Saturday, October 28, 2006

A Chorus Line '06: Musical by Harvard College

I went to a musical by Harvard College titled "A Chorus Line" today. It was pretty nice and fun. We had dinner at a korean restaurant. I had rice with beef served in this hot stone pot. The food came sizzling pot and u get to have some fun by mixing all the ingredients together. It kinda reminded me of the dinner that SJ and I had at a korean restaurant in Chinatown just before I came over to harvard. Eating this stone pot rice once again gave me the heart warming feeling, especially when it is always raining whenever I eat this dish.

The musical is quite nice. It is about 18 people who are auditioning for 8 positions in a musical and the director went around to ask each of them about their background and about why they want to dance for the musical. The dance and singing are pretty good. What I found a little regretful is the fact that some of the stories of the characters are not very well developed. But I guess there is really no time to develop 18 characters.

I think the director was trying to cover many topics like the wish of children to grow up to do what they feel passionately about, gaining acceptance into society, unemployment, passion for dance and theater, passion versus money and family life.

My favourite character is Paul. He is a really shy guy who had a lot of problems trying to talk about his life and background. I thought he looked really cute and noticed him from among 40 people right from the start of the musical. As the story develops, it turn up that Paul is a self-declared gay who had problems coming into terms that what he really wanted to be is not to be a guy but rather a girl. This is kind of complicated but I guess accepting to be a female soul being trapped in a male body is harder than accepting to be a guy who likes guy. In the end, he injured himself during the audition and was not selected for the musical which I thought was kind of a sad ending for him.

Hmm.. anyway I realized that I still like musicals!! haha... which is good.. if u are in boston with so many schools and colleges and it will be easy to get affordable tickets for nice campus musicals. =)

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Midterms are over

Yeah.. i finally got one day of rest. Ever since starting in harvard, I am either working or in lab every mon, tues, wed, thurs, fri, sat and sun. Now.. today.. i got half a day of rest after my third midterm in the week.

Yeah!!!!!!!

Spent 2 hours watching lin junjie on youtube. Watched him talking about his album Cao Cao and the stories behinds his mtvs. Realized that I interpret all the mtvs wrongly. Hmmm.. it is somehow weird to realize that the content of the mtv often has nothing to do with the lyrics of the song.

JJ was talking about his mtv jiang nan. I always find this a very.. strange.. weird.. a little scary mtv.. cos the background is sometimes black and white.. sometimes color... and.. junjie seems to be walking around randomly all the time... climbing staircase.... walking to an old room..

I thought he was singing and remembering his first love and how naive they are about that their love will work... but in the end.. ... things did not work.

Only after jj's explanation did i realize that it is meant to be a love that goes beyond time. Black and white is like in your dream.. and color is like.. in real life.. with the two overlapping... and hard to tell which is which. Hmmm.. so complicated.. even after watching the mtv after the knowing the explanation i still could not get the meaning...

sigh... but i thought it is kind of sad too.. cos i thought the feeling conveyed by the lyrics are really nice... but it was not acted out in the mtv.

Hmmm.. actually i think there is some fragmentation between many songs. For example, listening to the music.. makes u think of something.. carefully listening to the lyrics realize that it is actually talking about something else... and then watching the mtv and it is about something else .. completely different again. hmmm...

Friday, October 13, 2006

Okie. Little turtle has survived another week in little Cambridge. Has a few scratches on her shell though. But I think they will heal soon or just become more fanciful marks on her shell.

Weather is getting cold and the equilibrium is starting to shift towards the staying-in-shell conformation.

Anyways.. just wanna write something to let everyone knows that i am fine. =)

Monday, October 09, 2006

Why Changjin is a good doctor?

After being in a biology lab for two weeks, I have came to appreciate why Changjin can change from a good cook to become a good doctor. Actually e skill set is e same. To be a good biologist (which is more similar to being a good doctor) you need to be able to do lab work really well.

Examples of why cooking can help in labwork.
1) Handling of gels. if you can hold tofu well.. i guess 0.5% agarose will be no problem for you.
2) Adding of reagents. You need to remember how much and which reagent to add exactly.
3) Incubation time. If you can know how long to fry ur stuff and can control the temperature well, i guess u will nv miss or overshoot an incubation. Or incubate at too high a temperature.
4) Lab-book recording: Remember changjin's recipe book?

Okie.. i guess you all get the point... sigh.. e other point is why ruizhen is not a good biologist. =(

Thursday, October 05, 2006

MCB 156 section

Wahhhhhhhhh... it is like English Literature with Dora Lee relive. So stressful.

Okok.. actually e prof is not scary at all. She has a soft temperament and does not stressed u for answers or ask you to stand up if you cannot answer or ask u to speak louder like what teachers always do in primary school.

But.. it was very stressful cos I din read the papers as detailedly as she was going to discuss. She went through each of the figures in the paper and I din even look at them. In general, I only read, i dun look at pictures, kinda strange but pictures in scientific papers are the hardest to understand (esp more so in structural biology papers.)

Luckily I was able to explain the figure that I was asked to explain. Phew..... .....

Sigh.. tink I need to prepare more next time.

But it is kind of interesting to discuss papers and to think about the future work that can be done on the subject. Kind of give you an inclination about what research is all about.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

The Menu from a graduate student's kitchen

I have realized that if u are a grad student and if u are staying alone, then the food u eat does not really change much.

In short, i realize that almost all e food that i cook share a similar concept of being like a pasta.

Of course, there is the italian pasta = real pasta
japanese pasta = instant noodle
chinese pasta = egg noodle + chicken cube soup
egg noodle + tan tan mee paste