britification

Holidays are ‘ere! Except well, first semester in French public universities never really allows for a proper holiday. Oh come on, who bloody schedules exams on the first week of January? Bollocks I say, dog bollocks.

Blimey. I’ve gone and turned Brit on meself, haven't I?

The top reason for this can only be Doctor Who, otherwise known as the culmination of my geekiness. This English nirvana of Sci Fi, the zenith of British popular culture, this portal through space and time in the form of a very retro blue police call box. Its occupant being the last existing Time Lord, known simply as the Doctor. The. Doctor. Doctor What? Doctor Who? Exactly.

He’s a bit daft really, loopy face, one eyebrow almost constantly cocked and the goofiest smile ever - just this skinny geek battling evil, anywhere from the 18^th century to the year 5 billion at the end of the world or modern day on a parallel universe.

Among the villains so far:

Daleks, essentially robot pepper pots with one eye stalk, a plunger for a hand and a laser for the other;

Cybermen, ‘upgraded’ humans reduced to brains in cybernetic suits and emotional inhibitors;

A werewolf, (or as the Doctor puts it, a lupine wavelength haemovariform) worshipped and protected by a band of pale, bald, white Shaolin-esque monks;

Slitheens, a lumpy family of convicts from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius (I love that word) who kill humans, wear their skin with a zipper on the forehead and pass a ridiculous amount of gas.

Ah, you can’t help but love the Brits.

A spin-off called Torchwood (which incidentally is an anagram of Doctor Who. Smashing stuff.) has me hooked as well, centering around an institute created to investigate extraterrestrial activity on Earth and prepare the humans for the future. The series is set a shade darker, in terms of personal agendas, skeletons in the closet, alien encounters and sexuality. Apparently the creators wanted to break all monosexual stereotypes, ‘quaint human categories’, and well, by the 7^th episode, every character has already shared a same-sex snog.

The show is not nearly as captivating though, a lot of it is more affected and in a way bogged down by the need to be realistic in its contemporary settings. There’s a general opinion that the large fan base is loyal not to the show but to Captain Jack. Ah but of course. Captain Jack Harkness, a Time Agent-turned-con artist-turned-faithful sidekick to the Doctor-turned- leader of Torchwood Three, a 51^st century omnisexual being (‘so many races, so little time’). Captain Jack Harkness, played by Scottish-American actor, John Barrowman: Gorgeous bloke, perfect smile with perfect teeth, humorous and affable, a jolly good actor with a few bad movie choices (I’m talking Shark bloomin’ Attack III: Megalodon bad) and a lyrical baritone who’s performed in over a dozen West End musicals. Brilliant brilliant voice. In short, my dream man come true. Number one, ranking even above Seth Green and Wentworth Miller, and well, he’s gay. *SIGH* and getting civil union-ised end December. *SIGH* So this is how it’s like being in love with a gay man. I’m feeling right helpless.

OH! Take That! They’re back together after 10 years with a new album! I was chuffed to bits when I heard. A Take That fan and not bleeding ashamed of saying it. I caught a video of them performing at the Royal Variety this year and it’s just gobsmacking to see them together again. They look EXACTLY the same, still the same cheesy dance riot for ‘Pray’ and as usual, it seems like the other poor sods just gaze emotionally somewhere off-camera while Gary Barlow anchors the group. Another dishy chap I adore. They still sound brilliant, still that magic touch of instant success, with a lot less cheese and a more mature feel to it. Check out the beautiful first single ‘Patience’.

Ok, so Brit telly, Brit bloke, Brit music… Cor, I just love Britain and everything Brit right now. After all, they’ve had running water for over ten years, an underground tunnel that links them to Peru and they invented the cat.

Oh, and. Raxacoricofallapatorius.

are you a responsible sexually-mature adult?

Make sure you carry your sexual consent form with you.

'Yeah I guess it breaks the mood a little, but it's the right thing to do'

a much procrastinated update

Maybe the lack of Internet didn't do much for my writing, but evidently, neither did its presence. As can attest the sluggishness of this blog, or stagnance might be a better word for it. I choose to blame it entirely on certain environmental factors namely cerebral and logic deficiencies, the details of which I should already have ranted and raved on msn in one way or another and which I will exclude lest the perpetuators embark.

So what has been happening?

Still having classes, very broad spectrum stuff. I'm really impatient to get the first sem over and done with. Second sem promises to be full of viruses, bacteria, parasites and indignation over the fact that millions of children in developping countries die of diseases that have been relegated to anonymity in the first world (rotavirus anyone?) I got my stage, lab work on the molecular epidemiology of human enteroviruses. Hopefully it doesn't mean lots of software tools and hours in front of a computer instead of on the bench. Woopie-doo yippie-yay.

Went to watch Vincent Delerm in concert in Aix-en-Provence, this reallllly amazing guy who is just regal in front of a piano. He's one of the stars of what's called la nouvelle scène française, where the lyrics often exploit name-dropping for realism and is almost always violently unsingable. Watching him live makes me gladly want to give up a leg to be able to play like that. Damn my freakishly short fingers!

Had short work stints in Paris as an interpreter at the International Food Fair as well. That was interesting, partly due to the free food samples and the occasional 'I speak bad Spanish, you speak bad French, let's just try to understand each other, ok?'. It would have been better had they not have the bright idea to dress up in horrid fake SIA uniforms from Chinatown that made us look more like the Nonya aunties in the Bugis Junction basement.

In Paris, I fell in love. With a bookstore. (I know I'm a geek) Naan is the person to thank for this love affair. The Shakespeare & Co. bookstore that was seen in the movie Before Sunset, and it's the most beautiful, charming English bookstore tucked away on the left bank of the Seine that you'll ever see. Cosy and welcoming, beds for you to lounge on and read, books are wall to wall, typewriter left out for aspiring poets, willing them even to peck at its idle keys. I chatted a bit with the guy who was running the place that evening, and he was living that idyllic struggling writer dream, the kind where a short visit to Paris kept him there for several years, where his days are spent writing and his nights tending a bookstore. The kind I've only read about in novels, the kind I would love to pursue but will never muster up the courage or conjure up the talent to do.

Took a coach up to London from Paris, hitting the Channel crossing at 3 frickin am. Although I only had about 2 days there, there was so much to do and see and spend money on! My main reason for going to London was to watch Wicked, the musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz because the original Broadway lead Idina Menzel was going to be in the London production until December. And it was fabulous, she was fabulously green! One afternoon was spent just in and around West End, looking at the Theatre Museum and checking out all the quaint bookstores on Charring Cross, another was spent in Craven Cottage, watching Fulham get beat by Wigan. One evening on Wicked, and another on the Susan Hall play 'Woman in Black' which I highly recommend, but cannot go on expounding on it without letting slip any spoilers. Wicked and Woman in Black are must-sees. As in MUST-SEE.

I really need to find a way to satisfy my thirst for theatre, drama and music right now, now that I'm not doing theatre anymore because of simple stupid geographical and transportational issues. And while I know that the dichotomy between arts and science is a largely perceived one, as well as a very Singaporean one, I can't help but wonder if I've gone into the wrong field...

how to get internet in 58 days

Wow. That only took like 2 whole months!
To put the whole story in point form:

- Clear it with the roommates
- Paying 27.50 Eur to reactivate old phone line
- Bitch about having to pay 15 Eur/month just to keep phone line alive without being able to call
- Apply with ISP
- Wait for them to mail my modem over
- Wait for them to mail my modem over
- Wait for them to mail my modem over
- Find out that the postal service is on strike
- Bitch about the postal service being on strike
- Wait for the strike to end
- Wait for the strike to end
- Wait for the strike to end

Remind me why I love France?

internet

Still alive and kicking but bordering on dementia.
One more week to go before I regain entry into sanity and civilisation.

and then you were gone

c'est fou comme tu me manques.

a garter snake with osteoporosis has more hip

The femur articulates with the pelvic bone via a socket called the acetabulum. This hip joint is lined with cartilage, a connective tissue, that provides protection and cushioning. The wear and tear of this cartilage causes the bones to be more exposed and will cause pain, particularly in large weight-bearing joints.

So the dull ache in my left hip joint was making me walk all stiff and funny, unconsciously shifting more weight on my right... and somehow it turned into something called erosive arthropathy. Turns out erosive arthropathy is just a nice way of saying 'precursor to osteoarthritis'. Hooray for a lifetime of hip pain weather forecasts!

Osteoarthritis??

I'm too young for this! How could this have happened? I drink lots of milk, am turning vaguely French about my fromage, and adorrre yogurt. Ok, so maybe it's not lack of calcium, it's a problem of calcium absorption, lack of Vitamin D? I get plenty of sun, no? With the Mediterranean and all. Oh dang. One year in the wintry depths of hell that is Montreal. Should go stand in the sun and drink milk like Tim told me to... Oh wait. That's osteoPOROSIS. Wrong osteo here.

There is no cure for osteoarthritis, because cartilage cannot just grow back. In the meantime, I'm taking glucosamine, which is a precursor for glycosaminoglycans, major components of connective tissue. Glucosamine has not been conclusively proven to help rebuild cartilage but is said to delay the progression of OA.

In 2005, scientists at Imperial College managed to grow cartilage cells from human embryonic stem cells. Yet another reason to support stem cell research! Will people like Bush and the Catholic Church realise this before all we can do is to wave our canes and wiggle our replaced hip at them?

it all makes sense to me now...

Some of you have probably heard the story of how my Acer laptop has been ruined by the combined f***wittage of a plane passenger sitting diagonally to the right in front of me who somehow managed to spill a full cup of water backwards and diagonally to the left, and of course myself who failed to notice anything whatsoever.

I am now the prowd owner of an IBM Thinkpad.
Yup.
IBM Thinkpad as in spill-proof, shock-proof, everything-proof, big black boorish brick box bread box. A hunkajunkachunkapunkathunkathingamajig if you will. In fact, so prowd that it's making me spell it with a W and alliterate with Bs.

And prowd as in mum gives birth to baby goose daytime soap storyline type of prowd.
Happy. I'll still learn to love it. Eventually.
Shocked. What the hell happened?? How the hell did I convince myself to buy an IBM?????

And then I realised...
The universe as we know it is no more. My friends, we are now living in a world with 8 planets. We have lost Pluto, cast away from the exclusive planetary gang to sit with the dwarves. It's history in the making! Books to be re-written, maps to be re-drawn, minds to be re-brainwashed (or is it brain-rewashed?) It's a new universe.

I foresee a fourth law of thermodynamics, a philosophy (called Maxolivism) that suggests humans are nothing but leprechauns with holograms, the end of world poverty and the discovery that the holy grail of laptops is the IBM Thinkpad.

a tale of two cities

It's a pity I didn't like Bucharest. It's too chaotic a city, too chockful with dodgy homeless tramps who try to touch you in the middle of the streets, young children exploited by syndicates to beg and generally some ignorant people who find a way to be very impolite while doing so.

Some random guys just went 'china china china' at us in a complete mocking tone. Or better yet, this random guy at a otherwise nifty bar who first approached Gwen asking her how to say i love you in chinese. When Gwen told him that our native language was English, he didn't believe her one bit and continued harassing her a little. He promptly came over to my end of the bar and this is how our conversation kinda went:

IB (Ignorant bastard): Your girlfriend is being really mean, she doesn't want to tell me a few words in your native language.
Me: Maybe because it's ENGLISH?
IB: No no english. I look at your face and you can't be speaking english!
Me: Maybe when you were colonised by the English, you end up speaking ENGLISH?
IB: No no it's not possible.
Me: F*** OFF

At first we thought we might be a little sensitive about being 2 lovely *snark* Asian girls in a strange Eastern European country. But we received so much undesirable attention that even Claire, the french girl we were travelling in Bucharest with, got really disturbed. As a result, Gwen and I almost cancelled our trip to Belgrade, Serbia in favour of Budapest, Hungary.

Thank goodness we didn't!!

Belgrade is a looooove-ly city. Serbians are a delightful crowd. No weird leering men, mocking teens, just full of fun and helpful people. It helps that our hostel is party central too. Everyone's always smoking and drinking, regardless of the time of day and they're always going out to party. Language is a tough barrier though, even if alot of them speak English, alot of them don't. Plus the Serbian language is written in Cyrillic alphabet, so getting around is really not easy.

I'm not sure if we're gonna go party with them tonight. We didn't last night because I was feeling a little under the weather, which was a pity cos 2 of the crazy German guys have left! But we have an early train to catch tomorrow to Budapest. We originally wanted to catch the train to a town in northern Serbia called Subotica and spend the whole day there before continuing northward to Vienna where Gwen and I will part ways. But another German guy told us that Subotica is reaaaally small. So we'll be stopping in Budapest for a good party for a night!

Won't get a chance to update before I head back to France, or actually Singapore. I'll be home 10th August everyone!

the great fish-o-filet robbery

We had just spent 5 agonizing hours standing in the train from Sighisoara. It still amazes me how they dare cram their trains full with passengers paying the same price for a seat and for standing room. Standing trains are the pits of hell no one told you about.

So we arrived at the Gara de Nord in Bucharest pretty late at night, hammered and hungry, with not much in sight except McDonalds. Everything is edible when we're hungry.

Filet-O-Fish in a bag, we trotted along the perimeter of the train station looking for a taxi to bring us to the hostel. Not only did most taxis not know the way (even though it was not a terribly long way off), but a whole bunch of dodgy homeless people were harassing us, trying to get some food or money of us. They pull all the stops to rip you off, either by sending a really cute kid to give you the puppy eyes, or by feigning pregnancy or handicap.

These two girls approached us, gesticulating in the general direction of the taxi line when suddenly FWAAAPPP!!! They lunged at my McDonalds bag, ripping it right out of my fingers and grabbing the burger box off the floor. WTF??!!

splash and dash

The lack of internet has done nothing to inspire my lack of writing.

I'm in Romania right now, doing a francophone summer programme. It's really flattering to know that people think I'm French from the way I speak. Nice to know that 6 years of school and 2 years in France has some reward.

Right now, I'm trying to pick up some Romanian on the go while trying to corrupt my nice Romanian roommate with Singlish. She does a pretty good 'Wah piang eh!' I have got to take a video of her saying it.

i never thought i’d say this but......

I can’t look at chocolate right now.

My friends treated me to a nice lunch today complete with 3 huge slices of cake complete with sparklers. Woah man, that cake was huuuuge! One slice was double the height of your regular puny slice, layered alternately with chocolate cake and chocolate cream, then smothered magnificently with Oreo bits, chocolate chips or marshmallows. We barely got through half of it before feeling a little overchocked, too rich too sweet.


My chocolate tolerance level is as high as Elton John is gay. Which means very, very, very. Chocolate qualifies as one of my major food groups and can be eaten at any time of the day, on any occasion or lack thereof, in any mood or state of mind. It is a natural aphrodisiac, face-lifter and anti-depressant rolled into one - a viagrabotoxprozac miracle. If there’s no chocolate in heaven, I’m not going. Better have a chocolate waterfall à la Willy Wonka as well.

But this chocolate was just too sweet and in the end, we went with arteries and synapses so clogged with chocolate that nausea set in. What a beautiful way to remember my 22nd birthday: The day I got sick from chocolate. And I got a beautiful box of chocolates for a present as well.

22. *sigh* There’s no escaping being a responsible, mature, sensible adult now. 21 is the year of transition, or otherwise affectionately known as the year of denial. 21 is the year with the ‘perks’, the right to watch R rated movies and to vote (uh-huh). 22 is just adding another line of chalk to the wall of your cell, no more niceties until you’re 65. You’re just another face, another number, another slave, work work work and contribute to society!

Let’s have another year of denial shall we? And maybe a few more after that. I don’t feel like a responsible, mature, sensible adult yet.

dumbass douchebaggery

I have no Internet because my $#% roommate cancelled it WITHOUT telling me.

'Oh because we (him and his dimwit girlfriend) are going to Asia so we don't want to pay and not use it for 3 months' Meanwhile, I'm in this damn city for another month with no Internet.

He could have asked them to cancel it only a month later, or leave me to settle the cancellation and I would have gladly paid for that month alone. Not that I need to, since my lease clearly says that internet is included in the rent.

So well, I'll be posting sporadically and possible with heavy backdating. In the meantime, here are some amusing links I've been meaning to post.

Pablo Francisco - One man, one desiYUR!

Judson Laipply - The evolution of crazy dance moves that somehow we thought were cool haha.

the politically correct little red riding hood

__________________________

Disclaimer: Although I DO enjoy being called a genius, this little gem is sadly not my doing - It's the brainchild of a writer called James Finn Garner from his book 'Politically Correct Bedtime Stories' which has been spawned at least one variant, from both of which this little splicing came to be. But you can continue calling me a genius if you like, I don't mind.

___________________________

There once was a young person named Little Red Riding Hood who lived on the edge of a large forest full of endangered owls and rare plants that would probably provide a cure for cancer if only someone took the time to study them.

Red Riding Hood lived with a nurture giver whom she sometimes referred to as "Mother," although she didn't mean to imply by this term that she would have thought less of that person if a close biological link did not in fact exist. Nor did she intend to denigrate the equal value of nontraditional households, and she was sorry if this was the impression conveyed.

One day her mother asked her to take a basket of organically grown fruit and mineral water to her grandmother's house.

"But mother, aren't you oppressing me by ordering me to do this?"

Red Riding Hood's mother pointed out that it was impossible for women to oppress each other, since all women were equally oppressed until all women were free.

"But mother, then shouldn't you have my brother carry the basket, since he's an oppressor, and should learn what it's like to be oppressed?"

Red Riding Hood's mother explained that her brother was attending a special rally for animal rights, and besides, this wasn't stereotypical women's work, but an empowering deed that would help engender a feeling of community.

"But won't I be oppressing Grandma, by implying that she's sick and hence unable to independently further her own selfhood?"

But Red Riding Hood's mother explained that her grandmother wasn't actually sick or incapacitated or mentally handicapped in any way, although that was not to imply that any of these conditions were inferior to what some people called "health." Thus Red Riding Hood felt that she could get behind the idea of delivering the basket to her grandmother, and so she set off.

Many people believed that the forest was a foreboding and dangerous place, but Red Riding Hood knew that this was an irrational fear based on cultural paradigms instilled by a patriarchal society that regarded the natural world as an exploitable resource, and hence believed that natural predators were in fact intolerable competitors. Other people avoided the woods for fear of thieves and deviants, but Red Riding Hood felt that in a truly classless society all marginalized peoples would be able to "come out" of the woods and be accepted as valid lifestyle role models.

On her way to Grandma's house, Red Riding Hood passed a woodchopper, and wandered off the path, in order to examine some flowers. She was startled to find herself standing before a Wolf, who asked her what was in her basket. Red Riding Hood's teacher had warned her never to talk to strangers, but she was confident in taking control of her own budding sexuality, and chose to dialogue with the Wolf.

She replied, "I am taking my Grandmother some healthful snacks in a gesture of solidarity."

The Wolf said, "You know, my dear, it isn't safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone."

Red Riding Hood said, "I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop an alternative and yet entirely valid world view. Now, if you'll excuse me, I would prefer to be on my way."

Red Riding Hood returned to the main path, and proceeded towards her Grandmother's house. But because his status outside society had freed him from slavish adherence to linear, Western-style thought, the Wolf knew of a quicker route to Grandma's house.

He burst into the house and ate Grandma, a course of action affirmative of his nature as a predator. Then, unhampered by rigid, traditionalist gender role notions, he put on Grandma's nightclothes, crawled under the bedclothes, and awaited developments.

Red Riding Hood entered the cottage and said, "Grandma, I have brought you some cruelty-free snacks to salute you in your role of wise and nurturing matriarch."

The Wolf said softly, "Come closer, child, so that I might see you."

Red Riding Hood said, "Goddess! Grandma, what big eyes you have!"

"You forget that I am optically challenged."

"And Grandma, what an enormous, what a fine nose you have."

"Naturally, I could have had it fixed to help my acting career, but I didn't give in to such societal pressures, my child."

"And Grandma, what very big, sharp teeth you have!"

The Wolf could not take any more of these speciesist slurs, and, in a reaction appropriate for his accustomed milieu, he leaped out of bed, grabbed Little Red Riding Hood, and opened his jaws so wide that she could see her poor Grandmother cowering in his belly.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Red Riding Hood bravely shouted. "You must request my permission before proceeding to a new level of intimacy!"

The Wolf was so startled by this statement that he loosened his grasp on her. At the same time, the woodchopper burst into the cottage, brandishing an axe.

"Hands off!" cried the woodchopper.

"And what do you think you're doing?" cried Little Red Riding Hood. "Bursting in here like a Neanderthal, trusting your weapon to do your thinking for you! Sexist! Speciesist! How dare you assume that womyn and wolves can't solve their own problems without a man's help! If I let you help me now, I would be expressing a lack of confidence in my own abilities, which would lead to poor self-esteem and lower achievement scores on college entrance exams. "

When she heard Red Riding Hood's impassioned speech, Grandma jumped out of the wolf's mouth, seized the woodchopperperson's ax, and cut his head off. After this ordeal, Red Riding Hood, Grandma, and the wolf felt a certain commonality of purpose. They decided to set up an alternative household based on mutual respect and cooperation, and they lived together in the woods happily ever after.

mcgill admin - f%^king things up one at a time

Hypothesis: McGill Admin is f$%king messed up.

Evidence: Accounts of all kinds of stupidity, stupidity never before known!

#1:
McGill Admin evicted the Muslim Students' Association from their allocated prayer space. McGill's main assertion is that it is a secular institution and that they have no obligations to provide space for any religious purpose. The students started praying outdoors in the summer months and even out in the snow as winter approached, prompting them to launch a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission. Almost one year into the brouhaha for a multi-faith space, one common area for people with any religious obligation, the Provost maintains that McGill has no 'legal obligation' to do so.

OMFG, it's not like they're asking you to build a mosque on campus for them. What is a secular institution? Is it one devoid of all religion? NO, it is not. It is about not having a religious basis of operations, about not allowing religion to dictate administrative affairs, not favoring the adherents of one religion over another. While it is true that other major religions have their own off-campus prayer space, Islam is the only faith that requires its believers to pray at 5 specific times of the day, a few at which they are likely to be on campus. Legal obligation my ass, be a human for once.

#2:
18th January was break-your-neck day, when Montreal experienced freezing rains and EVERYthing was iced over. Considering how slopy this city and the university is, inch-thick slab of ice on the pavements and roads meant that even if you did not slip and break your neck by yourself, a car could very easily skid and crash into you. No joke. And of course, McGill did NOT cancel classes.

Not a single word for the Admin, no email no announcements no diddlysquat. Professors and students alike risked their lives going to school that day. As a university, I seriously advise against dead professors and students. It's just not a good idea.

#3:
I don't know how McGill Admin schedules exam finals, but they can't be putting very much brainjuice into it. Explain to me how it makes sense to schedule a 85% final on a Wednesday when the last lecture was on Monday, the very Monday 2 days before the final. I won't even be surprised if there were finals scheduled for the day after the last class. Explain to me how that makes sense.

And if they're gonna schedule an exam, explain to me how they can allocate only enough room for half the class? They missed out half the alphabet of last names and this is supposed to be one of the top universities in Canada! Ok they know their ABCs i'll give them that, but only up till L. 15 mins before the exam and nowhere to go. Invigilators' job seems to consist of chatting and telling bewildered students to go search for the Admin to settle their own problem. Right. Brilliant job guys.

#4:
The Sexual Assault Centre of McGill Students' Society has been evicted from its confidential night office. AGAIN. It is a volunteer student-run operation that provides free service and counselling to sexual assault victims. It has entertained several hundred calls within the last academic year to listen and comfort after business hours, without need for identification or waiting lines. The Faculty Advisor for SACOMSS is the Head of McGill's Psychiatry department, lending credence to its professionalism despite its voluntary nature.

Sad as it is, sexual assault happens and it can happen even on campus and in the residences. Without sliding into any generalizations, women tend to be the victims of sexual assault. (Face it, if a woman walked around in a trenchcoat flashing guys on campus, the guys would gawk. Except for saggy lumpy crinkly... ok I'll stop there.) Already victimized once by the assailant and now a second time by McGill Admin by their unwillingness to allow proper space for support service? The students who run it can death threats for goodness sake! Overcrowding schmovercrowding. Evicting a key student welfare society like SACOMSS to 'make more space' is bullshit considering they only need '70 square feet, a desk, two phone jacks, a filing cabinet – in a different building from the day office' and only at night. It doesn't take much to take a day-only office for night use. How about the childcare centre? How about the Accomodations office?

#5:
It's been 5 months since we've registered for Winter courses, 2 weeks since we've ended Winter Term and 3 weeks to convocation for some. Most people are preparing to up and go, their family is flying in for the occasion aaaand a friend has been told he's 2 credits short for graduation. His family is flying in real soon and the for sale sign is already on his apartment. This after the advisor told him he needed only 4 credits in the last term to complete his undergraduate studies. He signed up for 6 and apparently he needed 8. Now we know that McGill Admin don't know their ABCs, now we also know they can't count. 'This ain't shit hittin' any old regular fan, this is explosive diarrhea hittin' the industrial fan.'

Conclusion: McGill Admin IS f$%king messed up. Boy am I glad to be getting out from this shithole.

hi i'm here for the crabs on a leash?

I heard about the Quebec Snow Crab not too long ago. It's a species indigenous to the Canadian Atlantic provinces, supposed to be really sweet and succulent... but crab season is very short, in fact, almost over!! Living by my firm principle that no crab season can end before I get my hands on- or teeth in- one, I headed out to Jean Talon market with a bunch of friends on Friday. My mind was saturated with crabcrabcrabcrabcrab that when we arrived, I almost walked right past a chocolate truffle stand.

Me no walk past no chocolate.

A jolly bald guy missing a few teeth welcomed us with little swabs of truffles from a pot. That’s right, truffle in a pot, how often do you see that?! To solve the problem of melting truffles in the summer sun he said. ALL the chocolate is hand-made, or more precisely, home-made by his wife who gets ‘pregnant’ with each recipe and carries it to perfection. The name of their chocolate is ‘Les Amourgandises’, a wonderful play on the words amour (love) and gourmandise (greediness) that of course, are the basic concepts that governs the relationship of any sane normal person with chocolate.

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Truffles with porto:
Fairly normal pairing, but the first time I’ve had it. And it was gooooood. The sweetness of the port wine really brings out the semisweetness of the chocolate.

Truffles with rum and papaya juice:
While rum is very commonly incorporated in chocolate, but papaya juice?? Curious as it may seem at first, the subtle papaya lends a touch of fruitiness that makes the truffle a bit more memorable than a normal rum one.


Truffles with Grand Marnier and Lennoxville pimentos:
As we were told to expect, it hits you in 3 waves – the semisweet chocolate, the sweet Grand Marnier then the mildly spicy pimentos which lingers on your tongue. As with many spicy chocolates, I expected the flat powdery aftertaste of chili powder but there was none. The spiciness was full-bodied thanks to that row of pimentos (given fresh by a friend from Lennoxville who grows it) strung up, air-dried and ground for that authentic taste.

Caramel:
Ok, normally I hate caramel. Hate as in bleargh yeeerg arrrgh hate. It’s too damn sweet and is topped on my instant diabetes list only by the baklava floundering in syrup that I had in Turkey once. But this home-made caramel! It was thick yet not too sweet, ... But I still wouldn’t eat a whole bunch of it.

_________________________

A little stomach growling drew us to a sausage and ribs stand, but no ordinary pork sausages here but made from game. Buffalo on a stick anyone? Wild boar? They tasted, how do I say this without incurring ridicule, ........ meaty, really very... meaty, the way beef tastes more meaty than say chicken. It just feels fuller and bloodier somehow, too bad it was a tad too salty.

I also managed to sample la tire d’érable, even though it was likely leftovers since sugaring season in this area is over. La tire d’érable is basically maple syrup tapped from a maple tree that is heated and thickens on cooling to form a more viscous gel served in a plain mini-cone. It reminded me a lot of the malt sugar candy (麦芽糖 ) that we get at the pasar malam.

Finally, I went to get my crab. I had actually gone to the live crab stand a bit earlier, just to recce the prices for a bit and so I asked the guy how long the crabs would keep off ice if I still intended to walk around the market for a bit. He said laughingly,

‘You want to walk around some, you take the leash and walk the crabs with you!’

Then he added that they closed only at 8pm and not to worry, there is always a supply of freshly boiled crabs. So when I came back to the stand about an hour later, I promptly quipped,

‘Hi I’m here for the crabs on a leash?’

With a laugh, he bagged two halves for me and charges me C$11. One crab. C$11. Wah piang, it’d better be tastier than my 3 for S$10 mud crabs.

I just steamed the crab for a bit and made a little sauce with whatever I had in the fridge, kind of a mishmash replacement remoulade. To accompany it, we seared some button mushrooms, pan-fried potato cubes with herbs and tossed a green salad. The result? Ta-daaaaaa!


Verdict:
The crab smelt very fishy, but don’t let the nose judge what the mouth is supposed to. The meat is very sweet and the shell is soft enough such that the long leg segments can be opened up without fuss. You just bite along the long edge and use your fork as you would a letter-opener and flip it right open like a book. It tasted really good on its own and really needed no dipping sauce, though I did enjoy it with the dip a lot. The flesh is much more fragile than the mud crabs or Sri Lankan crabs, not as firm for sure and its sweetness and long legs remind me a lot of the spider crabs I had when I was in Hokkaido. (Apparently, another name for snow crab is spider crab so I guess they're one and the same.) Snow crab season is ending in a week or two at most. What I would really like to do now is to get a live crab and boil it myself to see if it still has that fishy smell, and also to see if I can get any of the roe which is usually heavenly, especially in chili crabs… mmmm.

Can’t wait to go home and have crabs. Chili crab, black pepper crab, white pepper crab, crab bee hoon…. Mmm… And that’s only the crab part of my To Eat When I Go Home list…

imola, sunday 1 may 1994

No one could have predicted just how nightmarishly unforgettable the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix would become.

Friday practice ended with Rubens Barrichello in hospital after a heavy crash going into Rivazza. Saturday qualifying saw Roland Ratzenberger suffer a front wing failure and crashed into a concrete wall off Villeneuve corner where he died instantly. The mood on race day, as I imagine it must have been, was sombre. The unyielding desire to outpace bugged by a very suppressed yet palpable vulnerability.

The red lights go out aaaaand they're off! Wheels digging into the tarmac for traction, engines spitting out as many horses as they can, the chassis piercing through the humid Italian air! A 2-car incident hurls debris into the spectators and out comes the Safety Car. For the next 4 laps, there is no overtaking as the cars slow down and close up the gap, weaving left and right to keep their tyres warm. The rolling restart. Triple world champion Ayrton Senna leads the pack, chased by a very young Michael Schumacher.

The Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari was very fluid and exhilarating fast, characterized then by the intense flat-out 6th gear stretch from the start-finish to the infamous Tamburello Curve, a good full 10 seconds at 300km/h. It was at Tamburello where Senna's FW16 Williams went off and straight into a concrete wall.


Today, Tamburello has been forcibly slowed down with a chicane. But even as the cars puttputtputt by in 2nd gear, the wall that claimed Senna still stands, an unofficial memorial of its victim. Perhaps prophetically, Michael Schumacher won that race and would go on to clinch his first (of seven) world title with Benetton. Poor Ratzenberger though, he will always be known as 'The one that died before Senna'.

Ayrton Senna died on Sunday, 1 May 1994.
He was 34 years old, and already 3 times world champion.
The Brazilian demi-god. Gone to the great racing track in the sky.

Ayrton Senna (1960-1994)
"Racing, competing, it's in my blood. It's part of me, it's part of my life;
I have been doing it all my life and it stands out above everything else."

a price to pay for the road less traveled by?

It's finally over. 3 long years of hard work and sweat... (who am I kidding... only ONE year of hard work and sweat *hehehe*) and I'm more than halfway through my programme. It's over!! Now let me rejoice in the sweet bubble called denial and not think of the steady pace at which I'm edging towards working life.

But as the curtain falls on my undergrad years, I see my friends preparing for their convocation, the culmination of their 3 years of Tim Horton's coffee (or any other drug of choice) at 2 am, furious 20-page paper seasons, honing their ability to survive four days with less than 8 hours of sleep in total and somehow still manage to come up with something coherent about the artful use of rhetoric to obscure a lack of content. In a month's time, they'll be in their graduation garb, waiting for a piece of paper that they exhausted themselves for.

And their family will be on hand to partake in their joy.
The vicarious celebration of an opportunity that wasn't.
The emotional realisation that children do grow up.
The anxious attempt to capture that shaking-hands-with-the-dean moment.

Then I realize I'm not going to have that.

In a country where the education system is built on the principle of education for all, where the very low tuition costs are paid for by taxpayers, education is valued in a different way. A year in a public university in France costs around 350 Euros, of which 180 or so is for socialized health insurance. Our exams are graded on a scale of 20 and 10-12 is a satisfactory grade. I cannot see a McGill student being happy with a C- and there is virtually no way of getting an A in France (or 17/20 - unless of course I'm taking that damn mandatory english course teehee). I still think 85% for an A is friggin' ridiculous.

If you fail a year, you redo it, simple as that. If you're not happy with your course 2 years into the programme, start afresh. If you prefer a technical diploma, just go for it. While I understand that this is probably one of the reasons why I know at least a couple of 30+ year olds still in school after so many years. What I do admire about this mindset though is that there's so much less hemming and hawwing, fewer what if this what if that. Because education is cheap, it is flexible, there is room to navigate and explore till you find your niche (Not that I can exploit this anyway). There is no background talk of wasting your time and wasting your life. So at the end of 3 years, it's not so much an achievement or a milestone as a turning of a page, there is no need for fanfare.

I hope it doesn't disappoint you, Pa and Ma, that there will be no fancy pictures for a yearbook, no formal ceremony, no mortarboard to toss in the air.

A price to pay for the road less traveled by?
It's no price, it's just a circumstance that will make all the difference.

should be doing work but blogging about F1 instead

I haven't been blogging much lately cos I've been saddled by TONS of work (although i know some people who definitely have more than me). I don't have that list of x assignments, y projects and z essays lah... I can only 'boast' 2 essays, 1 term paper and 1 oral presentation only but nevertheless, I can attest to the fact that McGill is no joke. If it is, I don't get it.

Anyway, i just HAD to blog when i saw this on the BBC. Singapore is preparing a bid to host a Formula 1 race! YESSssssss! Just what I've been saying for ages. It's good for tourism, no need to set $1000 entry for Singaporeans and just plain ol' heaven for racing fans like me!

Spanish city Valencia, Greece, Russia and South Africa have also declared their interest in hosting a race. Mexico had also made plans to return to the F1 calendar while an Indian Grand Prix and a second race in the United States had been suggested.

Without knowing any of the actual details regarding race track location and track design for example, I think Singapore will face tough competition in this bid. The FIA has always been eager to decentralizing the Grand Prix, especially since Formula 1 has always been very eurocentric. In the 2000 season, 11 of 17 races were in Europe. The 18 races of the ongoing 2006 season are slightly more dispersed: 4 in Asia/Australia, 3 in the Americas, 2 in the Middle East and 9 in Europe.

How un-europeanized Bernie Ecclestone will want his F1 kingdom to be, I don't know. But Europe has had a long affair with Formula 1, a long torid affair peppered with triumphs and deaths and raised the population on tyre scraps and fuel vapours. Europe is sure to remain a staple of F1 racing. I would count Valencia out of the race, since Catalunya has been the favoured track for the past 15 years i think, and even so, Jerez would be the hopeful runner-up as it's one of the most popular test tracks around. Greece and Russia, while European, are not Western European, and so stand a chance as the exotic bastard brothers. South Africa may be a strong contender as the only hopeful candidate of the African continent. Mexico and India, I don't really have an opinion as of right now and for USA, I think they prefer their NASCAR and Champ Car Racing to F1, so if FIA adds a second US race, it's purely for the sake of trying to break into the American market.

**to be updated when this #$%@ viro exam is out of the way... prions prions. i love prions. maybe if i keep repeating that, i'll believe it.*

my roomie's girlfriend is a regular genius: episode 2

They Say Good Things Come in Threes

Ever wondered what happens when you leave two eggs in an uncovered pot on the stove for 45 mins by which time all the water evaporates and the eggs burst open?

Wonder no more.


And just when you think it takes real skill to screw up hard-boiled eggs? She does it TWICE - in the same day. And did I mention she did it a third time a week or so later?

I feel SO normal!

swearing to uphold

On Wednesday, March 1st, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at AU, was requested to testify.

At the end of his testimony, Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs said: "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?"

Raskin replied: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

The room erupted into applause.

(via Pharyngula)

bite-sized portions of instant goodness

Somewhere on St. Denis is Suite 88 Chocolatier.

The chocolates sit in glass display cases, each single piece on a single square white plate. Two chocolate-coated cherries sit in the next case, along with a handful of chocolate-coated cranberries and three delicate chocolate-coated tuiles. It’s all very minimalist: White walls, white plates, beautiful chocolate. It’s so chic that calling it chocolate makes it sound plain and boorish, it’s definitely more chocolat than chocolate.

I love being adventurous with chocolat with new exotic flavours, especially after my trip to Paris and Bruges last spring. There’s a lovely shop, on île St-Louis along the Seine called Cacao et Chocolat, where I was introduced to strange new flavours like cayenne pepper, cardamom and Venezuelan Tonka bean. (What the hell is a tonka bean?? Don't know but I ate it all the same) In Bruges, the locals showed us the path to chocolat mecca, a place called Chocolate Line where I was rewarded with lemongrass and Wasabi flavours. Yeah, Wasabi, mmmm!

So anyway, i was oohing and aahing at the scrumptious sight to behold and resisting the urge to eat the shop from the inside out, when the salesgirl mentioned that a jalapeño flavour was available. And then I knew it: The bar of dark chocolate with jalapeño (jalapeño!) peppers – it just had to be mine.

This kind of chocolat you put whole in your mouth and let the flavour creep in gently and subtly. The dark chocolate itself was quite exquisite, just bitter enough to make for a good dark chocolate, yet sweet enough to draw out the spiciness of the jalapeños. Halfway as you’re savouring the chocolate, the jalapeños kick in, slowly at first then hard and fast progressively until finally all you have in your mouth is this spicy prickly aftertaste. It’s this aftertaste however, that kind of ruined the experience. It felt like a fake chili aftertaste, kind of like how you can tell when powdered chocolate is used in hot chocolates instead of chocolate syrup.

But the highlight of this chocolat expérience were the shooters. You bite the tip off and knock back the shot of liquor inside, before feasting on the lovely outer shell, letting it melt in your mouth while swirling it lightly with the liquor. Bite-sized portions of instant goodness! Mmmmm dee-lee-cious! I had a Soho lychee liquor one, which blended perfectly with the chocolate without either overpowering the other, making it smooth, fruity and chocolate-y all at the same time. It went down so well, it felt completely guiltfree! I’ll definitely be heading back to Suite 88 for more shooters, Absolut vodka, sake and Kahlua at least. I only wish they had more flavours, like Bailey’s, Manzana, Cointreau or champagne.

Here's a picture: It's amazing what Photoshop can do! And of course, I'm trying to be arty farty. Lindt chocolate shavings lying around!

now THIS is sudoku~

Sudoku is so hot now it has its own World Sudoku Championships.
Follow the link, scroll down and try your hand at their sample puzzles! It will blow. your. mind!!

Clique sur le lien et essaie les exemples du championnat sudoku.. C'est un truc de dingue~

preemptive culling

No, I’m not talking about sick birds.

Some time ago, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline each announced positive results for a vaccine that will help protect women against the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV, a DNA virus with over a hundred strains, is more commonly sexually transmitted than one would imagine. In fact, more than 50% of all women will become infected with HPV during their lifetime, but for the most part, these are restricted to benign warts or pass undetected. There are two oncogenic strains however, which are irrefutably responsible for cervical cancer, the second most common form of cancer in women worldwide and kills about 270,000 women a year. Both vaccines are reported to prevent 90% of new infections and ALL persistent infections.

Having a vaccine is a good thing right? Not according to some religious lobby groups.

Their problem with HPV is that it is sexually transmitted, so to prevent infection, vaccination has to be carried out before a girl becomes sexually active.

Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex."
- Bridget Maher, Family Research Council, a Christian lobby group

Since it protects against a sexually transmitted virus at a young age, some conservatives actually think that young lusty females will be encouraged to be indulged in as much pre-marital sex as they want, because ‘Hey! I’m vaccinated!’. What these conservatives advocate is abstinence from sexual activity as the cure for all evils. This is of course, true – in theory. I’m sure these conservatives are thinking to themselves ‘My children are so virtuous, they don’t need vaccination.’.

The truth of the matter is that people are having sex, and we cannot stop them from having sex. Just as was the case for condoms, IUDs, birth control pills and abortion, these measures will surely make it less worrisome to engage in sexual activity and people may find reason to engage in sexual activity but not any more than if such measures weren’t available. An epidemiologist put it nicely: Instead of seeing the HPV vaccine as a green light for sex, why not think of it as a red light for cancer?

What moral precepts allow us to think that the risk of death is a price worth paying to encourage abstinence as the only approach to sex?"
- David Baltimore, Nobel Laureate

Do all these holier-than-thou conservatives feel that it's fair to subject all women to the restraints of their religious beliefs? My cervix is mine to protect, you piece of crap.

My theory:
The US is anticipating more casualties in Iraq and possibly Iran, Palestine, North Korea and any other country that Bush is told he shouldn’t like. The American total male-to-female ratio is already at 0.97 male per female and surely they don’t want to face the problem of too many females.

Solution? Cull the oversexed godless females!

international women's day (aka blog against sexism day)

I would like to think that women today are finally considered free and equal adults. But some people go out of their way to prove me wrong.

South Dakota has banned abortion, effectively ensuring that a bunch of men can control what a woman does with her ova. Several other states are trying to follow suit to build their backward, testosterone-run country. Undoubtedly the work of lobbyists from South Dakotan coathanger corporations.

Human Rights Watch reports that rape victims in Mexico are denied access to legal abortions and subjected to routine humiliation and insult. Of course, that's because women are just asking to be raped, yeah of course.

Even when European women do better in school than men, they will get lower pay and fewer top jobs. Screw school. My A won't beat your C because I have eggs and I might have children, so I'll take my maternity leave, triple the workload of my colleagues and lower productivity.

The UN has actually posted a world classification table of the number of women in parliament. Top on the list? Rwanda. Singapore is at #66 while USA is at #69 and France is at #84. In fact, a grand total of 13 African nations and 6 Middle Eastern countries rank ahead of the US - land of the free! The 6 female heads of state of our time belong to Ireland, Latvia, Finland, Philippines, Liberia and Chile. That's cos we're emotional and thus incapable of rational decision-making. After all, we don't want an actual thinking, feeling person in charge of a nation do we??

When can we live in a world where the mere possession of testicles and a penis cannot justify such disparity?

allez l’OM... on craint dégun~!!

Living in a soccer town is a-mazin'! PSG-OM matches are super high risk. On match days, you do NOT want to be driving a car with Parisian plates or wearing PSG purple and red. Unless you’re itching to get insulted/assaulted/your car wrecked, of course.

This time, Paris had not sold the promised number of tickets to Marseille supporters and furthermore, seated them just beneath the PSG supporters. Outnumbered and vulnerable, the club chairman had refused to send first team regulars to Paris and discouraged supporters from attending the match, fearing that someone would be killed. Riiiight... So instead they sent a side of first team benchwarmers and amateur team (= 5th division) players, because we can’t get the first team regulars killed but hey it’s ok to send sacrificial lambs? Maybe they’ll do the Puss in boots ‘hey look at me I’m so cute and unthreatening’ routine and get away with it?

In any case, this jumble of non-regular first team and 5th div players held the regulars of PSG to a nil-nil DRAW. How about that?!! Even captained by the great Pauleta, PSG fell flat on their faces in front of a bunch of 'minots'!

As you can imagine, Marseille went wild!! The celebrations must have been crazy!! I can see people jumping into le vieux port, flares, horns, smokes, the works! People stormed the train station to welcome their unlikely heroes back, with you guessed it, more flares, horns and smokes!

Aw man, I want to be back to celebrate with them again! J'suis avec vous!!

Moral of the story: Better a small marseillais than a useless parisian.

one flu over the cuckoo's nest

To be added to the list: Niger and Switzerland.

the only thing i do more than cough is pee

I've coughed and sneezed my way through a midterm and 2 papers this week. Imagine trying to write an essay while coughing your lungs out. It's like coughing your brains out. I couldn't string two sentences together without coughing them apart, much less actually formulate a proper thesis on smallpox vaccination or Isaiah Berlin's two concepts of liberty.

So far I've ingested:
4 doses of paracetemol (panadol, efferalgan, doliprane)
20 strepsils
3 mint sweets swiped from the microbiology department
12 tbsp of sea coconut brand cough syrup
8+ bowls of home-brewed herbal chicken soup
6 cups of tea
6 cups of lemon honey water
countless cups of warm water
only noodle soups for the past 4 days already

Ain't that an impressive blend of Western medicine and Chinese old wives' tales?? It certainly explains the title of this post.

my roomie’s girlfriend is a regular genius: episode 1

The One with the Grilled Potatoes

So there’s this bad burnt smell first thing in the morning. My roomie’s girl is trying to cook to impress her man again and she’s ‘grilling potatoes’ to put into soup.

What’s the best way to grill potatoes in your standard modern kitchen?
Oven maybe? Toaster? Dehhhhhh, wrong answer. Something waaaaay better than that.

Well, somehow she figured that normal people grill potatoes by putting them face down directly on the hot plate. No kidding. She cut the potatoes in two and put them face down on the heating element just like that! But of course! So now the hot plate is blackened, the apartment stinks and the potatoes are carcinogenic on one side.

And she puts the potatoes into the soup anyway.

New and improved potato soup! Now with cancer!

a

happy Darwin Day~

February 12 is one of those days where geeks congregate to celebrate their geek holidays. Happy Darwin Day everyone!

Yup, Charles Darwin is 197 years old.
A lot of people think that he was the first to put forward the idea of evolution, or that he was a godless atheist who thought we descended from monkeys and not Adam and Eve. He was neither, but he was the first to propose natural selection as a causal mechanism for evolution. Although he lacked the carbon dating and the genetic tools so readily available today, evidence in favour of evolution has been piling up steadily and still coming at. Today, the scientific community at large validates evolution as a scientific fact.

Yet today, this scientific fact is being challenged as a mere theory by a handful of smartass scientists backed by small groups of ignorant conservative wackeroos who think that they know shit. This is mainly taking place in the USA (where else?) where about 45% of the population believes that God created humans in our present form. That’s 133 million people! Let’s hope scientists find a gene for ignorance, so that we can say ‘oh no they can’t help but be deluded them poor things’. This Creationism/Intelligent Design movement is pissing the heck out of me. It is nothing but religion thinly sheathed as a science-wannabe, no way can this be called a science, no way.

Anyway, I will definitely be posting more about this issue in little bite-sized pieces: The arguments ID proponents have put forward to oppose evolution, why ID cannot be a science, some of the entirely disturbing ways in which Americans are trying to force the Bible as the only science textbook and the recent Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial. (I like to think of it as the Evo vs. Wacko case.)

In commemoration of Darwin Day, I attended a talk by Dr. Brian Alters, an expert in science education here in McGill who in fact testified in abovementioned case. He was dressed in a burgundy jacket (how special!) and a tie with the Evolution of Man motif (how apt!). *haha* There, I just had to write that down.

Happy Birthday old Charlie boy.
Abraham Lincoln was born on the same day, but February 12 is Darwin Day.
a

ultimate showdown

Where else can you see Godzilla, Optimus Prime, Aaron Carter, Abe Lincoln and many more fun characters together?
Watch the Ultimate Showdown ... of Ultimate Destiny!!
a

just a small box

It was just a small box, a small plastic cubicle with one face open and a base evenly riddled with holes. I think I salvaged the components from the bookshop, the cubicle just a soft plastic casing and the base just one of those cardboard pens stands. The holes were just big enough for a marble to nestle comfortable in it and were marked with numbers.

For a small sum of I don’t know, 10 cents, 20 cents? You could get a marble and flip it into the box from a small distance. It lands on number 5? Oh man, unlucky. You don’t get anything but try again! There are strawberry-shaped erasers waiting to be won!

With the money collected, I would re-invest in new prizes and rack my brains for more fun games. This went on for maybe 3 days and then one day I was told to shut down my little act, because it constituted ‘gambling’.

Would-be gambling addict? Budding entrepreneur? I don’t know if I made any money, or if I even intended to make any money.
I was 11.
a

oh my Muhammed~!

I’ve been wanting to blog about the Muhammed cartoon uproar, but I’m conflicted. I won’t talk too much on it, given the extensive and much more eloquent coverage in the rest of the blogosphere (see Attempts) and the online news community. (see BBC)

The press has been quick to take the freedom of speech line, and European newspapers are rushing to back their Danish counterpart by republishing the cartoons. France Soir ran a frontpage with the headline 'Yes, we have the right to caricaturize God' along with a picture of Jesus, Buddha, Muhammed and Yahweh, with Jesus saying ‘Don’t complain Muhammed, we’ve ALL been caricaturized here!’


It’s not just purely a matter of caricatures and the Muslims too uptight to take a small jest. Islam tradition condemns idolatry and in doing so, advocates aniconism (i.e. no depiction of human beings). And when cartoons not only depict Muhammed but clearly associate him with terrorism, I think the press has hand-delivered Muslims a cause for their outrage. The cartoons are mostly tasteless, especially the most explicit one with Muhammed depicted with a bomb in his turban. It’s not funny. Nor is it clever and I do not see any other message except that Islam advocates violence. Drawing their prophet’s face is already a blasphemy, and labeling him a terrorist as well? This ignorant link does not lend support to a war on terrorism but a war on Islam, which the US and its supporters have vehemently denied.

Freedom of speech is not always compatible with society. You have the right to say what you want, even the most offensive of things. And while there is no reason to have the right to be free from everything one deems offensive (in fact the right to freedom of thought and expression should entail some kind of provocation), there is a need for self-discipline to not needlessly offend everyone, even those uninvolved. A mass boycott of Danish products is hurting by the millions, an innocent bystander whose only fault is its nationality.

I’m not saying that Islam should be insulated from media satirical criticism, but that it could have been done more tastefully and in respect for basic beliefs. Imagine if in the wake of all the priestly pedophilic scandals, one had depicted Jesus with his shaft up some kid, what would have the reaction been like? Or if Abraham and Moses were portrayed in tanks running over Palestinian women and children on the West Bank?

It doesn’t help that Muslim protestors from London, to Syria and Indonesia are reinforcing that crude caricature by openly calling for the deaths of the editors. The fact that the newspaper’s cultural editor commissioned the cartoonists to draw the Prophet as they saw him, already means that a general Western view of Islam is one of terrorism. With slogans like ‘Butcher/Slay/Exterminate/Massacre those who mock Islam’, they do nothing but underscore any gross stereotype. These represent but a small percentage of the international Muslim population. This radical minority is being exploited to substantiate blatant bigotry such as in this article by Steve Muscatello. He uses the example of Kanye West as Jesus on the cover of Rolling Stones magazine as a parallel event of blasphemy to Christianity and says:

When faced with a nearly identical situation, one faith resorted to violence, threats and rage like unruly savages; the other was civil, responding (if at all) with letters to the editor, calls for a boycott and many public denunciations.

Unholy Moses at Thou Shall Not Suck provides a nice stinging reply that lays bare for to see the ignorance that fuels this bigotry. He points out that radical Christians have had their fair share of violence, bombing abortion clinics and calling for the assasination of other world leaders. How is he is to say that Islam resorts to violence while Christianity is civil? There are Muslims, in Muslim and non-Muslim countries alike, who have called upon their fellowmen to take a step back and examine their religion and its image around the world. Sure they're offended too, but they're not torching embassies.

In short, while self-censorship is a counter-intuitive general solution, the European press should have considered the intimate level at which they were offending people with a set of crude and pointless drawings, crude and pointless being the key words. As a Muslim McGill student wrote in to the school paper, imagine the extreme disgust and humiliation if you were to parade your entire extended family naked along the busiest street in town. You can offend but be respectful. On the other hand, Muslims have to forward their own positive message to counter the general sinister picture in which Islam has been portrayed by the 'tyranny of the minority'.



I wonder though, isn't this picture a more appropriate look at today's world? And it isn't even the least bit satirical.

potential damage, actual stupidity

Some guy is suing Apple for potential hearing loss, saying that iPods are ‘not safe to use’. Not even actual hearing loss ok, but for potential hearing loss.

That’s like suing McDonald’s for potential obesity.
Or suing Ferrari for potential speed-related accidents.

Apple is not forcing you to expose your ears to 115 decibels.
McDonald’s is not forcing you to supersize you.
Ferrari is not forcing you to pull a Schumacher on your regular roads.

It’s ironic that today’s society demands more freedom for their own actions, yet cannot be responsible enough to choose actions that suit their own well-being. Just because you can do these things doesn’t mean you should do them. And if you choose to do them anyway, you bloody take responsibility for it. Don’t tell me you don’t know better, that iPods don’t have sufficient labeling to warn people blah blah blah. Isn't it common sense to not listen to music at full blast? The discomfort of your ears would clearly tell you that you shouldn't do it and if you ignore your body's response, then screw you. You damaged your own ears.

Sadly, people are compensating for their lack of common sense with trigger-happy litigation.
Maybe one day it'll be possible to sue these people for potential dilution of the gene pool?
-

day 2 of cny, it's 7am and i'm delirious

The other night I dreamt that a python bit me on my butt.
Which pissed me off cos that’s a scientifically inaccurate dream.
Because pythons rarely bite.
Which pissed me off cos that was the most geeky thing I could have ever say the moment when I woke up.

Anyway.
It’s been a rough week. I fell victim to the gastric flu bug, same old same old.
Bedridden and nothing but soup for 3 days.
But I’m all better now (thanks to you), ready to devour the box of lovely new year goodies that my wonderful parents send me every year.
Gong xi fa cai everyone!

The year of the dog opened with a whimper.
Essay due, quiz the following day, missed lectures to catch up on...
So how did I spend my first day of CNY?
I pulled my first-ever all-nighter (yay me!), writing about how George Orwell’s 1984 depicts a liberal dystopia against the account of liberalism of Judith Shklar.
Shklar Schmlar…
I don’t like that essay of hers, it’s unstructured and misleading and yet, she’s the prof’s hero.
Bah.
1984 is a good read though, highly recommended!!

Now the question is
Do I go to prop my eyelids up with matches, go to class in 1 hour’s time and snooze through Wainberg?
Or do I snooze at home and screw too-busy-to-offer-me-a-lab-position Wainberg?

when montreal freezes over

You know how roads are slightly convex so that runoff can drain properly into the sewers? Think that, but completely iced over.

You know how at the traffic lights, the pavement slopes off gently to meet the asphalt? Think that, but completely iced over.
In fact think ANYthing whatsoever, but iced over.

Welcome to the Winter Wonderland from hell!
The Disney on Ice of the Dark Side!!!

Ok I exaggerate. (I can’t help it! It’s the Marseille in me)
Today, freezing rain pummeled down on this wintry city.


Just a quick explanation without getting too geeky on you:
Freezing rain is snow that hits a warm front and melts into water droplets, which then pass through a cold front and is supercooled, such that it freezes on impact.

Every drop that hit was instant ice.
Roads were iced over.
Pavements were iced over.
Highways were iced over.
With all this ice, even the gentlest slope became a treacherous nightmare.


It was hell getting to school. Some roads had to be closed off in the morning; on others, firemen had to string ropes across so that people could tow themselves across. Cars had no traction whatsoever and since the university area is essentially on a hill, this meant that cars were frantically spinning their wheels, not to gain any ground in the process but to simply avoid slipping backwards down the hill and crashing into the other fellow behind him. People were falling left right centre front and back, from the simple ones who catch themselves just in time to the dramatic all-out belly-up cartoon flop! If you didn’t break your neck while going up the hill, no worries you’ll get a chance to break it again when you go down.

Considering that going to school under these circumstances might literally kill you? You’d expect that McGill has been around long enough to realize that students who break their necks in trying to get to classes that they didn’t cancel isn’t such a good idea after all. But no, not a single email from the school or a word on their website. My 9.30 a.m. class was not cancelled at all, never mind the fact that it was in a building on the upper more sloping parts of campus. People actually risked their necks to get there, and well the prof was stuck in traffic on the way there (doh!). So everyone had to slide their way back down to Lower Campus for absolutely nothing. Don’t worry about me – I skipped that class obviously.

Montreal is crazy.
Within a span of 5 days, we went from a toasty 6°C to a deathly -30°C, to snow, to freezing rain.

As one friend put it, the weather here is SO PMS-mood-swingy.

Ennis Del Mar-ism

If you’ve already watched Brokeback Mountain, you’ll know what I mean by Ennis Del Mar-ism.

It's not about cowboys, it’s not about gays, it’s not about whether homosexuality is right or wrong or left or right.
Or top or bottom for that matter.

Now I assure you I’m not one of those desperately-in-love-with-Jake Gyllenhaal types. Sue me but I think he’s ugly. Yet there’s a certain something in his character Jack Twist’s doe-eyed look that enthralled me. His eyes searched the depth of Ennis’ soul, willing him to understand that sometimes you have to take a leap.

Jack Twist is that sliver of optimism waving wildly, trying to cling onto our attention for more than just that fleeting moment.
To say 'somewhere someday somehow things will work out'.
But the voice of realism obscures him, in the way Ennis systematically turns away from hope and towards denial, letting the one good thing he had slip from his grasp.

It’s about that mechanical rationality, which tells us that we’re making the right choice, we ARE, even as we feel our hearts tremble and shrivel in sorrow.
We believe in procedural logic, in the mechanistic evaluation of pros and cons and sweep away the emotions we deem transient and inevitable.

I think we all are Ennis Del Mar in some way.
At each forkroad, we are invariably more tempted to pick the one that is ‘right’, that either yields more apparent benefit or procures less suffering. Instead of reaching for dreams, we’re content to trudge along and play it safe.

Three years ago, I came to such a forkroad, a path leading to Washington University and one leading to Université de la Méditerranée. The former had a greater sense of familiarity and opportunity, the latter a thrill and hesitation of unknown adventure. Frankly speaking, during my first year in France, I did question my decision and sometimes I still do, especially when I worry about becoming irrelevant in today’s society of Harvard and Cambridge graduates. But there are no regrets, only pride, that I took the offbeat path.

Today, there are more decisions to be made, and I risk turning away from an important part of my life because I’m afraid of facing my fear of incapability.

Go away Ennis Del Mar.
When you know you have a good thing, the stupidest you can do is to let it go.

who said science can't be fun?

BLAST is a bioinformatics tool we use in biology to find regions of similarity between sequences. One function of this tool is that you can enter an unknown sequence, and it returns the best match sequence from its database of organisms. Now we can do it in terms of the nucleotides (the A, C, G, Ts) or we can do it in terms of proteins. Proteins are basically many amino acids strung together, where 20 amino acids are represented 20 letters of the alphabet.

So what happens when you BLAST regular words or names?
A sort of message deeply ingrained in the essence of life perhaps??

Here’s a snippet of the quirky results that someone from Seed Magazine found:

… The query for "BUSH" receives no hits, primarily because it is deemed a "low complexity sequence." This is compounded by the fact that the letters B and U do not exist as specific amino acids

… Finally, in an effort to further demonstrate my impartiality, I begrudgingly entered "PRESIDENTBUSH." In this case, the best non-hypothetical match—one that can actually be assigned a biological function—was from the genome of Entamoeba histolytica. The organism is a single-celled, parasitic protozoan known for infections that sometimes last for years, which may be accompanied by vague gastrointestinal distress or dysentery—complete with blood and mucus in the stool.

A single-celled parasite that infects you for years and might give you bloody diarrhoea. Got that?

Read the full story: Concerning the President of the United States. It’s an amusing read!

So after all the laughing, I decided to be a geek and blasted my own name, to see what DNA has to say about it. I'm such a geek.

The string 'CHARLENETAN' returned 'fumarate reductase, iron-sulfur protein' of the Hildenborough strain of the bacterium Desulfovibrio vulgaris. So yay! I’m a bacterial enzyme!
Not that my name actually appears as part of the bacterial sequence though. I don’t think it's likely that there's an exact match.

For those of you are geeky enough to follow in my geeky footsteps, here’s the link to BLAST.
Simply enter your name and hit the BLAST! button.
On the resulting page that indicates your request ID, click on the Format! button.
Wait a bit for the page to load and then scroll down till you see the heading ‘Sequences producing significant alignments’
Click the top hit and congratulate yourself on your geekiness.

Do post a comment about what you are and if you got an exact match!

Oh yah, in case you didn’t notice… I’m such a geek. :p

inside and outside

Inside, it’s nice and toasty.
People sipping coffee, reading books, chatting on a pseudo-open air terrace.
Small potted trees carve out a little niche against a brick façade.

You can almost see the people lounging on its broad window ledges, top button undone, cold drink in hand.
You can almost smell the sea in the air, its saltiness and its fishiness.
You can almost hear the people on the streets, that unintelligible background noise that will not fade as one herd replaces the next.
You can almost feel the sun as it washes over gently, a warmth that permeates into the flesh.
You look up and squint, it’s too bright, and you shield your eyes with your hand.

Then you see the yellow spotlights that shine down.
You feel that chilly draft.
The scarves, the gloves, the hats on the tables and the coats over the chairs.
That chilly draft again.

Outside, the snow is falling.
Too fast to be called dainty but with a certain elegance in its rhythm.
It falls wordlessly.
Snowflakes sprinkle fields, roofs and naked trees, like a dose of icing sugar fit for a glutton’s cake.
Cars wheel slowly in the slush, people trudge about their business.
The world plays on in slow-motion, in white and grey.

You look up and feel the drizzle of ice.
You catch the flakes on your tongue.
You close your eyes but you still see.
It falls on you, straight towards you.
It falls wordlessly.
No words can describe it.

egotistical egoist

Here's an interesting post from a Science-y blog about a parTICularly interesting new virus Gonorrhea Lectim. trust me, you wanna go look at it.

On a geekier note, i won WEBoggle!! nahahahaha here's the proof:







go play and see just how tough it is!
muahahahaha... some people may call me egoTistical. but they ain't #1.
so there.
a

your genome is patented

Ok. School has started.

One class i’m doing is called Applied Microbiology and Immunology, doesn’t sound like very much but essentially it’s about the business of science. People from academia and industry will be coming in to speak to us about patents, big pharmaceutical companies, small biotech startups, and get this - even a FAILED biotech company. We live in a society where success is blatantly tooted in your face again and again, so much so that we’re averse to failing. I don’t deny that I do NOT like to fail. (Failed a damn communications exam last year. Apparently I can’t communicate.yay.). It’s great that they thought of showing us some of the failures out there.

But anyway, a part of the lecture got me really intrigued and I’d just like to share some thoughts. It may be a little scientific but i tried my best to be less technical.


!!Geek Warning!!
------------------------------

About 20% of all human genes have been patented.*
That makes about 4000 genes with its exclusive rights assigned to someone else for a certain amount of time.
*in the US. Patents are awarded differently in different patent offices around the world.

What does this mean for you and me?
Does it mean that in producing insulin (insulin was patented in 1923) to regulate the metabolism of out carbohydrates, we’ll need to pay some dude royalties?
Are genes even patentable in the first place??

The first criterion for patentability is that the gene in question must be NEW.
It can’t be new if it was already there in your body in the first place, can it? Well, it turns out that a gene as it exists in a chromosome in your cells is obviously not new at all; however, a gene that has been extracted, isolated, cloned and amplified can be (and has been) accepted as an artificial, man-made and therefore, new form. So no, you can go metabolize your carbohydrates in peace. Your genes are not patented as they exist inside you, but you might not wanna take any of them out of your cells.

The second criterion for patentability is that the gene in question must be USEFUL.
Now, utility of a gene is not always obvious. Certain genes have been identified to be implicated in carcinogenesis. One example is the BRCA1 gene, a tumour suppressor gene, which has been found to be defective in breast cancer patients. Using isolated BRCA1, cancer detection tests can be developed and it even evokes the possibility of gene replacement therapy. A gene in a direct relationship with a disease is obviously useful.

However, other genes may not present such possibilities:
In 1995-1996, it was discovered that chemicals called chemokines produced in our body suppressed HIV infections. Subsequently, it was determined that the virus enters cells by latching onto a chemokine receptor called CCR5 on the surface of the cell. People with defective CCR5 genes, and thus do not express the CCR5 protein are less susceptible to HIV!
Imagine, what an incredible achievement for anti-AIDS drug development efforts!

But wait!! Hold your horses. The party pooping has just begun.
Get this: the gene had already been patented by a company named Human Genome Sciences.

If somebody uses this gene in a drug discovery program after the patent has been issued to find drugs [...] and does it for commercial purposes, they have infringed the patent. […] And if a company brings a drug to market after infringing the patent, we'd be entitled not just to damages, but to double and triple damages.
- William A. Haseltine, Chairman, Human Genome Sciences

Oh not just to damages, boys and girls, but to DOUBLE and TRIPLE damages. It sounds like the guy has been playing too much friggin' Mortal Kombat or something man! Power up! Special press-many-button move!! TRIPLE KILL!! OWNING!!!
*ahem*
So now where to draw the line between science and business, between ‘cure the world’ and ‘let’s get a monopoly of this thing we don’t know much of and make shitloads of money of the people who need it’?

Is it correct to reward the person who made the discovery and did no further work on it, at the expense of the scientists and companies who throw themselves head first in working on a drug?

If the patent office awards a patent to someone who clones a gene, even though they have no notion of its function and no real idea of its use, that would be like saying, 'I found a fungus, therefore I should get credit for penicillin.
- Dr. Robert Gallo, co-credited (controversially) with the discovery of HIV

The first-to-invent or first-to-file patent system is in this case debatable, especially when HGS officials acknowledge that they had zero knowledge of the gene’s role in HIV infection at the time when the patent was filed. It sounds frivolous, but that’s the whole point of the patent system in the first place, isn’t it? To protect discoveries and inventions on a first-come-first-served basis, in doing so, handing its inventors a monopoly in exchange for the information, even if it was based on a marginal claim of use. This is the way the system works.

Patenting has to be in place to protect discoveries and to give incentives to the large pharmaceutical companies to invest and develop effective drugs (after all these are multi-million dollar investments, no company would ever back research without a tangible monetary reward expected).

But paying silly companies who jumped in before the crowd just to claim ownership and resulting fees before the guys who really produced something worthwhile with it? That’s just bullshit, 'robber barons of the genetic age'. The patents office has to be more stringent with the definition of usefulness of a proposed genetic sequence before they hand out patents like they were raffle tickets.

What are they gonna say next? I want a patent for this gene so I can use it to produce expensive, overglorified toilet bowl cleaner? It’s useful, as marginal as it may be, so let’s just wait till the next guy comes around and turns it into some anti-cancer drug. Hooray!