Last exam of my undergraduate life tomorrow! In 8 hours to be exact. After the 90 minute paper (no half-time unfortunately. :( ), it'll all be over!!

Only problem is - revising for this course (Quantum Condensed Matter) has seriously made me lose the will to live. I know I said it last time, but this time it's bad. boohoo. I was looking at the past year papers, and one of the questions was to write brief notes on the Schottky barrier. And then I look at my notes, and the only time it appears is:

The semiconductor bands bend upwards, so that the donor levels near the interface are emptied of electrons - leaving behind a positively charged depletion zone, and a Schottky barrier.

And in case you're wondering, brief notes is kinda an essay plan without the essay. *scratches head at what i'm supposed to write about it if it comes out...*

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On the note of the "Last-of/Last" series - I'm on my LAST pad of foolscap paper that I brought over from Singapore 3 years ago! (well, we all know they don't sell foolscap paper here in the UK right? ;p) I've been amazingly stingy on these treasured pieces of fiber... loL.

Ok. Need to get some rest before the paper tomorrow.

Labels: Cambridge

Can't believe this deja vu illness. Last year, I caught a flu bug at the start of the exams, and it seems this year wasn't much different! I've taken enough medication/vitamins over the last 3 days to kill an elephant... And the worse bit was actually the headache that I woke up with today.

After 3 pills of Panadol Extra (interestingly, i got this panadol extras from Syria - and the extra bit is 65mg of caffeine. so not realising that initially, and having 2 cups of coffee this morning, i'd imagine some people might actually suffer a stroke or something from this high amounts of caffeine.

[imagine if i was taken to a hospital. Doctor: "it seems you have an exceptionally high level of caffeine in your blood, did you take any caffeine pills?" Kenny: "no i didn't!" well, if it was House, he start saying something about "Everybody Lies" - Houseisms]

"I don't ask why patients lie, I just assume they all do."

But I digress. So anywho, after 3 pills of Panadol Extra, the headache still won't go away - if anything, I think it got worst. So that left me moping about the whole morning/afternoon, because I couldn't concentrate at all on my revision (thank goodness I didn't have a paper today) - until I found that I had 2 pills of Nurofen left in my medicine box. Hurray! More pills! And it seems Nurofen works - within about 20-30 minutes of taking ONE tablet, I could feel my headache ebbing away, so I thought, ah heck, I'll take the last one as well. And now my headache is gone, and I feel like I've been "reborn".

And unbelievably, the lecturer for one of the courses recommended a book AT THE END of the course - which I find to be more useful than going for all the lectures! I'm about 1/3 way through the book now, hopefully I'll get through most of it tonight.

And I'm already starting to think of how to improve my seriously deprived social life of late after my exams... :)

Lol. Bleach 172 just came out today.

Labels: Cambridge

At this time, I'd like to say I've lost the will to live after looking through too much lectures notes & past-year papers. loL.

10.5 hours to my first paper!

5 days to the end of exams!

And kenny makes a mental note not to pour so much shampoo the next time he showers....

(PS: the first line is NOT meant to be taken literally....)

Labels: Cambridge

Cheese Rolling - such a benign sounding term actually has more than meets the eye.... When a friend of mine told me he was gonna watch cheese-rolling, i taught it was a way of making cheese! Well, apparently not.

From the top of the hill a round of Double Gloucester cheese is rolled, and competitors race down the hill after it. The first person over the finish line at the bottom of the hill wins the cheese. In theory, competitors are aiming to catch the cheese, but since it has a one second head start and can reach speeds up to 70 mph (enough to knock over and injure a spectator as it did in 1997), this rarely occurs.[ie. the cheese reaches the bottom of the hill before competitors reach it]

Reference: Wikipedia

Well, if you need more information, and pictures, I'd suggest checking out http://www.cheese-rolling.co.uk/ or the Youtube video:

Labels: Muses

I've been kind of working hard today, but i got quite stuck on one of my past-year exam questions. The question is:

It is very easy to blow a candle out at a distance of, say 20cm - but difficult to suck it out. Why?

(no i'm not making this question up... it's in the 2002 paper, as a part of what i think is the fluid dynamics course).

Honestly, if i were to get this question in the exam, my answer would be - "Because we blow better than we suck! duhz!" Doesn't really take very much physics to answer it eh? ;p
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And I had a hair-cut today! The barber guy kind of took my "you can cut it short" quite literally and cut it VERY short. I guess it really was "value-for-money" in my case. But looking on the bright side, I'm not really going to be out v much this next week (exams... hur hur). And it's really not a horrible haircut - it's just horribly short... ;p

In case you've forgotten how my wonderful face looks like... ;p

Labels: Cambridge, Muses

http://www.freerice.com - learn a new word, and feed the world!

Word of the day (I found this one quite amusing): sesquipedalian - given to or characterized by the use of long words. Well, i guess it's not surprising that they used a long word to describe the use of long words then...

And here's a bonus one for you: Animalcule - a minute, usually microscopic organism. Well, you know, as in minusCULE?

Make sure you click on the first link!

Labels: Muses

My Thursday dinner time entertainment is now House, which is showing on Five (internet TV banzai!), and I just found out that it's actually four months behind. The Season 4 finale in the US was last week! Damn... So well, it's only episode 10 here in the UK, so it's kinda weird watching a Christmas episode of House in May?

But well, I have to take my hat off to the casting for House... it's brilliant - not only do they have good actors, but good looking ones as well.... *drools*

the eleven-year old star of the episode. (and no... she's too young for me.)

The man himself. I hear there's a boat in my boathouse called Hugh Laurie, which belongs to Selwyn (where Hugh Laurie was from). I gotta check it out and take a picture of it...

Cameron and Foreman. Everytime I hear Foreman, I think of Eric Foreman from That 70s Show (watched it when I was doing my project in Ireland). Boy, I miss those days in the cottage...

Labels: Muses, TV

After 3 years of finishing my Naval Stint during NS, I still get excited when I see warships, so of course how could I miss catching the documentary Warship which was showing on Five (TV)?
Warship is a documentary, which is filmed on board HMS Illustrious (Pennant: R06), and follows the professional lives of the crew on board, during their four-month deployment. And this reminds me so much of my seven-week Midshipmen Sea Training Deployment (MSTD), which looking back, is almost 5 years now. But wow. I'd DIE to work on board an aircraft carrier and I haven't even had the chance to step on board one... :(

And Naval terms like "XO Rounds", where the executive officer inspects the cleanliness & hygiene on board the ship (and trust me, we do have an OBSESSION with cleanliness in the Navy), "Fire Fighting & Damage Control" (FFDC), Shore leave, Anti-flash gear, etc, still thrill me and gives that bit of adrenaline rush.

It's only been episode 1 today - I think there are about 4 episodes in all, and I'm already looking forward to the next episode.

(Hopefully this post won't be taken as me having a keen interest to go back and do reservist.... ;p)

I came across www.improveverywhere.com earlier when I was looking through the videos posted by my friends on my Facebook profile, and golly, this is one cool project.


Apparently, this was incorporated into the latest Law & Order episode as well. I think they were gonna do a freeze in Cambridge as well, except I'm not sure if it's happened yet.

(And I AM working hard... ;p)

Labels: Muses

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1960734/The-week-in-pictures.html - Check out the photographs from the Telegraph on this week in photos. There're some darn impressive shots in there...

Labels: Photography

Don't think I'll have very much to write until after the exams.... :(

The Creation
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Today, God said, let there be a blackout, and Churchill College was shrouded in darkness for an entire hour.

It's kinda weird having a blackout. I walked out of the shower earlier, came back to my room, and all of a sudden, the lights went out. How fortunate that I was already out of the shower. Finding my clothes in the dark in the shower won't have been very fun. Blackouts are such strange things - it makes me think about what people used to do without electricity, and thing is we feel so lost and we don't know what to do - the internet was down, so no MSN, the lights were off, so no reading. Although I'm sure naughty things will be quite good in the dark. We shall find out 9 months later whether or not this has been true.

Blackout aside, I'm on my final lap to the exams now. On Wednesday, I had my last ever lecture in Cambridge - on the Large Hadron Collider & Murphy's law. It might be a little hyperbolic, but there're lots of stuff that my "last" in Cambridge right now - like my last (& only) blackout, my last supervision.... I'm so gonna miss this place when I leave.

Sighz. At least there are other things to look forward to as well. I'll be coxing my last set of bumps in the Men's 1st VIII - what an honour. We've got a race tomorrow, so I guess I shall be doing some reading now before heading off to bed.

[edit] in fact, there were another blackout soon after we came back. but that was just for 2 minutes... ;p [/edit]

Labels: Cambridge

urgh. i swallowed a bug the other day. it went into my mouth while i was cycling.

Ohana means family

If you've watched Lilo & Stitch, you'd probably know that, and if you wanted to know, that's my favourite line from the movie... "I'm lost" comes close. =)

But well, Clannad means family as well, in Irish. I've finished the anime series already (hurray! but what's new...) and the movie as well in fact, though the latter was a little bit of a let-down in my opinion.

Furukawa Nagisa. Moe moe moe!

Awwwwwwwww

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww... I also want.... But whether or not this anime ends in a happy ending, I shall leave it for you to find out. The movie ends in a slightly different manner though......

Labels: Anime

I stumbled upon this Coca-Cola 1970s (i think) ad. I'm sure you must have heard of the song "I'd like to teach the world to sing" right? (if that's even the title... ;p), but they've changed some of the lyrics, such that it becomes I'd like to buy the world a coke. And of course, the mother of all video libraries, Youtube, has a copy of it:

Enjoy....

Labels: Muses

Myth #1: Apples grow on trees. This is in response to Yihan's question, on whether apples do grow on trees. No, actually they grow on vines/wires, since the branches are weak and generally needs to be supported. The picture from my previous post probably does show it quite clearly.... Now you know where your apples come from.... :)

Oh, and just go you understand how the Dango Daikazoku (Big Family of Dango) song goes, here's a link to the Youtube video.



PS: And I was just pulling your leg about apples. they really do grow on trees.
And the only reason why the ones in the previous post didn't look like trees is because you only saw part of it... The other half is here:

And these ones are much younger compared to the one above (which is about 60-70 years old at least). Well we learn something new eh...

The day before yesterday, I saw a rabbit.
Yesterday, a deer.
And today, you

So here's introducing you to another anime series - Clannad. There're only 23 episodes! If you've watched Kanon or Air (or even if you haven't), I'm sure you'll like it. Oh, and I learn something(s) new.

1. DANGO
Apparently, they refer to the mochi dumplings. If I hadn't wiki-ed it, I'd have thought they were smileys.
Like this one here. And omg, i just looked at the lyrics just now, and it's soooo hilarious! it's about how there are two dango in love, they have a kid, and the grandparent dango looks on or something like that.... *cough*lame*cough*

2. Contrails
Apparently there's a name given to the cloud trails left behind when an aeroplane flies by... It's called a contrail....

And working with 2 monitors rox.... :)

Labels: Anime

(i'm sure my title will generate a phenomenal amount of traffic to this site somehow...)

anyway, if you're a Coldplay fan, you can get their latest single "Violet Hill" (from the album Viva La Vida), available for download from their website. It's only available for a week though.....

Labels: Music