You Are the Loyalist

6 You have strong relationships and are intensely loyal. People find you easy to love and care for. You like your world to be stable and secure, no surprises. You're cautious. You prefer your inner circle to the outside world.

I have shoes!!!

I finally got around to cleaning out the storage area downstairs and was thrilled to see my old friends again. They're a bit dirtier and more worn than I remembered...but wow, I've got enough shoes for everyday of the week and more! After living with only four pairs of shoes in total in Australia, I feel so blissed and happy.

Yeah yeah, I'm a girl, so shut up!

*lots of huggles*

Sorry I can't make it to your bday skate. I have lecture and I have no clue where my skates are anyho.

Christa, you are getting your present *gasp* tomorrow...because it's unlikely I'll run into you today (and that I forgot to bring it with me to campus)

I received a lovely phone call from Triona yesterday evening. She's in Banff at the moment, after visiting New Zealand and Fiji. It was quite a timely call, I must say, because without her reminder, I would've forgotten all about Australia Day today. Obviously, due to the time difference, all the Aussies would've finished celebrating at this point (most likely recovering from it now)

I was going to wear my biniki today(under my clothes, of course) in honour of Australia day, but then after a hellish night rushing to finish a paper I really couldn't care less. And that's beside the fact that I still have to handwash my biniki before wearing. Natioanl Geographics did a special story on Australia back when Sydney hosted the 2000 Olympics. There was a very interesting photo of two Aussie blokes in pink tutus drinking beer on a boat to show their sensitive side on Australia Day. And don't worry, they were wearing white boxer shorts underenath. I don't really get it but it was amusing nonetheless.

So to celebrate, I'm wearing my Sydney Uni hoodie...and maybe I'll have a bit of beer at the CBS Beer & Pizza night at the Keg.

I got a postcard from Triona! That made my day!

I also received a feedback questionnaire from Sydney Uni regarding the Pharmacology course I took. I must say, I'm rather impressed that they even bothered to mail a form all the way to Canada. And get this, they even included a postage-paid envelop. It was very nice of them...but unfortuately, I don't think Canada Post accept Australian stamps.

You know what's so special about January 24th? It's not just ANY ol' Monday....it's offcially the Most Depressing Day of the Year.

The authority's logic is that today marks one month after Christmas, all the lovely bills are coming in. People are starting to lose their new year enthusiasms and (already) breaking their new year resolutions and getting back into their old habits etc.

Not to mention it's a Monday.

I was attending the HKNS Symposium on Carbohydrates today and there’s was a speaker correlating carbohydrate intake to risk of developing breast cancer. Some of the data she presented compared prevalence of breast cancer between ethnic groups. The incidence of breast cancer is at least twice as high in Caucasian women in the US compared to Japanese woman. Then she showed us some mammograms of breasts to illustrate the idea of tissue density (the denser the tissue the higher the risk of breast cancer). I could help but notice that the breast with the lowest density happens to be the smallest one there. Could smaller breast size possibly explain why so few Japanese women get breast cancer? I mean, if you don’t have much of those adipose cells, the probability of one of those cells becoming cancerous is automatically smaller…

Makes sense doesn’t it?

Wonder if researchers has looked into this *opens library homepage to conduct article search*

Let’s see…

“Pain experienced by women attending breast cancer screening.” Supposedly it feels like pressing your boob between two plates…fun. But it's worth it right?

“Breast size as risk factor for tumor size at diagnosis.” These are all European women…nope.

“Does Mammography hurt?” Well, of course it does! But it’s worth it right?

Here we go:

“Comparison of mammographic densities and their determinants in women from Japan and Hawaii.”

“Breast size among women of Japanese ancestry was similar in Hawaii and Japan (Table II) but 50% smaller than among Caucasian women. This relation changed little after adjustment for anthropometric and reproductive factors. Dense areas were smallest among women in Japan, intermediate among women of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii and largest among Caucasian women. The difference became statistically significant after adjustment for variables
related to density. The adjusted means for the 2 groups in Hawaii were very similar in magnitude. Unadjusted percent densities were greater among women of Japanese ancestry than among Caucasian women because of the larger breast sizes among Caucasians. However, percent densities were significantly higher among Japanese women in Hawaii than among women in Japan.

Our results indicate that the size of the total breast differed primarily by ethnicity and the size of the dense areas differed mainly by place of residence. Because percent densities depend on the size of the breast and the dense areas, they were significantly different by place of residence and by ethnicity. Comparison of women in Japan with descendants of women who migrated to a high-risk environment several generations ago showed nearly unchanged
anthropometric characteristics but larger dense areas and higher percent densities, reflecting a higher breast cancer risk.

Comparing women of Japanese and Caucasian ancestry was strongly confounded by anthropometric characteristics and, in particular, by the larger breast sizes in Caucasian women.”

After reading Tiffany's email...I've come to the conclusion that one common aspect between a Catholic family and a Chinese family is that the children are raised to feel guilty about everything they do.

Symptom #1: Craving for tea.
Stimulus: fatigue
Time: three days after arriving back in Canada
Location: my house.

Symptom #2: Craving for a hot night out clubbing.
Stimulus: "supersize me" and other hip hop music
Time: noon
Location: in the Grad Lounge @ Uni. Why am I stuck here reading these gross science journals written in jargons I cannot comprehend? Do I really care about cardiovascular diseases that I'll (likely) never get in my life? *sob sob*

I went along with my mom and my brother to the UoG library so she could borrow a book on my student card. I found the book for her within ten minutes on the fifth floor but she continued to look on the shelf. My brother, Alan, is being his usual loud energetic self and kept on running around making funny noises, disturbing everyone on the floor. So I dragged him away and said to my mom “we’ll be in the computer pool on the 2nd floor”. She nodded in response, so off I went.

Half an hour later…no mom.

One hour later…no mom.

Two hours later…still no mom. Okay, so maybe she’s taking her time, I thought, I told her exactly where to meet us so I should stay put and wait a little longer. Alan has gotten really restless and I had to entertain him by playing games with him.

One more hour later…okay, it’s quarter after five. It’s been almost three hrs, I think that’s enough time. Where is mom? Did she forget about us. Forget staying in one spot, I’m going to find her. So off we went on our little mom hunt. We went through all the floors except the first floor and ended up back at the computer pool on the second floor. I was getting really pissed off…and a little bit worried.

One more hour later…okay, maybe I should call home and see if she’s gone home without us. No answer.
Then, a library staff asked “are you Ching Huang?”
“yes”
“your parents are looking for you. They’ve been going around the library.”
“oh,(finally) where are they now?”
“go down to the first floor.”

ARGH!

And there was my mom and dad, looking completely mystified. And so was I.

Apparently, mom was done browsing in about twenty minutes and then proceeded to the first floor (didn’t I say second floor?) to find us. Didn’t see us, got worried and then went around the library on every floor looking for us. Then she just panicked and decided to search the UC. Then she imagined some boogieman dragging both of us off and called Dad. Then she looked for us some more. Then Dad came and looked as well and still didn’t find us. If I didn’t bump into that nice library staff, god, we’d be there all night.

This is my theory of how this happened.

1. Mom admitted that she checked every corner on every floor of the library, except the second floor (don’t ask me why). If she actually bothered to look, or just walk past all the rows of computers on the second floor, she would’ve spotted us. I did leave to take Alan to the washroom, but our coats were there. Can't miss my bright green jacket!

2. Why didn’t Dad find us? My guess is that the time when he checked out the second floor is right when I was fed up and grabbed all our stuff to go on a Mom hunt. So we left right when he would’ve saw us.

And when I finally decided to call home, they were both IN the library frantically looking for us.

Amazing isn’t it?

I chickened out of the Organic Chemistry course...

I'm not required to take it.

It won't help me with the MCAT.

I don't really like Organic Chem...

I hate labs.

I have a Monday lab, which means that I'll have four lectures and two labs all on Monday...9:30am-5:30pm with no breaks ain't pretty.

Pete didn't end up as my lab partner anyways.

The exam is scheduled on the first day...which doesn't help the fact that I have two exams the day after and one more the day after the day after. I don't like having four killer finals within three days.

I think that's enough good reasons.

It's just not like me to chicken out like this...usually I don't make life easy for myself.

I guess change is inevitable.

I go back to school tomorrow. But I don't wanna! AHHHHH! I still have one more course to pick up, the problem is that I need special waiver form to get in...and currently, they are all full. I'll have to pray really hard that somebody will drop it 10min before I line up at counsellor's office. AHHHH! I haven't bought a single textbook! AHHH! I don't even know the exact route or how long it's going to take me to talk to campus from my new house...AHHHH!! And I messed up my computer...how I can have two Window xps running on the same computer when I'm only supposed to be replacing the original one is beyond me....AHHHHH And and...I discovered that three of my fav posters were missing when I was redecorating my room. AHHHH...where's my Legolas?? ...*sob sob* Don't worry, situation normal here (obviously)

Currently fully indulged in the music of Sarah Blasko. No one's ever heard of her though. She's one of the artist featured in The Best of Aussie Music cd Sina gave me. I think I've listened to the entire album at least five times by now. And to prove that I'm not insane in my tastes, my friend Jing came over and within 30sec of listening, she wanted a copy of the album. If you do visit her website, read her Bio...it's kinda funny.

1. Cry less
2. Figure out Dreamweaver
3. Figure out Macromedia Flash MX
4. Finish my websites (no matter how crappy they are!)
5. Sleep at least 7hrs each night (good luck!)
6. Finish learning (damn, what’s that song called…) Gr. 9 piano piece by Bach that I’ve been trying to learn for the past three (yes three) years
7. Practice flute at least once a week (not counting rehearsal)
8. Not lose any more cameras
9. Not lose any more keys
10. Take multivitamins
11. Lose Boyfriend Impaired status
12. Score 10 on each section of the MCAT
13. Make the bed for at least three days a week
14. No swearing near Alan
15. Procrastinate less (good luck on this one as well)
16. Keep in contact with friends
17. Volunteer (babysitting brother doesn’t count)
18. Always maintain positive attitude
19. Freak out less
20. Stop regretting the past