give to me besides lazyness?

Book Reviews (4)

The Armageddon Strain (Book 1 of The Countdown series by Sharon Gilbert)

I purchased this hardcover book at a Christian bookstore for only RM9.90, a real bargain. At first, I had thought that the book was out of place, it wasn't a real Christian book, and that the storekeeper had mistakenly purchased it because of the book title. I thought it was a book dealing with viruses and SCIENCE. I was right, for about half the book. Then, came the scenes containing religion, demons and other supernatural beings.

This book is rather fast paced, too fast paced for my liking because it skips out on description and characterization, and the author often skips from scene to scene, often each scene introducing new characters. There are far too many characters and little time is spent to flesh them out. Only the main characters get some meat, though even minor characters are given memorable names like Carrot-top. I did feel for some characters, especially Meiers. Also, Maggie, the lead female, seemed to be the desire of all men, and she has so many love interests, including her divorced husband. Also of note, most characters in this book are middle age or at least not young.

The ending was extremely disappointing and anti-climatic. Even though this is the first book in a series, I believe it should have been given a decent ending. Despite all the negatives, the book did keep me entertained, and some parts were memorable, but it was fatally killed by the ending, thus getting a 5/10. I would not recommend a purchase unless at a bargain price or someone lends it to you :)

A busy, busy day.

"You've had a busy, busy day."- Christina Yang, Grey's anatomy, Season 7 Finale.

Yes, I've had a busy, busy day. I did four preps of plasmid extractions (two tubes each time), did a PCR, ran two gels, did a 6 hour ligation reaction (with manual water bath keeping temperature at 16C) all done in about six and a half hours. So yes, I've had a busy, busy day. I even had time to go for a 40 minute lunch in between. And I managed to blog, lurk on facebook and even listen to music on youtube. But I missed the battlestation wars on facebook today. That's okay because work always comes first. Oh, I was also supposed to do a transformation for the ligation reaction I was preparing, but the lab next door (with the -80C freezer holding my competent cells) was locked, so I couldn't do it. Anyway, I think my last gel is about done now, so bye. I'll be going home after viewing it. Fare the well and yes, I've had a busy, busy day.