i had no idea how these fluttery things with slimey-looking younglings get inside my apartment when there's a wire gauze over all windows... except perhaps through the slits in the window wherein the air-conditioner (A/C) was installed over summer... darn those wretched creatures! i had to part with my beloved sacks of rice... rice of all sorts; wild, sweet, brown, and my baking stuff... evil little things!
may i also mention that the said window with the A/C also enticed a frequent visitor with a bushy tail particularly when it storms... and more annoyingly this visitor has a penchant for gnawing at the gauze outside the storm window next to the one containing the A/C. it's partly my fault for having the storm window drawn up occasionally for the fresh breeze, because the protective (?!?) gauze has suffered 3 chewing destructions and consequent replacements... and i believe that the visitor actually came in one evening and decided that it wasn't going to be finding any food and scampered out again. i've never had negative thoughts of grey squirrels until i met them in person... they are pesky.
anyways... back to the pantry! i've been swatting and exterminating them moths and emptying my food cupboard... and putting whatever could be salvaged in a box... clearing away these invaders will be my new chore! baaaah... and i will have to live with an empty cupboard for a while... sob.
ARRGH... if we didn't have choice, we'd be better at decision-making... except you'd think you have lost your free-will.
for the past months i've been saving up for what i thought i'd be getting, a mac-book-pro... with all the latest frills maximazing the RAM, HDD, DLDVD, etc. but it seems quite a huge leap to switch between operating systems... don't get me wrong... i do like the Unix system... i just grew up with Windows and there're many things you just get used to because of the many different softwares you use in research... to be honest... I HATE COMPUTERS. they are great when they work. else, they are horrible monsters and vexing frustrations.
i have to get a new laptop soon... my current archaic, ancient, temperamental dell might just give up on me any day, it's motherboard is flaky -- that's the new replaced motherboard mind you (sob... the poor monster has had a couple of serious technical surgeries... thank goodness for extended warranty; don't leave home without it!). i've had it with dell. it's not as good as it used to be. i don't recommend it. period.
so it's between the X60-ultraportable Lenovo and the MacBook pro, with similar specifications.
they are both just as pricey... both with pros and cons...
at the end of the day i just need something portable, reliable, that works, and i can get my thesis done, and use it for future number crunching... brrrrrrrr.
gosh i hate decisions...
BTW, has anyone used BOOTCAMP? apart from the partition at installation of the OS, do you need to include in the partition, hard disk space for mac and windows applications/programmes separately and do the 2 operating systems share the same folders across platforms?! are partitioned macs stable?!
UPDATE!!!
lucky is she who gets a new lab-sponsored laptop... it's an ibm-lenovo with all the specs i want... maybe i might get to buy it off the lab if i end up loving it! that means... i get to wait a bit more wrt macs... what can i say... i am ALL SMILES =C)
image © apple.com
it's a hedious name... the macbook pro (they really ought to come up with something better... tsk tsk!)
and it costs a bomb... particularly when i'd like to have the max. of the available specifications... so i have to save up another us$1500... before i can get the academic price version... it should be worth it though (i hope)... yeeehaar... the smaller version has a dual-layer dvd writer, finally!!! and up to 200GB for harddisk space capacity... YES!!! now i just have to keep my fingers crossed that MATLAB will be quick enough at developing their softwares for the new IntelMacs... i wonder if i can run wretched SPSS on it too... i wonder if bootcamp will work... hmmmmmm. (how i hate the fact that computers and operating systems don't speak the same language!)
Summary Quote (NB: Academic Pricing)
Subtotal $3,487.00
Estimated Ship:
2-4 business days
Free ShippingSpecifications
* 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
* 3GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 1x2GB, 1x1GB
* 200GB Serial ATA Drive @ 4200 rpm
* SuperDrive 6x (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
* MacBook Pro 15-inch Glossy Widescreen Display
* Apple USB Modem
* Magsafe Airline Power Adapter
* Backlit Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
* Final Cut Express preinstalled
* AppleCare Protection Plan for MacBook Pro/PowerBook (w/or w/o Display) - Auto-enroll
baaaah... what a lot of craziness... i shall have a peek at the apple-store!!! rah... how very exciting...
imperial old fashioned units are impossible... as with the unit of time... and to make things worse... time differences can be a pain for parents when they try to call their children in far-flung continents...
it is also made even more confusing with Winter and Summer time differences... when day-light savings is turned on and off in the northern hemisphere. Winter-time (day-light savings) usually starts at the end of Oct for most countries and every country participating in this change, shifts time one hour backwards.
however, Summer-time begins at different times across the european countries which results in a week of extra 1 hour time differences for some cities when it happens during the last week of March until we arrive at the beginning of April. but when this happens, we return the 'stolen' hour back by moving time forwards by an hour...
here is a way i've come up this morning to calculated the current time (in 24hr format) at the country/city you are interested in:
STEP 1) You need to know the Time Difference (in 24hr format) between the country you are in and the country/city of interest. It is more common to find this relative to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or Universal Central Time (UCT) and it depends on the Time-Zone of each country. A quick way to do this is to check on the time icon of your browser; right click and select 'Adjust Date/Time' and a window pops up with the setting options. there is a tab for changing time-zones.
e.g. Singapore is +8 hours of GMT in Winter-time (+7 hrs GMT in Summer-time)
e.g. Minneapolis/St. Paul is -6 hours of GMT in Winter-time (** - 6 hrs GMT in Summer-time; and -7 hrs GMT for 1 week at the end of March)
so the Time Difference between Singapore and Minneapolis is 14 hours during Winter-time...
but NOTE : Singapore is + 14 hours of Minneapolis and Minneapolis is - 14 hours of Singapore. the underlined city will be referred to as the 'city of interest'.
the + and - signs of the difference are important for the calculation
Step2)
Using this Time Difference with respect to the country/city of interest (including the sign of the difference), now check the Local Time at Present Country in 24hr format and apply the formula:
Current Time at CountryORCity of interest = Remainder when [Local Time at Present Country + Time Difference with respect to city of interest] is divided completely by 24
For Example:
Current Local Time in Minneapolis == 13hrs
Time Difference between Minneapolis and city of interest London == +6 hrs
Current time in London = MOD(13 + (+6) , 24) = remainder of ((13 + (+6)) / 24) = remainder of (19 / 24) = 19 hrs
Another Example:
Current Local Time in Singapore == 3hrs
Time Difference between Singapore and city of interest Munich == -7 hrs
Current time in Munich= MOD(3 + (-7) , 24) = remainder of (-4 / 24) = remainder of (24 - 4 / 24) = 20 hrs
Another Example:
Current Local Time in Minneapolis == 13hrs
Time Difference between Minneapolis and city of interest Adelaide == +16.5 hrs
Current time in Adelaide= MOD(13 + (+16.5) , 24) = remainder of (29.5 / 24) = 5.5 hrs
more succintly, the formula can be reduced to:
Current Time at CountryORCity of interest = MOD (Local Time at Present Country + Time Difference with respect to city of interest, 24)
MOD is a function or operator that gives a remainder for the division of a number (completely) by a divisor (in this case, 24). NOTE that e.g. MOD(4 , 24) = 4 and not 1/6.
in any case, the answer will give you the time of your city/country of interest in 24hr format.
here is an online website for more direct calculations which you can even personalize... but when you don't have access to the www, the formula will come in handy... that is if you remember the time-zone differences!
it is terrible that BBC has reduced or removed all its short-wave broadcast to/in the usa... for i could not get any reception at all and what it alternatively offers on FM is just too short a service and during odd hours of the day... i suppose it is presumed that everyone will have cable, satelite, and high-speed internet connection today...
this explains why even the antenae extension my papa sent won't work... sob.
i was mopey yesterday with the remnants of a flu-like bug i was still fighting... and i decided i had to do better than that today... but my heffalumps-neighbours upstairs were game on setting me up in a moody morning with me trying desperately to steal more sleep but obviously loosing the battle... crap. i resorted to blasting my world-receiver (which my brother kindly retrieved from my bedroom at home) and then after a while got bored with the selection of classical pieces on the classical radio channel and started randomly pressing some buttons i've made to store the frequencies of some channels that happen not to have too unpleasant things on air...
frequency-modulated (FM) channel 88.5 suddenly aired the voice of a very british accent... and i thought, how weird... i turned up the volume and much to my amusement... it was BBC world on culture and movies... i got to hear a review of Chronicles of Narnia, Everything Is Illuminated and Ang Lee's new movie Brokeback Mountain, which sounds like a good one to catch... how delightful... and i thought my attempts in trying to find the BBC channels were futile... i really was quite upset not finding any for weeks... now i know at least one channel in the mornings might be dedicated to BBC world news!
yippeee...
i honestly think that...
...people working in banking either can't be bothered with their jobs or are completely ILLITERATE.
this is the 2nd time i've requested for an international transfer and they, ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND... have messed it up again... and guess what? i'll have to call them to tell them that THEY screwed it up AGAIN... and i so hate the time-difference...
pathetic.
*if only there were a DeutscheBank everywhere... they were most professional... even in wee little tuebingen... sigh.
// UPDATE:
it appears that my request addressed to the manager never arrived to his attention... whoever took the authority to process the request is also quite incapable of reading the type of transfer i've requested. the additional mis-handlings previously experienced were brought up to his knowledge and i also expressed my dwindling confidence in their services... i expect the undue charges be rectified *of course*... to which i am sure he was surprised... so what if it might just be a student account... we have every right to proper professional conduct from banks. in the end, even waiving all charges will not help to resurrect any good opinion of their banking quality... they will have to prove that such stupidity will not occur again... but of course they couldn't even guarantee this the previous time.
i truly hate playing the cop...
i don't know if many of you have already heard of Project Gutenburg but this is a really nifty site for literary works whose copyrights have expired and are therefore free for all to use...
since i have left or sent back many of my books home (except for a few things packed in 3 boxes at the dept. back in edinburgh and some bitsNbobs left with lucy) this spiffy site is a really nice way for me to read up old classics.
and guess what i was pointing my browser to?!
thanks to f who introduced this to me some time ago and then i forgot all about it until desperation set in... memory has a wonderful life of its own.
there are probably more things swirling in my mind than i could properly digest and share it with sensibility... but i feel the spasmic urge of a bit of verbal diarrhoea...
i am still suffering my sleepless nights thanks to the loud snoring of my neighbour?! which i think is worth the whiney mention since snoring is a sign of a health problem that people usually don't look into for it CAN BE a rather awkward thing to talk about... i've bought green coloured soft spongy ear plugs that you squeeze to insert into your ear and let them expand within the canal to assume their noise-blocking role... but the pressure is uncomfortable... either i'll have to learn to get used to the perpetual unpleasant rhythm or i get myself totally exhausted through work or chores (neither is a healthy thing) and sleep through it... maybe i need to carpet the wooden floors...
anyways...
work has been stressful... frustrating... one waits for this busy boss for his approval on things and meanwhile one needs to remain busy. sometimes all this waiting makes everything seem meaningless. instant gratification... if only you can get that to manifest more easily in science... physical work is often more satisfying in my opinion... but no one noticed that the previously filthy microwave-oven in the lab library is looking squeeky clean... sigh.
and
i can't seem to find a decent loaf of bread here! everything is FORTIFIED with something... and the centre bits of the bread is an airy fluff of insubstantial stuff... if the brits are criticised by the continental europeans for not having good bread... the americans have lousy ones. sorry if it seems harsh... can't help being honest... now, i am on the quest for quality bread... and i got these wonderful cookbooks (Apetite by Nigel Slater -- one book i highly recommend for the kitchen... if i only owned my own kitchen! Slater's cooking philosophy is one which all of us should aspire to have... and Breads (The Good Cook Series) by Time Life) out from the neighbourhood library the evening i gleefully joined and thought i really should try to make my own bread... but the first attempt on sunday was an utter disaster... i was in a terrible mood... cooking can be so influenced by the mind and soul... amazing. and so i tried it again the night after... it's still not quite what i'm craving for... so i'll have to try again... sigh.
sigh...
when things get a little down... i often find solace in a cuppa... a good cuppa...
but even then...
people here have been finding me a little peculiar... for i add fresh milk into my mug/cup before i pour hot tea... and they don't understand why this ritual is more 'proper' nor why it should taste sweeter that way... but it does... and here is one fun instructional guide on how to enjoy a good cuppa tea! (click on the animation!)
now... i feel a little less miserable... ahhh the wonders of catharsis!
i recently discovered this spiffy site: ScienceWeek gives little updates and news on current interests in various scientific topics and you could sign up for the weekly updates!
i think you already know how much i love visiting ruth at her place in portobello... but i won't hesitate to tell you again (and again if i so feel the need to!).
yesterday evening, i went over to join in ruth's flatmate emily's little farewell-do (she's going to namibia next week for a few months to help with the health work there)... and coupled with the glorious 22degC yesterday... it made a perfect escape from the frustrations i've had to face. i particularly enjoyed the stroll along the beach with ruth... bare-footed, we pranced in between the ugg-worms that surfaced on the moistened sand... the fresh soft lime-green seaweed washed ashore... the buried seashells and under the canopy of the beautiful skies...
we also indulged in a very 'proper' dinner-picnic by the sea... we had salads galore, veggie sticks that we greedily dipped into the lush roasted-peppers-and-tomatoes humus and there was also yummy coconut-banana-pineapple smoothie that tasted like virgin pinacolada...
with a company of english, scots and irish (united-kingdom sans welsh -- perhaps i could represent that since atlantic college is there!) we couldn't possibly have escaped the typical scenario of utter-politeness... the usage of "could... possibly... perhaps... maybe... might... lovely...." dotted much of the conversations particularly when everyone was starting to feel the chill and would like to go into the warmth... it was hilarious... and i couldn't stop giggling over our irish friend's utterances... the combination of the accent and the way everything was said was just so amusing... he reminds me of Pippin... and it all made sense why ruth said he's a hobbit (*wink*)... i wonder if my cousin-in-law has that accent too... hmm.
before it got too cold... we dashed to say hello to the sea... i dipped my feet into the gentle lapping of the dissipated wave while some of the others were brave enough to soak their legs in the cold sea... and then we walked back into the warmth of the little house to have some profiteroles laced with hot chocolate sauce and ice-cream.
sadly, i had to catch the last bus back into town and i couldn't witness the much-renowned moon-illusion that was supposed to have occured last night.
i don't know how i became obsessed with them... they were hardly available when i was a wee lassie in singapore... but given how wonderfully rich in anti-oxidants and how lovely they taste... and how beautifully blue they are, who really cares?
blueberries are my all-time favourite of all berries... i don't care much for strawberries, nor raspberries nor blackberries, or gooseberries... but the blues...
according to my new "fresh" food magazine, which i picked up by chance when i tried to get some change to buy some stamps from the automated machine, blueberries rank top in their Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity among fruits and veggies, i.e. super high in anti-oxidants... these molecules help neutralise free-radicals (chemicals that often lead to cell-degeneration when found in access... and this process, termed as oxidative stress, is linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's).
i was also amazed to find out that these little berries are good for you in more than one great way! apart from the protective influence of the variety of anti-oxidants that 1) help strengthen collagen, 2) help improve vision (via increased production of retinal -- the precursor to visual pigment; by filtering harmful ultra-violet light via carotenoid-induced pigment growth in the lens and macular of the eye) and 3) help in preventing the formation of leaky capillaries, blueberries are also found to be both anti-inflammatory and anti-clotting.
thus, they are not only great for keeping you looking younger, helping you keep your vision clearer, they also help improve your blood circulation and help reduce your risk of having cardiovascular problems. and as if that weren't good enough, they also have naturally occuring acids that appear to help prevent cervical cancer and protect the womb... and have i already mentioned that they are also said to have antiseptic and antibacterial properties?
my golly... i will never run out of reasons to gobble them now! heee.
and to indulge in my blueberry-lust... i baked a lovely blueberry tart from the blueberry bliss i brought home (and froze) the other day... and i dedicate this to stella who requested it but i am unable to ship it to HK before it all disappeared! ooops.
NYT - techie news reports the mac-intel coorporation... i hope this will churn out some better powerbooks... and hopefully at more affordable prices...
=c) i shall be patient...
[Tony Avelar/Reuters]
i was trying to figure out if Yukawa Hideki whom i quoted in the entry below was also the Nobel Prize winner for Physics in 1949 for his postulation of the existence of mesons in the nucleus of the atom, whose forces of attraction keep protons and neutrons of the nucleus together... i still don't know for sure if it is him, but my silly search led me to something else...
Prof. Steven Weinberg's Four Golden Lessons... this couldn't have been more encouraging! =c)
enormous flying machine takes to the air... perhaps i'll get to travel in one of these someday soon?
i was tidying up my stuff after my trip and came across 2 paper slips in the pockets of my coat... fortune cookie slips from the dinner with my auntie at Lily's in NewYork... where you can find really good authentic chinese dishes! it was so funny though how we ended up with the cookies... we thought that with a company of 4 we would get a complimentary plate of cut oranges as dessert but the waitress said we weren't a party-size and when we asked what a party-sized group was she replied that we had to pre-book a table -- which we did... and she said we should have gotten our fortune cookies but we didn't... and so she gave us one each.
i don't know how or why fortune cookies are so popular in the states... it's quite amusing really... a silly sort of fun.
anyways, we opened up ours and found our fortune slips... 2 were complete nonsense and my brother spotted the bowl of fortune cookies lying not far away from our table and saw that the close was clear and helped us to 4 more cookies to find our fortunes! heeeeheee
while we were happily reading the next set of fortunes, my auntie remarked that maybe we had better go because the waitress who then passed by our table seemed perplexed; possibly wondering how our 4 cookie slips multiplied to 8... but this time we had better luck!
1st cookie slip : "With your beautiful voice, please sing a song for everyone. some random numbers :[38 18 48 41 11 14]; Speak Chinese: Grape -- 葡萄 Pu(2)Tao(2)"
2nd cookie slip: "Reach for the stars, but keep your feet on the ground. random numbers :[8 48 36 44 6 19]; Speak Chinese: Grey -- 灰 Hui(1)"
i took some lovely pics of daffodils while walking to the office on sunday... they might give you a wrong impression of how lovely it must be... that spring is perhaps here to stay... except the weather was miserable today... wet, cold and windy.
i made something more of a real dinner today: chicken stew with chinese herbs and spices... and adding half a bottle of cheap german riesling wine (which needs to be consumed!) -- you reckon it's the last ingredient i bet?!
i found a recipe for Banoffi (aka Banoffee) pie which doesn't require the rather dangerous method of boiling the tin of condensed milk with 2 wee holes pierced into the lid to create a caramel-like stickey goo... if it works -- which i shall attempt tomorrow for A's birthday surprise (i doubt it is sucha big surprise) -- you shall all be introduced to an incredibly fun dessert at some point in time (when i get a chance to upload more pics)... wish me lots of luck!!!
the wound scabs below my eyebrow have fallen off... wee patches of pinkiness are apparent... which i will have to live with... guess i might have to wink more to divert attention...
anyways another new day...
i just wanted to do something else apart from thinking about programming so i spent 2 hrs tranferring my old pics i placed in this blog earlier from my laptop to my little free account with flickr.com... i've managed to re-link (at least i hope the links are right) all the pics from 2003-2004 (a total of 55 pics! wow) and edited some of the layout in the process (now that i am acquainted with a few more codes! hah)... do visit my old archives and revisit those old-forgotten pictures! =C) but i still have 2005's pics (taken with my spiffy new digicam) to upload and re-link... which i will do whenever i am needing another one of these mindless procrastination. ... when i'm done with all that... i can remove my old pic files from the server to free up some space! isn't that wonderful?!
[ps: i am still trying to learn how to use this flickr tool... it seems like a lovely way to share pics... i love the zoom-in-thumbnails when mouse-is-over option like how it is with Mac OS desktop i enviously play about on other people's G4s... spiffy!]
i managed to coax myself out of the flat to shoe-hunt today... it's quite a lot of effort especially since it is terribly difficult for me to find shoes that fit my skiny pair of feet, moulded by years of ballet dancing and silly ankle injuries from crazy gymnastics... plus, i need shoes that look good with either shoelaces, straps, or straps and buckles to hold them onto my skinny feet... plus, i have a horrible tendency to bring my purchases back on 2nd thoughts... plus, i find shopping rather stressful... plus... i am highly indecisive... sigh! i am indeed the retail-stores' greatest night-mare! (where's my rabbit hole?!)
the sad fact of life is that nothing lasts forever. sigh (but it can sometimes be a positive thing i suppose).
most of my shoes have carried me through sunny and wet days for over 4 years, almost everyday... so the thought of replacing them is heart-wrenching.
meet my brown suede shoes:
i bought them from NineWest just before x'mas in 2000, a few days prior to flying over to michigan for my brother's graduation... i remember having great difficulty deciding between dark brown and camel suedes but was really taken by how comfy they felt (and still feel) and their slim-shape which held my feet like ballet shoes... they looked a lot more charming than they do now, of course... since then we have experienced walking together over carpets of snow, travelled to germany and hopped on grassy pastures, and jumping to avoid rain puddles in scotland... all that fun has undoubtedly worn them down... mum and dad had helped me sent them to a cobbler to have them re-soled (spot the 3 different shades of soles?) but even that isn't able to keep them alive for much longer... these are my friends who will retire soon...
these are my all-time-favourite --- say hello to my Happeee Shoes!
it is most tragic that Dr Martens no longer produces these... they are a classic pair of mary-janes... i love them to bits... wearing them on days that my brown suedes get their snooze... but they are older and getting on with age too... this coming summer might be their 7th birthday! i need to keep them alive for as long as i can... they underwent some surgery twice... i need to bring them in again for some stitching soon before the bit of leather that goes into the buckle starts wearing off too much... these are shoes that keep me smiling when days are grey... and when i feel low and down... they've also travelled far with me... from scotland to singapore to germany to aussie land and back all over again and again, up a few hills, and skipping about in summery days... we all need happeee shoes!!!
meet my new pair of shoes, which i managed to find today at the sale:
they will be my first pair of Timberlands... they seem really comfy and come with in-sole arch-supports and nice flexible outer soles for sporty fun and prancing about in all weathers... i nearly got a pair of Dr Martens' mary-janes again... but i couldn't decide between pinky-red and black and very much wanted something brown... and the pair of Campers i tried on -- although they were in a nice brown colour and felt really comfy -- looked terribly silly and huge on my feet... let's hope i don't run back to the store with these Timberlands for whatever silly 2nd-thoughts i might have... because i do need a pair of new shoes!
on new year's eve, Frauke and i went to visit the Writer's Museum just off the top of the Royal Mile (the cobble stoned road which separates the Castle and the Palace is exactly a mile long) in Lady Stair's Close (FYI, a close is a narrow alley way) and in the exhibit which gives an overview of the lives of three of Scotland's best known writers, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns (poet), and Robert Louis Stevenson, i discovered something which i found rather amusing: Robert Louis Stevenson -- the author well-known for his stories, "The Mystery Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" and "The Treasure Island", used to keep a notebook to jote down his observations and muse and called it his "... book of original nonsense"!
this is really quite spooky... news of plausible clues to the Holy Grail reported today, a lead via one of my office-mates who left a copy of the Metro (a commuters' paper offering daily news snippets) on my desk opened to the page featuring the news and highlighted in a marked circle... and i was spooked out for a second... because i can't recall who i've excitedly talked about the "Da Vinci Code" with or about cycling to Rosslyn or both... but that little mystery was solved when the kind soul told me he'd left it on my desk because he recalled the random conversation we had one lunchtime... phew.
imagine!... gosh... this is an exciting time... i still don't know much about this mysterious Grail... hmm... D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. .... any ideas?!
i was really curious as to how Clotilde, author of the delicious Chocolate&Zucchini, gets her French version of her blog done so quickly... and then realised it was with the aid of Google Language Tools... more curiously, i wondered how well the tool could translate my muse into French, German, and Chinese, and how close the translated versions are to the original. i was going to choose a foodie entry but i decided to use a short paragraph from a recent entry instead... here's what Google gave me for the exerpt...
overacuppa in hrm's English
"on the way back, i read another short story from "Elephant and other short stories" by Raymond Carver, an author (and poet) i am beginning to grow quite fond of... perhaps i will share my thoughts on them someday... but i am no expert on such things and i can't string clever and eloquent sentences to make a brilliant critique...hmm...
Posted by hrm at 14:25 hrs on 20 November, 2004 "
overaccuppa in Google's French
"sur le chemin en arri?re, je lis une autre histoire courte d'"?l?phant et d'autres histoires courtes" par Raymond Carver , un auteur (et po?t) que je commence ? me d?velopper tout ? fait affectueux... peut-?tre de moi partagera mes pens?es sur elles un jour... mais je ne suis aucun expert en de telles choses et je ne puis pas ficeler des phrases intelligentes et ?loquentes pour faire un hmm brillant de critique......
Signal? par le hrm ? 14:25 heures 20 novembre, 2004 "
overacuppa in Google's German
"auf der Weise zur?ck, lese ich eine andere kurze Geschichte "vom Elefanten und andere kurze Geschichten" durch Raymond Carver , ein Autor (und Dichter), das ich anfange, in... m?glicherweise mich ziemlich vernarrt zu wachsen, teilt meine Gedanken auf ihnen eines Tages..., aber ich bin kein Experte auf solchen Sachen und ich kann nicht die gescheiten und redegewandten S?tze zum Bilden eines leuchtenden Critique... hmm aufreihen...
Bekanntgegeben durch hrm bei 14:25 Stunden am November 20, 2004 "
overacuppa in Google's Chinese
"在途中, 我读其它短故事 从" 大象并且其它短故事" 由 Raymond Carver 作者(和诗人) 我正在开始 增长相当喜欢... 或许我某天将分享我的想法在他们... 但我是关 于这样件事的没有专家并且我不可能串起聪明的和雄辩句子做一精 采批评... hmm...
由hrm 张贴于14:25 几小时在2004 年11月20 日, "
i suppose the essence and intentions remain pretty much the same in French and not too badly in German... but in Chinese... the literal-translations don't really keep the original expressions and the paragraph reads rather awkwardly and at times, it doesn't really make sense... i guess they would have to work on their algorithms... hmm. was interesting nonetheless...
i acted like a "damsel-in-distress" again yesterday... pedalled my bicycle to BicycleWorks and got help to fix my back light... the new bulb didn't solve the problem... there was still no light when the front wheel was set in motion to work the dynamo... lots of fiddly-tweeking ensued... it's good to learn tricks from the experts. i didn't know there's an 'earth' from the lamp that's usually connected to the metal frame/mud-guards... i mean it makes perfect sense to have one... imagine you and your bike would get high on electric charges while cycling in the dark! it wouldn't be too funny as it may sound.... no no no... moreover there won't be any light which probably explains why the old blub looked so terrible...
anyways, after a bit of losening bolts and cleaning some gunk... and tightening the bolt that attaches the back lamp to the mud-guard of the back tire and re-connecting bits of wires... wayhey!
i really need to give my bike the works... i need to prolong its life... mayyeeee!!!
i went to Glasgow yesterday to the Home Office Public Enquiry Office to have my entry permit transferred into my new passport and spotted a grave mistake on the sticker on my way home; although i did browse over it upon collection, none of the details were explained in full and the fonts were tiny -- 1 of the 3 lines of details to the right seemed dodgy: it is weird that if i should be Female and from SGP that what seems to be potentially a birthdate coding is clearly wrong!. my phonecall this morning confirmed my suspicion. this is most unacceptable for a Governmental department dealing with Immigration! it's not as if my date of birth wasn't printed clearly enough, it is on 2 front covers! not only am i stated to be born a month earlier (i am no april girl!) on the sticker, i now have to travel that horrendous hour to (and back from) Glasgow yet again to see the manager to get things straightened out and there's no guarantee i get a travel reimbursement. they have absolutely no right to incur charges on people when their precision and services lack the professionalism that is expected from the immigration department of the United Kingdom! i am not impressed. this is utterly crap.
another flaw in the windowsOS... i wonder when MS will ever launch something more trustworthy and reliable...
possible new vaccine against pollen allergies might enable people like me to better enjoy Spring time... (hope you can access the ScienceMag link)
Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine, Thymine ... we are all made of lots of these 4 important building blocks of life, in varying but systematic proportions (%A=%T; %C=%G)... all assembled in a remarkable combination -- the double helix-- and then twisted some many times more... thanks to the luminaries behind the work on DNA we are now able to uncover an amazing amount about what it is that make each of us unique individuals... among them, the late Francis Crick, co-winner of the Nobel Prize with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins in 1962 (by then, Rosalind Franklin, another pertinent worker in the field, had passed away -- why she wasn't given the Prize posthumously is controversial). clicking on the link to the DNA Interactive, i was pleasantly entertained and enthralled.... this educational web-tool is more educational than all the textbooks i have ever tried to comprehend... i didn't do much biology before going to T?bingen (thanks to the fact that 'general' or all-rounded education does not seem to be offered in certain parts of the world and restricted merely to those deemed capable)... in fact, so little that i suffered having to cram lots of facts (within very short spans of time) with little to bind them together in a coherent story with which i could hold on to for life. (no joy & very unsatisfying) i learn in a very strange way i guess... i seem to need a story to hold things together... which makes me quite a failure in my Chinese class... i simply can't do rote-learning -- which was the way we were taught... i manage alright but i am far from brilliant and that's rather embarrassing partly coz one expects you to be good at it if you are ethnically chinese?!. anyway, in order not to digress too far, i was re-learning about DNA from a historical perspective... all the pertinent ideas, experiments that led to each bit of piecing together the big puzzle....are all very exciting to me... those pioneers were like cryptologists...like Sherlock Holmes and it's just great to follow their various lines of reasoning - some flawed and others adroitly sharp - and testing them out to see if any of it made sense. such inquisition is oh so inspiring!
and in learning a bit more of the history of the DNA, i am also reminded of the Swiss, Friedrich Miescher, who is remembered as the first person to isolate DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid; which he gave the Latin name 'nuclein') from cells in 1868, inside the T?bingen Schlossk?che (castle kitchen) where the Felix Hoppe-Seyler Institute was then located. i also remember that as you enter the grounds of the T?bingen Castle, located to the left of the portcullis gateway, is a plaque that describes this historical discovery.
i cycled (on the one tough gear the snapped cable left my bike in) to Bicycle Works today to get my bike repaired.... the mechanic at the Works said he could fix it in a wee while so i thought i'd wait.... but while fixing it, he realised that the dreigang (3 speed) shifter cable he was replacing with the Sturmey Archers cable will not fit the co-joining part of my bike's unique coaster gear system by Sachs (it allows me to do a quick back pedalling to brake; truly rare today -- my bike's a vintage! wow.)... but the manufacturer has been bought over by Sram. my heart sank when i heard the news... slightly dazed i asked if anything could be done.... the mechanik said he would have think about it and try to see if he could fix something up... i left my poor bike and contact details and walked into town to get some stuff done...such news are like medical notifications from the doctors that one has been diagnosed of cancer or something terrible... i was hoping that it would be benign rather than chronic....but the thought of never ever able to cycle on the lovely silver Slalom was painful... on my way home, i passed by the Works again to check if something might have come out of the 'thinking'..... i was glad to find my bike on recovery... a hybrid of new and old cables had to be created; bits of the old that fitted the gear hub connection was 'fused' with the new cable that is attached to the gear shifter with a sort of anchorage piece. it looked alright although i am slightly worried that the old bit might one day snap when the thinner wires that make up the thicker piece wears thin. so now i am wondering if i could find a new cable.... i tried looking for the specifications ... i think this cable is the closest match to the model of the gear system i have (you probably need to zoom in)... if anyone has a clue where i could possible find one... please please let me know! thank you.
i just walked home from watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with Lucy and i am not quite sure if i really like it in terms of the way it was filmed -- those online-brain-scanning technology is rather annoyingly crude; Elijah Wood was behaving like a twat; and somehow the interleaving scenes did not seem to be held together enough.... yet, i do quite like the underlying themes....
Jim Carrey Joel wakes up to a new world erased of Clem... just as Clem has forgotten who he is.... they meet again, by coincidence on the same beach where they met for the very first time and fall in love with each other.... could it be that there is something basic that attracts them despite their supposedly 'erased' memories of each other? what triggered the desire to erase each from the other's memory in the first place?
the whole 'forgetting' process began when Clem returned late one night, drunk and looking pathetic and an annoyed Joel thoughtlessly said something regrettable igniting what was a slowly degenerating relationship into flames. the kind of incidents that provoked people's 'realisation' that they didn't really understand each other as they thought they did and decided that maybe they weren't suitable for each other.... so, perhaps it is better to erase the whole experience altogether. that's probably what many of us feel like when something awful happens... when we feel ashamed or when life didn't turn out the way we had imagined it should....no? wouldn't it be just great if we could wipe away all the mess and icky things about our lives so we can just live with the clean, happy, spotless history of our existence?.... perhaps... but simply erasing these specks of dirt from our memory do not seem to suffice.... Joel and Clem meet again and fall in love with each other, with the same people they supposedly wanted to forget.
script-writer Charlie Kaufman tries to suggest that the idea of having a 'spotless' mind could be a far cry...and perhaps there is something more basal. you do not just forget.... even if you really could... he plays with that idea of 'mind-maps'; that a lot of our memory is linked to an infinite number of things in infinite ways. it is the mind-map of associations involving Clem that we need to erase from Joel's memories. but in the process of such map-association deletion, Joel rediscovers his love for Clem and tries to hang on to those gradually diminishing Clem-related memories. in his desperate awareness, he realised that these 'mind-maps' are not made of 'fixed' mindless Pavlovian-bell-rings-dog-salivate-like associations. they are fluid and very malleable. how often do we find ourselves trying to recall incidents that we 'fill-in' bits that we aren't too sure of....or link it with other plausible events that may or may not have actually happened? Joel somehow discovers this loop-hole in the underlying Lacuna Inc. 'trade-craft' while he desperately tries to save Clem from being erased in his 'conscious' 'remembering' ... meanwhile Dr Howard Mierzwiak's team of 'memory-erasers' are getting distracted and loses Joel's Clem-associated-memory-map. a desperate situation develops which necessitates the master-minder's involvement in completing the whole 'forgetting' procedure.... Dr Howard Meirzwiak's appearance once again rekindled the adoration from his secretary, Mary, whom Stan, one of the eraser-team-member, fancied. Mary's (after being stoned) disinhibited revelation of her infatuation for Howard opened up a can of worms and multiple revelations unfold; for herself whose infatuation had once undergone a similar process of 'deletion', for Stan who had no knowledge of this past history, and subsequently for Clem and Joel, who were unwittingly made to face their once-discarded memories.
in the given second-chance, Joel realises that there is something that is so emotionally strong about his experiences with Clem which he didn't want to lose. his poignant utterance of "it's ok" to the Kate-Winslet-Clementine attempting yet another escape from being frustrated with the inevitable mundane-ness that surfaces in a relationship every-so-often, the ugliness in each of us, the boring hermit we sometimes become etc. was what struck a chord. it is when we confront these different sides of ourselves and others that we come to terms with those spots of specks that make us who we are.... perhaps the very essence we can't erase....
Charlie Kaufman could very well also have been inspired by LeDoux's 'Emotional Brain' (or similar ideas by other Emotion-researchers e.g. Damasio)... and got to the last pages where an 'ancient brain map' laid bare in words from one of the researchers in the field....see, much of what we now appreciate as the spongey blob of white-matter called the cerebral cortex is actually quite 'new' and anatomically termed the neo-cortex (it is what very much distinguishes us from other non-human primates apparently).... what lies beneath is the primitive brain and its circuitry that is also shared, in very similar ways, by many mammalian species. there are basal pathways through which some memories are believed to be resistant to 'forgetting'. ..... the 'mind-maps' metaphors can be appreciated as synonymous for the 'neo-cortically-linked-cognitive' memories -- memories that one is usually quite conscious of and can be quite easily describe or even manipulate, while those indescribable memories which tug your emotional heart-strings are proposed to be linked to the more primitive part of the human brain... these are memories likely to be more strongly formed for an ancient survival need.
could this be what Kaufman tried to convey between the lines and beneath the surface of the love story..... these unforgettable basal feelings.... and hence the recurrent love experiences...?
perhaps it is just a satirical take on our desire for that perceived Eternal Sunshine of a spotless mind (Alexander Pope)....the world does not really forget, by the world forgotton...memories do not reside merely in ones 'mind-maps'.... they are shared, intersubjectively constructed and chronicled in various forms...
(i am sorry for this rather sketchy review that is potentially full of shit... it's 3:30am here and i'm hitting the sack... kindly tolerate any typos/agrammatical nonsense spewed...i just had to write it down before i forget...)
[some after-thoughts]
F suggested, with reference to my qualms about the apparent 'crude' brain-technology used in the film, that the very features of the 'props/tools' could be part of the whole 'feeling/idea' about this Lacuna Inc. -- that it is some form of illicit 'drug', spliff etc.... that induces a different state of consciousness...that somehow appeases my prejudices a little.... hmmm.
roughly a week from now we will be able to witness another amazing astronomical event.... the transit of Venus across our Sun..... i am quite excited... i have seen the 1999 Solar-eclipse while in Romania and one Moon-eclipse in 2000 (i think) in Edinburgh... it'd be nice if i could catch the Venus transit too... i must look for some special glasses... i wonder where i could find them... hmmmm...
anyways, it's all happening between 7th-8thJune2004 -- so remember this date guys! if you can't catch it live with special glasses, Exploratorium will be having an online broadcast of it....
i don't seem to be able to access a few of your blogs, let alone comment in them...it seems that unless i add the prefix of "www." to your address, i'll keep receiving error messages that the requested link is not found. some blogs are also looking really weird. i swear something odd is happening!!! eeek.
also ... i still can't work out how to get the "remember personal info" option in the comment pop-up of my blog to actually work. for some yet unknown bizarre reasons... your info. is just not rememebered and so you'd have to keep typing it in everytime .... sorry for the annoying bug.... i looked over the default template in the MT-website but found no apparent discrepancies. hmm. sehr doof.
does anyone have any ideas?
Monday, 17th May UPDATE
i think i fixed my comment bug (please let me know if it still doesn't work for you!).... it's goodbye to popup... sob.... hopefully it will also stop this crazy gjhghi@..... person from spamming me with "small penis enlargements"--- i mean if these twatty spammers could actually get their targets right... i would at least be a bit impressed.... but of course they are spammers... and not targetters! grrrr.
i also seem to be able to access your blogs alright... so perhaps it's just some server problems on this side of the world... utterly bizarre.
how appropriate! BBC4 is currently airing In Our Time and chatting about the historical development of tea in Britain and how it became a national identity (or more appropriately a daily drug) here.... the 'anglo-saxon domestication' of a Chinese tradition with the 'fusional' ceremony of adding milk and sugar; as well as an obsession that unwittingly led to the inception of the Opium War..... a cuppa tea is indeed a British thing... yet a rather amusing irony about this enthusiasm is that while the Brits may very well drink more tea than anyone in Europe, they have fewer selection of teas in their tea houses (if you find one; they are not very common here, surprisingly) or the supermarkets compared to her European compatriots, the Germans. there are many more quaint little tea-shops where you can get a plethora of all sorts of flavoured teas in Germany....
i have fond memories of visiting Mokka (shown in picture), a little shop in the old part of T?bingen which sells lovely assortments of chocolates, pralines, truffles, aromatic coffees, and most importantly? their own mix of flavoured teas in all different tea varieties (redbush, green, black, sencha, etc?.). tea appears to be sold through tea-merchants here?.i have found it hard not have a good local tea-shop to frequent?for i am quite a tea-addict, if you haven't already realise...even though there is Whittard, they do not really have a broad selection of teas.... and they do not sell tea filter-bags! a must for loose teas! feeling slightly desperate about the tea-situation, i started Goooogling? and found Grey?s Teas and E-teas; the latter has quite a large variety of teas (including tea-filter bags) but even then, E-teas does not appear to stock Lavender tea? nor Blueberry Redbush tea?. both of which are a few of the things i treasure.
i was compelled to visit the university health service to get some help in counteracting the attack of my immune system by the smallest of all things... dust, housedust mites, and pollen of sorts. the GP prescribed some form of anti-histamines and special eye-drops to help me cope. i am usually quite against drugs, pills and medication of sorts but monday evening's uncontrollable spasms of wheezes and tearing and itchiness made me succumb to the reliance of bio-chemical symptomatic relief (even if i don?t believe they will necessarily work).
i have never really suffered seriously from hay-fever until last summer when i was literally knocked-out by it. the reappearance of the symptoms (repeated sneezing, runny nose, itchy and watery eyes, general feeling of unwell) this year has fuelled my suspicion that my body might have grown sensitive to the various allergens that trigger the occasional spasmodic reactions. Hay-fever is medically known as seasonal allergic rhinitis, and is an immune reaction to pollen and fungal spores, which the body recognises as foreign bodies (or in this case, as allergens). pollen is released by various plants and trees at different times throughout the year, with trees being the first few culprits followed by flowers, grass, weeds and fungus as summer progressively emerges. my blood test in Germany indicated my allergy to pollens released by Birch and Hazel trees as well as the protein that housedust mites discharge (which is apparently everywhere and could plausibly explain my blocked stuffy nose ? a symptom of perennial allergic rhinitis).
apparently, the very first time one?s body encounters an allergen, it reacts to this ?intruder? by inducing plasma cells (which are mainly found under mucous membranes) to secrete lots of anti-bodies against it. our body is said to be capable of secreting an unique antibody for all possible allergens or intruders (anything that is not recognised as ?you?) so that other proteins become activated and they all cooperate in the destruction and removal of these foreign bodies. some antibodies also play a vital role in preventing such intruders (e.g. viruses) from entering cells and causing damage.
i learnt that Immunoglobulin E is an antibody commonly related to allergic reactions, and it is attached, in masses, to mast cells, which are found in nasal tissue linings, bronchial tubes, gastrointestinal tract and the skin, and also to the cells circulating in the bloodstream, which are known as basophils. these antibodies stand on guard for the next intrusion by the allergens to which they are made specifically against. when indeed an allergen (e.g. Birch pollen) does enter the body (e.g. me breathing it in) the Birch-antibodies capture the irritating pollens and inform the attached mast cells and basophils which then trigger a cascade of other signals and processes to rid these intruders. for example, potent chemicals (e.g. histamine, among others) are released almost immediately, and neighbouring tissues start to swell and become inflamed. the related autonomic sneezing and runny nose symptoms, itching, and various other uncomfortable experiences may well be our body?s means of removing these pollens from the system or preventing us from being subsequently in contact with the allergen.
i am no biology expert (with only 1 yr of intensive cramming of facts whilst in Germany!) but the world of biology is to me a world filled with metaphors. chemical messengers within your body, in the form of charged particles, travel and send their messages through various doors depending on their properties (e.g. whether they have the right shape, charge value, or chemical form etc).... fitting into a door or passage-way or key-hole (e.g. on the surface of a cell), these chemical messages elicit various subsequent processes within a cell?s body which sometimes induce electrical pulses being sent with light-years' alacrity from one end of a cell down its axon to its other end... then between other cells via other messengers and then all over you if they must. to stop this chain (and/or synchrony) of reactions (or message-relaying) many drug-designers and pharmacologists have sought to block these doors or passage-ways... making it difficult or impossible for these chemical messages to get passed on so as to trigger other biological processes.
drugs against allergy work like this too. they mimic certain properties of the actual key to a lock; enter the lock and block it instead of opening the door to let the message through (i.e. the subsequent processes normally associated with the presence of the key). that is, they antagonise specific receptors and prevent them from responding as they normally would.
in the case of hay-fever, the prescribed tablets are commonly a variety of anti-histamines; based the belief that histamine is one of the main culprits inducing the annoying symptoms. anti-histamines block histamine receptors and presumably prevent the effects of histamine (although it doesn?t stop the production of histamine per se) and so reduce or temporarily mitigate the symptoms of hay-fever. this form of treatment like many other clinical treatments is highly symptomatic. if i could have it my way, i?d much rather like to teach my body?s immune system to recognise the intrusive pollens as foreign but benign?. but i am not sure how this could be done. immunisation? hmm.
i am not convinced that the anti-histamine tablets i am prescribed do actually work. interestingly, i recently read about the herbal extract from the shrub, Butterbur, which seems to work just as well as anti-histamines. it seems that Butterbur has been used throughout history for a variety of illnesses; ranging from fever, coughs, asthmas, skin wounds, gastric ulcers, bladder problems, and migraines. maybe i ought to find some Butterbur extracts instead! but whatever it is, be thankful that you do not suffer hay-fever like i do? because it is a lot more fun to be outdoors (or indoors) without feeling like you will lose your nose or eyes when the tiny but potent pollen or mites' discharge get inside you.
i went to an inaugral neuroscience seminar on friday given by Prof. Iain Donaldson, who was also among the first few to record and stimulate the thalamus (a structure rather deep in the brain) in monkeys, a practice that later made its way into clinical treatment for some parkinson's patients. it was about 16th and 17th century practices in surgery, particularly about the discoveries and ideas of how (gun-shot) wounds and poisoning should be and can be treated, and also about the emergence of empiricalism in the medical practice. it was a very entertaining lecture, different in ways to what i am used to (facts and big ideas and some findings of support).
history is very relevant to any field or practice but is often taken for granted or forgotten. translating from the old latin and french texts to english, one discovers all the uncertainties of treating new wounds in those days are quite similar to the ones we encounter today. the 'hero' is Par?, a french surgeon known for his detailed and practical observations in treating patients and his empirical approach to finding the (more) appropriate remedies for wounds rather than simply following what his fellow surgeons would do. many of these remedies come from the folks themselves, the old remedies.... and i shall share a few i have jotted down in case they might be of some use one day:
for serious wounds:
make a paste with egg yolk, oil of roses and some medical turpentine and apply to the wound. (this is many times gentler than scalding the wound as was usually practiced)
for burns:
apply some raw onions with a little crushed salt (not sure if it has to be in the form of a paste but presumably it would work too!)
maybe it's time to find a book of old remedies....!
Tuesday came and went...
tutorial was trying....perhaps it's the post-essay exhaustion....my tutees were rather lifeless. but i did manage to spark some enthusiasm despite that fact that they were 2 lectures behind and therefore what i had planned was not touched upon in their lectures and they didn't seem to feel that they could still have an opinion about something that they haven't been exposed to in the lectures (silly!).....Consciousness was the topic...and i tried to show them how our concept of it somehow imposes how we attribute that phenomenon/experience to other beings/things...that there are unconcious perceptions (e.g. blindsight) and that in itself challenges the way we 'define' consciousness....they were also asked 'IF' biology and consciousness are closely linked, and 'IF' so, is consciousness altered with brain diseases/illness? ...etc. in the end it really didn't matter whether the topic was brought up in the lectures...it did get them thinking....and there were some really interesting opinions from the students themselves....i am glad i could amuse them a little more by showing them their blind spots (go here to find yours and what it is all about and how you cope with it in life!.....i had 2 other pictures which were more fun...but they work just the same, for a more scientific account... read up the article by neurologist, V. A. Ramachandran, "Compensation of the Blind Spot," Scientific American, June, 1992.).....there are many more related issues e.g. subjective experiences aka Qualia etc.. but we didn't have enough time to go over them...i'm sure they'll get a chance to ponder over 'what it is like to be ....' at some other point in the course....
...sometimes i think i work harder in preparing for the tutorials than my tutees (not fair :cP)...at times i think...well, if i can get some responses from them and if they do seem to participate...i'd be happy... tutorials are meant to be fun and interactive...shouldn't they?
is the exact weight of an adult violin bow. something i learnt today when i brought my old bow to the string shop for repairs. but i didn't get it repaired (it is near it's end, apparently...). the violin maker said it would cost just as much to repair it as it would to get a new one, exactly of the same make.....so he suggested i ought to get a new one. instead of ordering another of the same make i decided i'd get one from the shop....it is one of a notch higher in quality than the one i have and lighter...or so it seemed when i tried to play something (embrassingly)....we decided to weigh the bows for comparison. on the shop's quaint little weighing device (which has its full scale on 2 semi-circular wings that expand with the weight above), my old Chinese bow weighs 65g but the other bow which i eventually purchased weighs 61g....what it ought to be. ahhh. interesting. and my mind raced about wondering why it is 61g?! is it the magical number which makes the physics of the bow work?! hmmm....should have asked him.
i just finished cleaning up the common areas in the flat + my room (except for a wee corner i forgot! oops!); sorted out the trash...oh! didn't i say i was going to tell you about it???
well, there are at least 4 different bins in each German household, namely:
#1 biomüll == all bio-degradable things e.g. food waste...
#2 papier == paper...of course!
#3 gelbesack == packaging...plastics and recyclable materials go into the yellow bag
#4 restmüll == anything else that doesn't fit in the above categories... except e.g. batteries which go into special collecting boxes in supermarkets.
#5 old glasses either go back to the supermarket where you bought them for collection OR you have to bring them to the old glass containers in the neighbourhood.
most of the waste (paper/ recyclable stuff/restmüll) are usually stored in the cellar until collection day. the biomüll goes from the little container down to the big green bio-waste container outside, next to the building.
so that was it. it took me a while to get used to sorting my trash out... i wasn't sure what went where!! ...
the nice thing about the refuse system here is that companies play a big role in it too... they take part in both the creation and destruction of the products. what exactly is done is not clear... i.e. whether they pay for another service which dismantles the parts or ship the used products to a poor country (e.g. India, which many developed nations do) and let the poor sort out the trash.... i hope it is more of the former, than the latter... because there are some wastes e.g. television sets, pc parts e.g. monitor that carry very dangerous chemicals e.g. mercury... and people in the poor countries don't usually realise... we are a bunch of cruel consumers!!!
i knew something wasn't right last year when i experienced my first actual German summer .....the weather resembled typical monsoon seasons of Asia with hot days and thunderstorms that literally threw buckets of rain down (which led to the flooding in Dresden, Pasau, Prague etc..and i was getting worried that the Nekar might overflow its banks).... i told my German friends that Germany was experiencing monsoons!! but everyone just laughed it off...
today, it is 38 deg. C. and the temperature will steadily rise over the week.....it is unbearable heat not just because the use of air conditioning is not common here (and i am glad it isn't as they contribute to the green house effect that we are all experiencing now)... but really, it's pretty much like living in a sauna.
strangely, we are not doing much more to change our life-styles when global warming is hitting us harder than before. forest fires continue to eat across parts of the northern hemisphere and the summer heat is still brewing...maybe we might actually start panicking...because really, we should have consciously done so many years ago.
if we really cared, we would actually re-prioritise....cutting down on CO2 emission
...re-considering other sources of fuel, re-challenging ourselves and the industries to come up with more eco-friendly products....maybe it's time to re-introduce/promote the use of bicycles in cities.....e.g. i would be overjoyed if Singapore actually became cycle-friendly...cycling is not only healthy (and may even be an effective way to counteract the ever increasing problem of type II diabetes in Asia - which can be seen as a 'life-style disease'), the use of bicycles will also cut down pollution, traffic and parking space.... !!! (it is also much more affordable than a car!)
...unwittingly, attitudes will have to change...
there are lots to learn from the Green movement in Germany, Australia and Canada...and i only wish that other countries would start to adopt a more sustainable view of life... otherwise, global warming will turn out to be the 'weapon of mass destruction' and we have only ourselves to blame as we melt in the heat.
update: EU fighting global warming
