Showing in Griffith this weekend

Um. Happy Halloween, yo.

Something exciting! We are in the finals for SoJam, a huge a cappella festival in the Southeast! We sent in an audition tape that we had just randomly made from one of our performances, and they actually picked us as one of the 6 best groups. Now I don't really get excited about things that easily, as you know, but this really is something. The judges include Sean Altman, founder of Rockapella, the big daddy of all modern-day a cappella, and Andrew Chaikin, the best vocal percussionist born on this earth. Which is, like, wow. And whoa. And to top if all off, Da Vinci's Notebook are performing live. It's an absolutely fitting way for me to round off my time in Rhythm and Blue. Without bragging, I feel that the group has come a long way since our freshman year, and I would not be at all surprised if the group became a household name in collegiate a cappella in the next few years.

By the way, fun factoid: the meteorite that hit the Earth 65 million years ago in the Gulf of Mexico would have generated winds up to 40000 mph in the immediate vicinity of the impact, and 600 mph as far away as Texas. A 600 mph gale is 3 times the force of the highest measured wind speed on Earth in modern times, and would have been sufficient to literally blow a dinosaur off its feet and away.

I love Bio.

Rain, rain, endless and dismal.

From Brick Lane:
"What I did not know - I was a young man - is that there are two kinds of love. The kind that starts off big and slowly wears away, that seems you can never use it up and then one day is finished. And the kind that you don't notice at first, but which adds a little bit to itself every day, like an oyster makes a pearl, grain by grain, a jewel from the sand."

Parents weekend is depressing, although this year's was a marginal improvement over the last. Our concert last night was one of our best performances this semester and we sold a bushel of our new CDs. I got to meet Jon's parents. They're rather elderly and remind me of someone I know back home (but can't put my finger on it). After-concert gelato and bizarre animation ensued.

Today was all about catching up on sleep (courtesy of DST). I had one meal the entire day: chicken cacciatore. I only mention that because it's fun to say. Cacciatore. Heh.

From Brick Lane :
Bibi was looking at the snowstorms on his desk. There was a line of them along the back in every sahde of colored glass. They were arranged by color, running from clear glass at the far end to a small black dome over a frozen winter garden. He picked out one and offered it. Bibi held it on the flat of her pal, and peered at the little lattice-worked tower inside.

"No, no. You shake it." Dr. Azad explained that he had got it in Paris. They watched the snow swirl around inside the galss and come to a peaceful arrangement at the bottom. "That's it." He took it back. "That is like life," he told Bibi. "Remember that is just like life."

"Why?" said Bibi, surprised into speaking. She swallowed with difficulty.

Dr. Azad picked up another snowstorm and shook. "If you are strong you withstand the storm. Can you see? The storm comes and everything is blurred. But all that is built on a solid foundation has only to stand fast and wait for the storm to pass. Do you see?"

Bibi nodded, so slowly she might as well have shaken her head.

"And do you know how to make a solid foundation?"

Again, Bibi gave her slow, negative nod.

"Then would you mind," said Dr. Azad, "telling me just how to do it?"

Sprained my leg a little while running today. Cannot locate a single tube of muscle rub in my entire dorm.

Our CD is finally out! If you want a download, go here and you'll find a track. (Don't go in scripts, that's just some rubbish).

Going to Boston on the 6th. Sigh, I am very poor.

The assistant attorney-general was our guest du jour in Psych 238 today and damn it was dull as ditchwater. I weary of classes. It's that time of the semester where one is suddenly stranded in between breaks with no source of revitalization.

Exchange in Psych section today:
TA: I've looked through next week's test and I think it's easier than the first one.
Girl in corner: (suppresses a giggle)
TA: What's so funny.
Girl in corner: Oh nothing...just that I got a hundred for the first test so if it's even easier...

And...some people don't know when to shut up.

It was a gorgeous day today, one of those rare late October afternoons where the sun actually decides that its job is to provide the little creatures below with warmth and light. Laptop and reading in hand, I sauntered off to the new cafe in Duke Gardens to see if I could get some work done. And it was shut! Nasty, cruel Duke Dining Services. Humph.

I received the "course selection form" for Beaufort next semester and there's this course on sea turtles that I want to do but can't because it's being offered on mainland U.S.A. when I'm going to be in Bermuda. Damn! I wonder if I'm going be able to update my blog in Bermuda. I suppose they have internet access. Anyway, I'm thinking Marine Invertbrate Zoology, "Light and Life" (half course), Marine Ecology, Coastal Ecotoxicology and Pollution (maybe) and something else which will bring me up to 34 course credits and graduation. Yay.

Watched Tarantino's new offering today and feel in need of a good cleansing. All in all, it's been a good week for movies: Pirates of the Caribbean for a dollar in the BC yesterday, School of Rock (downloaded) and Full Metal Jacket (downloaded).

Books:
Brick Lane - Monica Ali

Four hours scanning people is not the best way to spend a Saturday morning, I'll tell you that right now. Nothing else terribly interesting going on at the moment.

Oktoberfest! Beer on points!

I have given out my last set of recommendations (to Dr. McCarthy) so I'm home free on that front. Dr. McCarthy is such an enigma -- I know he's a really friendly and approachable person, and yet he has this aura of scholarly impregnability that makes me so anxious every time I have to meet with him. He was so nice about agreeing to write my recs, though, and I'm extremely pleased - he's incredibly influential in the academic world, knows so many other professors, and is certainly going to improve my chances.

GRE score reports are in the mail.

Things have been quiet since fall break otherwise. Went to Ailian's room to profer freeze-dried bak kwa but she was feeling under the weather. Also,could not find anyone to have dinner with so had a rather solitary day. The weekend is here again, though, so I guess I should appreciate the time to chill and be by myself for a while.

Books:
The Book of Illusions - Paul Auster

The trip, in brief:

University of Richmond, 10/10
4 hour drive. Partook of Frosty Dairy Dessert (Wendy's) and listened to a lot of Three Doors Down and John Mayer. First to arrive. Movie being shot on campus: Living the Lie - small indie film for some festival or another. Sang - made a pig's ear of concert because of (a) poor acoustics, (b) turned-off crowd, (c) dispersed standing arrangement. Went back to dude's apartment (402). Jeremy and Dan played beer pong with Richmond folks. Knuth happy as the Cubs won in 11 innings. Some sketchiness and rum and assorted people making out in the kitchen. Rum and Coke(s). Smirnoff Ices. Wafflehouse run with Andrew and Knuth and Xander at midnight with promise that said Wafflehouse was fifteen minutes away. Drove for half-an-hour before conceding that we were lost and asking directions from Asian dude outside 24-hour pharmacy. Found that Wafflehouse was 15 miles away. Went there anyway. Found that there was a line for the place at 1:15 in the morning. Waited, amidst smoke and grease and the unemployed. Read a travel magazine on South-East Asia, felt momentarily nostalgic for home and, of all things, satay. Seated at 1:30, ordered hash browns, scattered, smothered and chunked. Discussed, among other things, Steve Buscemi, Andrew's father's new movie (set in Russia) "Love and Honor", Christopher Walken, maple syrup, carjacking and homestyle cooking. Drove back, caffeinated. Arrived back at apartment 402 at 2:30 to find no available space to sleep. Tried to sleep in armchair downstairs but failed because of incessantly chatting people, in particular this one Richmond dude who was convinced that Rebecca (one of our freshmen) is a lesbian, and was trying to get her to admit it. 3 a.m.: Xander gave up, and fled upstairs to the one available bedroom; went to sleep on floor. 3:05: Discovered that toothbrush was in Jeremy's car. Brushed teeth with finger. Stole someone's sleeping bag. Finally got to sleep at 4-something, downstairs.

Princeton 10/11
Woken up 8:00 (inadvertently) by Dan, who had to leave to get back to Duke for other rehearsal (The Wiz). Couldn't get back to sleep. Showered. Felt like hell and craved coffee. Searched for coffee; found none, only beer (everywhere). Waited as people woke up one by one about an hour-and-a-half later. Much passing around of Ibuprofen. On the road at 10 in car with Simon, Lindsey, Ryan and Kristen. Stopped at Cracker Barrel for comfort food: apple pancakes, ham, sausage patty, eggs (sunny-side up) and much needed caffeinated beverage. Tried to solve a Rubik Cube; failed. Tried to finish arranging score in car in afternoon; failed (battery died). New Jersey turnpike at 6, Princeton shortly afterward (New Jersey, state of no left turns!). Dinner at crappy school cafeteria, but good ice-cream afterward (peanut butter) at quaint Princeton pub. Pictures of cows of wall. Had strong craving for eggplant parmigiana sub, but too full. Sang in arch with Princeton Roaring 20. Very good that night, despite Jeremy forgetting pitch pipe and needing me to give pitches. Blend, volume, performance, energy: all spot on. Eating clubs afterwards (like last year). Terrace. Sketchiness in basement. Beer on tap. Place hot as hell. Gyrating, etc. Exact details of debauchery not included. Fast forward several hours - back in Elizabeth (our host's) apartment. Fell asleep almost immediately on fancy-shaped chaise-lounge - Liz's brother took the futon (visiting for Parent's Weekend) and everyone else was consigned to the floor. Heh. Middle of the night: Aditi (sophomore, our grp.) gets up, exits the apartment, knocks on the door of the adjacent apartment, and drunkenly spends the night there. Rest of us wake up following morning wandering where in hell she want. Found her. Story of the tour, etc.

Columbia 10/12
Left Princeton 11 a.m. following morning, after bagel, cream cheese, and exceedingly good brew. Anticipated 2-hour drive to NY, gridlock in Lincoln Tunnel bumped it up to 4. Dropped Andrew off to see his mother, and went to Thai restaurant with Betsy and Knuth. Had 100% genuine keropok, and fake, but nonetheless satisfying, Pad Thai. Took subway to Times Square. Walked around, shopped, marvelled once again at the Consumers Paradise that is the U S of A. Decided to see new Tarantino movie when back in Duke. Concert: 8:30 p.m, Lerner Hall. Sang - performance decent. Missed Yisheng, who had gone to see me, because I had to leave as soon as the concert was done (Knuth needed to get back to work on Monday). Roy Rogers at midnight. Duke at 5:30. Slept like death until afternoon.

I think that covers the barebones of it. It's hard to write in detail about anything on this crummy site, so that'll have to do. Live with it.

Gave Dr. Pelphrey the recommendation forms with little ado, and got much done in lab today. Progressing very well with independent study; it looks like getting a paper out this semester is very possible.

Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the premier scholarly publication for neuroscientists: "Brain activation during Human Male Ejaculation". Methods, and I quote: "The volunteers were asked to perform the following tasks twice: rest, erection, sexual stimulation, and ejaculation followed by sexual stimulation. To minimize motor activity by the volunteer during the scan, sexual stimulation was provided by his female partner by means of manual penile stimulation in the tasks stimulation and ejaculation. Manual stimulation was continued through ejaculation. The volunteer's head was maintained in position with a head-restraining adhesive band, and to minimize visual input, volunteers were asked to keep their eyes closed." Um, right. I'm amused. And wondering how they got funding for the study.

Anyway, on that lovely note, I'm off to New Jersey and New York, so don't expect anything here till next Monday, earliest. Adios.

Dr. Buhusi talked to me for 1.5 hours today to try and discover my motivations for going to grad school.

Me: blah blah blah blah clinical programs blah blah blah good of humanity blah blah blah improving the state of mental health care in singapore blah blah blah passion for research blah blah blah blah blah blah etc.
Him: But are you really sure you want to go?

And then we started talking about how I didn't believe that science was a paradigm which could explain everything and he went on about how if you're a real scientist you wouldn't want to subscribe to philosophical beliefs, and how if you're a psychologist you don't want to depend on the "soul" as the motive force behind behavior and blah blah religious impinging on my personal beliefs fishcakes.

Anyway.

One down and two to go. I rather dread having to ask Dr. McCarthy because he has this stern disapproving way of looking at you even though I know he's very nice. But well, one at a time. Dr. Pelphrey tomorrow.

Am arranging a new song despite having a midterm on Thursday. Perfect prioritization of time, as always.

Got a haircut.

Finished putting together teacher recommendation packages; hope professors are satisfied. Going to see Dr. Buhusi tomorrow to hand him his package and say nice buttery things to him so that he'll forget for the few hours that he's writing my recommendations what an incompetent I actually am.

Music:
Kingdom In the Sky - Da Vinci's Notebook. Among others.

I was fixing my recommendations to give to professors just now in the commons room and this girl who's studying there remarks that it looks like quite a hefty operation. I agree, and she asks me if the entire application is in the envelopes and I sort of goggle at her, like, um, hello, you haven't seen the half of it, dear. Sigh.

Books:
The Well of Lost Plots - Jasper Fforde

Music:
American Tune - Simon and Garfunkel

Sang in Southpoint for 3 hours yesterday. Earned $50 (unsolicited) tip from one gentleman whom we suspect did not know how much he was giving, and handed out numerous business cards. Excellent exposure, although experience exhausting. Waffle House afterwards.

Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield win Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering MRI

After a very filling (and very late) dinner last night I declined to write anything. Chow this morning was at an SSA picnic, where Ailian and Shiying had apparently gone crazy with the food-buying. The menu: proscuitto ham, French loaves, pound cake, carrot sticks and about 6 kinds of cheese, spreadable and otherwise. Fancy. People turned up late because of partying the night before, and a lot didn't come because of studying (lousy excuse), but enough: Lipyeow and his wife, Shiyi, Swee San, Shawn, Yaoquan, Rivai, Kelvin, Alfred. Rushed off halfway through the meal to be in time for a concert for P-frosh, which was good, but short. Andrew Wallace's father, the director was there, hearing us for the first time.

First draft of my personal statement is done, thank goodness. It was such a pain to write. I'm getting my recommendations in to professors next week as well as getting GRE scores sent, and then I should be nearly set, except for all the fastidious little details I've forgotten that will no doubt end up taking longer to fix than the "bulk" of the work itself.

Books:
The Horizontal Instrument - Christopher Wilkins

Oh, and by the way, I got my AMEX working again. It was something to do with them not having my address, which was mysterious, but at least I fixed it.

Question of the day

If you take a rocket ship to Alpha Centauri and find an organism there that has exactly the same genetic makeup as a robin on earth, is it a robin?

Food:
Cheesecake

Books:
Till We Have Faces - C.S. Lewis
~which incidentally is very lovely, but hard, because it presents us which such a complicated picture of love, something that we want simplified nowadays, cut into little squares, wrapped in rice paper and packed neatly in an elegant gift box. Shout out to Minz for finally getting me to read it.

Apparently "more worst" is part of her repertoire too.

I know I complain about this every year but my room is a refrigerator and damn housing services refuses to turn on the heat.