I hate this website. It is broken.

Oops. Forgot something. I might have to eat my words about the Duke Hospital not being able to do anything. It seems they found another donor after all. What were the odds? God works in mysterious ways.

Good news. I have finagled my way into switching a presentation I had during exam period forward a week, which means that I have NO FINAL EXAMS this semester. How amazing is that? I've been looking into plane tickets to California for flights that leave on April 25th and rubbing it in with every single person I've met today. Hehhehheh.

I'm leaving for an R&B retreat to Winston-Salem tomorrow afternoon. Coming back sometime on Saturday.

Last thing before I go to bed...the Singapore Students' Assocation had its AGM a few hours ago, and, well, I'm on the excom now. Secretary. Look at it this way...it will look good on a resume, and people wanted me to do it. Pro patria, pro gloriam. Stop it. Stop laughing. Now.

I suppose that everyone's seen the article about the "tragic error" at Duke University Hospital where the girl got a heart and lungs of the wrong blood type. It's really kind of shocking that something like that could still happen in this day and age. I mean, complications arising from surgery, fine. Mismatched blood types from the best surgeons in the country? Not so acceptable. As if that wasn't bad enough, the poor gir's family was told that the mistake was made due to a "clerical error". "Sorry, Mrs Santillan, your daughter's going to die because someone couldn't tell the difference between the letters 'A' and 'O'". Geez. I think even Elmo could manage to get his vowels right on a good day. Time to dust off those Sesame Street tapes, Dr. Fulkerson.

So, as I write this, Duke leads Maryland by 4 at the halfway mark, the U.S. comtinues on its inexorable march towards war, and this poor girl is dying somewhere in the large building 2 quadrangles away from me. I really feel kind of sad about it. Say a prayer with me. All the medical expertise in this University isn't going to save her now.

Ben Affleck should just stop acting in movies before he rends the known universe in two. And he should stop writing movies too. And while he's at it, maybe he should just go and become a used car salesman in Sasketchewan. Joe Pantoliano, in the mean while, rocks my world. Rock on, Joey Pants!

My IM is in a state of ruination, so forgive me if things are going badly on that front.

I've graduated from soldering to drilling holes, so it's not far to the Nobel Prize now. At least my pay checks are beginning to come in.

Food:
Synthetic tempura

Music:
Walk On - U2

Books:
Number Ten - Sue Townsend

The reason that I hardly drop the names of any of my friends in here is that I feel really uncomfortable talking about them "in public". I surfed through an e-journal of one of my friends once and I was just totally weirded out by seeing my name appear in some entries. I'd rather not put anyone through that. Anyway, it's more fun to be randomly selective and twist the truth.

Stupidity
I forgot Shaun's birthday. Every time I do that I tell myself that I have to create a system for remembering people's birthdays, and then I put it off, and then it happens again.

Junk Food
I found banana chips in the lobby shop. They're more sugary than the ones you can find in S.E. Asia, but they're a fair substitute.

Marine Lab
No one can help me! I don't want to sink $150 into their coffers! Respond, Helen Nearing!

Pigeons
One of them keeps pecking me every time I go to take it out of its cage. Talk about biting the hand which feeds you. I really feel like smacking it, but somehow I don't think that it will help, and the more extreme measure of wringing its stupid chicken neck might not go down so well with Dr. Buhusi. It has yet to draw blood, but if it does, there will be soup, employment be damned.

Taxes
%^(*%@&#^)($^&*(@^#^&^*&^#*@

Hmm...it's been a while. Laziness becomes me.

I got my letter from the marine lab today saying that they've accepted me for the summer course and that they want a $150 deposit to confirm my place. Problem is the deposit is non-refundable and I won't know whether they're giving me a scholarship until April 1st. Blech. Now I have to haul myself down to the Bursar's office and ask them what they make of that. They'd better be helpful. On top of that, the course that I wanted to do (Marine Oceanography) isn't being offered this summer. I've ended up with my second choice (Marine Invertebrate Zoology), which is not exactly what I wanted to do.

Mmm...zooplankton.

I found this great new file sharing device. It's called bit torrent, which you can download here. It's really fast, which is great, but what's even better is that this website posts torrent files of TV shows before they even air on TV. It's the ultimate in spoiler technology. Get broadband! Tell your friends! Don't let the megacorporations win their war!

JKS's take on bowling:
"...the natural pastime for Americans to take to since it basically involves staying in one place and hurling a ball at things." Sedentary...and free anger management at the same time.

I do like bowling, though, and I think I'd like it a lot more if I were a little better at it. I think I'm doing something fundamentally wrong because my thumb always feels like it's broken the day after.

Got my first shout-out on TWOP this week (I'm Iago, in case you didn't know).

Otherwise: too much work. Too many tests. Time to hit the ephedrine.

So lust is a worse sin than gluttony because there is no pornographic equivalent of pate de foie gras. Unless Gourmet magazine counts. Mmm...prime rib.

I have received the ying1 xiong2 VCD. Shout-out to Poods. Now all I need to do is find time to actually watch it. It has to go in the line with the five million other movies I've downloaded and haven't had the time to view.

We were supposed to go to the EEG lab today for a tour but it snowed and our professor didn't trust us crossing Erwin Road because of the treacherous 2 inches of precipitation. Wuss. Instead, he did a lame in-class demonstration which didn't work because the cap with the electrodes couldn't fit over his head. $35,000 a year for this.

Food:
Cannoli, probably not authentic

Music:
Cabaret, the musical

I wish that people would stop insisting that I have a British accent. It would be wonderful if I did, but given the olla podrida of influences that have been thrown into the stewpot of my speech patterns over the years, I find it strange that people pick upon the one accent that has probably affected me the least. I think I've given up all hope of ever acquiring a faux American accent. I just don't seem to be malleable in that respect. Speaking like an American is overrated anyway, from what I hear.

Apparently, 60% of people from Asian descent are incapable of metabolizing acetyaldehyes (the product of the breakdown of alcohol) because of a certain allele that predominates in the ethnic group. This isn't dangerous, on the contrary, it makes people feel sick and causes flushing and nausea, thus putting sufferers off drinking and preventing them from becoming alcoholics. It's funny, though, because I can't say I know anyone who has this condition, never mind 6 out of 10. Just thought you'd like to know.

Sometimes, you just feel like crying.

blah blah blah blah Georgetown blah blah blah concert blah blah blah sketchy house; three kegs of beer blah blah blah questions about ownership rights and trespassing blah blah blah police etc.

so no, none of us are languishing in gaol, but i'll leave off the exciting albeit somewhat complicated details of the weekend. oh all right, a few more details.

wendy's frosty freezes
unintentional busking
an 18-year old who looked 12 named steve
mental math
numerous long island ice teas
being hit on the head by a door
Lost In Hell

Food:
Nothing nutritious

Let's see if my writing improves under the influence...hehehe

In the yearly competition for the Saddest. Chinese. New Year's. Eve. Ever, a bunch of us went out for Chinese food at this place that cooks EVERYTHING with brown sauce (much like the Chinese restaurants we went ot in Alava, Spain). No yu sheng. No mahjong. No ten million aunties and uncles. Just random quarrels about whether or not to order the tilapia (mispronounced to the umpteen squillionth degree) and a tiff with the waitress about who could or could not drink wine at our table.

I have a new tutee for biology who knows everything and just wants a "study buddy" so now I'm getting paid to sit around with her for an hour and do, essentially, nothing. Milk and honey indeed. I need more jobs like that. Keep 'em coming, Peer Tutoring Center.

In other news, I am halfway caught up with Six Feet Under. And though it is not quite as good as The Sopranos, it is very enjoyable nonetheless, much more so than the garbage we are inundated with on network TV. (Yes, Dawson's Creek people, we're looking at you).

Prof Kort:

"If you get the chance you really should see Mr. Holland's Opus. It really demonstrates [C.S. Lewis'] dichotomy between the individuality of goodness and the homogeneity of evil. Of course, Mr. Holland comes to a very atypical end in the movie - he gets a concert played for him. Most good people don't even get a concert for them at the end - they just die."

Happy Chinese New Year!

Poetry:

1) A haiku

Yesterday it worked
Today it has broken down
Windows is like that

2) Shout-out

My name is Gato
I have metal joints
Beat me up
And earn 15 silver points

I spent the whole afternoon soldering wires together and inhaling lead fumes. I hear that's bad for you.

3) Fill in the blanks

There once was a man from Nepal
Whose _____ was incredibly small
His perpetual prayer
To the powers up there
Was ________________________

I swear that the pigeons hate me and I feel really bad having to deprive them of food. Presumably, it's part of my whole guilt complex, and the ever-present paranoia that immanent justice really has been built into the universe.

Contributions for the fill-in-the-blank poem should be sent via e-mail.

I lost my gloves, so it seems the dire predictions have come true. The screaming may now commence. In my defense though, I must say that they're really silly items of clothing. You have to take them off indoors, and there's really no sensible place to put them while you're fiddling around with other things. They're like umbrellas. You come in out of the rain, your umbrella is sopping wet, and there really isn't anything you can do with it except hang it on a chair or prop it up against something, and there you go, it's forgotten. They should make umbrellas/gloves with sensors and a device that you can put in your pocket that beeps when it's beyond a certain range of the thing you're trying not to lose. Or something...anything, I swear that the sole reason the umbrella industry is burgeoning is because our family keeps misplacing them, and if we lived in a temperate country, I would say the same of the people who make gloves.

Damn it.

So half of the world's computers go down today and I can't pay my credit card bills online. If I have to mail them a cheque I'm going to start losing hair, because that's going to require finding an envelope, a stamp and my cheque book. Is that "check" or "cheque"? Or are both of them OK?

Music:
Anything except those people who auditioned for American Idol and blew out the eardrums of half of America last week. And Good Charlotte. And Kelly Clarkson. Especially Kelly Clarkson.

Books:
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller (finally)

Food:
Lots of cheese

So re-reading that last post, it kind of sounds like we share a laundry basket, which we don't.

I have started on the pigeons, my job being to weigh them, feed them and give them water every day (to begin with, anyway). As you might imagine, the hardest part of the exercise is catching them. They put up one hell of a struggle, and sometimes end up flying around the room. Pigeons flying around the room, Dr. Buhusi tells me, is not good. He also tells me that the reason we keep the lab doors locked all the time is so that animal rights activists can't get in and let all the animals loose, like in the Rats of Nimh or something.

So either I suck at html or blogger is just not cooperating with me because that picture just won't show up.