Today is seven-eleven day. I still remember seeing a bunch of trinity people bringing in their slurpees into Math 1 lecture last year, which I smsed the gang about it immediately after, and off we went to get ours after class that day. We got pretty excited and certainly had fun trying to squeeze as much slurpee we could into that cup, experimenting different flavour combinations, and teasing each other's slurpee colours that they look ugly. Things are more fun when done together I guess. This year, I did not get my free slurpee.

Happy 7-11 day.

♥

i ♥ lifecycles. i ♥ monkeys, gorillas, great apes & human evolution. i ♥ australopithecus africanus. i ♥ australopithecus afarensis. i ♥ homo neandethalensis. i ♥ great sanitary awakening. i ♥ XIST genes. i ♥ basidiomycota in my pizzas. i ♥ aspergillus because they ferment my soya sauce and sake. i ♥ gene interaction simply because they sound so cool although i might not understand a thing about it.

i ♥ biology.

biology ♥ me.

june's msn display picture : cookie monster cupcake!

40th anniversary of sesame street

such an adorableeee google logo!

sorry i'm just slightly obsessed with sesame street characters...

Look at my hoodie!

Welcome to Wildlife Biology 101! I was googling pictures of our lovely ancestors on google while studying them for the upcoming test T_T but yes some of the pictures are really CUTE!

My favourite angry ape! His nostrils are so big!! He's gonna hit someone with his stick! ROARRR RUNNN!

Baby Lemurs:

Ring Tail Lemur:
I always thought that Tasmanian Devils look like this :

But the real ones look like this :

ORANG UTANS! "Orang utans live in Sumatra and Borneo." lol, grace yes i might go visit for the sake of orang utans!

A cheeky orang utan

"A pair of Sumatran tiger cubs and a set of young orang-utans, all abandoned at birth, have become inseparable after sharing a room at an Indonesian zoo." BBC News 28 February 2007

Picture from The Star website

SO CUTE RIGHT!!! I wanna go see orang utans!

I somehow just feel like writing something, and this don't always happen. Because if it does I'll probably be doing arts now instead of calculating the dielectric constant of capacitors which I am so totally interested in, not.

I realise that I haven't been talking much about the university I go to - University of Melbourne much in my blog. So here it is, some basic housekeeping info:

The University of Melbourne, founded in 1853, Australia's 2nd oldest university, 2nd highest ranked in Australia, Motto : "Postera Crescam Laude" lol, yes i wiki-ed that up. I don't love my uni that much by repeating the motto at least three times before I sleep every night don't worry.

So being a first-year going on second-year biomedicine undergraduate (hopefully i pass all my exams this semester, fingers crossed), I would like to share some of my thoughts and opinions here!

I shall start from the teaching and learning aspect, which is a crucial component of the whole university experience.

Teaching and Learning

Firstly, like what we were told to expect beforehand, learning and studying in university is really up to YOU, the lecturers and tutors really take the whole independent learning concept seriously. If you don't turn up for lectures or tutes, no one's going to care about you, whether you do extremely well, pass or fail that subject, it's really up to your own initiative. Well, weekly lectures and tutorials for all the subjects are really important of course, but what I realise is the actual 'learning' bit only starts when you sit down and go through the material on your own. If you want to make your presence known, you've got to speak up, which I don't do so ( so A-S-I-A-N, haha!), and well if you talk too much, not only everyone will know you, but they'll probably hate you as well. So these are some of the pros & cons i've thought of :

Pros :

1. We get good lecturers. Being in Biomed, the uni has a pretty high ranking in terms of Life Sciences & Biomedicine in the world (13th ranking). We get different lecturers from their own specialised areas of research or study ex. physiology, genetics & cell biology teaching us in first year biology subjects and most of them are pretty good. Most of the lecturers are willing to help and they reply to your emails pretty quickly. (even those old uncles/aunties are IT literate! +1 point!)

2. Material taught are cutting-edge knowledge and information. With the uni being the 2nd largest research organization in Australia (just below CSIRO, a government scientific research body), the lecturers are largely involved in research and thus the information they obtain and pass on to us are the latest development in the respective fields. So we actually get to know what's exactly happening in the world today, and not learning some old technology from some 10-15 years back.

Cons :

1. Too much to do, too little time. A standard science subject has 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tutorial and 1 x 3 hours lab per week. And we have four subjects per semester. So an average science student, taking account of the new melbourne model would get around 20 contact hours per week (without self-study time and assignments/homework completion time). The amount of work we have to cover is actually quite a lot, especially if you're a lazy person like me who leaves everything to the last 2 weeks of the exam, mati-lah. Malaysia Tak Boleh already. Well this is actually highly-dependent on different individuals, but since i'm talking about myself, this is the case happening. And yes I admit I am not at all a hardworking student!

2. Mixing around. It's kind of hard to get to know or mix around well with Caucasians, especially if you're Asian Asian. Asian Asian = people like me, who don't attend high school here. Those who go to high school here can mix around fairly better with the Caucasians. Oh well, we don't even really mix around with the AAs - Australasians (?). Well it's kind of hard to actually pinpoint the exact reason, I believe there are many reasons combined together. And in biomed, the ratio of Caucasians + AAs : Asian Asians is probably like 75:25!?? But in general, Australians and Australasians are fine, they're pretty friendly and harmless. We still work together in group work and labs when assigned to.

University Facilities

Well to be fair, the range of facilities Melbourne University provide isn't too shabby. The buildings are constantly being looked after, and there are always new developments or redevelopments going on from time to time. The one under renovation now is the biomed library, study space and student centre opening in February next year! Union House (The place we can get almost everything) is pretty cool actually, we have different ranges of food here from chinese, italian, japanese, vietnamese,indian (the one grace's working at) to bubble tea...etc. I think its fair enough, although being a loyal EK fan, I shall remain faithful to dear ol' EK at all times. LOL. EASTERN KITCHEN $6.00 HONEY CHICKEN + MAPO TOFU/EGGPLANT takeaway! I shall take a picture of it the next time I have it in case I don't get to eat it next time.

Pros :

1. Uni Wireless is FAST! Within the uni area, downloading stuff or surfing the web is very convenient, and I can youtube to my heart's content (ok, there's a weekly limit actually, but so far I haven't exceeded the limit)! I am so going to start a new drama series after this exam! Any joiners??

2. Distance. Buildings are relatively near to each other. As in, compared to Monash Clayton, we have to be really grateful and happy with the distance between buildings in Melbourne Uni. And oh yeah, the distance really matter when you have a 8 a.m lecture, which I'm going to have again next year in Sem 1. fml.

Cons :

1. INSUFFICIENT LIBRARY SPACE. To be exact, quiet, conducive study spaces. Ballieu library (the main library) and ERC/ Frank Tate is horribly overpopulated with very inconsiderate, noisy, CBF @BCD#F! people!!!! Furthermore, ballieu is so 破烂 already lor. So tak enak rupanya.

2. The $$$ issue. We need to pay to use the gym, pay to join student union, borrow storybooks (not academic books), print our own notes or buy our own lecture notes from the library. The amount we pay should entitle us to free lecture notes! >:(

Okay, as you can see I am getting lazier in my descriptions so I shall stop here, and I'll continue this another day when the 'mood' is here again!

=)

I'm now listening to songs in my iTunes playlist while studying, and I've got a question to ask: where do you guys get information or news about new songs or albums from ah? And where you guys download those songs them from??? How come I never get news like abc artist or def band is coming out with a new album all these kind of things? My songs are like SUPER old!! I've been listening to Nat King Cole the other day for my Music & Health essay..and he passed away in 1965. Yes just an idea of what my definition of 'old songs' is like...

Anyway random, random thought! Reply to my question ok!

some pictures!

Giraffe Cafe : #302 Little Lonsdale Street

my Tiramisu + Espresso!

june's giraffe cheesecake!

ken's crème brulée !

nostalgic much? 飞行棋！

Cupcake day + ANN'S bday! 4/11!

Happy 18th fellow biomedder!

* BACK TO STUDY! =/

One more month...

till I see these people

I haven't been seeing for the past 10 months.

EDDA Final Quiz: DONE!
Genes Last Independent Learning Task: DONE!
All subjects tutes and pracs : OVER!

I'm now left with my music portfolio and three exams..

and there goes my first year of Biomedicine, second year of residing in Melbourne, first year of not being with CSUL and first year of CMG.

Must be more optimistic and positive! Must type blog posts with lots of exclaimation marks!!!!!!

ACHIEVE AND ACCOMPLISH!

(!!!!)

pew pew!

omg omg omg.

..guess who's doing CHOIR as her breadth subject next semester??? :P

Got my re-enrolment thingy done today, and i think i'm gonna do this subject called Childhood, Youth identities and Change for my 2nd semester breadth next year.

eggcited-ness! :DD

happy post!

*Yay i'm so excited right now! wooppeeedooodee~

I've just confirmed my tickets to HK this coming January with Hann, and Jing's flying back with us (she's doing her internship there right now)! =D Gonna visit xuanjiuan and sherman and whoever else there (or maybe bump into mahone at 女人街 again?? XD) Seriously that was the random-est thing that ever happened to me, bumping into a friend on one of the busiest streets while travelling..

I'm going to Shanghai to visit phoebe in dec, and grace is dropping by KL for a few days, proposed trip with CSUL.GW gang, trip with the sakais, taiwan trip with cousins(?), learn driving, embrace the heat and humidity, savour good food, sleep, yoga & gym sessions with mum, visit new places!!!

I can foresee..this year end break is gonna be an awesome one! =)