You know how some people just make you let down your guard subconsciously, implacably, insuperably?
How he/she breaks down that sky-high wall you've constructed around yourself to prevent those darn chemicals from seeping in - with so much ease that you wonder why you built them in the first place?
How he/she makes you lose that last ounce of self-control you possessed when dealing with people.
How he/she unleashes the darkest secrets you've kept buried deep beneath the murky depths of your heart.
How he/she makes you realise how vulnerable you really are, beneath that dark exterior - that masquerade mask you constantly wear - up till now.

How he/she makes you consume just that one more bar of chocolate without feeling any guilt whatsoever.

;)

http://netdoctor.msn.co.uk/uk/msn/news/index.jsp?id=6943&D=23&M=1&Y=2006

Hmm.

Perhaps I should really make a top 50 songlist. OK here's one then. Wanted to rank them but realised I really can't do so. I really like these songs, all of them.
1. Howie Day - Collide
2. Embrace - Gravity
3. Audioslave - Be Yourself
4. Snow Patrol - How To Be Dead
5. Dashboard Confessional - Vindicated
6. Bodyrockers - I Like The Way
7. Jack Johnson - Banana Pancakes
8. Papa Roach - Scars
9. Apocalyptica - Ruska
10. Faithless - Don't Leave
11. The Eagles - Hotel California
12. Led Zepplin - Stairway To Heaven
13. Jars Of Clay - Love Song For A Saviour
14. 3 Doors Down - Be Like That
15. Lifehouse - You And Me
16. Fun Lovin' Criminals - I'm Not In Love
17. Fatboy Slim feat. Macy Gray - Demons
18. Britney Spears - Toxic
19. Simple Plan - Perfect
20. Green Day - Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)
21. Cake - I Will Survive
22. Smashmouth - I'm A Believer
23. Creed - One Last Breath
24. Dido - Thank You
25. Five For Fighting - Superman (It's Not Easy)
26. Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out
27. Gomez - Shot Shot
28. Goo Goo Dolls - Iris
29. Hoobastank - The Reason
30. Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl
31. Maria Mena - You're The Only One
32. Massive Attack - Angel
33. Moby - Porcelain
34. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me
35. Oasis - Don't Look Back In Anger
36. Our Lady Peace - Whatever
37. Robbie Williams - She's The One
38. Scissor Sisters - Filthy/Gorgeous
39. Sepultura - Roots Bloody Roots
40. Maxi Jazz feat. Robbie Williams - My Culture
41. Prodigy - Firestarter
42. The Chemical Brothers - Hey Boy Hey Girl
43. U2 - Beautiful Day
44. Avril Lavigne - I'm With You
45. Coldplay - Yellow
46. Audioslave - Show Me How To Live
47. Fatboy Slim - Slash Dot Slash
48. Chantal Kreviatzuk - Leaving On A Jet Plane
49. Fun Lovin' Criminals - Scooby Snacks
50. Basement Jaxx - Do Your Thing

Sorry ah kiezin only read your blog today and knew i kena meme-ed heh.
Alright here goes then. (Sam I'll do urs later heh)
Rules:
1. Post the top 20 OR 30 OR 50 most frequently played songs in your player for the past one year.
2. Name five victims to pass the game on.

OK here are my top 50 songs (in alphabetical order of artists):
1. 3 Doors Down - Better Life
2. 8mm - Nobody Does It Better
3. Apocalyptica - Epilogue (Relief) [Reflections]
4-5. Apocalyptica - Life Burns!; Ruska [Apocalyptica]
6-12. Audioslave - Cochise, Show Me How To Live, Gasoline, What You Are, Like A Stone, Getaway car, The Last Remaining Light [All from album: Audioslave]
13-14. Audioslave - Be Yourself, Doesn't Remind Me [Album: Out Of Exile]
15. Basement Jaxx - Do Your Thing
16-17. Blur - Crazy Beat, Sweet Song [Album: Think Tank]
18. Blur - Song 2
19-21. Bodyrockers - Handel On Your Face, I Like The Way, Round and Round
22. Bread - Make It With You
23. Britney Spears - Toxic
24. Cake - I Will Survive
25-26. The Calling - Wherever You Will Go, Stigmatized (Album: Camino Palmero)
27. Chantal Kreviatzuk - Leaving On A Jet Place
28. Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band - Express Yourself (Mocean Worker Remix)
29. Christina Aguilera - Beautiful
30. Coldplay - Yellow
31-34. Creed - With Arms Wide Open, Higher, One Last Breath, My Sacrifice
35. Damien Rice - The Blower's Daughter (Acoustic Version)
36. Daniel Powter - Bad Day
37. Dashboard Confessional - Vindicated
38-39. Dave Matthews Band - 41, Crash Into Me
40. Death In Vegas - Hands Around My Throat
41-42. Dido - Here With Me, Thank You
43-44. Dire Straits - Romeo And Juliet, Brothers In Arms
45. Dope - No Chance
46. The Dysfunctional Psychedelic Waltons - Payback Time
47. Eagle-eye Cherry - Save Tonight
48-50. Eagles - Hotel California, Desperado, Get Over It

How ah. I'm still stuck at E.

On a lighter note, the skiing trip was AWESOME.
Picked up skiing again, and by the end of the week was skiing down slopes so steep they'd need an hour and a few hundred calories (not to mention litres of water) to climb.
Got so high skiing down those same slopes at such high speeds, yet knowing I could control how I'd end up1 at the bottom (but for once) that I ended up doing more than 10 ski runs a day on the final few days. Yep basically took different chair lifts (those dangling thingies) up various slopes2, and whizzed down them feeling absolutely exhilarated.
And it wasn't just the skiing that was good. Dinner we had each night was absolutely amazing - got to try different dishes like paella, meat fondue3, marvellous steaks and amazingly fresh oysters. Was looking forward to trying something different every night.
And the company was great too. Mark, with two of his cambridge female friends...
Oh did I mention I got to use ALL of my medication I brought along for the first time? The dressings and antiseptic cream; the bo zhai pills; the medicated oil... Panadol was almost used too. Damn drama-packed trip, with one female friend suffering from various ailments, not to mention our getting injured in various places and suffering from assorted strained muscles, of course.

Absolutely amazing trip, I tell you.

____________________________________________________________________
1 Still standing, but of course.
2 Some classified "advanced" - for advanced skiiers.
3 Meat fondue, apparently, is really just (slightly marinated) meat dipped in hot oil. Yes not kidding.

A cascade of events
So unpredictable.
Don't know how it started
Or its torturous ending.
Never anticipating; yet always knowing,
How a trip like this would but sadly end.

I should really stop being so nice.

Yes I seem to be fairly stressed recently. I'm going on a ski trip from tomorrow to next sunday, and my exam's on the wednesday after the next.
Yes I'm nowhere near completing my studying.
Yes I'm starting to panic. Just that wee bit.
Yes I'll be bringing my books along to study on the trip, don't you worry.

:P

You know, sometimes the weirdest situations can inspire some good mental exercise. Like just now, when I was sick of studying, had had a meal at Macs, and was walking back in the cold¹, I actually started reflecting on the past year. On how I'm like as a person. How people might perceive me. And the like.
Perhaps the firing of random neurons is one of the ways our body creates warmth and maintains normal body temperature - mental exercise may just be as efficient as the mild physical exertions² you do when you're cold.
I mean seriously, we all know when our mind is focused on something, we tend to forget the various stimuli around us right?
Don't you think this is a reasonable extension of that common phenomenon? The physical and apparent manifestation of but yet another homeostatic mechanism in our iniquitously complicated bodies?
__________________________________________________________________
¹With cup of cold Coke in my hand. Which definitely didn't help the circulation in my hands.
²Like shivering, lah.

It has really been a great year, 2005.
Went to London, then Sheffield (and Peterborough), then London again, then back to Sheffield! In the space of 2 weeks. Which was extremely fun, heart-warming, and... just great, really.
Visited my parents' friend's family (and his brother's family), my aunt(+husband) from Australia (and her daughter + husband, yep the one who lives in London), Deb and Jessica.
*contented sigh*

And its not just the past 2 weeks. The whole year... its been really eventful. Perhaps one of the best years of my life up to now in fact. Shall elaborate when I feel more... reflective.

Now I'm happy just to bask in my contentment and enjoyment of this wonderful moment. :)

Its just pure unadulterated joy when you receive a package. Perhaps part of it is derived from the anticipation - will it come, or won't it? when will it come? Or perhaps it is more to do with the element of surprise, just as you think you don't have a parcel after all, but still check the noticeboard anyways, there! You see your name! Imagine the surprise and delight. Imagine the glee as you discover it is, indeed, for you.
I just looooooove receiving parcels.
Thank you Christina :D

Now that everything's done and I've time to blog, I feel its convenient to remember that I went on a road trip on Saturday. Yup rented a car with 4 other friends, and went driving to several places.
Well we'd planned to drive to Bath only initially, 'cause of its Christmas Market, but decided it'd be too much of a waste renting a car for 55 pounds (for the weekend) so yeah. Planned to go to several other cities at the same time.
So yep covered Strafford(-on-Avon), Cardiff, Bath and Bristol (in that order). Cardiff and Bristol we just drove around, parked the car in some illegal spot and popped down for a while - Cardiff 'cause we were stuck in a jam going there and were rushing to Bath; Bristol 'cause it was dark and it looked real boring.
But yeah. The cities/towns were cool!
And I drove for part of the way back! Manual car leh. Max speed 110 miles per hour. Haha yeah you go calculate. But for the most part kept to the speed limit of 70 miles lah.
Quite fun actually, considering the fact I've never driven a manual after the test.

Watched Miss Saigon today!
The guy playing the Engineer was damn good.
Oh I've discovered the ultimate combination : Dark chocolate with cherries.
Both ingredients are readily available from your local supermarket - like I bought mine from Tesco's - and you can eat in as crude or sophisticated a way you want¹, but the effect works just the same. Its a great depression-buster, and as long as you are secure in the fact that you need to consume 3500 calories to gain a pound (0.45kg), and that 100g² of (tesco's) dark chocolate contains only 490 calories, you need not feel guilty at all about it.
I believe the brands of chocolate you get in Singapore taste better too. But oh make sure it contains more than 70% cocoa. The contrast will be all the more sharper, and the enjoyment you glean from eating such a sinfully sweet delight will be all the more intense.
Yummy.
__________________________________________________________________
¹I choose to eat in a crude, but time-saving way - popping a chunk of dark chocolate into my mouth, then a cherry. Taking care not to chew on the pit of course.
²Typically equivalent to 8 chunks, each chunk containing 4 'squares'.

You know after all this trouble I went to, the tutor wasn't at the lesson today.
Fucking hell.

Was reading up today for tuesday's case when I realised why NUS (and elsewhere) only offers top students (academically and otherwise) for medicine¹. You really have to study so much for med. I know this may sound very bhb, as a med student, but I think many med students articulate this idea thru physical manifestations like developing white hair, suffering from stress and depression, and becoming caffeine addicts.
Seriously. Its like, after reading up so much and taking stock of what I've covered in the weeks before, I've realised that I really am lagging behind. In terms of each topic - be it bone ossification, embryological development, immunology, or ageing, as I'm reading up now - the amount of stuff to be covered is just daunting.
No I'm not getting disheartened by the mountains of knowledge that are in the library I have yet to discover, its more like, wow. I really have been slacking for far too long. The isolated nights spent in the library studying - I'm actually proud of them, when others probably regard nightly visits to the library (or spent studying at home) as 'normal', and would be aghast at the amount of time I waste chatting online and doing assorted time-consuming stuff that have no benefit to my studies, or otherwise.

I now postulate several reasons why doctors are perceived as aloof and distant -
1. They are aloof. 'Cause with the enormous amount of information you know, as well as the knowledge that you can actually save or treat a person, some people may be so secure in their status that they become too self-confident. Feel that some people really waste their own lives by destroying themselves with alcohol and drugs. Or give up on themselves (when they're sick) with no apparent reason.
2. They lose the 'human touch', the social interaction that everyone needs outside his or her occupation. Basically they lose empathy in the eyes of their patients.
I believe this perception of doctors is changing - rather, most doctor and educators are actively trying to change this perception. I don't know about other schools, but here they seem to stress a lot about empathising with the patient and communication skills. How to make people feel they are being listened to. How to treat illnesses psychologically as well as medically.

Hmm veered off topic there. But yeah. Did I tell you I had an interview with my tutor on Friday? He told me I was too quiet, not actively participating in class discussions. Wanted me to speak up more, especially in the next session, or he'd give me a mark for PBL that's in the last 10% of the cohort.
I realise he doesn't see why I haven't been speaking up, and shall have to show him some 'power' on tuesday. But I guess he was correct when he said I have to re-examine the reasons (for myself) why I haven't spoken up often (though I must stress, I have when the need arises). I'm too nice - I put too much emphasis on group harmony and don't like discord. And of course, more importantly, I haven't read up enough.
I realise there are members in the group who always seem to cover what I've covered - and much more.
And no they're not no-life creatures who spout medical phrases (and only medical facts) and spend their eternal life in libraries huddled in the most obscure corners - a particularly brilliant one is a sportswoman who's in the school hockey team and medic's football team, I think, as well.
I realise I've just got to organise my time more efficiently.
Holidays are coming up - I really need to think of timetables as schedules that help me, and not weird contraptions mad scientists with frizzly hair use such that they do not forget to brush their teeth at regular intervals.

_______________________________________________________________
¹And its not just medicine. I believe it applies just as well to pretty much any other subject which requires intense memory work. Like law, chemical engineering, and biomedical sciences. The list isn't exhaustive.

After months and months of searching, I've finally found a pair of shoes that I like!!! YAY!!!! :D

My father once expounded this fact of marriage to me: You just have to keep on falling in love with your partner - again and again - for your marriage to work.
Today, I found out that it applies just as well to the subject I've chosen to study.
Last night (this morning, rather), a friend suddenly complained of chest pain just after we played a computer game. I was damn worried¹ and rushed to his room, you know, just in case I had to do something drastic, ie, CPR.
Thankfully nothing happened, and he seemed alright after that, but it really reminded me of how important what I had learnt was.
You know, somehow, subconsciously, I've spent the night here at the library studying with renewed vigour, when I had lost quite some motivation to study the past week. Its as though an important stimulus has triggered my brain cells to proliferate the sense of urgency that I've been lacking the past few weeks².
I guess for whatever subject you're doing, you just have to search for - or just notice - your own stimuli that you need from what's happening around you.
And mei, it doesn't have to be medicine or any health-related occupation - just recognise and realise what you are really interested in (for pa it was the structures around him, for me its the people in my life) - and choosing a course won't be much of a difficult decision.
You have four months for you to explore all the options out there - for NUS, application deadline is 1st April, for UK its june - and I'm sure you'll find the right one. (No I'm not pressurising you :P)
And to the rest of my friends, I'm sure you've found your reason for whatever it is you're doing - if not yet, I'm sure you will soon. :)

Yup feeling particularly pensive today.

________________________________________________________________
¹ From what he described, I couldnt be sure whether it was angina, or just something less malignant.
² Yes I'm studying cancer and cell proliferation now.

Went out with two friends on friday night, somehow ended up in a big tesco which sold lots of yummy chocolate desserts.
Didn't know a friend - well, senior, technically, Exactly one year older than I am, in fact - had a weakness for chocolate too.
And made a huge mistake - I should really have stopped a friend from bringing a trolley in, when I knew the consequences - and we ended up buying 6 desserts. Yeah mostly chocolate ones.
Went back to said senior's place, made another huge mistake in opening the seals from all the desserts.
After two desserts, we actually got so sick of them that we had to play assorted games like Indian poker, table tennis and table soccer to finish them.

Seriously, you can get sick of too much chocolate. Even for a chocolate lover like me. And you know how much of a chocolate lover I am, so yeah.
Put me off chocolatey stuff for a whole day.

Get to know yourself better

Your view on yourself:
You are intelligent, honest and sweet. You are friendly to everybody and don't like conflict. Because you're so cheerful and fun people are naturally attracted to you and like to talk to you.

The type of girlfriend/boyfriend you are looking for:
You are a true romantic. When you are in love, you will do anything and everything to keep your love true.

Your readiness to commit to a relationship:
You are ready to commit as soon as you meet the right person. And you believe you will pretty much know as soon as you might that person.

The seriousness of your love:
You are very serious about relationships and aren't interested in wasting time with people you don't really like. If you meet the right person, you will fall deeply and beautifully in love.

Your views on education:
Education is very important in life. You want to study hard and learn as much as you can.

The right job for you:
You're a practical person and will choose a secure job with a steady income. Knowing what you like to do is important. Find a regular job doing just that and you'll be set for life.

How do you view success:
You are confident that you will be successful in your chosen career and nothing will stop you from trying.

What are you most afraid of:
You are afraid of having no one to rely on in times of trouble. You don't ever want to be unable to take care of yourself. Independence is important to you.

Who is your true self:
You are full of energy and confidence. You are unpredictable, with moods changing as quickly as an ocean. You might occasionally be calm and still, but never for long.

Right.....

I'm now treasurer.
Interesting ah, I'm treasurer again after all these years.

Decided to pamper myself today. Bought some mixed seafood (squid, mussels, prawn - from sainsbury's) and beansprouts, cooked myself laksa! Had resisted the urge to utilise the laksa mix Mum had sent me until now.
Niiiiiiiiiiceeeeeeeeeee!
:D