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.

The illness spreads

The illness spreads like a malignant disease. It creeps and seeps into every nook and cranny of my being. It is a permeating cough that comes at night after the midnight bell has chimed. I can't sleep. I twist and turn, hugging a pillow to my chest, hoping to protect my fragile lungs from the cold wind billowing from the fan. I keep coughing, that whooping cough that yields no phlegm. Slowly I descend into a frenzied sleep. Like my body, my mind is plagued with disease; another disease that hijacks my brain and directs my thoughts towards insanity. In a semi-dazed state, I am one with the dark elves. Their evil is my evil. I cull the weak, betray my "friends", and murder my siblings. I am rescued by the break of day. When I wake, my mind wants to continue the dream. It is fun, but I get up anyway, after wasting more time just lying in bed. My cough is better now, but I know when I go to sleep, the cycle continues.

Book Reviews(3)

Brisingr! That's the 3rd book in the Inheritance cycle by Christopher Paolini. In this book, he really proved some points that I had made in my review of his earlier books. His writing has improved, but then he still writes things that makes me question the plot. And then he kills off another character at the end, surprise, surprise. The begining of the book was well written, especially the long awaited fight with the Razac. But then it got boring and very destination oriented, which means Eragon decided to go to location A, B, C then D, E and then F all in that order which seems too planned out. Most of the time, Eragon also acts childish (technically he is a child) and his outbursts are rather out of character for a "hero" figure. And when the time comes (the big battle at the end) where he can kill dozens of men with any of a handful of killing words, he conveniently forgets that he has that power. Instead he kills them the slow and tedious way so his army still has a job to do. The final battle was not believable considering that Eragon has grown so powerful but yet for no explained reason, did not use his powers. Overall, this book was still entertaining and fun, and I do care about the characters, story and the world that I will try to obtain the last book, Inheritance which was recently released. However, because of the flawed last battle, his tendency to kill characters at the end/begining to move the plot, and an almost methodological plot, this book gets a 8/10. I have been over critical so here are some of the good things. Indeed, there are many good things, especially Eragon and Saphira's relationship, the scenery and the view of the world through Eragon/Saphira's eyes, the student-teacher relationship, the many strong women characters, and lastly Roran's struggles which make me worry about Roran in every battle he is in, since he is not the central character, thus subject to death.

Book Reviews (2)

I just reformatted my laptop and I'm currently downloading Adobe Reader. Quite surprised that the file size is 60+MB!! So while waiting, I have some spare time to kill and so, I will fulfill the promise I made awhile back. Not a real promise, but rather something that I said I would do.




The review of ERAGON!

Anyway, I'm done reading ELDEST. So I'll review it as well.

Eragon (7/10)
Eldest (8.5/10)

I enjoyed reading Eragon, but throughout Eragon's journey through Alagaesia, I kept questioning the author's credibility. Maybe I knew that this was Paulini's first book and had some prejudices since I knew he wrote this book when he was still a teenager. Or maybe the plot was too contrived. The entire plot seemed to be a sequence of events that the author wanted to happen, and he made Eragon do it as if he had no other choice, no matter how rediculous the plot actually was. Nevertheless, Eragon was fun to read and good enough that I continued on reading Eldest.

I quite enjoyed reading Eldest and found it to be much better written than Eragon. I really enjoyed the magic system in this book and Eragon's relationship with his dragon Saphira. I found most of the characters interesting and likeable although there were too many random villagers whose names I just skipped and didn't really want to get to know. The author's writing has matured althouth there are still some major flaws in the plot and the twists are quite predictable. I found the character Eragon to be quite realistic in the sense that he isn't perfect at all, but this makes him a little bit annoying especially with his self-righteous and better-than-you attitude. Also the author has a tendency to simply kill off important people just to move the plot. I don't mind the fact that a King can die too, but DO IT WITH STYLE. And don't do it so obviously and casually just so you can have something to write about.





I'm going to rant below, SPOILER ALERT.




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*Spoiler alert*

GRRRRrr. Anyone reading would know that Murtagh DIDN'T DIE in the first chapter. How the F*ck could Eragon believe it when there was no body and all he saw was "black" when he scryed! Grrr. What a noob you are Eragon... K, that's my number 1 complaint. My second complaint is after the battle which lasted a single day, the empire still had a huge army right? Why would they be "routed" after losing a minor skirmish? All the mobilization and you would expect a 100 year war but it is over in 1 day.

Wrong Priorities

(Narrated in the style of Meredith Grey)



The world is a messed up place. I have often wondered, why do farmers earn so little. They are very important people. We depend on them to survive. Their work is tough; working a whole day in the fields under the hot sun till their muscles ache. Then they return home late in the evening, and prepare for another day. Imagine if all the farmers went on strike and money could not buy food. Where would we get food from? We would starve to death or learn to grow our own food. Then we'd realise how lucky we are. I think society needs to re-arrange the priorities. A farmer should earn no less than a doctor if he works just as hard. After all, how is a Doctor's job of "saving lives" more important than a farmer's job of "nurturing life"? It's not.



Which brings me to the next topic. Money. How much money we have defines how much we are worth. Money is like a form of credit or bartering chip. For every service rendered (unless it's free service), we earn money. Then we can exchange that money for something else (ie. buying something). A service that we have done earlier enables us to gain something back, at a later date. It's a good system, where one contributes something and gets something back from his contribution, now, or at a later date. Supposedly, those who are very rich with wealth to last three generations have done so much for the society that they can simply live and do nothing for the rest of their lives. Think of it this way, when they spend money, they are extracting back the benefits of the favours they have done earlier in life. If they deserve it, why not. But unfortunately, many will lie, cheat and steal to earn money which they don't deserve. They manipulate others and inflate their self-worth. They become filthy rich, but at the expense of others. The money has to come from somewhere, usually from the toil and labor of others. In other words, these "rich" people are unjustly taking the self-worth of others and claiming it as their own. Even more unfortunately, the "survival of the fittest" seems to favour not only the best among us, but also the dishonest and those who can inflate their self-worth artificially.