Friend?

True friends are hard to come by these days. A friend is defined as a person, who is usually not a member of your family, whom you know well and whom you like a lot. Like it or not, friends influence us in many ways, and some "friends" will try to change you into something you are not and most of the times the new you is not a person you can like or be proud of.

I do not like it when "friends" spread hurtful words and rumours about other friends no matter how true they are. And the worst of these type of "friends" are those that can do this with malicious intent and glee. Utterly disrespectful. It is almost like an addiction to them. They do this because they feel that they are alone and they do not want you to have other friends other than him/herself. These "friends" talk bad about other people to you so that you cannot face them without feeling ashamed or being fake as now you know something that you should not know about them, and eventually you will drift away from other people and you can only turn to these supposed "friends".

Light gossipping is one thing but "friends" who spread venomous gossip about others is an entirely different story altogether and beware of these "friends" as they can declare that they are your "friend" in this moment and backstab you in the next second when you are not looking.

Another type of "friend" that I despise are those that put you or other people down in the face just to make him/herself feel better about themselves. These "friends" are those who know that they are lacking in many ways but they choose to put someone else down or hurt the feelings of others just to prove to themselves that somehow they are superior beings to others instead of working on their weaknesses or trying to look at themselves in a positive light. Hopeless.

Also, there are "friends" who take other people for granted when they themselves do not want others to take them for granted. What hypocrites.

The traits of these "friends" is too long to list in one post. Human nature can be so ugly sometimes.

Pot Calling the Kettle Black

Last Friday I was doing FTIR in the lab and it was a day that was a bit on the disastrous side, but the disasters did not come from me hehe. It was Nithiya who started the disaster with the vacuum dessicator (do not pry for more information or he will whine to me or go on his famous rampage =p) and I told Wai Leong about it. This was what happened after that...

Wai Leong was cleaning the mortar with ethanol and he was saying "Haih..Nithiya is becoming a disaster..." and at the same time he was placing the bottle containing ethanol on the table i saw a drip fell onto the table and I was thinking "It couldn't have fallen into the weighing boat containing the KBr right?" but when I went over and checked the weighing boat, part of the KBr in it was already soaked in ethanol and cannot be used anymore, so Nithiya had to re-weigh the KBr again. Just imagine the situation I was in. I couldn't stop laughing cause Mr. Disaster calling another person disaster is like the pot calling the kettle black.

After that there was this time when Wai Leong squirted some of the ethanol on the KBr disc and the papers underneath the disc were handwritten notes using gel ink. And the ink spread beautifully across the paper. Luckily those were not my papers, if not all hell will break loose.

And some time after that, Wai Leong was picking up the weighing boat from the table and he somehow lost his grip on the weighing boat and some of the KBr spilt from the weighing boat. I was laughing so hard till my sides hurt cause I remembered Wai Leong's earlier comment while he went out to tell Nithiya he had to re-weigh the KBr again. This is such a joke. I will never get bored working with these people I tell you. No hard feelings Wai Leong and Nithiya. =)

Ramblings

It was such a huge relief after I was done with my research proposal presentation last Friday. Luckily the presentation went well, I was all nerves the whole time before the presentation but when the time came and I was sitting in MPH 4, I was so calm it felt weird. There's no use to freak out when something is inevitable right? But I was happy with the results in the end. =)

I'm still not used to this whole research thing. I have not officially started yet so I am not as busy as the others and I'm not used to having free time. It almost feels like I'm wasting my time not doing or achieving anything like in previous semesters where there was no time for anything else. Guess IMU has trained us well in using every second of our waking moment working towards something. But things seem to be a bit too calm now...almost like the calm before a big storm...a bit creepy...anyway I think things will start to get busy soon...

Speaking of which, I joined the "B105 gathering/dinner" on Monday at the Overseas restaurant at Sri Petaling on Monday night. The food was terrible in the sense that it did not taste as good as those at the other Overseas branches and it was so not worth my money which is a lot for this kind of meal and the atmosphere was so-so. Plus, I was so not in the mood that day. I don't know why. Not going to comment anymore. What's done is done so I'm just going to get over it and move on.

Feelings in Speech?

Last week I had a mock presentation with my supervisor and I received a comment that I presented unfeelingly. He said that my pronounciation was fine but that I did not speak confidently or persuasive enough. This is not the first time that anyone commented that I speak unfeelingly.

The other time was when I was asking this simulated patient some questions about his health and this lecturer told me "You do not seem concerned for the patient. I feel that it is in the way that you are speaking to him." Sigh. I did feel concerned for the mock patient but I just did not project it in my speech. It is not necessary to project your every emotion into your speech right?

It is not that I do not want to but I know that I do have a problem in expressing all my feelings through my speech other than anger or sarcasm (yes I know this and some others do too) but nevertheless I am somehow always misunderstood as a cold, unfeeling person. Sigh. I have to work this thing out somehow and try to inject more feelings into my speech in the future. And I am also trying very hard to not fall sick until my proposal presentation is over. Keeping my fingers crossed for my presentation!

I Love Spain!

Yessss!!!! Spain won the EURO 2008!! They so deserved to win it!! The goal by Torres was fab and Casillas was great! If only Villa could have played...Actually most players on this team were in great in most of the games and their games were nicely played out. Spain could have scored another goal (especially the one attempt that I can remember by Senna) and many more which were so close but Germany just got lucky.

I do watch football whenever I can and I am no expert at the game but I watch for the fun of it. Especially World Cup and EURO. They are a must-watch. And this year's game was really, really good! Except for the departure of Portugal and Netherlands at the quarter-finals due to Germany and Russia respectively, which almost made me not want to watch the game anymore. Such a waste...Too bad Italy couldn't make it to the semi-finals but I would be happy anyway if either Italy or Spain made it to the semis. Thankfully, Spain thrashed Russia in the semi-finals (again! haha I don't care, I support whichever team that beat Russia, sorry Russian fans) and Germany in the finals (same thing). I love Spain now!

Only people who watched the game throughout can understand what I'm talking about here so I can understand if anyone gets confused with my notoriously terrible and extremely brief comment of the game haha. After all the excitement for 3 weeks (and 3 weeks of sleeping almost at 5am together with complimentary panda eyes), it is back to research, research, and more research (and more panda eyes plus sleepless nights plus stress). *sigh*

First Aid

On the 21st of June 2008, I finally went for the Introduction to First Aid and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation course with Andrew the Palli and believe me it was horrible in the sense that I had to go through almost 8 hours of lame jokes and comments that at some point in the middle of the course I decided that I will no longer entertain the lame comments that the instructor were feeding the participants. But horrible as it may be I finally did my electives and am now certified as a first aide! Well..kind of even though what I learnt is just the basic of the basics but that is sufficient enough. Let me just give you a few highlights of what I had to go through (there were too many comments oozing with lame-ness that I lost count halfway through). By the way, the conversations were originally in Bahasa Malaysia.

Situation 1
Instructor: Why can't you use clean cloths to cover wounds?
Me: (Thinking what is wrong with using clean cloths to cover the wounds as it is better compared to using dish rags or other soiled cloths that may cause infection to the wounds)
Instructor: Because you can't find clean cloths anywhere and at anytime. Can you find clean cloths lying by the roadside? Hahaha.
Everyone: Hahaha.
Me: (Thinking okayyyy.....)

Situation 2
Instructor: Why can't you put an unconscious victim on a table? (the CPR dummy was on the table anyway)
Someone: Because it is harder to perform CPR on a victim that is lying on a table? (now doesn't this sound sensible?)
Instructor: No. Because you can't find a table on the roadside or in the jungle, can you? Hahaha.
Everyone: Hahaha.
Me: (Thinking okayyy again. Like, when is this going to end?)

Situation 3 (and this is the final blow for me as I was bombarded by one too many lame comments by this time and I absolutely refuse to be affected by any more of them)
Instructor: What do you do when a patient is conscious and has pulse and breath?
Someone: Recovery position.
Instructor: What do you do when there is no pulse and no breath?
Someone: CPR.
Instructor: What do you do when there is a pulse but no breath?
Someone: MTM (mouth-to-mouth).
Instructor: Then what do you do when there is no pulse but there is breath?
Me: (Thinking something is weird about this situation...I mean a person with no pulse but is still breathing?? There can be no more steps right??)
Instructor: It's CL.
Everyone: (Thinking what the hell is CL???)
Instructor: Cabut Lari la!
Me: (In my mind I am banging my head on the wall and wanting very much to kill this guy standing in front of the class)

Seriously I think this may be the same guy that answered the phone call as posted in my previous post. But anyway I have my certificate already! Thank God I made it through that horrendous class alive. Palli susahla...

Birthday Celebration

Date: June 10th 2008

Venue: Italiannies, The Gardens MidValley

Birthday girl: Huixin

Organizers & friends: Gianwan, Eeling, Elaine, Siwei, Me

We went out to celebrate Huixin's birthday (belatedly as her birthday falls on the June 5th) and it was supposed to be a "surprise" birthday celebration for her but apparently the birthday girl was not all that surprised because somehow she kind of figured it out haha. It was a small affair, nothing too fancy and we decided on the venue on that day itself and when we went there it was as if we reserved the entire place because it was empty except for us and it was at lunchtime!

I was starving when I finally sat down and when I looked at the menu...forget about deciding what to eat I'm too hungry to think and everything looked so good, I did not care what was being ordered. This is why I do not remember any of the names of the food in the following pics but they were good especially the starter that Eeling ordered.

The flings. From left to right: Yellow Birdie (Huixin, that was how she got her nickname Birdie hehe), Bay Breeze (mine), Island Breeze (Gianwan) and Frozen Ocean (Elaine). We did not know what drinks we ordered because we couldn't hear what the waiter was saying so we decided to be a little adventurous and just picked whatever sounds nice and hoped that it turns out ok.

I was taking tentative sips of the drink cause I did not know what was it but it turned out ok. Huixin said it tasted like water that is used to wash hands when eating crabs. Okayyyy..but I was happy with my drink which is some sort of lime mixture and it is handy when you have to down lots of cheese later.

The starter that Eeling ordered. It was very, very good. Recommended if anyone goes to Italiannies. Forgot what it was called but there's a pic of it in the menu so it's easy to order haha.

The main courses. The only one I remembered was the Classic Pizza because who can forget such a simple name? But the pizza was so-so only, I prefer the ones at PastaMania. The pasta was overdone and tasted a bit soggy and by the time I got to the lasagna I could not down anymore cheese, it was so cheesy and although I like cheese but too much of it will make me not eat cheese for some time.

These are the other pics that we took during and after our meal...

There were more pics than these but I'm too lazy to upload all of them. After this we cannot go back there for some time because we were jumping here and there and taking pics everywhere haha. After our heavy lunch and taking lots of pics, we went walking around The Gardens and then Huixin and I went to KLCC to get the shoes that she wanted since last year I think...Not bad yea we can go to two different places in a day. Up next, our (Huixin and I) "date" with McDreamy at the movies hehehe...