Foreword by the Author I would first of all like to thank myself, without whom, this trip wouldn"t have been possible, this story wouldn"t have a protagonist, n there wouldn"t be anyone writing up this blog book. Hence, this gratitude is not some manifestation of my ego ... it is something essential. I would also like to thank my travelling companion Andy Tan, the second protagonist in the story. This blog book essentially traces our adventures in Argentina, through Buenos Aires, Puerto Iguazu, Bariloche, El Calafate, Chile and Ushuaia. Filled with interesting episodes such as tyre puntures, 120hr bus journeys, the End of the World, and extremely hot Argentinian gals, this story promises to be of the utmost intrigue and interest to all readers. This I guaran-damn-tee. So without further ado, I shall take my leave for now ... n leave u readers waiting and anticipating the journalistic brilliance of me. In a few days, Chapter 1 shall be up .... I expect to have 9-10 chapters in all. But you will know when the last chapter is due. After all, if I start in Chicago, I have to end in Chicago rite? Its what I call a circle of common sense.
Hola ppl, finally an update in 3 weeks of madness. Dun be fooled into thinking my spanish is brilliant simply because I started off with the spanish version of hello. If I don"t even know that word I must be a complete moron, what with everyone on the street saying that to me, and if I dun feel too dao, I would reply in the same way. 3 other Spanish words I know: gracias (thank you), vino tinto (red wine), and vino blanco (white wine). Besides the numbers, I guess this is all you need to survive here. So as I am typing this, I realize that I have 4 more days of vacationing left in Argentina. I shall not go into the details of what I have done here, or what I am going to do here, since I have a mega plan in store, a big project which I shall only reveal toward the end of this entry. I am currently sitted in this underground internet cafe in the middle of Florida Street, the Buenos Aires equivalent of Orchard Road. One thing which has become plain obvious to me since I have got here is that Argentinian gals are hot, and I mean real hot, or chio if you prefer. It"s not difficult walking every 10m and seeing a gorgeous gal walking past. If you are lucky, you see 3 or 4; on other not so fortunate days, you get 1 every 10m. Now compare this to Chicago. For every 10km you walk, if you are lucky you see 1 hot gal; on other not so auspicious days, you get maybe a semblance of 1, or none at all. Seems like America has lots of catching up to do. So onto my big project which I revealed earlier, I am gonna chronicle my Argentinian adventures in the form of a novel ... no, I am not gonna publish a book, but I"m thinking of writing a sort of blog book (I like that phrase ... dun you think it sounds cool: blog book) with chapters and what not. So each time, I"d only publish 1 chapter, complete with words and pictures. And then with the passage of days and time, I"d slowly publish more chapters, so its a kinda read and wait and be excited and then read again kinda cycle. I think it sounds really cool ... once I get the pictures from Andy, prepare to be mesmirized and thrilled by the adventures of YC and Andy exclusively in the blog book, which I shall henceforth call "Argentina: Former Fantasy". Can you beat that???
yo yo watsup folks? Guess this is gonna be my last entry before I fly off for 3 weeks of Argentina fun ... and more fun with my great travelling buddy Mr Andy Tan, and weixiong and meiyi. So yeah, I managed to get hold of the bloody rent person this morning finally. You know how irresponsible some people can be? Our rent kena increased also never inform us. Then when I sent an email to her last Monday she never reply at all. When I tried calling her on Tuesday, I only got her voice mail. When Serene called on Wednesday and talked to her, the lady said she would get back to us, which of course she never did. So on Friday after my finals, I went to the rental office to look for her, realizing that the office would be closed over the weekend and i was leaving on Monday. But the office was closed. Shit lah!!!! Not like I never put in any effort to try lor. So my only recourse was to look for her Monday morning.
Fast forward to this morning. Andy told me our flight was at 6pm and not 8pm liao. Shit! More haste and rush. I went to look for our rent lady and finally managed to catch hold of her, ending up talking to her for half an hour. So our rent has now gone up from $1915 to $1972. Wah biang eh, a 3% increase lor, but at least this was settled. Then I went to check my mail, and realized I received a letter from the university's payroll department. Apparently now they have this law change concerning non resident aliens who are working in the US, and so I gotta fill in a form. But lo n wat behold, the deadline is Jan 1. Yah as if I can send letter when I am in Argentina? Realizing that I didn't have a stamp (I have numerous envelopes, but yeah not a single stamp), I had to go to school to get one. Fortunately Andy had to go school to hand in his paper also. Heng ah! But when I reached the post office, the line was so long lor. Queued for 20 min before I got to buy a stamp, and help mail Andy's postcard to Paris. And then I finally reached home. Never expected this morning to be so fast-paced.
And oh yah, I finally cut my hair liao. Before the haircut, when I reached for the back of my neck, all I feel is hair, no skin. When I tried pulling my sideburn in front, it covered my eyes and touched my nose. Now I feel like someone just pulled open the curtains and I see light ah! Nice to experience short hair again!!! So pics of me n my hair will be up soon, when I get back from Argentina and Chile (1 day stay). Till then, everyone have a good break and Christmas and New Year!!!
I'm in the mood for pictures, so what better pics than Miss World 2005 which was held yesterday in China? Just for the record, Miss Iceland won the contest to be crowned Miss World 2005. Here she is below.
Miss Iceland
Since I am going Argentina for 3 weeks, I thought I might as well check out just how Miss Argentina looks like. So here she is, in the flesh!
Miss Argentina
Since I have been in the US for 2.5 years now, why not check out the best in the US? (eh it rhymes ah. The best ... in the US)
Miss USA
Of course I just had to check out how our Miss Singapore is.
Miss Singapore
Well, just to compete the set, here are the other Asian beauties.
Leeds United lost this morning (for those who haven't noticed, I have added a LUFC score update section on the right column, just above Mr Tagboard). I am not happy .... I am pissed off .... I don't feel like talking to non-LUFC people till dinner at least!!!!!! Why has it got to be Leeds losing all the time .. why can't Chelsea or Man Utd shoulder some of the burden of losing?
To cheer myself up, I've decided to go watch a few more episodes of Jacky Wu variety shows, and to take a good long nap this afternoon. Till tonite, zzzzzz!
Well, reading Chinese history and civilization and culture is not cool. I pretty much know all that is significant in China's past from the Qin dynasty to the end of the Mao Zedong era in 1976. And rather shamefully, I regret to say my knowledge of China history pretty much dwarfs my knowledge of Singapore history. Pertaining to the latter, I can only recall 2 noteworthy events. First, Singapore gained independence from the Federation of Malaya in 1965. Secondly, I was born in 1982. What else is there to know?????
So rather than reading up on more history, I thought, why not I read up on myself? What does my name mean? So randomly surfing through various sites, I've come up with this compilation of what it means to be me!
From Zodical Zephyr, here's what my first name means! yongchun: Financial gains and status are important elements in your life. You want to do things in your own way and on your own terms. You have a great deal of loyalty to those you love. You have much inner strength. You can handle details well. You have a methodical mind. You are a hard worker when you make up your mind to do a job. You are clever, inventive, imaginative and youthful. You enjoy socializing. You work hard to achieve material success through your own efforts. You are soft-hearted with a charitable nature. You must learn to give 'wise' service and not be a martyr.
Everyone has got his or her own ways of relaxing, de-stressing and enjoying the simple life. Some people may just choose to 'relac one corner', others may choose to go on an alcohol dash-to-the-finish, others may simply whine and be irritating, while there are also those who might have no need for such simple pleasures of life. Well, this being finals week, I needed something to preoccupy myself with before a final, since it never makes sense to cram everything a few hours before you go into the exam room. Otherwise confirm kee siao. So after lunch and having an hour to spare before having to go to school for my finals yesterday, I decided to watch one episode of Jacky Wu's variety shows. There are plenty of classics to choose from: "Guess - Wo Cai Wo Cai Wo Cai Cai Cai", "Shi Zhi Lu Kou" or "Zong Yi Zui Ai Xian". Dun act blur ah, I am sure my hanyu pinyin is all correct lor. So I picked up a vcd of Zong Yi Zui Ai Xian, and started watching it. Wah, damn hilarious ah ... even tho I've seen that episode before, it still makes me burst out in laughter watching how the unsuspecting guest kena played and ambushed left, right center. Simply brilliant! With Jacky Wu around, who gives a shit about Super Host? Ai, the days of staying up late to watch his shows back in Singapore .... why dun they show these classics here in Chicago??? Nobody gets desperate for Desperate Housewives ... kick them off primetime!
Everyone knows that stress can be both good and bad rite? Good in the sense it makes you more competitive and more efficient. Watever! But, we all know too much stress is also not good, cos it causes you to break down. But recently, it has been proven that a link exists between stress and certain illnesses such as flu and cancer. So in the Dec 5 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, several Australian researchers found that stress triggers the release of a hormone neuropeptide Y (NPY) which then inhibits the body's immune system from destroying bacteria and viruses, and thus causes the person to fall ill. An abstract of their work can be found here, but it's too cheem to understand lah. What Y1-/- mice thing which they mentioned most people also won't understand lah. So might as well let me summarize it. This NPY impairs the ability of a body's immune system to detect pathogens and hence send out T helper type 1 (Th1) cells, which under non-stress circumstances, are sent out by the lymph nodes to attack foreign objects. With stress, the Th1 cells are not sent out, in spite of the presence of bacteria. This bacteria then infects other cells and causes a person to fall sick! Ta da! So what's the moral of the story? You tell me lah .........
Just some random thoughts before I get to revising for my math 19500 finals for tomorrow. All these thoughts and ideas are rather scattered and messed up, so skip if you feel all nice and sundry, and dun wanna feel messed up at the end of this read.
1) My internet connection is getting bloody unstable. And I dun know what is the problem? Is it due to the SBC modem? Or is it due to my wireless card? Or could it be that the hot air in the apartment is interfering with the signals? Or that the cold weather outside is messing up SBC? I dun know, but for once, I do care. So unless things change, I shall not be signing in to MSN, or ICQ for that matter. You know, or you probably don't, I can't stand it when the same person signs in to MSN consecutively every 5 seconds, so that the pop-up thing just appears at the bottom right of your screen every 5 sec. Well, since I can't stand that, I suppose most people can't and thus I shall not sign into MSN, only to get signed out immediately upon signing in. So if you see me online, it probably means that the internet is working fine that period of time. If all things fail, just call me!
2) Finally got class allocation for next quarter. Classes start at 1030 every day, which is fine I guess. Confirmed classes would be my Japanese Civ, Cancer Biology and Physics. I've also signed up for an astrophysics class called "Searching Between the Stars", which is a cool elective, but I've just checked and only 3 people are registered in that class as of today. Unless things change, the class is gonna be cancelled due to too small an enrollment, or I'd just withdraw, cos I hate a 3-people class. Confirm kena called upon to answer questions, and if I dun attend class, that'll be a 33% drop in attendance. That's not cool!
3) Was having dinner with the Regents gang yesterday, and as usual, we were eating our fortune cookies at the end. My fortune cookie message read "your new love is actually somewhere nearby". First time I have had a message about love. Wonder how such a message actually got its way to Chicago. But if it's referring to human affection, it probably is quite absurd to even believe.
4) My Lu Hsun book finally arrived. Just in time for my civ finals on Friday. Yay!
5) I've decided that I should finally go get a haircut, since it's getting to the stage where I think its unmanageable and too time consuming and inefficient to do something to it every morning. And since I've actually said this a couple of times already but not done anything about it, I've jio-ed Kaiqing to go down for a haircut this Friday. I figured that the surest way to make sure I actually go down to Chinatown for the haircut is to get someone else along. I might pang seh myself, but I sure won't pang seh someone else. haha!!!
6) I should start revising for my math, since I intend to watch wrestling tonite!
You know, how sometimes you tell yourself, " yeah, I've done a lot of work, time to relax. No problem lah ... halfway through, I'll finish the rest tonite" when you actually know that's a whole load of bullshit. Well, so turns out I had to do 6 out of 8 questions for my Human Genetics and Evolution take home finals. Heng its a take home, otherwise I'll be screwed 180 degrees several times over, and still not realize where I am. So I did 3 questions in the afternoon -- the 3 easy questions, and I know that for a fact from the outset. Having contented myself that I am halfway through, I rewarded myself with an evening of Chicago Bulls basketball. I mean, even if I hadnt finished half of the questions, I would most likely have watched the game aniway, but that's besides the point yeah? However, it's important to give yourself a moral victory at times, so I told myself 50% of the questions done. Yeah, but the next 3 questions are gonna take a tone whole lot longer to do. But I can't bother myself with all these trivialities when there's a Bulls game on TV. So after the game (which the Bulls won 106-102 against the Celtics), I returned to my bio finals.
4th question didn't seem that bad .... took me half the total time I needed for the 1st 3 questions. Then came to horror horror 5th question. At this point, I was pretty darn sure I was gonna attempt the question on the paradox between genetic differentiation and race differentiation (ok so a little background on this qn since it sounds cheem. It's obvious to us that there are many races around us -- Asians, Africans, Caucasians. But if you look at their genetic content, they are almost uniform. So how can this apparent genetic similarity match the observation of distinct phenotypic differences, eg skin color, hair color, blah blah. Trust me, the actual qn sounds much worse than this.) Being unable to find enough evidence of this, and that was just part a of the question, I decided to look at the other 2 questions which I had hitherto decided I would not attempt.
Qn 4 was on the origins of genetic diseases -- single or multiple origins, and how having multiple origins would affect one's ability to finding its primary cause. wtf? i tried googling origin+genetic disease, but ended up with more wtf, and mebbe wth. So I turned to qn 7, which was on the polymorphism and nucletide divergence of the sex chromosomes and autosomes. Similarly I searched through my somewhat threadbare sheet of notes taken down in class, and the textbook and the web, but couldn't find anything that resembled a solution to the qn. At this point, it was past 12 midnite, and another hr of wtf loomed. So I had started on the latter 3 qns at 10pm, and by 12, I had only finished one. You get the point lah .... die! But die or no die, I still have to answer 1 qn lah ... choosing which 5th question to answer is really turning into an unlucky draw ah. By 3am, I managed to miraculously come up with some brilliant solution, a rojak compilation of stuff from various chapters of my textbook to answer the qn on the sex chromosomes and autosomes, and this was after I was darn sure I would be solving the paradox question instead. Now that I'm wide awake to think properly, I do think that my answer is in fact gonna be correct. So 3 hrs pondering on the choice of qn and then attempting it. I hope solving my final question later today is gonna be nowhere as painstaking as this.
I realize reading this has been equally painstaking for most of you out there, but I just needed to purge this from my system ah. Sorry!
But tis' December, and Christmas is round the corner. Here are several pictures, taken from the Chicago Tribune, of this year's Festival of Lights Parade along Michigan Ave. I totally forgot about the parade this year, but lights, parades, Disney ... yeah you get the idea ... Christmas (and YC's birthday) are almost here!
Aiya, as I glance out of the window of my 36th floor apartment after dragging myself out of bed at 11am, a sea of white engulfs me. The rooftops of every building are covered with white snow ... the roads and pavements are white ... the railroads are white ... a cloudy mist surrounds Regents Park ... I'm barely able to discern the city. The only tinge of non-white I can make out is the verticals of adjacent buildings ... those are still monotonously grey. I guess the perils of winter wonderland is finally upon Chicago. Shit! That means no more of the Triple S combo - shirts, shorts, slippers. Hence in commemoration of my final fall in Chicago, here are a set of pictures, taken in Fall 2004. The first one is the city view from my apartment ... and the 2nd the lake view. It's really beautiful when you actually take the effort to appreciate it.
View of downtown Chicago, taken from my room
Bird's eye view of Lake Michigan
And by the way, here are 2 laws I came upon while reading up for my Bio finals. 1) Bergmann's rule: Body size increases as climate becomes colder, because a decrease in SA:Volume ratio helps retain heat 2) Allen's rule: shorter appendages are favored in colder climates because the higher mass:SA ratio helps retain heat Taken together, this means that people near the Equator have a linear body shape (ie. skinnier) with long limbs. As you move further away from the Equator, people tend to be stockier and shorter-limbed. No wonder polar bears are bulkier than humans ... hmmmmmm
