A last day of a life

One lived in pursuit of the secrets of life, the truth and to know ourselves. One lived in microlitres, at the mercy of mice, and with 95% certainty.

And it's one that'll be difficult to leave behind. And it's been a very depressing few days.

One last experiment to finish off. A million goodbyes to deliver. I have all the standard responses down. "I'm not sure where I'm going yet". "I'm gonna be a bum for a while". "I'm not doing a post-doc, so I'm looking for a job". I want to stay in science, but just off the bench". "I'll be back lots to visit". It's amazing how much stuff is accumulated over six years. And it's equally amazing how much of it can be simply discarded. The hardest part was emptying the cart full of various solutions. With each, I relive the experiments of days gone by. Round and round, down the drain.

And how things change. New faces and new names on the doors. Rocky road ice cream of yesteryear is no longer available in the cafeteria. The new building sprouting out at our feet has now obstructed the public's view of my "J" from the street. How will it look the next time I look out these windows?

I will miss everyone. I will miss the life.

Ode to my staples

Dear Staples,

Thank you for your 6 years of service in binding my knowledge together. Without you I would be lost in a sea of overwhelming text. I now release the pulp from your twisted clutches, and with each, I forget a little more. Now, you may rejoin the natural cycle of your kind, so that you may all live on in your next mission. Be it a soda can, a high school locker or a shiny vibrator, I know you will each have a bright future. I shall never lay eyes on a stronger or more determined band of metal soildiers.

Sincerely,
Me.

Movie review: In America

I guess I'm chipping away at all the videos here. And finally, a feel-good movie!


It's too bad I've waited this long to see this one. One of those movies that got great reviews everywhere, but never quite sure I was ever in the mood for it since I didn't know what it was about and it sounded a bit... sappy. And to a certain extent, it is. Definitely drama, and it was wonderful! In America tells a story of making the best of what one has and dealing with what one has lost.

The best part of the movie were the two kids playing the daughters of an Irish family making a new life in New York. In particular, the elder daughter Christy, from whose perspective much of the movie is told, is gonna be a star! There's no question the kids play sisters convincingly, and as it turns out, because they're actually sisters!

During casting calls, director Jim Sheridan recalls that after a long day of auditions, he was very glad to have found Emma Bolger to play Ariel. He said that that little girl "told" him that he had to cast her sister Sarah Bolger as Christy. After not finding the right girl to play Christy, he auditioned Sarah for the part of Christy and she turned out to be right.

Djimon Hounsou got alot of attention for his role as the suffering soul that brings the family hope, and it was good too, but I kinda wish there was a bit more on his character. But Christy's character is definitely the star and around whom the story revolves. I was totally drawn into their family stuggle and joy.

12/13 stars

Yeah, it was a little sappy at the end, but well worth it!

In America

Movie review: O Homem do Ano

I guess they speak Portuguese in Brazil: The Man of the Year.

It's too bad most of my friends aren't so interested in foreign movies. Not that I'm into the foreign language part of it. I hate having to read it all too, but it's often worth it! By the time it gets press here, the crap from other countries have obviously been filtered out and whatever's left is ready for the big leagues, right? But there's something different about foreign movies. Often the moral of the story is the same, but fresh as told from another cultural baseline. Something mundane to their local audience become colourful details for someone less worldly like myself. But I digress.

Before you're born, someone, maybe God, defines exactly how He's going to fuck your life.

Being from the same country as the critically acclaimed City of God, comparisons are often made with The Man of the Year. The fact that it fares well in these comparisons is a good start. I'm no movie critic so I missed many of the metaphors for Brazilian society in the main character Máiquel. To relate to him, I found I had to take an initial leap in how easy it is to kill someone. But after that, it's a spiral rollercoaster ride in how a chain of events can complicate your life beyond control. It starts out fun, but does get real serious real fast, so not exactly a warm fuzzy movie.

16/19 stars

Do blondes have more fun?


I was in the mood for a happier movie though. I thought from the initial synopsis, that this would be a fun adventure film! Y'know, like Amelie, or Fight Club; other movies that are classic one-thing-leads-to-another type movie, but with happy endings. But no, more drama than the action/comedy/crime categories IMDB would suggest. Hmmm... will I need to watch Eternal Sunshine for the umpteenth time for a pick-me-up?

Trip through your wires

Well, I welcome you to trip through mine.

A few years back I was a subject in a top secret hush hush military experiment. Now, through the Access to Information Act, those files have been made available! These are MRI images of my head:

My head is oddly shaped... to accommodate my big brain of course. It's all frontal lobe, baby!

Mmmm... look at that yummy interhemispheric bridge.

Look, it's like a lightbulb at the back of my brain!


Best of all, I have taken the individual images and created a little movie for your enjoyment! If you only see one movie this year, make it this one!

Trip through my wires!

Please leave a comment if you cannot open the movie clip, or if you see any abnormalities the military "doctors" have missed. If it doesn't work, try right clicking the link, and save the target file to your computer before playing. Alternatively, try this smaller, crappier, but more compatible version:

Smaller, crappier, compatible.

Movie review: Jigureul jikyeora!

I mean "Save the Green Planet"

A Korean movie about... well, this gets a bit complicated. I feel I was misled by the hype. Not that most are aware of the hype, which perhaps negates the meaning of hype. But it has won awards and is 'critically acclaimed'. The trailers and review snippets suggested this would be an original, upbeat, quirky kinda movie. In other words, my favorite.

But it's more of a cross between Silence of the Lambs and X-Files. It's definitely more serious and disturbing than one expects from the trailers. It's also a good deal more depressing than the 'comedy' it's touted as by critics. That said, it is a good movie. Original if nothing else. The message of the ending is a bit cliche, although not predictable, and not a happy one.

5/7 stars

Save the Green Planet

Official Synopsis:

Lee Byeong-Gu (Shin Ha-Gyun, JSA) is a sensitive, blue collar sad sack hopped up on conspiracy theories and sci-fi films whose life has been derailed by one bad break after another. Yet he knows there's no such thing as bad luck. The only thing that could have made such a mess of his life are...aliens. Nasty, disgusting aliens who have infiltrated human society. Sly aliens who are planning to destroy our planet at the next lunar eclipse. The one alien possessing the Royal Genetic Code needed to contact the Crown Prince and stop the destruction just happens to be his old boss, CEO of Yuje Chemicals, Kang Man-Shik (Baek Yun-Shik).

So with the help of his circus-performer girlfriend he sets out to kidnap Kang and torture him until he confesses to his alien identity and stops the invasion. Of course, it's hard to confess to something that's just a delusion in a sick man's mind.

Random picture (2fer)

Where have you been all my life?

I NEED one of these:

Google me immortal

I love Google Maps and its satellite images. Quite fascinating to have access to satellite images from all over the world. But of course, all our travels only tells us how much we miss home. And now, home has been updated to include my car!!! As circled below, this silver object is my car, glistening in the bask of last year's sun.

But how do I know that's my car?

1) That's my parking space, second from the right.

2) I know the picture is recent since the last time I checked, there were only low resolution pictures of Edmonton. Furthermore, from the picture below, I can date these images to a period last summer. This can be determined by how far the construction has progressed (yellow bloxes) around my building.

Woohoo! So how cool is that?! Too bad I wasn't in the frame. Conceivably, I'd have been visible as a tiny black pixel or two. This is so neat I can hardly contain myself.

Of course, with every silver lining, there's a blood red cloud. I was so excited about finding a satellite image of my car and being forever immotalized with the Google gods, I sliced my thumb open while cutting my orange. I had turned my head to tell a co-worker about the discovery. I thought I had it all patched up under a band-aid when to my surprise, I smeared blood all over some merchandise at a store. My band-aid was just bursting at the seams with my liquid essense. I apologized profusely, handed the clerk the bloody object and went on my way.

BONUS PICTURE: these are the ponds we fished in last week.

Notice there are 7 baseball diamonds in that one shot? Welcome to Alberta.

Movie review: Wedding Crashers

Maybe I'm Vince Vaughn'd out. He was already a bit too much in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But his fast talking shock jock bit is kinda old. I still like him, though I wish he'd let up a bit.

But I liked the movie in general. Kinda predictable. The biggest flaw was the pace, which is very slow for this kind of party romp movie.

Oh, and Christopher Walken is in it.

Wedding Crashers

3 out of 5 stars

A last hoorah

One last lab BBQ. There's one every summer held at my supervisor's house. Always fun to do the potluck thing. Found a slug which I believe to be the Deroceras reticulatum. I rescued him from the porch and threw him back to the dirt. Quite slimey and difficult to pick up.

We even relived the fishing adventures of days gone by. The day before to be exact. We were supposed to bring what we caught as the potluck contribution, but since that wasn't possible, I brought food on fish shaped plates instead. The plates themselves were a gift from a friend a few years ago.

In the main dish are bagel slices. In two of the five little dishes are roasted garlic and in the others, salmon roll, in ball form.


Roasted garlic:

cut top off to expose clove cross-sections, and drizzle liberally with olive oil. Sprinkle some salt. Bake at 350 for at least an hour. Amazingly easy appetizer. And not as strong as most would assume.


Salmon roll:

canned salmon
cream cheese
bacon
onion
crushed pecans

finely dice bacon and onion and caramelize. Mix with salmon and cream cheese. Refridgerate for at least an hour. Form into desired shape and roll in pecan pieces.

Role played

At the risk of lowering my dateability quotient, I'll proclaim that I just finished a video game! Woohoo!


It's about an ordinary little boy having to take on extraordinary responsibilities and save the world. Standard Harry Potter faire. Although this little boy has a hat that talks to him and lets him shrink down to mini size!

Ahem. But it's not the particular game that's important. It's more that I haven't actually finished a video game in decades! I'm more of a collector. I like downloading every game for a platform ever released, just so I'd have a complete collection of something. Sure it's a bit compulsive, but what's life without a little OCD? But I usually start many games, play the odd one through to the final boss and lose interest, since I've seen 95% of the story, and the last 5% requires the most effort.

Ahem. But it's not about video games. It's reflective of what I've often done. Starting things without following through to the end. And it's been like that since I was young. The ebb and flow of my motivation has delayed many things...

This is half the solution right?

I caught one [ this ] big!

Well, it was invisible, so I can't show you, and it was out of phase with our space-time continuum so I can't cook it. But I'm sure it's there at the end of my hook.

I'm quite happy with my phantom fish considering I was using orange peel for bait. It was the citrusy goodness that beckoned him. Of course it was also because of someone's special top secret 7 loop lure tying technique that was passed down his pedigree for 7 generations.


We were also joined by little ones that ran away from home. They survive by fishing for food, mooching off others' tackle boxes and singing popular rock and/or roll diddies to strangers in exchange for worms.


Next time, marlin or nothing.

Final hoop

The air smells sweeter.

I defended a couple weeks ago, but there were still corrections to be made and administrative hoops to jump through. But now, everything's done! The corrections have been made, the thesis has been printed on special paper, and everything's been dropped off at the binders.

Now I just have to wait to convocate in November!

All that I am to do is done.


And yes, the form has been returned!

Morning on the lamb

It felt like I was playing hooky!

Walking around aimlessly during school hours.

But I just brought my car in for scheduled repairs, and decided to wait for them to get it done, instead of having them drive me to and from the lab as previously planned. So I just relaxed, walked to Chinatown and had a very traditional chinese style breakfast consisting of congee with salted pork and thousand year old eggs (black blobs), and chinese donut:

I also found this greek store near chinatown. Seems to be some sort of mom and pop operation:

Poolhall Junkies

Everyone knows how to play 8-ball. Most know how to play 9-ball. A few have played cutthroat, and a select group might even be familiar with straight pool. But I have made up my own game! And it actually works out pretty well (in my opinion)! It might seem a bit complicated on paper, but is quite intuitive in practice.

BEHOLD: PUYO POINTO FEVER!!!

1. Balls must be sunk in ascending numerical order (henceforth refered to as the target ball for each shot). Points are awarded according to face value of the target ball. The one ball is the first target ball and is placed at the foot spot in the rack. Optional: to make subtraction of points easier, each player can start with 50 points.

2. The break shot must either pocket a ball (one point for each) or cause at least 4 balls to hit the rail.

3. To earn points, the first ball struck by the cue ball and pocket must be called. The first ball struck can be any ball, but the ball being pocketted must be the target ball. The first ball struck can be the target ball, and one or more balls can be struck in between the first ball and target ball without penalty (combinations). First ball and pocket need not be called off the break.

4. As long as conditions are met in rule #3, any other balls going down will earn points equivalent to the target ball for each extra ball pocketted (instead of the face value of the extra balls).

5. There are several types of "scratches". Scratch conditions: white ball pocketted, first ball called not first ball struck, target ball not moved at all, target ball pocketted in wrong pocket, each ball pocketted without target ball being pocketted in the correct pocket, each ball jumping table, no balls being struck, and a shot where no balls are pocketted or hit the rails. For each condition being met, an equivalent of target ball points are subtracted (instead of face value of ball scratched).

6. Balls pocketted unintentionally stay down, and are skipped in the order.

7. When a scratch involves pocketting the cue ball, the next player must shoot from behind head string. The ball must cross the head string before striking the first ball.

8. Game ends when all balls are pocketted and the player with the most points wins.

The important thing to remember is that points up or down depend on multiples of the target ball value, not the value of extra balls pocketted. The result of each shot can involve addition of points from pocketting balls, and subtraction for scratching. A common example is if the target ball is pocketted correctly, but the cue ball is also pocketted addition of points for the target ball, subtraction for scratch).

Since the first target balls are of little relative point value, and are often obstructed by other balls, early parts of the game is often slow. However, the game picks up since the higher values of later balls can turn the tides quite quickly. The possibility of scratching with subtraction of multiple target ball point equivalents also makes the game result unpredictable till the last ball is sunk!

FEVER!

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Bonus movie review: Poolhall Junkies

Christopher Walken is in it. Need I say more?

It even has Clint Eastwood's daughter.

Okay, it's even a good movie! Not the best movie and it's definitely fits well in the hustler/criminal movie cliches. Y'know, a hustler/criminal trying to start over, the younger brother/son following dispite advice otherwise, and the necessity to do one big job to save the brother/son in trouble. Just like the general theme of Gone in Sixty Seconds.

So why is it good if it's not original? Why does it have to be? It's fun, and well executed. No big names in the lead roles, which is a good thing. Everyone does a good job of making the characters accessible and relatable (mostly). It'll especially appeal to pool fans of course. And it even has a happy ending.

Did I mention Christopher Walken?

12/17 stars

Got a new shirt today

Letting go

I guess now that I'm done the PhD, I can throw away notes from undergrad.

All the way back to Chem 101 in my closet!

I also still have my Krazy Karpet from elementary, when I lived in Millwoods, right after I moved to Canada. Ah, the memories.

Life and times of Amy Amaryllis

As a final tribute to my experimental Amy Amaryllis blog, here is the time lapse movie you've all been waiting for! Experience her life from beginning to pruning in 38 seconds. You can even see the "live" calendar behind her! Windows Media Player required.

Watch the movie!

See the blog!

Movie review: Bambi

Ooooh, the meadow, I'm shakin'!

Yes, that's right, I haven't seen Bambi before this.

There really isn't a story is there? He didn't avenge his mother's death. He didn't stick an antler up a hunter's ass. He just knocked up the neighbor girl. By the way, if that Great Prince of the Forest is the alpha male, it's quite possible Bambi and Faline are half sibs anyway. I guess that's how it goes with royalty.

And I gotta find me that spring forest where the women just throw themselves at passing young males. Oh what grand expectations we instill in children. And Flower sure got pussy-whipped quick. I guess that's a bit more realistic.

Too much frolicking!

6/11 stars


I guess this means I must catch up on other classic films. Next up: Debbie Does Dallas.

Like an offline blog

Other than the University of Tony Danza t-shirt, my lab also presented me with a photo album with pictures from the years of life in and out of the lab. An impressive feat as I'm the lab archivist of digital pictures so they had to scrounge up what was available. They did an amazing job with it, although of course it's hard to describe here. I suppose that's part of the point, it's of special significance to me, and less to my imaginary internet audience.

Random picture (typo generator)

Canada Day fireworks

A defense pictorial

Getting ready for the show.

Audience is waiting, the show must go on!

Fancy dinner after with the examiners.

Spoils of finishing: University of Tony Danza t-shirt (eh oh, oh eh!)

Enjoying a cold one in my engraved pewter mug. So I can see my enemies from the bottom up!

Wellwishers galor.

Hindering the rotation

There is a chinese saying for people who are slow, in the way, or otherwise pokey. It basically says that they're hindering the rotation of the earth. To state that one is buggering up the system so much as to prevent the natural pace of things. I was that one who hindered the rotation of the earth.

On the LRT, there are fancy new power ramps to accomodate wheel chair access to each train. I wanted to activated it so a stroller can get off easier, but pressed the big red emergency assistance button by mistake. Part of me was panicking because it says "penalty for misuse", but part of me was curious if assistance would actually come.

The train just sat at the platform, motionless, for what seemed like forever. Until finally someone from the lead car came out to investigate. I then explained it was an accident and no penalty was issued. But really, for the amount of time it took them to get out and look, any emergency would have escalated.

There's no moral to this story. Just something embarrassing that happened to me. Piercing eyes were everywhere.