feel totally crushed after my jap final.... =(
feel ultra sleepy and i just want to go home and sleep but i hav astro hw due later in the day.... maybe i'll drop it though i'm not supposed to... why am i so bad at coping with whatever i hav to cope with....
it's finals week starting next week... and am going home in exactly two weeks' time... but somehow i still don't hav the motivation to study... and there's like so many other things to worry about

reactions to my peach tarts have been somewhat mixed, ranging from peaches are somewhat gross to crust is not very cooked to peach tarts are very nice.... haha hmm. so i conclude that they are average-tasting. but sample size not large enough. biased.. haha. if i have time tmr perhaps i can make more for my potluck at my prof's place again. but seeing how i have IAS hw, jap finals and tonnes of articles all due on thursday... hmm.. maybe not.

visited the SF fed reserve bank yesterday morning... and it was pretty cool! not only because we got to sit in the board room where board members meet, we also got to meet the president Janet Yellen who was surprisingly small-built and nice.... also got to tour the vaults where each container contained from between 4.6 million US dollars to 460 million dollars... and got cute souvenirs of shredded greenbacks from our 'tourguide'. had macdonalds in SF with sumei and shiying... hmm dunno. it was just a morning of getting away from all the work ahead of me. escapism....

my peach tarts! 

aargh. cannot believe my calmail timed out twice while i was typing my ad for my room and as a result i typed my ad thrice!! i tried copying before i pressed 'send' but then stupid me forgot to paste before copying the SMSA email address... aargh. so.
hmm spent the whole morning doing misc stuff such as laundry, making peach tarts from leftover crust dough and cleaning my toilet and room... had better start on all the work i have soon...

am faking my astro labs in dwinelle comp labs using google image search now... i hope i dun get jie1 chuan1ed... for some odd reason my finger joints hurt... perhaps its been so cold recently that i got rheumatism....
attempts to write a slightly more analytical piece on anti-americanism for my journalism class yesterday made me realize something more applicable to life in general... whenever someone doen'st like us, we tend to just shun them or reciprocate the hostility... do we actually bother to find out why... i guess sometimes the reasons behind one's actions are as impt as the action itself yet most of the time we dun bother to dig deep enough... cos discovering these reasons my mean discovering new things about ourselves, or our faults, or misconceptions that people have of us that we could not have corrected without knowledge of them.... well i guess cos it isn't exactly pleasant to have someone dislike you in the first place and we hesitate in uncovering appalling facts (maybe?) about ourselves..?

why must ppl tell me explicitly even if i am fat??!!
hmm had an interesting ex in class yesterday; was told to draw the world map and all of us were complaining how distorted our maps looked... but it was interesting to see what everyone else drew... and our instructor highlighted the fact that the north is over-represented.... and that the equator isn't in the middle for most maps.. it's usually like 1/3 from the bottom of the page...
i realize that i am quite dead with tons and tons of readings for poli sci... but i really dun feel like reading. sleepy and lazy. astro labs due tmr; was supposed to stay in scsh to go for star parties.. but ended up coming home. dun think i did well for my jap presentation today... orals next week... many things due...

us! 

Road trip highlights

shall take a couple of minutes to do this...

1) Shopping!
think every single one of us spent no less than $100 each at the premium outlets and i splurged on two CK shirts that were the most expensive shirts i have bought in my whole life... not that they were THAT expensive; guess for rich ppl what is US$40 for a shirt, but i felt very xin tong and guilty spending so much on plain shirts... maybe overwhelmed by the shopping 'spirit' and momentarily super brand-conscious? and so the one who said he would go back to the motel to sleep or something while we were shopping also ended up with many purchases... tsk tsk.

2) Buffets
I dun think I have ever spent as much money on food within 3 days as I have when in Las Vegas, but no grudges cos I really did enjoy every single buffet I had in Vegas... i shall always remember the irresistably yummy smoked Salmon and prawns we had at Paris and the sumptuous spread of Jap food and cute desserts at Todai...

3) Jacqui the Wasabe Queen!
haha god knows what sparked off the wasabe eating competition... every one of us swallowed at least a small ball of wasabe just for the kick of it at the end of our lunch buffet at Todai, with Jacqui 'winning' the race by swallowing this big dollop of wasabe in the end all at one go... straight-faced and with no signs of choking..unlike some really amusing "candidates" with contorted facial expressions... hee

4)My biggest folly
was to point to this somewhat scandalously clad woman on a poster when asked to choose between two shows after winning this mini free spin at Tropicana... well.. i really didn't think it was going to be a strip show but of course no one spared me for that so throughout my trip I was harrassed by my companions pointing out strip show posters to me... glad i am back..

5) Our near 14-hour car ride home
I am sure everyone was glad to be home after a gruelling and tiring 14-hr ride in our SUV... due to jams on freeways we took a detour and ended up almost 5 hours behind schedule... but it could have been worse...kudos to our brilliang drivers and navigators... esp evelyn and ziyang who took the bulk of yesterday's long long ride home... =)

so even though i ended up home at 1130pm with lotsa work unfinished, big big hole in my pocket and perhaps hundreds of calories more from all the rich food I took in, I really enjoyed the trip... what can be better than hanging out with good company on a holiday...=)

the Bellagio fountain...=) 

just a quick entry from las vegas! am at coffee bean with my road trip mates 'koping' wireless from coffeebean... and unfortunately it closes in about 15 min time so we hav to vacate.... spent a lot of money today at outlets earlier... aargh.super broke. yest night was really nice but expensive as expected. had sumptuous buffet at Paris, then strolled across to the Bellagio to watch the musical fountain. which was just amazing and beautiful. I was really awed by the first performance and it's amazing how when skilfully choreographed water and lights can be so pretty. =)

it's thanksgiving weekend this week and with the holiday atmosphere everywehre even though i hav work i dun even feel like working. extremely bad. i was really upset today when i got back my late hw for IAS today, cos it's the best hw score i ever got... just that it had to have 1/3 of my marks docked off and end up being my worst homework.... aargh.
i received the kenneth cole coat i wanted to buy some time back from my dear friends from Kearney... sigh. very happy and thankful and touched... sigh. next time when i want to buy something i better keep it a secret...
and finished baking cookies, helped make brownies and blondies for our road trip tmr!! yay... setting off for las vegas! haha and watched bridget jones diary 1 for the nth time just now....

Kaleidoscope of cute babies

was just surfing randomly on the net and visited one of the sites i used to frequent for my journalism class .... and i came across a collection of pictures of babies on the China Daily Website... 12 pictures of babies in all kinds of funny situations... i certainly wun want to be the baby precariously lodged in a plastic bag.... nor the one being fed by a milk bottle dangled on a set-up of hanger-like thingies... "poor" babies.
aargh i am getting a sore throat... i dun want to be sick before nor during my las vegas trip.. =(

i wondered how long it would take me to walk home. and so i found out yesterday.... hmmm in about an hour. not that bad lah, at least i know that if i have absolutely no way of going home i can still walk! met up with some UCDC participants yeterday and they seemed alright but then talk of clubs to chill out at or girls swooning over the OC just left me with nothing much to contribute.... hmm oh well. i was kinda discouraged, but then again i have to bear in mind i dun even know them yet why keep worrying that i wun fit in.... i believe there will be one or two nice souls i can click with... i hope? am getting fat!!!! appealing for "waistline-decreasing measures"!! anyone?

tag-board is still down for some odd reason. how unfortunate.
i get to fly home for free!!! only paying taxes cos i redeemed my mileage plus miles for a SIA round trip ticket... and am excited that i will get to take the LA-SIN direct flight on the way home! but enuff said, i think i've been telling ppl about my 'windfall' today that i am on the verge of going overboard. so...
had my UCDC orientation today and went into a room in dwinelle with video-conferencing. rather cool i must say, to actually get to see students in Washington D.C. this sem... the group of 25 seems like a really diverse group... but I am somewhat apprehensive as I seem to be the only Asian girl there... I hope I will cope and manage the non-academic aspects of interning and studying at D.C. next sem and though I am rather tempted to worry about not fitting in, I do recognize that it is somewhat uncalled for.... worrying even before I interact with my peers on this program. terribly unhealthy, dear shi min.. I shall wait till the 'social gathering' tomorrow before making any judgments...
just watched Bridget Jones The Edge of Reason and though the proper English accent and hilarious and stupid things that Bridget did make it a really light-hearted funny movie I somehow still prefer the first one... =)

what am i doing up at 3am in the morning??! i guess cos i fell asleep while reading my articles just now and as such failed to summarize them then and now i've just finished my job and somehow am too awake to go back to sleep...am somewhat upset with tag-board for failing the whole day and making me suffer from burning curiosity as to whether those =) or ^^s or (*,*)s have xian4 shen1ed.... am also extremely amused that my little email to tell my friends about firefox sparked off a whole lot of replies from ppl in singapore, east coast of US, china and UK.... totally unexpected but then it made me very happy to hear from ppl i haven't heard from in a quite a while. =)

my 'latest craze' is firefox 1.0, available for download at www.mozilla.org
was initially unconvinced when my fren tried to tell me how IE sux.... cos i am so used to using IE i have never imagined switching to some other browser... but this is really cool. esp the tabbed browsing and multiple homepage features... among many others! =) plus it has themes u can download, extensions that u can add to make ur browser really personalized!!!
haha ok. shall stop advertising for them... hmm since when did shimin turn into a software geek?? =)

today i was toying with the idea of flying home after all.... it might be ok for me to go home, even though just for say about 2 weeks.... but tickets are SO expensive now... did a search for redeemable tics on United... and i only hav around 78000 miles to redeem... enough for a saver award home (60000) but not enough for a standard award home (100000)... aargh. irritating. only found standard awards that were available. if only i can find a saver award i can fly home for free.....then going back for 2 weeks wun be that not worth it... but perhaps i should wait till my UCDC orientation on wed to decide if this is feasible..
so many things to do before tmr, and this week!!!! aargh. too busy to be depressed. =)

sigh. have been resisting blogging about unhappy things but i shall make an exception today... dunno what happened to me today i suddenly just feel very down. bad mood. no mood to do anything. abandoned my astro hw after looking at the questions... and found out today too that i was supposed to come up with questions for poli sci section by today but kinda forgot about it and now desperately trying to read article but nothing seems to be going in. =(
and feel like i suddenly dun belong anywhere...am not capable of doing anything... dun excel in classes... bad driver... not very good company...eating lotsa junk food instead of dinner... flood of silly thoughts.

and so my grand plans to study after lunch went down the drain... ended up baking with jacqui and after that spent whole night watching bridget jones's diary on tv...it was fun though... i havne't baked for so long. and the cookies were rather yummy and i couldn't resist eating them one after another. i think i gained at least 500 calories eating all that junk...and couldn't resist walking away from the tv to do my polisci readings...
but rewatching bridget jone's diary was fun... there were still many bits which made me laugh.. bits which made me feel a bit 'aww...' like for a few seconds i wonder what it would be like if i knew someone like mr darcy... so straight-faced and seemingly nonchalant but actually loves bridget so much..., "just the way she is"... =P

thought i would hav nothing to blog about today but apparently my life is quite 'happening' haha. well.... i overslept today!! and sadly missed my IAS lecture AND the deadline to turn in the homework i stayed up all night to complete... i am so pissed with myself. i actually woke up at 820 am, but went back to sleep then when i woke up again to my horror it was 1106am.... now i get 2 out of 20 points docked off my hw and i will do badly cos dun even know if the answers are all correct. =( oh well but i mean it's my own doing... it also suddenly struck me while walking to my poli sci lecture this morning how i complained about this to no less than 3 ppl within 1.5 hrs of my waking up.... and i would hav complained to everyone who visits my blog and reads this entry!! why do ppl feel the need to complain? not that it helps undo whatever has been done...