SOMORP September 23, 2008

Yo,

Waddupp, waddupp ma homiez, how’s y’all been diggin yaw?!

haha. ignore that.

Ok, I know I should be studying at this very second (it’s currently 9 pm and 30 seconds) instead of pressing on my wellworn keyboard trying to get this message across to you people. I hope your brains have not yet died so at least you can still read my post (yes, the post that i’ve currently wasted 3 minutes on). Well, all I wanna say is, GOOD LUCK FOR PROMOS, let’s try our best to get the A for Lit, Geog, Hist and Chem/Bio like we’ve been forced to! you know, I’m still wondering about that chalet we’re supposed to have…

then again, I really should be thinking more about Karst Landscapes and Mass Movement, shouldn’t I? toodle-oos.

Sara the pretty. (HEHEHE)

(i wasted 8 minutes on this post, including changing my track list to N’Sync songs )

Teacher’s Day August 29, 2008

To Miss Teo and Mr Rajoo,

Thank you for all the fun, guidance, care and concern over in the UK. I shall take this opportunity on the behalf of the students to express our gratitude. I know it must have been hard to handle the naughty kids that we are but you guys were as cool and patient as you could be. When Deborah & Ivy were desperate for additions for their outfits, thank you Ms Teo for helping out. When the boys can’t wake up, thank you Mr Rajoo for your music. Seriously, thanks for all you’ve done for us, getting all the tickets, worrying about us, watching over us. You guys are the awesomest (and oldest) Gran-Smurfs. I hope you had a great teachers’ day. We miss.

Love,
Sara.

I’m still reading this blog! August 25, 2008

Ivy here, blogging for the Biotech (once again). Hey guys, Reach Cambridge may be over but let’s not forget the great friends we made here ok? Do check back once in a while, you never know there may be more photos posted.

The journey back was pretty uneventful. On the last day, we basically packed up (only the Biotech stayed behind, all the rest went to town!) and some of us helped Ms Teo pluck rose petals. (Long story.) At 1pm, the guys lugged their stuff downstairs and then helped the girls with their suitcases. It was quite funny to see the whole load of us tumbling down the staircase with the heavy suitcases.

Whilst the teachers, most of the guys and a few girls checked the weights of the luggages, the rest of us went to play soccer outside! It was great to enjoy the Girton grass one last time.. The grass that’s so soft and comfortable that you won’t mind lying out in the cold, at night, dressed in only shorts and a tee shirt, to watch shooting stars.  

The bus ride to Heathrow seemed like an eternally long one. When we finally arrived at the airport, most of us had to rush to the toilet We checked in and then split up to do our own DFS and have dinner. The Bio-techies and Jun Xian went to Garfunkel’s to have dinner.. Yummy fish and chips! We also had macaroni and cheese, mushroom omelette, pizza and a dish which had a mixture of bacon and chicken. Yummy yummy yummy. DFS was pretty fruitful, Changyuan bought Liverpool merchandise and Ivy and Jonathan managed to finish buying gifts for their friends.

Flight back – pretty uneventful. The in-flight entertainment was not working properly but we still had movies to watch, so it wasn’t too bad. Most of us knocked out – I, for one, saw Francis sleeping everytime I turned around! Others had fun watching shows like Little Britain – their laughter could be heard through my earphones. XD

Well, some more pictures which hopefully speak volumes about the great fun we had in Cambridge.

Formal night

The marketplace! I love!

Strawberry DNA

IMAX movie.

The Lit students going for Othello.

Chilling in the JCR

Renuka during a tutorial

Deborah in the train!

joke ah joke August 23, 2008

just a little something to remind y’all of the fun we’d had there. nyahhhhhh!

ok i miss. see y’all. upload your things here lah kays.

<3,
Sara

Jet Lagged and Nostalgic August 22, 2008

 

 

Beautiful people!

So just in case people forget to visit this blog, i’m starting to post random pictures!

Rock On!

Please everyone keep posting! I miss cambridge so much alrdy. School is a triad and homework is its assassin.

Random Sara

We the Lit people!

the second hand on the clock only has a few centimetres to cross before that second’s over August 22, 2008

Time is our friend, and time is also our enemy.

Everyone looking as glam as we can be with last minute outfits.

Girl Power!

Is it just me or are most photos of Mr. Chee are of him sleeping?

Is there anybody out there still loyally clicking on this blog?

We’ve been back for about 3 days now and I am having serious withdrawal issues. No more waking up at 7.45am to rush into the bathroom and be physically present in the dining hall by 8 for breakfast. No more of Mr Rajoo’s musical banging on the doors. No more hashbrowns + baked beans + the Frosties that has just rejuvenated Ken Chew’s life + hot chocolate. No more attending fun, fun, fun lessons (ahem, it’s Sara here so most of the R.C. students should know what I’m talking about), no more going out to places that you can’t find here in S’pore. No more “eh, what to eat for lunch ah?”, “we all going co-op, wanna follow?” and “aiyah, got two hours, I wanna sleep first can?”. No more fighting for working computers in the computer room. No more of seeing Tim run away from the bees and actually hiding behind me (ME! Sara, the small, small girl vs Tim the Giant). No more of Desdemona’s screamings at night. No more meteor showers. No more of Jess’s struggle to bring home 30 books. No more Oxfam, Elijah’s fish and chips, Saakshi. No more jump shots.

It was only two weeks and it was like a lifetime. twoo weeks and I’ve made better friends than I have in many years. I miss you people, even though I do see you along corridors and in the canteen. Let’s have lunch one day kkkk, or at least have break together one day.

Missing the nonsense,
Sara

A picture-heavy Biotech post %) August 18, 2008

 

In front of the Botanical Gardens.

Shadows. Guess who?

FAILED ATTEMPT AT JUMPSHOT!

Skittles..

Men in Black.

One of the pretty lone roses in the Rose Garden.

Photo crasher got his head covered with a paper XD

Do you see the bee?

Lime cactus! Nice pretty (pink) spikes..

Normal shot, with HCI friends.

Ivy poked her head inside the Round Church and snapped this.. heheh.

Deborah, in front of the Round Church mentioned above.

Deborah laughed her head off when she saw Ivy’s face in this photo.. ):

Dinner preparation time!

All ready to start at the picnic table!

Ms Teo and Mr Rajoo with their flowers and gifts. Aww, aren’t they cute..

We started this eventful day with a lot of stress. Why so? Imagine waking up early in the morning to polish up our presentation on our anti-HIV drug, the HIV?! (Human Immunity Vaccine). What it does is basically to render the mutations of the HIV useless. Thus our drug is a stone that ‘can kill many birds’ (quoted from Ivy). We kicked off the day with Edwin, our top presentor, giving an inspiring speech as to why we should eliminate the existence of HIV in human population. Sadly in between, there was a hiccup such as the laptop suddenly ‘died’ as it ran out of battery and ‘prepared to hibernate’. So, Edwin had to come up with some impromptu entertainment and jokes for the crowd while Jonathan borrowed another laptop to continue with the presentation. It was then a smooth handover to Jonathan who had just rolled out of bed. He gave a presentation on the mechanism of HIV. To explain the mutations of HIV and its effects, Chang Yuan gave a passionate speech about why HIV is so deadly. Professional speaker Marc then took over giving a speech about our miracle drug, The HIV?!, demonstrating how it can make use of gene therapy to eradicate HIV from humanity. The treatment method was using fire to fight fire as our drug makes use of a virus to ‘indirectly combat’ a virus. Bok Seng then presented how we can obtain this helpful virus.

We then had a short advertisment for our drug. This was planned and choreographed by our director and co-star Deborah. Marc had the role of a reporter, Ivy the child who had lost her parent to AIDS, Deborah the mother who had lost her child, Jonathan the businessman, Edwin the beggar and Bok Seng the clicker. The highlight of the skit was when Chang Yuan played his part who had lost his friend to AIDS and was hugging a soft toy Merlion and saying, ‘I have no friends.’ The audience were rofling – rolling on the floor laughing! Afterwards it was back to Ivy to cover the marketing of our drug such as who we are targeting and whether it was proftitable. She then concluded the presentation along with acknowledgements to thank those who had helped us especially ourselves who had worked so hard on the project.

We then had a short quiz after all the groups had done their presentations, where our group unitedly tried to remember the facts and figures to answer the question. After the quiz, we went to the city centre to buy a certain present for a certain someone……  Then we got back to college and were in a mad frenzy trying to pack our luggage. Everyone seems to have overweight baggages, Ivy had to sit on hers to close it. We are all hoping to make it past the customs without having to pay any excess charges ^_^.

Off to continue sitting on the luggage.

Sweet Memories August 18, 2008

So here we are on the last day about to leave the college for one last bit of shopping. Buying all the presents for the people we forgot. Two weeks have come and gone so fast, and we’re already missing the weather and the fun that we’ve had in this past two weeks. Back to the mundane sai gang life of school then. I don’t think everyone has finished their homework, and most certainly most of us havent touched PW (shh..)

We’re missing Singapore and home cooked food now. Can’t say much about the breakfast here, except that it got pretty repetitive after awhile. Last night’s casino night was awesome, kudos to our top gambler Tim, who together with Josh managed to get into the lucky draw at the end and win prizes. We’ll miss this college and everything that it has had to put up with for the past two weeks. The sprawling lawns and the fresh pluckable apple trees. The squirrels and the rabbits, the basketball court. Notably the meteor showers four nights ago. That was one of the major highlights. Now we really understand why REACH cambridge is really such a privilege to attend and why there’s so much enthusiasm about getting into it.

I’ve to put something in for Lit now. Hah. Yesterday we went punting, and it was really unfortunate nobody fell in, cause we were kuind of hoping someone would. For the record, the girls in Lit punt much better than the guys, which is me actually (but shh.. don’t tell them it was because we were heading downstream so they weren’t doing anything at all ) anyway, punting was fantastic fun, our boat nearly lost the punting stick twice and we got stuck in the riverside trees almost all the time, with Anna, our tutor, getting the most of it since she sat in front. The worst part though, was that we had to do our a lit practical analysis of a poem on the boat, which of course everybody forgot as we punted and balanced and punted and laughed and punted at looked for eye candy and punted and took random camera shots and punted, and grew muscles. V got quite a good exercise so she says and J nearly fell into the water save for her kneeling down at the right moment. aww.. haha.

Eating at Cafe Uno was the best meal of the entire trip i must say, thanks Tim for recommending it. We had pasta and bruschetta and pizza and tuscan bean soup (heavenly) and the best part of it all was the dessert. Lime sorbet or waffles with raspberry syrup and vanilla ice-cream. I know your salivating now, don’t, you’ll wet your keyboard.

Unfortunately, the cliched phrase arises again that all good things must come to an end. Bye for now, the taxi’s here and we’re going shopping now.

TOWN TRIP! August 17, 2008

8am. There was no sign of us from Bio-techies in the Girton College Dining Hall. Five minutes later, we started shuffling into the Dining Hall, weary from long hours spent in the previous night on our HIV Project. Nevertheless, we were all relieved by the fact that we could journey into Cambridge Town Centre today! This would definitely provide an escape from our troubles. After gulping down our breakfast, we once again headed to the all-too-familiar computer lab, to take advantage of whatever time we had to try and improve on our project. Luckily, we made much progress before we went down to the Porters’ Lodge to take a cab to town.

Once at town, we split off to shop at different areas. Some went to look at sports apparel, DVDs and CDs, stationery, Cambridge apparel and sweets and chocolates amongst other stuff. For lunch, most of us had hotdogs and others sat down to eat at an eatery in Lion Yard Shopping Centre.

Deborah and Ivy went shopping for clothes – formal night on tomorrow! Bok Seng and Jonathan bought lots of sweets and chocolates for their friends back in Singapore. Practically everybody bought Cambridge clothes for their loved ones back home – such apparel included pullovers, jackets and shirts! Chang Yuan found himself a ‘lobang’ when he got two shirts for himself for only £10. Edwin indulged himself in a bookshop, whereas Marc spent the day away with his uncle who came all the way down from Nottingham, before meeting us for dinner back at college.

Dinner at college was fun! We had a picnic dinner by the pond, with lots of games and fun! We cooked pizza in the pantries of the hostel and also we had sandwiches, chips and drinks. Monica brought her frisbee down and we also borrowed a ball from Girton. It was the ultimate bonding as we played monkey with the ball and the frisbee, and taught Ms Teo and Mr Rajoo how to play frisbee!

The leaders of the groups surprised them with bouquets of flowers and gifts, as a thank-you gift for helping us throughout the trip and guiding us whenever we were lost. It was quite funny as Ms Teo commented, “I quite like the flowers leh! I want to save them for my ROM..” Everybody burst into cahoots of laughter as we tried to figure out how Ms Teo could bring them home.

We ended the day with a CHEMISTRY TUTORIAL , and somemore final work on our project.

I [Ivy] promise, pictures will come up soon. I need to get an SD Card reader and my camera which I’ve conveniently left in my room. D:

TILL TOMORROW! It’s the last day of school..

D is for Debate :D August 15, 2008

Biotech experienced one of its most adrenaline-pumping days today.

We started off in the morning with a lecture by Heiko on genetic modification (GM), where we learnt about its applications and talked about the different things that can result from it. We also staged a debate about genetically modified food, where CJC and HCI collaborated to represent scientists, whose objective would be to provide an insight into GM food. Ivy from CJC and Kevin from HCI formed the voices of the scientists. The debate was a heated one; the two were challenged with many questions concerning the safety of GM food. Luckily, our colleagues from the floor helped the duo, successfully addressing the concerns of the opposition – the farmers and the anti-GM. “Super stressful!” complained Ivy after she came down from the stage. In the end, the debate ended in a draw as all the teams presented plausible points.

After lunch, we went to the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens. Cross the threshold and be greeted with a wide expanse of land, set aside for the sake of appreciating the wondrous gift of Nature. We were mesmerised by the lush green landscape, the myriad of colours of flowers from all around the world, and the tranquility the ’forest’ ambience that it offered. We started off at the greenhouses, where we snapped photos of plants that are characteristic of certain climates, eg. desert vegetation and tropical vegetation.

We stopped at the garden fountain to take pictures. Biotech finally has a jump shot! Look below! Thereafter, we proceeded to the Genetics Garden where we saw different variants of the same crops, allowing us to see real life applications of genetic modification, like the beetroot.

We literally had a trip down memory lane, when we ventured through the pebbled pathway flanked by plants placed in chronological order of its introduction to England. From there, we walked through to the Scented Garden and caught familiar whiffs of herbs like thyme and rosemary, which often go into our food without our knowing. “It smells like pizza!” Deborah exclaimed. We then went on through to the Rose Garden, which unfortunately at this point in time does not have blooming flowers. Bok Seng commented, “I’m sure that in its full bloom, the garden will look SPLENDID!”

Our last stop was a huge pond with a limestone garden. Marc was awed by the limestone formation and borrowed Ivy’s camera to take many photos of it. “It was great to see limestone formation in real life, not just from textbooks. It’s definitely one thing I’ll miss when I get back to Singapore,” cited Marc.

On the way back, we were introduced to a sapling of the original apple tree that spurred Newton on to revolutionize Science! Sadly, Jonathan didn’t get a picture of it. ): But luckily, Deborah’s got one! Chang Yuan said that it was an honour to be on the site where Newton once made a discovery.

PICTURES! soon.

We’re going to Cambridge town tomorrow.. Finally! SHOPPING!!