Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Another Baby!

As V had predicted would happen, Jack Alasdair Conway arrived Thanksgiving morning at 1:45am. Nothing like spending Thanksgiving eating hospital Turkey.

Special Cat

Atticus, bless his heart, is the sweetest little thing. But boy is he dumb! I cooked Unagi a couple of days ago and tossed the aluminium foil into the trash bag. Sometime during the night/next morning that silly cat managed to fish the foil out of the bag and had succeeded in eating chunks of it. So I awoke yesterday to piles of puke with little foil balls. Lovely. When I told Eric he said "that Atticus is a special one." Yes he is.
I feel like a bit of a lardball these days. Went to kickboxing and felt that I almost had a hard time keeping up! Goodness, when was the last time I felt that way. Granted I haven't been to the class for a while, and you use different muscles, so considering the fact that I am not crazily sore today I guess things were okay. But I have been lagging in the running--these days I only get 10 miles a week. Not entire sure what I can do to energize myself, and the fact that it gets dark at 5pm really doesn't help. I hate daylight savings!

No choir practice this week, and I felt strangely free on tuesday evening. Went for my fortnightly voice lessons yesterday. I am finally getting comfortable with singing soprano. The As and Bs that used to cause great distress are getting much easier now, though I still feel my body tensing as I anticipate the high note. One thing I have to work on. We have been working "Rejoice" from the Messiah and Puccini's "Quando Men Vo", and have sort of started "O Mio Babbino Caro." I must remember to make a trip to the Brand Library to see if I can get on hands of Mozart's "Alleluia." I would like to start that after the new year. Caltech is having the yearly Messiah sing-along 12/9. Nothing to rave about, but it is always great fun to sing a masterpiece in a low key setting.

I still have no idea what to do with my life. EHD mentioned that he could get me a teaching internship are Occidental or Pomona College if I want. I would be fun to do that for a year or so I think, but at the same time I feel that I want to leave the whole academia thing. One great advantage about teaching though, the hours are really great. All the time that I will have to sing and sing and sing! Perhaps I would get good enough to enter a competition or audition for roles! And that would really be sweet.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

I finally opened my video ipod, and spent the better part of the thanksgiving weekend organizing and uploading my music. Alas I have no videos, so to this moment my ipod is still videoless--however I do REALLY like the photo feature, and how I can sync it with my contact list and calendar in outlook.

No choir today--what's a girl to do? I think perhaps I shall go to my kickboxing class instead. It's been freezing like a motherfucker here recently. Starting to write my bike to work again. Rode for over an hour this weekend and had sore quads for a couple of days. Boy am I getting weak!

Benjamin Khoo, my choir conductor at NJC, passed away a couple of days ago. I never realised this, but apparently he was a choral music pioneer in Singapore and the first conductor of the SYC. Deb and I were remarking on how much we used to waste our time during choir practice in JC. Definitey true. Now that I have done a lot of singing I realise that we were really quite terrible in JC with the constant yapping. I'm surprised he never tossed his baton at us! But he will be missed.

Monday, November 21, 2005

As you can see I have finally downloaded all the pictures from my camera.

I think that the nasty scourge of Ick is starting to leave my tanks, leading me to think that perhaps the remaining fish will survive after all.

Mostly eaten birthday cake... Posted by Picasa

At Buca di Beppo for my birthday. Posted by Picasa

EHD's catbed Posted by Picasa

Doggie sweater Posted by Picasa

Eric's dog wearing sweater. Posted by Picasa

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Illicit Affairs

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Welcome Ian!

My friend Zhihui from St Nicks has given birth to a beautiful baby boy! Congrats!

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Waiting

Am sitting around waiting to meet with S. He was supposed to be here at 4pm. He didn't show up, and around 4:30 I went off running instead, knowing that he was supposed to meet E then. Now I am back, have gone to the yarn store (which Ashly very kindly let me in as she was already closed) and they are still chatting. Am contemplating how much longer I should wait before throwing in the towel. One thing is for certain, I do not like waiting around for others, never have and never will.

My inertia in making a reservation for my trip to Asia has resulted in me sitting on waitlists. Alright, to my credit I was hoping that I didn't have to make the trip. However, it would probably have been clever of me to simply make the reservations anyway. So now i have a reservation from LA to Taipei and Singapore to Taipei but not the rest of trip. Hopefully other indecisive people like myself will cancel and I will be able to get a seat. But the tentative dates are 12/22-12/25 in Singapore, 12/25-12/31 in Taipei.

I have not had a good week overall. Spent most of my days feeling rather blue. The job hunt is causing me a great deal of stress. R and I had a discussion about this, and I think it mostly stems from the fact that we are these super overachievers who simply cannot stand (or imagine even) the idea of not succeeding at everything we set out to do. And we mused about how we got to this state. Really, my parents always wanted me to do well, but never to the extent of "you're a failure if you don't succeed." So where do these feelings of inadequacy come from? After all, in a sense, I have accomplished many things already. I go to a top school doing research in a top lab, I'm a reasonably good singer, I maintain a well balanced life by staying active with many hobbies, and most importantly, I have many friends and family who love and support me. So why is it so important for me to succeed at everything I try, not just succeed, but do phenomenally? Is it really reasonable to assume that I can/should be able to do whatever I want? Is my ego so important? R and I think that because we have tasted success and we liked the feeling of being the best at something, we keep trying to attain that "high" in everything we do. It's like an addiction, and today when I was watching Sarah Reinertsen finish the Hawaii Ironman with only 1 leg, it just reminded me of how much I have to be thankful for. Goodness, I have two well functioning legs and am not handicapped in any way (unless you count my very bad eyesight), so what am I whining about?

The tank at work has also been stricken with Ick. However, I caught it early and looks like I will survive that without any casualties. Wish I could say the same thing about the tank at home though. I have pretty much lost my entire tetra population, the platies still look bad, and the guppies and gouramis are also getting ill. Only source of consolation, I can always repopulate the tank at home with the fry from the tank at work.

And to top off my bad week, some fucking asshole hit my car while I was at an interview yesterday. I came out and there was this giant scratch across the side of my car. Seriously, if you think you might not make that turn, then don't do it! Thankfully there was no dent, and I managed to get most os the bumper rubbed off, but if you look closely there is still a scratch. Bastard.

T got married! I was contemplating the idea of visiting him in Japan when he told me that he got married last week! What kind of friend keeps news from us for so long! Terrible! But we are all very very happy for him. He's got a job, and wife, and kids are sure to follow soon!

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Ich

My fish has a nasty case of Ich. Must have piggybacked off the fish Roger and Qiang gave me. Bummer. I have lost a tetra so far and I hope I don't lose any more fish. Some of them are starting to look better after I added the medication, but I am not entirely sure if its not too late.