(Monday, November 18, 2002) (11:55 p.m.)

Oh fuck bugger off, you conceited git. Don't assume everyone's talking about you; that every little action is related to you; that you're the butterly that changes the weather in London when you flap your itty bitty wings in Tokoyo. Quit being so self absorbed. The world doesn't revolve around you (nor me or anyone else, for that matter). Don't go completely postal when well-meaning strangers try to help. They give advice, you can always ignore it and pretend they never said a word if you don't want to listen. Instead of getting all worked up over how they leave remarks with good intentions, immediately claiming "you'll never get it because you're not, and never will be in my position". Duh. If that's the point, why bother telling anyone anything at all, since no one'll truly understand?

P.S. I'm cranky (and very judgemental) tonight. This is directed at someone, but it's crazy to get so worked up over a faceless and unseen person whom I have never met, and will never meet.

I promise I'll be nice tomorrow. (:

(Monday, November 18, 2002) (08:51 p.m.)

I stayed home the whole day. Wanted to go swimming after moppping the floor but it rained! Also checked (and double checked) my project partner's primers for her... She flew off to Australia this afternoon because something bad happened. I won't say what or who or whatever, I respect her privacy too much for that. Anyways. Because of the sudden change in events, she'll be gone for 2 weeks. Minimum. Which leaves our whole project in a horrid shape. And I had to do her primers! I was erm, well, rather irritated at that because while I know she can't help what happened, she could have done her part before she fell sick. She could have done them on Friday (she was still sniffling but was well enough to go out, at any rate!). But she didn't. And sigh. Now that that's happened, she left and we're stuck.

Don't get me wrong, I sympathsize and understand why she has to go. I feel what she's going through. And besides, it's too late to get angry at her for not doing it earlier. Anyways... I hope she'll be strong and take courage. I just hope I'll be able to manage labwork for two! I mean, we were supposed to start working in the labs this week... Although our experiments are essentially pretty straight-forward, it's the initial part of calculating the concentrations and optimizing everything that makes me worried. I'm BAD with numbers. Bleh. (Note to self: Final Year Project is only worth two modules, and isn't enough to warrant a full fledged panic attack).

Anyways. Enough of work! My mom and sis are happily in Switzerland. Wah. Do you see my face turning green already? q: They better buy me a year's supply of Swiss chocolate to make up for leaving me behind! My sis said she's having such a lovely time and she doesn't wanna come back! I miss her very badly though. I miss the way she comes up to me when I'm frenetically typing away at the keyboard and gives me her I-think-I'm-too-cute-for-anyone-to-resist smile, and goes "huggie?" with her arms stretched out wide. Haha. I miss the way we fight and how I take shameless advantage of my superior strength to tickle her senseless. I miss having someone to talk to, and she's about the only person I know who wholly listens. No advice offered (that can sometimes be a minus heh), no "yea I know what you mean because I also yadayada". Though sometimes she keeps so silent I think she's not paying attention, lol. We've worked round that though - she grunts at appropriate intervals, and that's how I know she's still awake. :D

Not to say I'm this super selfish sister, she just doesn't like sharing about what happened in her day (she's got this mistaken idea she's uninteresting). But we've gotten rather close over the past couple of years, I remember how we used to really quarrel over stupid things, over how she used to tell tales and how I used to terrorize her into obeying me. q: I love her to bits! And I miss her snuggling up to me. Goodness. No incest going on, we're just really affectionate with each other. (: Anyways, they're coming back on Friday morning. I can't wait! So my mom can take over the chores again, haha. Just kidding though, I think I've tentatively developed a working relationship with the mop, vacuum cleaner and washing machine. My mom will be... Surprised, to say the least.

I can't believe it. This entry is so boring I'm boring myself already! All the *ahem* intrigung stuff just went into my diary. (:

(Sunday, November 17, 2002) (02:05 p.m.)

I suddenly feel nostlagic. I feel as though I've lost a great many friends in the space of one year. If I ever had best friends, L (as mentioned somewhere else) and X (s/he knows who s/he is) would be it. The initial part was the hardest. It was painful letting go. Somehow, I knew that things would change too much for the situation to be remedied. I knew s/he would feel as though there wasn't any point in rectifying the sagging relationship. You see, X found someone else. Someone who (very gladly) took my place as a friend. As a confidant. As a supporter. And that someone loved X in a way I could never love him/her, and vice versa.

And as upset as I was at that time (yes, I was devastated), I feel there isn't much point in this charade anymore. I believe every good relationship has 3 parts. The initial stage where people meet each other. The developmental stage where the friendship progresses and deepens. And then it dies. The trick is to ensure both parties stay in the second stage. And when there's a chance that things will flicker out, it's up to BOTH sides to decide if the situation is worth salvaging. If the shared bond isn't increasing and maturing, if the whole friendship gets stuck in a rut, why, there's not much meaning anymore, is there?

I've said it umpteen times, but I fervently mean it. I will not implore anyone to be my friend. Ever. You choose to be my friend. You choose to tell me your secrets. And I choose to tell you mine. I'm not about to plead with him/her to provide a listening ear. I'm not about to beg for token favors, a telephone call when s/he's free, a chance meeting on the streets. I may be best-friendless. But I will not stoop that low for anyone or anything. And judging by the way things have worked out so far, I don't think there's much point in having best friends anymore. It's dangerous letting someone, anyone get too close.

I'm no longer bitter or resentful, honest. Just... Resigned, I suppose. And half-full of yearning desire, twinged with a little melancholy... To have things back the way they used to be...

But there now. I know it sounds stupid. I know I have a lot of pride. But frankly in this particular friendship, dignity, and a whole lot of memories in a dust-covered box, are all I've got left.

(Friday, November 15, 2002) (08:50 p.m.)

A few of us stayed back to swim after the practical ended. I haven't swum in a pool for a year or more, I haven't swum continous laps for the longest time! The water was so icky though, felt as though I was covered in slime when we got out. Heh. But anyways. I'm glad the Bioinfomatics course is over. Today's assessment quiz sucked, I got 6/10! When I got 10/10 and 9 for the other 3 days. Guess I should have paid attention, haha. The chinaman was so boring though. And the smart-alecy woman was introducing us to RASMOL, this computer program that's like DeepView (we were self-taught to use that for our Drug Discovery module). Only Deepview is for 'experts' and 'experienced people', while RASMOL is for the beginners. LOL.

You should have seen the way she opened the protein, turning it round and round with the mouse, zooming in and out on specific amino acids etc... And she was so full of it too, expecting us to gape and marvel at how cool it was. *wince* We know how to use DeepView already! We can do much more sophisticated things (at least, those that experimented with the program can)! And you expect us to be amazed at how you can zoom in and out? For crying out loud! But it was so funny though, everyone was going WOWWW with very exaggarated mannerisms. I nearly died laughing when she lapped it up and went on to show us how we could change the colors of the carbon/ oxygen etc to suit our purposes. Heh, I wished Dr Koh were here to see that; I can imagine the look on his face already. :D

Anyways. Thank God I managed to finish scanning through those primers, no thanks to those who published the journals (the gene sequence was updated very recently too and may have played a part as well). *angry glare* Got the labtech to fax it to the company, yay! Though my partner was too sick to do her part, at least some things are on their way. My supervisor had this aha-so-rubbing-it-in-DID-work look on her face when I went to show her my primers this afternoon! Yes, that worked. Though it's only one module, I just want us to do well.

Anyways, I'm going to bed soon. Had freakish nightmares about the aforesaid primers after I finally finished checking them and didn't sleep well. Though I think I ought to shower again cos I can feel the chlorine sticking in my hair!

(Thursday, November 14, 2002) (10:54 p.m.)

Our project supervisor wasn't very pleased with the both of us when we went to look for her today. Two of her other project students were there too, and she was raving over how wonderful their work was, how it was neat and organized, how absolutely brillant and how pleased she was that they put in effort! Gack. She was rubbing it into our faces! It's not our fault the cultures haven't arrived so we can't start the ribotyping! It is partly our fault we couldn't do the primers, but well, come on. We did try okay. Grrr.

My partner is sick, physically sick. And she's also sick of doing the primers. I don't blame her, I'm also sick of them. After 4 hours, I only managed to match about 20 out of about 45 pairs. From none in the afternoon. Why? Because thank God, I found the most common strain under a different name (*mutters angrily*). But most of all, I had to individually dissect each primer sequence into many bits to do a Find using MS Word, and then compare them with each other and piece them together MANUALLY. Because so many of the sneaky people who published the papers (we got all our sequences from them) mistyped a single basepair/ changed the alignment by one etc. Deliberately too, because it was so damn obvious most of the time! No wonder we hardly got any matches just now!

I'm so angry at how they could mix up the sequences on purpose! Knowing that everyone who needed to use them for reference would find it so hard to match them properly. I could just about spit nails right now. The selfish conniving lard buckets!

(Thursday, November 14, 2002) (01:40 p.m.)

_Sarah (01:24 PM): erm alright. none of my primers match. i mean those that matched for forward don't match the reverse
|~*Kylaria*~| (01:25 PM): mine oso
_Sarah (01:26 PM): OOPS.
|~*Kylaria*~| (01:27 PM): i don't know. only one has matched so far
_Sarah (01:28 PM): NONE of mine has. for strain 49504
|~*Kylaria*~| (01:29 PM): i haven't even searched for the other one
_Sarah (01:31 PM): okay its official. nothing matches for the other strain 43526 too!!
|~*Kylaria*~| (01:32 PM): fuck. fuck fuck fuck.
|~*Kylaria*~| (01:32 PM): how? i think i've fallen sick
_Sarah (01:34 PM): how? i think we're dead!

We're in such deep shit. Nearly everyone has started on their final year project except us. Those that haven't are planning to do so next week, after the Bioinformatics course ends. My partner and I haven't even ordered the damn primers, which will take at least a week to arrive. Because we didn't know how to BLAST them. Then now we've learnt that, they all don't match each other! And our bacterial culture & DNA hasn't come yet! We ordered them 7 weeks ago! Our supervisor isn't even breathing fire down our necks (like we thought she would), I bet she trusts and expects us to be mature enough to handle the huge responsibilities on our own.

Whoops. Bad move.

(Wednesday, November 13, 2002) (10:51 p.m.)

Whew, it's been a busy two days. Things have happened but I don't feel like going into detail just yet. So bear with me while I stray from the introspective path. (: The Bioinformatics course is getting pretty interesting and challenging, thank God for that! The first day's lecture on databases was so boring I was shriveling up in the LT. Haha, anyways. Lianne (the only other truly mad HP fan I know) and I went to watch the Chamber of Secret sneaks today. We were booking tickets online when we were supposed to be working with BioEdit, and silly me gave her the url for Causeway Point instead of Cineleisure. Ack! D'ya know how far away Woodlands is from my home? I took 110 minutes to get back!

The movie was good, but I prefer the book all the same. I feel so disappointed! Yes I know I'm the only idiot that didn;t watch the first HP movie; but when I downloaded the Sorcerer's Stone last night (couldn't watch the VCD Michelle lent me because the tv connected to the VCD player malfunctioned at that opportune moment!!), I was let down so often! Like, I secretly expected the broomsticks to be ethereal, I thought they'd glow and glimmer with that barely-there shimmer. But they were thick and solid! And made of common wood! And looked like the cheap kind you could get from the market! I also imagined the Quidditch pitch to be a wide expanse of green, where the players would soar dip glide effortlessly over a large lawn. But I was disappointed again.

And don't let me get started on the characters. Hermione was SO pretty, she didn't fit the girl I thought she would be! Harry had such stunning eyes and was so sweet and adorable, especially when he (tenderly) held her hand while she was Petrified. *mock swoon* They look compatible in the show, honest they did. Ron had his mouth open half the time, and methinks he fit the role perfectly. Dumbledore was another let down, imo, Gandalf (from LotR) would have made a better Headmaster. And Snape. Oh Geez, Snape! I'll not go into details but suffice to say, I don't think I can bring myself to read anymore Snape/Hermione/Whoever fics. It's too depressing seeing the "real" thing instead of who/ what you always visualised.

Maybe I shouldn't have watched the show after all. But apart from the places where it didn't fit my expectations, it would have even been worth .50. I suppose this goes to show that sometimes, things are better left to one's imagination. At least they aren't confined to other people's standards and (misguided) judgement. q: