Uni-disaster week 11&12 report (Part 1)

"Like a roller coaster ride

Like a runnin' a red light
Like a rocket ship in flight
There's nothin' else that makes me feel like whoa"
Like Whoa, by Aly & AJ

Click here to play this song

To be honest, I don't like Aly & AJ at all, just the lyrics describes what these two weeks was like. If you haven't read my week 10 post, then read it for there will not be a Monday to Friday format here (太懒惰了).

"过完整个阴天
忧伤并没有好一些
开车行驶在公路无际无边
有离开自己的感觉
读不完一本书
疲倦还剩下黑眼圈
压力的世界伤害在所难免
黄昏再美终要黑夜"
lalanandaFRY modified 黄昏, originally by 周传雄

Click here to play this song

Another song by the famous singer whose nickname is 小刚. Notice that I changed a few words here and there so it doesn't feel like I 失恋(putus cinta) by replacing love with stress. That was all I, and maybe many other batchmates, got from the recent Physiology class test I had yesterday. Now for another language, lets see.....BM

"Bersampan menghala ke pekan
Hendak mencari bunga melati
Umpan di kail ikan tak makan
Usahlah merajuk di dalam hati

Tersusun di sanggul bunga melati
Harum semerbak sepanjang hari
Bukan merajuk di dalam hati
Kesibukan sering merantai diri"
Pantun Merajuk, by unknown Malay dude/dudess

Aku memang sedang merajuk ni....!!!!AaARRRGGGHH!!!!! Kenapa Physio test macam ini? Otak ku cacat ke??? Adrenalina/epinefrina mengalir dari medula adrenal menerusi arus darah masuk kelenjar peluh...aduh...sakitnya sampai otak pun jadi gila dah!!! Transduksi isyarat dari otak, saraf-saraf badan, gentian efferent dan afferent(deria), sampai otot tangan pun hampir tulis dalam BM... Inilah maksud perkataan "Merajuk" dalam kamus saya.

Back to English. Actually there are many things to report here since I this is what I call BI-POST, but I have to study Bioscience now. Oh yes!!! As May Hwa said in her blog, all hail EARTH HOUR tonight. Switch off all lights and electrical appliances from 8.30pm to 9.30pm to support this wholesome event.
But there are 4 don't during Earth Hour:

1. Light candles (they contribute to pollution as well!!!)
2. Turn off street lamps (obviously!!! we don't want car accidents either)
3. Wear black (after cannot see each other!!!)
4. Change your desktop screen to Black (it doesn't make any difference to the Earth)

And don't forget to hang on for Part 2.....

....TO BE CONTINUED....

Uni-disaster week 10 report

Time flies as the wind blows me to the TENTH WEEK in IMU. Class tests will be coming soon starting 27th March with my hell subject, Physiology. I don't want to type so much about this week when my Physiology book is right in front of me now (I'm supposed to be reading it!!!). Please bare with me if I skip the next few weeks of post.

I think I can still share a little about this week.

Monday was Prophet Muhammad's birthday, so it was holiday = relax to everyone.

Tuesday is when the hectic day starts again and ended with Biopharm tutorial (boring...).

Wednesday is the same as Tuesday, but no tutorial, just the CAL session.

Thursday, had long long break, but I don't want to talk about what I had.

Friday was the most hectic of all. Had normal classes in the morning and tedious experiment in the afternoon.

Before I end my post, just wanna show you something I found in my garden that may interest you, a blue Robin egg. For your information, Robins are normally found in either Europe or the US (that why got Batman and Robin!!!). I know that you will be thinking "Why so 大惊小怪, bird egg only 吗!". That is what I do when I'm not studying, taking 无聊photos. (clap..clap..clap..clap)

That all folks.

lalanandaFRY 15/3/09

Uni-disaster week 9 report

This week is quite dull mostly because there was a class test right at the start. We also had 3 lab practicals this week, which makes us write another 3 reports... hectic!!!

The class test was for Foundation Chemistry, which is for now my only OK subject. Yet I didn't have much confidence in it after seeing everyone claiming they had only 1 or 2 mistakes. Questions were not really tough, I would give it a 6/10 difficulty. But I hope I could do well in the other test to come, especially Physiology, which is the toughest subject right now.

Lectures were OK as usual. These are 4 pictures to explain it all.

1. Everyone listening in lectures
2. Many writing notes
3. Dr. Sue Chen, the nice Physiology lecturer who made
4. (cont') Wei Jian stay awake for the whole lecture

1. 

Within the same day, I also had a practical for Bioscience. It wasn't as difficult as most practicals for one reason, the readings from the spectrophotometer are very nice and accurate unlike other measuring apparatus. Overall, it was easy and fast.

The other days were as usual, lectures were as usual, practicals were fun but hectic as usual. But I would want to highlight the practical I had on Friday, which is the seperation and recrystallisation practical. If you scroll down this page, you would see that I did almost the same procedures LAST WEEK!!! But of course the uni guys are not that 无聊 to make us repeat. This time it was more complicated, yet relaxing.

Sounds like an irony? Actually it was only a semi-repeat since the term recrystallisation appears in this practical again. But the seperation part was the key to unlock the recrystallisation portion. Alright! I guess if you did not do this practical, you wouldn't understand. First, we had to take a prepared unknown mixture which contains both organic and inorganic substances. Then we used a seperating funnel to extract the inorganic part by adding NaOH, thus forming 2 layers (too bad I was too busy that I couldn't take any pictures). This is a picture I got from the net to explain the layers formed.

After that, the NaOH (bottom layer) is drained twice to a beaker leaving the light yellow colour liquid in the seperating funnel to be disposed. HCl is then added to the beaker containing the NaOH to form a cloudy suspension in the solution. (again, no picture) We need to wait for around 2 minutes before we filter the solution using vacuum filtration. By the way, this is not my hand, it is Sophia's, my lab partner's hand.

Then we will get white coloured 'stuff' that needs to be recrystallised using Petroleum Ether (yea, i know it is poisonouse if it enters our body). I made a slight mistake and it became dry before I could cool it, so a weird shaped thingy was formed.

Of course I was very nervous but I decided to redo that part by redissolving it in petroleum ether again. It was worth the effort! The crystals were B.E.A.utiful!!!

This is again Sophia doing the filtration (mine was the conical flask on the right)

do you see the crystals formed? to me it looks like raw mee suah

Nice ryte? It was much better than the ones formed in the practical last week. Hopefully the next few practicals will be fun too.

By the way, Happy March 8!!! if you know what I mean. It has been an eventful year for all politicians and speculators. To me, nobody in politics are good, the only question is, "Who is worst?"

lalanandafry 8/3/09

Uni-disaster week 8 report

This week was eventful to me because I was involved in many activities:

1. Lab experiment involving crystallisation of compounds.
2. Met lecturers and S2-dudes at Taylor's.
3. Got notes from mentor.
4. Protein estimation experiment.
5. Met secondary school dudes (again)

So let me start with number 1. Our experiment was called "Purification of Organic Compounds by Recrystallisation". Just before we enter the lab, we met a few seniors who told me that it was really fun. Now I can tell everyone, "yea ryte...!!!". Okey la... it was interesting, tedious but the result was extremely w.e.i.r.d! While waiting for my recrystallisation, there was a work of art in the making on my same bench.

what do you think? quite nice right? what do you think it is?

here you go... really kesian my lab partner man...!!! she spilt a part of her saturated solution to, somemore kena publicity here. But seriously, it is a beautiful yellow crystal formation.

Mine wasn't very nice because I was too kan-jiong(in a hurry) to finish. So I cooled my solution using cold tap water and see what happens.

looks like butter cake before entering the oven.as you can see, the paste formed is so not in the shape of the crystal at all...(crying~.~")

2) Then on Wednesday, May Hwa took Chiew Vien and I to Taylor's to meet up with my old classmates and teachers. We reached there at around 11am, went into Taylor's with my old and ugly and expired Taylor's tag, then went to look for Ms Lee to give her a surprise but couldn't find her at the Orange room. After looking through new and old block, we finally found her at her office.

We had a short chat in a vacant classroom, then suddenly Baezil came in 2 of his classmates, one of which was my senior in secondary school (small world). At around 12 noon, we left the classroom to look for Ms Kwa. Coincidentally, we saw her walking up the stairs and Chiew Vien started her loud streaking "Ms Kwa.....!!!!!" which could be heard from one stairs to the other. We met up and gathered with Jegan at PizzaHut. Chat, makan, chat, makan, chat, makan and when everyone was talking about how life was after college, Chiew Vien started talking about HYBRIDISATION!!!! haha! At around 1pm, we left Subang to IMU again for our next lecture.

3) My group had a practical demo of Organ Bath (not literally bathing the organs). It ended quite early and I wanted to stay back in the Library to finish up my Foundation Chem report for recrystallisation. The readings wasn't nice, what supposed to be 95-98% turned out to be 35+% only. I was quite stressed up and took a walk out of the Library for some fresh air. Lucky for me, I met Gen Yuan, my mentor who was jsut about to return home. He then asked me to get the notes from his apartment nearby. We walked there and chatted about my experience in IMU for the past weeks and finally reached.

when I recieved this, I was thinking to myself "how would I collect all this for my mentee next year?". Look that that stack of notes, it is almost 20cm thick!!! So I tak boleh tahan, must take a photo of it in the elevator.Those notes were really good. I managed to carry it back to the Library and continue to finish my report which built up my confidence since his was also similar (readings were around 40% also).

4) On Friday, Gaik Cheng wanted to have Yong Tau Fu for lunch again after visiting her mom at Ampang Puteri Hospital (don't worry Gaik Cheng, she will be alright!). So eight of us from IMU visited the Restoran Syarikat Yong Tau Foo Ampang in two cars. After going for two times, I realised that place was the Yong tau foo shop recommended by Ross on LiteFM to be one of the best!!! I felt so honoured to be there.

Then we returned to IMU for our practicals. Mine was the estimation of concentration of protein using Biuret method. Since Chiew Vien said it was fast and easy, I tried to break her record of 1.5 hours. It was actually very simple and easy, although the results are prone to be inaccurate if it is done too fast.

those are the samples we needed using 16 test tubes.

I didn't get to break her record, finishing in 1.75 hours, but it was fun racing against other groups for the incubator and spectrometer.

5) Lastly, Riz and Ivan had last minute plans for a meeting at Restoran Kinrara just after my lab. Initially I was hesitant, but I still went to yum cha with them. We were only expecting 4 to turn up, Ivan, Riz, Shaun and I. But coincidentally, we met another group of old schoolmates at the shop who also joined us. We had a long chat before Riz and Shaun came (as usual, Riz was late). Unfortunately, I had to leave early for my home cooked dinner waiting for me.

Wow!!! Eventful? I have not written such a long report for a week before. I'm sure everyone will be tired reading as I'm tired typing too. Thanks for your time...

lalanandaFRY 28/2/09

Uni-disaster week 7 report

Actually I don't really know what to say here. I just know that the first class test is the following monday and I'm still not sure what to anticipate. I admit that I'm a blur student who happens to be lucky to get a place in IMU for being lucky in his finals and various class tests during my SAM days. I was also very lucky to have some mood to study during my SPM days to get fairly good results. But times have changed already. Some say that university is a place where almost everything is self-study, self-learning and of course, self-practice. As a lazy bum, I seem to find every part of this new life hard to cope with.

But then I the seniors are very friendly. I really hope that I would transform into a friendly guy by next year so that I could welcome my juniors the same way I was welcomed. After getting to know my mentor, Gen Yuan is a really nice guy (I was really worried...). Everything turned out alright so far except that concentrating in lectures still tend to be a persistent problem. My lecturer for Organic Chemistry is is quite good at explaining stuff and I definitely understand most of her lectures. Biopharm is a different story. Not that the lecturer is not good, just that my concentration power... just see the pictures below.

the top picture was what the lecture was supposed to be,  Undissociated-Dissociated Equilibrium. But it turns out to be like light in my mind...ahhh!!!

The seniors also had a food fair for their Malaysian Studies entitled '5 Regions, 1 Nation' which turned out great.

the pics above and below are the preps done on Wednesday just before the event. (it was dark because there was a storm  at that time)they also had little placards hanging from the  3rd floor advertising the events.and this is the nice scenary of the atrium on Friday before the crowd came in.Thats all for this weeks report. Thank you very much...!!!

lalanandafry 21/2/09