Wish for a peaceful, fruitful and successful 2010.

Happy 2010 to all our families and friends. What a year 2009 has been.. Praise God for smooth academics, good labs/bosses, many friends made in / coming to Boston, good health for loved ones and the many marriages made by God. Pray that God will continue blessing our families and friends and this household in the new year.

2010 is going to start with a blast, I know it already. Check out dear Boston on NYE.

Good holidays, everyone!

First X’mas for our chilli plants

While we were having fun in Grand Canyon / Las Vegas, our chilli plans were undergoing metamorphosis of their own…

 

They were bushy and full of red chillis when we dropped them off with Shengyong and Richie before we left. Alas the day we moved them was an especially cold and windy day – they must have been frostbitten because shortly after we reached Vegas, a very traumatized Richie and Shengyong wrote an email to let us know that the leaves started wilting and dropping.

 

 

 

 

Fortunately our chilli plants were so hardy.. Under plant fertilizer, much watering and TLC from the two guys, they started sprouting new shoots! They look very healthy now, albeit a little zen-like (think bamboos), but I think we can look forward to fresh chillis in a couple of months again!

P/S: Did I mention today happen to be cold and windy too, as we moved them back home?

Whale watching! Sept 19, 2009

Yes I am long overdue for a photo update.. The past semester has been crazy for me, having to struggle with a class I’ve never been good in, and another class that.. I just couldn’t do well enough in. Well thankfully for us, our days of working towards good grades are over, so dc and I are looking forward to some quality time in lab. LOL. Thank God for sustenance.

Boston has the fortune of being along the marine route of whale migration and every fall, hundreds of humpback, minke and finback whales as well as white-sided dolphins swim from the polar waters down to the tropics to feed over winter. This year we snagged a good deal from MIT to get discounted tickets for the whale watching cruise!

Excited about our whale cruise!

It was a sunny, albeit windy day. There were lots and lots and lots of people, do you see how the queue bended around and was still snaking on the left? Even with our discounted tickets, it was still a little expensive, so you can imagine how much profit goes into operating the cruise..

Yay group photo! (Check out the cute expressions of the guys behind us)  

Tenessa! She’s such a cute darling.  Tricilia to Tenessa: ‘Tenessa look at Auntie Chyan Ying (so I can take the photo). Later she’ll give you peanuts.’. After the shot was taken, Tenessa innocently asked her mother, ‘Where’s my peanut?’ She really does enjoy her food.

The Boston skyline. Nowhere as impressive as NYC, but hey, whales don’t need skyscrapers.

Check out the engines reving out. The catamaran was literally bouncing off the surface of the waters, and it was SUPER windy.

  

Men who love children and whom children love :) These are the men I admire.

Poor Yingkai had to carry the kids and stay balanced on the catamaran in the strong winds, because the children were afraid of being blown away!

  I can’t resist putting up this smart photo of Leonard. :)

Yes the absence of whale photos is too obvious to ignore. The truth is, we saw only spurts of water vapor from their blow holes from far far far away. I had the fortune of catching a glimpse of the tail of the whale as it was swimming, but dc didn’t see anything. The catamaran was really crowded, and once it stopped when it spots a whale, the whole boat will rock violently from side to side, not unlike a viking ship. Whale watching is quite a cool conversation topic, but… not quite worth the time and money. :(

To end off, here’s what we thought will happen before we went on the cruise.. haha. (Photo courtesy of Boston Tours) Guess our expectations were jacked up wayyyyy too high by promotional photos.

Juxtaposition of an excellent and "less-than-average" class

We have just ended the fall semester during when we took two engineering classes required by our program. In the midst of fulfilling these requirements, it was interesting that we were placed in the juxtaposition of (to paraphrase from the title) an awesome class and rather distasteful class (hereby referred to as Class T and F respectively). The many emotions and thoughts invoked in the process are precious and valuable to anyone who is interested in pursuing a teaching career in the future or just anyone else for interest's sake.

What defines an excellent class, or what sets it apart from a bad one? In broad strokes, an excellent class is very similar to a bottle of good wine. The introduction or description must be elaborate and clear. In the context of wine, a decent description runs from the characteristics of the grapes used, the different tones the wine possesses, additional flavors from the aging process and even the kind of food it should pair with. Note the broad concepts: origin, content and applications. All these apply for a class. The teaching faculty should be clear what prerequisites are needed, explain and motivate each subject topic to be covered in the course and lead the students to fruitful application of the content in real world problems.

I used to be a wine idiot, picking up only three of the five primary tastes from any type of wine, namely sweet, sour and bitter. (I suppose it will be weird to pick up saltiness or umami in any wine.) Over the years through trial and error, I improved slightly (still not a wine connoisseur yet). To me, a glass of good wine walks you through the entire process of wine-making. When the cork is removed, you are greeted by fragrance that is weakly fruity and at the same time, almost earthy. As you take the first sip, basic tastes (sweetness and sourness) come in to remind you that everything starts with grapes. As the wine lingers in the oral cavity longer, the characteristic tones emerge. Some alcohol, upon evaporation, then carries the aromatic compounds it dissolves up the nasal passage to the olfactory receptors. These tones and smells, by tantalizing our senses, are almost a mapping of the fermentation and flavor development in our sensation universe. After you swallow the wine, aftertaste appears. Some flavor will persist. Depending on the wine, some amount of tannins will be left behind, giving you some unique texture on your tongue and cheek walls.

A good class therefore walks you through the process of knowledge making. In class T, the professor took time to paint the history of the subject and what have been accomplished thus far. He began on a blank page, almost at the point similar to 2-3 centuries ago where mathematicians and scientists were only beginning to scratch the surface of the topic. Each concept was illustrated and proven in the same way how pioneers in the field arrived at their conclusions. Most importantly, concepts were painstakingly explained in great details before the embarking of mathematical acrobatics. (It makes so much sense to make sure that students are clear with concepts so that they know why they need to a certain mathematical treatment, but you will be surprised not every teacher follows it.) Yet, equations were properly derived with all the assumptions, simplifications etc demonstrated. Important milestone topics were even introduced with stories of how the scientist made the discovery, why he did so or what happened to him after the discovery. Eventually, certain concepts were explicitly used on a problem relevant to the students. Again, all these seem like common sense, but it takes a great amount of organization to pull it off.

Class F transverses on a different path. From day 1, a lot of emphasis was placed on applications. In short, every lecture was almost like "if you know how to do this, you can solve this problem, that problem...." When the time came to the how's of problem solving, two and three equations were smacked across the chalkboard with the derivation skipped. The same theme repeats over and over. It's like telling you that this bottle of wine goes well with certain food and tanah, the bottle of wine is thrown to you with no bottle label, year or description. When you sip the wine, the same basic flavors keep swirling around your mouth, giving rise to nothing interesting. Worse still, quite a few equations were wrong. (Now imagine sipping a salty wine.)

You may ask, what difference does it make as long as the problem is solved and as long as the equations work? Well, the difference is for the former scenario, having experienced the process of "wine-making", the student now knows exactly what lies in the bag to create a wine to go well with a specific type of food. In the process, he understands the fundamentals of wine-food pairing, be inspired by the process of wine making and even with a certain amount of additional training, become a capable wine maker himself. Even better, because the fundamentals are understood, they can be manipulated or used properly in new, creative ways. For the latter, food-wine pairings can still be done. Sadly, it's more mechanical. Sweet wine goes with Food A. Dry wine goes with Food B. Wine-making always remains in a black box untouchable and unreachable.

After both Classes T and F, these two aftertastes still linger in my mouth. But it doesnt take much to predict which one will persist longer and which is the one I would choose to "pair with my food" when the opportunity arises.

1 more day to end of exams!

It's amazing how bad a certain class is in MIT

End of Thermodynamics.

:D :D :D

The over-competitive, over-aggressive city

Boston, sometimes known as the bean town, is never as cute as her alias suggests. Each year during school term, the whole city is flooded with hormone-raging teenagers to young adults who have converged to attend the numerous colleges scattered all over an area way smaller than even Singapore. Each day, countless ambulances and fire engines comb the streets of the city, always in a rush to get to someone in need or perhaps another false fire alarm trigger. But what really marks the tough, unfriendly and almost despicable side of the city is the pool of drivers it boasts.

Today, CY and I went to Porter Square to get some stuff from the supermarket. On our way home, we were approaching an intersection and preparing to enter a left-turn-only lane to turn left. Suddenly this car behind us, who was running on yellow lines and fighting to enter the lane prematurely, honked at us. LOUDLY. In a PROLONGED fashion. The kind you put your hand on the honk, refuse to let go of the pressure and in fact, even press harder as time passes. What nerve! I had my indicators on for ages (all car were waiting at a red light before this happened) and unless the driver behind us has faulty photoreceptors that refuse to fire at the same frequency as our indicator, he should have already known our intention to move into that lane once the traffic ahead cleared up. When we got to doing that, he chose to attempt squeezing in the lane first, and when my car veered into his path, he actually had the nerve to honk instead of stepping on his brakes first. What on earth is wrong with people like him?

This marks a good time to summarize our driving experience in Boston so far. People on the roads here are literally monsters. Each time you turn on the indicator to attempt to change lane, the car directly behind speeds up. Well, maybe the first car just wants to clear out of the way. Then, the second car speeds up too. And then, the THIRD car speeds up too. All zooming on in a defiance act to cut you before you change lane. Sometimes, it's safer to change lane without turning on indicator.

We are thought to slow at traffic intersection, prepare to stop if there is amber. Not for Bostonians. They operate at a more advanced level. They speed up to intersection, if there is amber, CHEONG AH! If it just turns red, CHEONG AH! Perhaps the US military will do a better job just sending Bostonians to Iraq or Afghanistan to drive their tanks.

To emerge from a small road into a major one, our driving instructors teach us to check for clear traffic and then inch forward, check again and then proceed. Bostonians totally simplify the procedure for us. Just stick your car out. It's ok to block traffic. The whole world will wait for you, and you transverse across to the lane you want to travel in.

Even better. Say if you are at an intersection. You look to your right and see a car intending to leave a street side parking lot, and you want to park. Then the light turns green, and you have to move, because otherwise you are blocking vehicles behind you, which are blocking the car which intends to leave the parking lot. Pop quiz: What would you do? Well, a normal human being in the world will say "Geez, tough luck!". Again, not for Bostonians. To them, it's "YES!" They stop right there, shift into reverse gear to kindly inform the cars behind that they want to reverse into the parking lot (which if you check above, is not even vacant yet because they do not allow traffic to pass). Their next step: endure 10 seconds of honking. Cars behind them have no choice but to pass around them. The leaving car finally gets to vacate the parking lot. Then the indifferent car pulled into the lot. The driver got off and walked away, as if nothing happened.

Boston is home to the two greatest learning institutions in the world. Yet, who would have guessed, she may be more famous for having re-invented the rules of driving completely and TOTALLY.

The new face of science

Just got back from a seminar class in the evening. The speaker was some executive in an up and coming biotech company, and his talk was on communicating innovation. Catchy title huh, but it comes with a sobering truth. As I listened to his talk (and tolerated with his sales pitch for everything), it suddenly occurred to me that science will never be the same again. How so? Some excerpts from the class:

Qn 1 from audience: "Does your company have publication planning? I learn that many big pharma have that." (What? What the heck is publication planning?)

Ans: "No, we do not do that. But we will look hard at our scientists' work and we have a team to make sure that the work gets to Nature"

Ok, great... Multi-million-dollar companies, with almost unlimited resources and now, specialized teams to help package work into Nature-worthy publications? How on earth can small fries like us compete at all?

Speaker: "We also make sure that we invest and collaborate in key research teams in MIT etc".

Good as it seems to sound, but hanging around Cambridge area allows one to witness how getting into good books with money-flushed companies is as important as doing good science.

I guess doing science is no longer the noble, altruistic pursue of truth and knowledge. If an apple were to fall on an Isaac Newton-equivalent now, he would be thinking more about selling the apple, packaging the apple to fetch a higher price or even file a patent for the apple if it is possible. If there were a Gibbs-equivalent who was asked to teach so that he had enough income to support himself doing research he was interested in, he would most probably just leave the job and be some biotech CEO, preaching that the marketing law of being first is better than being better. True, commercialization of science has fueled the development and accessibility of technologies but it is also true that it has completely changed the face of science. There is no question about it.

Countdown to Thanksgiving!

Haven't updated the blog for eons, so thought we should drop something here to tell the world cydc has not been buried under piles of work (at least just temporarily and not permanently).

Counting down to Thanksgiving for a good meal and a good time in Burlington, VT. Please come soon...

Relearning the ABCs

We all learn our ABCs when we are young but who would have known that we will relearn it again in grad school at MIT, and what's more, over the span of just two classes

A for Ampere's Law

B for Boltzmann's relation for entropy

C for Canonical Ensemble

D for Donnan Equilibrium

E for ElectroQuasiStatic Approximation

F for Faraday's Law in Maxwell's relations

G for Gauss' Theorem

H for Hamiltonian

Babies of the house

Just thought it’s something fun – who would have thought a 24 year old will owe so many soft toys? Yet each of them are sentimental to me, and have their own personalities, so they are really like my babies.

Chu Chu is born on June 13, 2004 in Hong Kong. She is a frequent flier of the Singapore Airlines, having zipped from US to Singapore multiple times (and even to Texas from Baltimore on one occasion). She has stuck with cy through thick and thin through her ardous undergraduate years, even sharing cy’s single bed in her undergraduate years (usually taking up a third of the bed, right picture). ChuChu is gentle, nurturing and very motherly. She might be big, but her heart is even bigger.

 

PipiPapa was adopted from ToysRUs in the summer of 2005 – I was so excited when I saw him because he is a larger (and fluffier) version of our existing puppy Pipi, and hence he was named Pipi-Papa. Unlike normal dogs who cannot stomach chocolate, Pipa loves everything cacoa, much like cy! He is usually blur-rish (you usually can’t see his eyes!), but his best buddy Cola looks out for him and alerts him when there is food (more like, chocolate) to be eaten.

Cola was acquired from World of Coca Cola, Georgia. It was a random spoilt-the-girlfriend moment when dc offered to buy me the bear that I was hugging at the shop, though Cola insists that it was HE who chose us, and not the other way round. Cola claims to have a BS in Biomedical Engineering (concentration in Electrical Engineering), with minor in Chinese language from University of North Pole and graduated Valedictorian of Valedictorians. He has a panda girlfriend who is currently an ambassador in Beijing, though dc and I have never seen him trying to communicate with her. His Coca Cola cap and scarf are gifts from Santa and his polar bear mummy respectively. Cola adores seafood, hibernating and watching Curious George on TV, and will be very annoyed and grouchy if he does not get any.

 

 

ColaDiDi (aka Colad aka DiDi) is a result of consuming 60+ bottles of Coca Cola.. Well almost. We got him from the Coke Rewards scheme, and he cost us 186 points, which translates to 62 500mL bottles (imagine drinking all that!). Thankfully we had some help from large events that allowed us to quickly raise the points. We were out of US by then, DiDi had to be sent to ZhenXing’s place in Baltimore first, before being brought back to us by Xiaosai. I remember her passing him to me while I was in lab.. he’s such a small darling. When DiDi is being taken care of by Cola, he is usually tied around Cola’s waist with by Cola’s scarf. Most of the time, though, he is taken care of by the motherly ChuChu, while Cola goes off having fun on his own.

WuGui (or Master WuGui) has only one photo because he joined us relatively recently, being a gift to dc from his parents-in-law (together with cake and a cute birthday card!). WuGui rarely talks, but he makes bubbly sounds when he is tickled. We are still trying to decipher his language, and more importantly, find out what he eats (for now, we think he eats bread).

 

 

The friendship between Cola and XiaoDingDang goes back a long way to March2008 when we visited Baltimore en route to graduate school interviews. Since she doesn’t talk, Cola called her XiaoDingDang as her head is big and round just like the fictional cat. XiaoDingDang was looking for a new home when we went to Baltimore again last June, so we adopted her to join the ever-growing family. She is now part of what Cola dubs the ‘Hibernation Gang’, who strive for undisturbed sleep through winter, except for when food is available in the dining room.

That sums up all the babies in the house. They are such darlings to me, that I’ll shuttle them back and forth Singapore everytime I travel. My mum and husband begs me to leave them behind, but my sister and I just cannot bear for them not to reunite with their siblings in Singapore (yes my sister has another set of babies!).

What prompted me to write this entry? I was baking apple crumble last Sunday, and dc decided to weigh each of them using my weighing scale. The results were astonishing. Can you guess which of them is the heaviest?

The Five Love Languages

We learnt about The Five Love Languages (Gary Chapman) when we were doing “Before You Say Yes” course at Trinity. It’s a very enlightening revelation to how we show love to our partners and friends – here’s a short except from Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages website:

Words of Affirmation
Mark Twain once said “I can live for two months on a good compliment.”  Verbal appreciation speaks powerfully to persons whose primary Love Language is “Words of Affirmation.”  Simple statements, such as, “You look great in that suit,” or “You must be the best baker in the world! I love your oatmeal cookies,” are sometimes all a person needs to hear to feel loved.

Quality Time
Quality time is more than mere proximity. It’s about focusing all your energy on your mate. A husband watching sports while talking to his wife is NOT quality time. Unless all of your attention is focused on your mate, even an intimate dinner for two can come and go without a minute of quality time being shared.

Receiving Gifts
Some mates respond well to visual symbols of love. If you speak this love language, you are more likely to treasure any gift as an expression of love and devotion. People who speak this love language often feel that a lack of gifts represents a lack of love from their mate. Luckily, this love language is one of the easiest to learn.

Acts of Service
Sometimes simple chores around the house can be an undeniable expression of love. Even simple things like laundry and taking out the trash require some form of planning, time, effort, and energy. Just as Jesus demonstrated when he washed the feet of his disciples, doing humble chores can be a very powerful expression of love and devotion to your mate.

Physical Touch
Many mates feel the most loved when they receive physical contact from their partner. For a mate who speaks this love language loudly, physical touch can make or break the relationship. Sexual intercourse makes many mates feel secure and loved in a marriage. However, it is only one dialect of physical touch. Many parts of the body are extremely sensitive to stimulation. It is important to discover how your partner not only physically responds but also psychologically responds to these touches.

It is also interesting to note that our love language can change as we mature and go through different circumstances. For instance, my love language used to be ‘Physical Touch’ – I will long for him to hold my hand, rest his arm on my shoulder as we walk, or a goodnight hug before we part. Recently I re-evaluated my love language, and it is now ‘Quality Time’. I guess with his lab being 20 minutes away from home, and us being busy with our individual research, I only get to see him at night when we’re both doing assignments..

Anyway, the reason I brought up The Five Love Languages is this: I was doing my usual dishwashing after lunch this afternoon, while dc set about packing his desk. Noting that my desk was dusty too (no thanks to the central heater vent behind us), he started packing and cleaning my desk, and even brought out all his tools (isopropanol, water, cotton pad, tissue paper, forceps, dustbuster etc) to clean every inch of my laptop:

It was really endearing to see him being so occupied with getting every stain, dust and tissue lint off my laptop – he did not even know I took these photos. That was his way of showing his love for me, in his usual silent, non-fanfare, non-PDA mannerisms. His acts of service to his wife.

Two years since he proposed…

… and smiling every second since then.

Love you Dear.

It’s great when your birthday falls on a Saturday

First things first, thank you for all your prayers for our driving test! It really worked for me, though for dc it was an unlucky stint. In any case, with a US license in the family, it really paved the way for us to buy a car :). More on the car will come, as promised. :)

Saturday morning, dc woke up earlier than me (as always), to prepare my birthday noodles and eggs. Heh when I got out from the bathroom, there was a weird birthday song playing from the living room (check it out here!) and the babies were all waiting for me when I walked into the living room!

Oh man I couldn’t believe my eyes!! A HP Mini! And a simple slideshow made by dc as my birthday card :) :) :) Sigh.. I’ve been talking about getting a netbook so I don’t have to bring my 14” Lenovo around.. It’s kind of heavy. So I was just musing to dc that I can bring a netbook with me when I’m waiting for FACS.. or open a netbook in class.. I couldn’t bring myself to spend another $300 on a netbook, considering my Lenovo is less than a year old, and it certainly didn’t occur to me that dc will pamper me on my birthday! (I refuse to let him pay for my CK sling bag during an outlet mall trip because I wanted a ‘surprise’.)

dc put in so much effort to make my day. He ordered it on Amazon.com way in advance to have it sent to Tricilia’s place, but since Amazon was taking forever to ship it, he has to upgrade to two-day shipping just to get it in time for my birthday. Tuesday before my birthday, he collected the netbook to install all the software – it made his female colleagues envious! :D Feel so pampered.

After skyping with folks in the morning (emotional nourishment!), we decided to check out an Italian restaurant at Little Italy.

Nice decor, soft music. Albeit few people due to the rain and stiff competition in Little Italy.

Bread with olive oil dip! The dip was so good – chilli peppers, parmesan cheese, garlic powder.. Ahhhh. From then on, we always pair our Bertucci rolls with homemade olive oil dip.

Appetizer – grilled shrimp caesar salad. The shrimps were very fresh, and dc really enjoyed the grilled flavor of the shrimps.

Oh my gosh, when our entree came out, dc and I were at loss for words.

Look at the size of my pasta!!! There’s like at least one pound of pasta underneath all that mussels and clams and squid! And dc’s just as spectacular..

Eggplant-chicken parmasean. Another pound of pasta.

This is what is left after I’m done. It looks barely touched!

This is the restaurant, if you are interested. Super value for money! Our leftovers lasted us another two meals :)

Foggy rainy September 12.

We went to Haymarket to check out the fresh produce that were crazily cheap, and the Macy’s sales that were going on that morning.. Unfortunately we didn’t snag any loot and instead went home to start cooking dinner, which is another of my favourites…

Zhen Xing’s Taiwanese beef noodles!! Yay! I love its beefiness, spiciness, and that each batch we make will last us at least four meals. Ooohhh and I love love love stewed carrots.

So while we were at Macy’s, we forgot to make a detour to Chinatown to buy their yummy birthday cakes. I was just 撒娇-ing to dc that it feels weird without a birthday cake, and within half an hour, we were on the T to LA Burdick’s at Harvard Square!

A slice of Burdick’s Birthday Cake (chocolate fudge with raspberry) and molten milk chocolate.. Such a pampering end to the day!

My birthday certainly lasted more than a day. The next day, Josthan got off his stroller to give me a BIG birthday hug as soon as we met at the T platform. Tenessa immediately followed suit, doing everything her brother does. I got a wonderful birthday present from the Chuas:

A lovely Liz Claiborne sling bag (perfect for freeing hands for grocery, or slinging over poofy winter coats) and birthday card specially chosen and decorated by Josthan! Josthan chose a Curious George card for me because I always reminded him of Curious George (since I introduced them to the cartoon…. Oh well yes I admit I love watching Curious George). He even bought stickers that he can color so decorate the inside! According to Tricilia, Josthan took it very seriously and even cried when Tenessa tore some of his stickers. Haha I love the two kids. And, oh yes, I was Chyan Ying JieJie when I first met them in June 2007. After I got married, my title was officially changed to Aunty Chyan Ying. Sigh.

For grocery shopping that week, we finally succumbed to the calling of the frozen Thai durian..

It was frozen, it was peeled, it was Thai.. Nothing about it indicated that it was going to be good durian, but we were craving for some sulphur in our bodies anyway. Amazingly, the durian was much better than expected! (though I’m still spooked by the cleanliness of the fruit, considering that it was peeled by goodness-knows-who (or what).

dc enjoyed the durian so much that he can’t help subconsciously giving a thumbs-up! Unfortunately it’s kind of expensive.. that box costs around $5.. so I think we’ll be saving it only for special occasions.

On a final note, 24 is just too big a number for me…

Car comedy

In primary school (and even some TCS drama we could recall), people make fun of car plate numbers of how 7448 means "go die die". Who would have known, we got one ourselves when we grew up.

Jokes aside, we have gone through the rite of passage to search and buy a car! (thanks to help and advice from Yingkai) More details in subsequent postings

Deliberation over words = Indicator of age?

I recalled my NS days as a clerk, typing away as the high-ranking officers met and discussed. One thing I used to be intolerant was how they agonized over the choice of words, which, to me, were nothing but synonyms of one another. E.g.

Officer A: I think the mission should be 'To maintain and protect XXX'

Officer B: I disagree. You have to protect first and then maintain. I would go for 'To protect and maintain XXX'

Officer C: I think 'To defend XXX' is better. It encompasses both the 'protect' and 'maintain' aspects and invokes the emotion that you are fighting for the good of people you want to protect.

I used to go like "Duh.... all sama sama la, go for the one that sounds the nicest, has all the alliteration, rhythm and whatever. Time for tea break?" Intriguingly, this very delibration over words, which I ridiculed, is coming back to haunt me. I was preparing for a presentation very recently and I caught myself being so cautious in choosing my words as well. "Two mechanisms opposing each other in a post-stroke setting, no no no, opposing is too strong, facing each other? or co-existing? Hmmm, sounds too neutral though, arrghhhh"

Sometimes I wonder whether it is an "age-thing". The longer you live, the more you have experienced people's reactions to what you say and the more cautious you now become. Even more subtly, maturity has perhaps allowed you to understand the mentality of others better and everytime you choose a word, you subject it to the evaluation by a few different mentalities and you just want to find one which fits all. Fortunately, something is still true no matter how old one gets: when you agonize over words too much, go for tea break la...

Btw, if you are reading this before Friday Sept 11..

.. please pray for our driving tests.

.. and that we get a good deal when we buy our Yaris/Prius. :)

Snapshots from the end of summer

With the campus teeming with students today, I just keep getting reminded that I am no longer the fresh-faced first year graduate student. It doesn’t help when the two engineering classes we are taking are core classes for first year graduate students. Oh well. I’m grateful, though, that unlike last year, I am now settled in a friendly lab with an amazing boss. :D

Nonetheless, it still saddened dc and I that summer was coming to an end, yet we didn’t have much of a break-break except for the two weeks spent back home. It was wonderful to have lots and lots of old friends moving to Boston, but quite frankly, after all the weekends spent helping people move and hanging out with friends, dc and I were kind of craving some alone time. (Not to say we didn’t enjoy your company – you all are wonderful!) So last Thursday, dc and I decided to take a day off lab (bosses, if you are reading, please click the back button on your IE now) to explore what’s north of Harvard Square T station, notably Porter Square (Jap food court!) and Davis Square (Family Dollar!).

Who knew there’re be such a quaint Japanese haven in the first floor of a building called Lesley University? It’s like a mini-Japanese food court, complete with ramen shop, don shop, sushi/sashimi shop and even a Japanese crafts shop. Aww! dc did his homework and we made a beeline for the highly-reviewed ramen shop.

dc’s getting annoyed with my multiple attempts at forcing a flash with my feeble Sony Ericsson camera phone. (Argh I forgot to bring my camera!)

Yay lunch is served! I ordered curry ramen, which is really a dash of Jap curry in the soup, but I really like the hint of Jap curry taste! The soup is claimed to be made from pork and chicken and full of collagen, and it’s immediately apparent from the thickness and viscosity of the soup that the claims are most likely right! (Side point: I love the Jap chilli powder.)

Cute chilli dishes!

Sorry, the ramen soup was so good that I left nothing behind.

For some reason, dc and I notice a consistent pattern in our dates. The focus is usually on food – we will go for something really exciting (like the discovery of Jap foodcourt!), and then usually follow up with some ‘auntie-uncle’ shopping. :) After lunch, we headed to Davis Square where the nearest Family Dollar (yes, I’m not ashamed to admit that dc and I love cheap stuff) to us is. We also checked out the meat shop next to Family Dollar, where Leonard buys his delicious marbled beef steaks. The ooh-so-succulent and tender beef chunks that had dc and I swooning over at Leonard’s house. Eventually I curbed myself from buying the steaks.. I realized that my love for beef (steaks! 牛腩!) and red meat is going to kill me someday (unfortunately I have yet to convince myself that all the chocolate and ice-cream are going to do the same), so I’m trying to cut my beef intake. Ironically, women do need more iron and not so much chocolate. Booo.

Speaking of not being able to curb my sweet tooth…

We found a crepe cafe!!! Voted the best neighbourhood cafe in Best of Boston, I convinced dc to check it out with me. Lets drool over the hazelnut crepe with coffee heath frozen yoghurt.. ahhhh. 

Saturday: dc made a huge batch of chicken rice and invited yk over for dinner.

Hainanese chicken, chicken rice, chicken soup, complete with ginger-scallion sauce, improvised chilli sauce, sweet dark sauce, and oyster omelette!

yk bought cheesecakes for us! Sugar overload – woohoo!

yk, coming from Stanford, dreaded the New England winter (the cold is already fast settling in) and so invited us to check out Boston’s beaches on Labor Day. Though we really should be working in lab on a public holiday like all graduate students do, dc and I scrimped off for one of the last few sunny and sufficiently-warm days at the beach.

Kelly’s Roast Beef flagship store at Revere beach – we found out that they are famous for their roast beef sandwiches only after we came home and read up on them. Nonetheless, we thoroughly enjoyed our fried clams, fried fish, clam chowder and double cheeseburger!

Cute puppy :)

I like this photo :) (Shoutout to Dom: Rule of thirds!) 

yk’s terribly amused that the three of us are sharing his beach towel (hence we’re all sitting so close together on the sand).

The two hawt guys.

chyan ying moment (noun):   an incident in which a soon-to-be perfect result is thwart by chyan ying’s blurness, causing the user (usually chyan ying herself, sometimes others as well) to be amusely frustrated (or frustratedly amused).

Hee love dc’s candid expressions.

The birds came near enough because dc tossed them a grape and told them ‘Go fight for it, man!’. (SPCA please do not arrest my husband.)

Pretty wispy clouds! I considered approaching the couple sitting there to sell them this photo, though it's going to be hard to convince them that it is them in the picture.

Yay for the beach!

Heh and below are some of the other photos that I took with my idiot-proof camera, praying hard that they *might* turn out somewhat artistic looking.

(Special note: This Baby-G was a gift from my uncle when I left Singapore for undergrad. It’s still working great and I wear it to lab everyday.)

  (Rule of thirds again!)

Divergent seagull prints.

(I don’t know if I should be happy that the bird is not in focus.. I guess I can argue shamelessly that I meant for the waves to be the subject? LOL.)

(Completely unintended, but I somehow find this photo has a certain ‘National Geographic’ swing to it.)

Ended the week with baking banana bread, and here’s the little bear doing his part for food.