What's IN and what's OUT in 2008

As simple, achievable and realistic as I want it to be (thanks Ee Meng for the guidelines), I can surely reveal my 2008 NY's resolution today (6 Jan 2008). Though a week too late, nothing's too late for a change. It's better than having no resolution/goals. I equate 'resolutions' to 'goals'. To me, it's the same thing.

Resolution=Goals:

1) Less Starbucks (reduce to twice a month compared to 2007's once a week)

2) Less coffee in general, as of now, I believed that it has turned into an addiction instead of habitual. This also means less McDonald's drive thru' coffee every morning. Ohhhh.. and also less Old Town Kopitiam Xi Mut Tea. Kinda addicted.

3) Spend less on clothes especially blouses. Buy more shoes and dresses? Hahahahaa :P Kidding!

4) Save more for the future i.e. unit trust, insurance, shares, etc.

5) Travel overseas to at least one location this year. I'm eyeing Macau/HK;

6) Less procrastination on my lab work;

7) Produce one research paper in a journal and get it publish by next year.

8) Sorry everyone, but I'll try to quit Aikido gradually (and I did say: gradually). I think this could be the most hard-to achieve goal. Kill me if I appear at SD or SS4's doorstep again.

2007 is for all my friends.

Year 2007 has been a year of friends & friendship. I will, in this post, dedicate 2007 to all my friends who totally changed my life. I don't like to quote real names in my blog as I respect some friend's privacy, but I MUST this time. Sorry for making your names public today, but mind you, I don't produce sex DVDs on my friends and you don't have to make public statements (hint: Dr. CSL resigned!)

My climb to mt. Kinabalu will not be a success without the help of my personal trainer, Ramesh. He's my no. 1 personal trainer in my world (errr..he's the only one I know of). Then, thanks to Henry for introducing me to his Actuary Society of Malaysia's ppl that was soo motivating during the climb up. They are great friends to hang out with too! Sorry, Henry...this year was not for us, but I treasured every moment with you and we will remain friends forever!

My dedicated Aikido friends at SS4 - I love you guys: Sensei Kow, Fu Yaw, Lipson, Chai, Joseph, Eddie, Brian, Sheau Shin, Yin Wah, 'clubbing' Leong and his beau, Mhong, Kenny (ex-Liverpool), Jong Yang with bionic hands & Yuen, for always making me feel fat after every supper, listening to my woes, my dirty jokes, my love life and many other crappy stories. You guys really listen and gave me good advices, though I've never followed, I respect you every one of it. It's been a great trip at Penang and Gua Tempurung last May too.

My dear group of beloved GIRLFRIENDS: Fee Peng, Yeng Pooi, Sook Jeng, Callie, including self-confessed gurl Chris Thoo have been really supportive of me this year. We commited the cardinal sin of gossiping and eating too much in each & every minute of our meet-ups, but seriously, every meeting with you girls have been fruitful and tremendously life-changing. Girls always support each other, and we may be dubbed the 'Desperate Housewives' previously (not including you, Chris), but I DO love the label thrown to us. Cameron Highlands with you girls really made me a much confident driver now; Jo Nie - our trip to Bangkok was absolutely wondrous! Will not exchange it for anything. Oh forgot: YP esp. for helping me out during our 31st dec open house! Without you, I'll be dead. Seriously.

Thanks to all people who voted for me at SpeakingTomato.com 'most gorgeous girl competition' by Chris Thoo. I dunno who the voters are, but some are damn pretty obvious like "Not Kenny" and "fipink" and "bea" and "Jesse YP" and "Jon" and other Aikido dudes which I forced them to vote for me. Hope the votes helped your blog, Chris in getting more than 20sens a click. Thank you guys/girls for the vote. I didn't know I was gorgeous.

I would love to thank Beh for always been consolling me at my times of trouble last year. It's been an honour that you've visited my lab. Thanks for the treats but sorry if I've not been able to show my gratitute in a nicer way. All my best in everything you do and your MBA, i supposed? :)

Fee Yen - for being the best financial planner ever. Darn, I think my unit trust lapse, yah?? Hahahaha. I still don't understand about a lot of things. Leong EM - for always letting me be editor for his writings. Kenny - for creating such a great blog that it overwhelmes mine :P and esp to Ee Soon for asking me to quit studying & get some life. Nice....

P/S: Some names have links on it. It's their blogs, so please click on them and write comments, and visit their blogs regularly!!! Thanks.

oh, I love my lab-mates too. They're the coolest labmates ever in UPM history!

Don't let them be history

Malaysia Wildlife Conservation
Support The Camapign

I didn't realise that I can get all touche after I read articles on Malaysian wildlife getting extinct, or illegal poachers hunt and brutally skinning tigers for their testicles and skin, or China people (as in Stephen Chow's God of Cookery) cooking bear paws, or in clubbing sea lions in europe, etc. Sometimes I don't think I am able to stomach shark-fin soup after reading about suffering-finless-sharks being thrown back to the sea. Animals do have feelings too, you know. I believe deforestration (for palm oil?) has endangered our wildlife which btw looks cute to me! (in zoos and pics). Don't you think those tapir and rhino look cute and chubby!? Okay, sorry...lame...

Back to reality:

If you think wildlife in Malaysia deserves a chance, please blog about them and tell internet users (just about everyone!) how you feel, and how wildlife changed your life. Please support the campaign (click on the banner). If you don't want to support the wildlife campaign, you can support the illegal poacher. I think they have a blog somewhere for you to support their illegal hunting activities :P

If you remember my friend whom I met in Starbucks in the previous post "A Scientist Near You?", he's from WWF Malaysia (was a save-our-snails champion) and is campaigning for rhinos and tigers in Malaysia :P. Oh, no, no, no,...not the wrestling organisation.

My fungus showing the LOVE

Even my icky, green muscadine fungus is showing me the 'LOVVVE':
P/S: Don't laugh!!! It is a rare instance for a fungus to know it's Xmas next week)

"Merry Christmas everyone!! Have a blessed year ahead."

Love,
Ivy
No-bell prize winner: for producing rare green-lovely-fungi on Xmas.

A scientist near you?

If you read the book "How Starbucks Saved My Live", you will be surprised how some insignificant, everyday, routine, daily activities can change you into a better person. I could relate to that story, all the more, it happened in Starbucks right in the heart of PJ. My X'mas mood plus my daily dose of caffeine requires me to be in Starbucks at least once a week. No doubt by this time of the year, I yearn dearfully for my Toffee Nut Latte and the need to collect 17 stickers before mid-Jan to get my cute little 2008 diary.

So there I was on a Sunday afternoon after visiting an aikido friend in hospital for a fractured collar bone, ordering my ToffeeNut Latte and then filling up some Sudoku numbers. With my Prof.'s reminder haunting me (he haunts me daily by saying: read at least one journal a day), I took out two scientific journals and started reading (well, it was just browsing and flipping those pages). Not even a minute passed, I almost doze off. But I was kept awake by a really cute guy in front of me and it's definitely not science at work.

All of a sudden, the guy beside me with a laptop pat my back and asked if he could join me at my table. I thought: "Hey, you've got your own table, don't take mine! And you're not that cute!" And I blurted out rudely: "Err...yes, anything?!"

He was a Singaporean, started working a month ago with our WWF saving tigers in Malaysian jungles. He claimed he has been in Malaysia for a couple of years doing research near Ipoh, Kelantan, Pahang checking out on snails. He's a snails expert :) He couldn't help but noticed that I was reading scientific journals. Ohhh come on, what are the chances of you meeting a guy who loves biology and .....err.....have an inclination towards snails!!! (weirdo) And yes, he passed me few of his papers, published in high impact-factor journals. And of course (sob!), I have none to pass to him. Malunya! Now I can see why NUS is such a great university, he's just a master student for 2 years, and has published 4 papers (four!!!) in high impact-factor journals.

The rest of the day (and night) was history..... I had a great time, and it's been a long time since I had some nice intellectual, scientific chat with anyone. Especially when someone is interested in your field too. Did he change my life (like the story in the book)? Indeed it has, because from today onwards I swear to publish at least one paper in a high impact-factor citation-indexed journal. What a great motivator.

P/S: I should go to Starbucks more and read journals there...you will never know a scientist is just right beside you.

Josh Groban's Noel

This holiday album really did beat the hell out of celebrated A.I. 6 winner Jordin Sparks' debut album. It's a real winner. I downloaded the whole Noel album and the first song I heard from my iTunes: "Angels We Have Heard On High" was truly amazingly wondrous (give me another superlative!). His angelic voice is a gift from God. This song also feat. Brian McKnight who has a mellow voice corroborates well with Josh's, making the tune stuck in your mind whole night long. I can't sleep now. And it's 3am.

A must buy (or download :P) for everybody in this planet. Josh Groban himself have always impressed me even from his very first album 'Closer' and his hit single "You Raise Me Up". When I watch him acted in one of the episode of Ally McBeal, he sang "To Where You Are" and my eye got all teary just listening to that song.

"Noel" is a must buy album and a great gift for this Christmas season. I rate it 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

"Silent Night" really silence-off the other cool (and quite good, actually!) catchy song that keeps sticking in my mind - "Gimme More" by Britney Spears. With her life in such a mess, I think she did great with this song. It saved her face a little.

Seeing Red.

England cannot qualify for Euro cup! Yeerrrr...malu betul lah....never hear before soo 'charrrrr'. England's dismayal performance, to my honest opinion, was caused by Steve Mclaren's selection of players and no-show by any Manutd players. Well, anyway...I am not a soccer pundit, and not that I know anything about managing football. I think I will just stick to supporting ManchesterUtd alone instead of England as a whole.

My busy week continues with several good news along with some appalling ones too. I was pretty happy with the arrival of my research equipment called the 'granulator-extruder' directly from China. I've waited 10 months for that blooody thing that is now sitting at the back of my lab. It definitely eases half of my workload and time, where else before this, I had to resort to my mum's putu-mayam maker she bought from Mydin to extrude my chemicals. And earlier, the putu maker actually broke at its handle. So much for my 'innovation' :) Thanks mum, for giving me the putumayam maker, and though it broke, I wouldn't mine replacing a brand new one from you. It's 1000X cheaper than my new extruder from China. I'll go to Masjid India this week.

The appaling news, besides England's failure, was the work I had done on my research had one small-itsy-bitsy mistake on the calculation, which my supervisor fired me kau-kau after finding it out. It was a small-itsy-bitsy mathematical mistake, but according to Dr. Tan, makes a whole lot of difference in my final results. I couldn't understand my failure in detecting it, but damage was done. Nevertheless, we fixed the problem, but my reputation has gone down the drain.

This coming week, I had to present my work at a cool conference in Penang. Hope to gain back my reputation a little. Mum is tagging along and staying at the hotel. But mum, even if you insist, you cannot enter the conference hall!!! :P I am all by myself this time.

Technorati

Technorati Profile

Bersih and such

The opposition parties put on a brave front to go ahead with the permitless BERSIH protest. I wish I were there, but being a postgrad student in a pariah local university (just try finding my university in www.topuniversities.com), I had to refrain my physical self from rallying in what I support and believe in. Malaysia has rapidly fell in many ways with regards to democracy and in protecting its people's rights. It's getting worse year after year, even by the minutes! There's no freedom of religion. Government bringing down temples - and damn - for the first time I had to support SamyVellu :P There's no expressing your thoughts in anyway - not even in cool blogs or street protest. Then where else can we express the basics of all human rights which is the right to speak out. Did you say Dewan Rakyat?? Tell we why the Speaker always deny any motion that the opposition wants to debate about? When I was presented my scholarship in Kuok Foundation not long ago, I was glad to have met Azmi Sharom, the infamous handsome, long-hair, hippy, law lecturer in UM and his vocal presentation of the governments stupidity in handling almost every matter. He's my hero!! And now, where is he now?? UM's VC basically asked him to shut his mouth and no more writing sin the local newspapers...or else....!!

The local papers are dogs; they dare not put the BERSIH rally on the frontpage!!! Instead, they put the deputy PM's face or what not portraying the govenment's 'help' in formulation a better subsidy scheme to counter fuel price rise. Helping us....tak payah lah.....we have not been helped for a long long long time. Why do we need help now?! The UMNO also said that if we chinese do not support BN in the next general election, we are shooting ourselves on the foot. You have crippled us long before; we are aready standing in one leg. Shooting another foot/leg won't make much a difference. In fact, it make us much stronger.

Well, Kenny the Law - you've done well, and you are already my hero. Let me promote your blog here in my space for once: www.darnmalaysia.com

I love Malaysia, but why doesn't Malaysia love me back?! You may advocate that every country has it's discrimination. Yes. But let me tell you...This is our own GOVERNMENT discriminating us. I've never seen in any country where the government openly discriminates with their policies.