Turkey turned out pretty good! I must admit that my heart sank quite a bit when I first saw it; seemed kinda charred and burnt. We probably put it in the oven for an hour too long. :( Ah well. We all learn from our mistakes. Even so, the turkey was still very much edible. We ate as much as we could but it was simply too big; there's probably still a quarter left. Overall, it was a great experience, albeit a tiring one.
Tomorrow is the Vancouver trip! Its going to be a day one; just heading there for some good tim sum, japanese food, karaoke, shopping, stuff we normally do over there. Gotta wake up early though... something Brendan has been grumbling about. Haha. Makes it worse when he's the driver i guess.
Weather forecast predicts a 'great thunderstorm' tomorrow. Hope it won't be too bad.

Baking turkey in Bren's place now; and so far it has been quite an experience. No prior experience of making one watsoever; basically all we did was generously cover the turkey with olive oil, honey, oregano, basil, dill weed, pepper, salt, parsley and now its just sitting there while we leave it to marinate. :D Gonna stick it in the oven in an hour or so... hahaha. Wonder how it'll turn out. Will keep everyone posted. :P
Happy thanksgiving to all!

Argh up late doing lab report.... while leonard is sleeping soundly already. :( This is the part of Bioengineering which i kinda dislike... all the electric circuits!! I mean the bio stuff is fine and dandy, I really enjoy it. Its really the engineering part which I sometimes dread. Probably because I understand the bio stuff much better than I do with the engin stuff. The fourier series, the transistors, blah blah blah. Sigh. Does this mean I should be in Biology rather than bioengineering?

On a lighter note.... so as not to sound so depressing. The Apple Cup is the trophy for the winner of the rivalry series... which pitted my school Uni of Washington (The Huskies) against Wash St. Uni (The Cougars).Which we won of cos. :)

Ode to APPLE CUP!!

Twas the end of the game, and inside the house,
Lil’ Danny was sitting with his foot in his
mouth.
Tears flowed swift from his sad little eyes,
but to anyone smart it was no big surprise.
Those cougars all thought that the game was won,
but those darn Dawgs were just leading them on.
UW again walked away with it all,
and the cats would stay and argue the call.
So how many straight? Is it 6 or 5?
Oh, I forgot, cougs can't count that high.
Either way, it is getting old,
seeing cougars killed by purple and gold.
You wanted that trophy, but what can you do?
Why don't you try sticking it up your WAZZU.
And now it's time for us to say,
"goodbye, goodbye to the crimson and gray."
Try again in another year,
but for now just go back to drinking your beer.

-Neil Junkin

A blog on a more serious note here.... I just had to break a piece of bad news to a friend... which kinda reminded me of it as well. An army friend (lets just call him W) recently passed away. It was a bit of a nasty shock; at first we (the NS gang) heard that he had gotten cancer last year. Apparently he battled through that phase and got through it pretty well; I went to see him during my summer break together with other people and he seemed to be slowly recovering... going through chemotherapy and all. So it was quite unexpected when I received news of his demise... somehow in my mind I had already assumed he had won the battle... but I guess for cancer u can never tell when the battle is won.
W was such a fun guy to be with.... and great person whom I (and many guys in the army) shared many good and bad times. W had it all going for him... he was extremely smart, had a scholarship, and recently got a gf... something I teased him mercilessly about. Now everything I write for him has to be in the past tense... it is really such a dreadful waste. I am only glad that I managed to make the effort to go see him in June... if I didn't I would never been able to anymore. This serves as a reminder that sometimes when we put things off... we will never get that opportunity again.
Death brings about the harsh reality of how minute in the world. Even that W has gone, there is hardly a difference to show that such a wonderful person is no longer around. Life goes on as normal... and unless u know him personally, there would be nothing to show one of his passing. Its not that this is wrong.... but thats how life is. Death is simply a harsh reality that we all have to live with.
All I have of W are memories now... which I will forever cherish. May that never be forgotten.

Today was a day spent immersing in a favourite pastime of Americans - watching college football games. Think that its growing on me... growing to like the sport more and more. And its not just because I find the game enjoyable to watch, its the whole atmosphere in the 70000 plus Husky stadium. Its absolutely electric... the fans cheering... the marching band playing... and the raw emotion shown by everyone when a good play is made. Of course it makes it more fun when our team wins... and today they did!! It was such a passion-fuelled match some more... Uni of Wash against Washington State Uni... intra-state rivalry at its best. We were the underdogs (Wash St is ranked 8th in the nation) and were behind for most of the game, but fought back and took the win (26-19) in the last few minutes of the match!!! It was such a fantastic feeling when the Huskies pulled off the comeback... I think we (Lennon, Leonard, Brendan and I) got caught up in the euphoria of it all... we were just hugging each other and shouting at the top of our lungs. Heh. Must have been quite a sight. At the end of the game all of us students just rushed the field and celebrated right there.... where Leonard got a little trigger-happy with his digital cam...hahaha. The things Americans do when they're caught up in the moment are so crazy... some of them decided to clamber up the field goal posts and started to shake the whole structure... I mean like thats crazy bordering on the limits of stupidity. The announcer told them to get off or they would be arrested but they continued... hmm wondered what happened to them in the end. Don't know cos I left the stadium after that.
That is one thing I like about the US... there are just so many of such activities to enjoy... and the thing is that its not just the youngsters who enjoy them! Watching a game like a football game is like a family outing to the Americans... the parents bring their kids and even the grandparents to the game. Guess its part of their culture. And they're really really enthusiastic about supporting the team! Every week the school would announce and thank some people for their long term support... and these people have all been season ticket holders for the past 50 plus years!!! I mean... seriously... thats friggin amazing. If such activities were held in Singapore, I wonder how many Singaporeans would be willing to part with money to watch them. Well of course its virtually impossible to do that since basically it would just be a matchup of NUS vs NTU vs SMU. Hmm could be quite boring.
After that went for a dinner of ma la hot pot with the gang as well as INong and Albert. Didn't do wonders for my throat I think. Probably will wake up with no voice tmr... ah well heck.
Huskies rule!!!

Its the weekend!! :D A big plus for enjoying the weekend... the Bioen 304 exam went pretty well! Don't think that it was because of superb studying on my part, rather the test was of an easier standard. Just hope I do better than the last time la.
Leonard says with the exams over, he is 'lost'. It is true in the sense that suddenly you realise that there is no need for studying (for now at least) which has taken up more than a majority of our time. With that out of the way, there is a feeling to do something special... but then again we're at a lost of what to do. In the end spent an hour or so playing CS.... haha. Also visited Professor Folch's lab... I basically went not because I was interested in what he was researching, but rather I wanted to see for myself how the labs in the UW were like. And it was pretty good! Rather spacious... and most of all... it had good lighting!! I once went to a lab in NUS... and that was terrible. Totally put me off research then. Right now... well I'm keeping my options open. If I ever find something that interests me greatly, research would definitely be a direction to take. Like Xianne says, ' Welcome to the dark side'. Haha.
Gotta prepare for work in a bit... and then go see Brendan perform. Ah well... and I thought I didn't have anything to do. Hmm.

Reading metabolism notes now.... looked out of the window and realised thats its snowing! Woohoo! I mean not that i haven't seen snow before, but just that its the first time i've seen snow in seattle. Standing at my bedroom window and looking at it, kinda realised how beautiful it actually was. All these snow flakes floating past me separated only by that sheet of glass. Got pretty excited about it; went downstairs with Leonard and Lennon to check it out. Heh. Sounds pretty childish... we just stood downstairs, stared at the snow for a while and came back up. Loads of americans downstairs yelling though... and you would think that they have already grown accustomed to the sight of snow. :P

Ah well, back to metabolism. May the exam go well tmr...

My start in blogging.... may it be a successful one! :)