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!
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