Refraction

In taking one of my many, many breaks from studying coordination chem (I seem to be able to study properly only at school), I had what I call a “word moment.”

So we all know that Notredame cathedral is famous, yadda yadda yadda. What I didn’t realize until about ten minutes ago is that Notredame comes from “notre dame” – Our Lady.

Can’t believe I didn’t see this until now. How very lame of me. :tongue:

Speaking of little French things, it pays to know French… at least slightly. I had someone ask me once, “What is a faux?”

“Er,” I said, “it’s French for ‘fake’.”

“… It’s not some kind of animal?” The person in question had bid on an eBay auction for a faux fur jacket, and evidently she thought “faux” was a variant spelling of “fox” or something.

Then there was the Frenchie who explained “faux pas” as coming from “il faut pas,” which makes some sense but doesn’t fit with the spelling. One does wonder, though, if that was the original etmyology of the term.

It’s been forever since I’ve done one of these. I’ve also basically been studying since 7 am this morning, so I think I deserve a little break.

1. What did you want to be when you grew up? Haha, at what point are we talking here? I went through various stages in my career ambitions. The major ones, as I recall (in some rough order) – paleontologist – marine biologist – lawyer – mathematician – psychologist – writer – journalist – linguist – chemist. There were, of course, weird one-off things, like jockey 😀
2. Did you follow through? If not, what happened? I don’t know. I haven’t thought seriously about being a paleontologist for good long time now. Ditto for marine biologist. As for the others, it was mostly either that I didn’t think I’d be much good at it or that it wasn’t really going to make me happy. Or, in the case of linguist, that I wouldn’t be able to parlay it into anything useful.
3. Is your life turning out the way you thought it would when you were a kid? If not, is it better or worse? Ah, it’s a little worse, I guess. I can’t really say much about it except that this is not what I’d expected. I don’t know where all my ambition went. I used to be so… get-up-and-go. Now I’m so … it-can-wait.
4. Paradoxes aside, if you could time-travel back to when you were 10 years old, what would you tell your 10-year-old self? Oh dear. I can’t believe that’s almost a decade ago! Um, probably not to take myself so seriously. XD I was a very serious kid in some ways. Not so much in others.
5. Do you think the child you were, would like the adult you’ve become? No, I’d hate me. I think I talk down to kids and I’m just no fun and … yeah. That, and the kid in me would totally have jumped into the Faculty of Arts feet first and taken Bio as my science requirement, forget Chem 😛

And in other news….

I need to make a list of things to do after exams:

• Do Christmas shopping
• Go see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• Actually, I should watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban first
• Go see RENT
• Go see the Beauty and the Beast musical
• Watch Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Wererabbits

Edit, sometime later:
I realized that most of these things I need to do involve watching movies. I might as well add:

• Watch Infernal Affairs in Cantonese before Hollywood…. Hollywoodizes it
• Read Pride and Prejudice
• And hey, while I’m at it, watch Pride and Prejudice
• Read all those French books I borrowed in May
• Read that Essential Linguistics book I borrowed last week
• Go do something remotely Christmassy like Bright Nights
• Buy a nice scarf
• Clean my desk
• I know there’s some other movie out that I want to see, but I just can’t remember its name right now
• Watch In the Mood for Love and see just how indie HK films can get
• Learn a little something about economics
• Learn a lot more stuff about organic chemistry
• Re-organize mp3s on the computer (since it got formatted, I haven’t bothered sorting anything I’ve downloaded. All my mp3s get tossed in “My Music.”)
• Finish Dots and Diamond. WARNING: ADORABLE CUTENESS AHEAD :kawaii:

So how’re everyone’s exams coming along?

I had analytical chem today, which I totally overstudied for. I’m kind of sad I won’t be taking it next term, actually! The prof for that course rocks. And if I wasn’t such a failure in the lab I might actually think about taking further courses in analytical chem…

Speaking of labs, I have determined that it’s ORGANIC that I’m really screwed for. I hope I didn’t fail the lab, because if I did, well then all my studying comes to naught.

*shakes fist at TA*

*shakes fist at intimidating organic prof*

*shakes fist at the smart people in the class–any class*

*shakes fist at people only taking four courses*

*shakes fist at people who live on campus*

Oh, what am I saying?! I need to go study.

I have a friend on LJ who writes about half of his entries bullet-point style, so I think I’ll take a page out of his book and apply that here. It makes things easier for me, anyway.

• I wish I knew more about [iksi:d]. Actually listening to their music, I realize I’d like to hear more.
• I’m so glad I don’t have my organic lab tomorrow. :biggrin:
• I bought myself a little timer so that I can actually ration my studying properly. I find that it helps to break things up into chunks and work on them a bit at a time rather than try for a marathon study session of three hours. It keeps my brain happy, anyway. Until I decide to take a nap. It always turns into a four-hour nap. I’m terrible. I need to drink coffee or something. Oh wait, my mom’s Hello Kitty tea does a decent job keeping me awake.
• I love foobar2000 and how it makes it so easy to input info into mp3 tags. What I don’t like is iTunes, which can’t read these properly for some reason and displays ???? ????????? instead.
• Speaking of ????, she has the same birthday as Sarah! 😯
• I have one week until my first final. :nosey:
• I love French :biggrin:
• I wish that finals weren’t coming up so soon. Now that I’ve been galvanized into semi-decent work habits, I find I’m enjoying my classes a lot more. I also just enjoy attending the lectures of some of my profs. Actually, I enjoy all of them, except matrix algebra. I swear this is true. I love going to class; I hate writing tests.

They’ve cancelled the sixth season of Teen Titans! And I haven’t even seen the fifth one yet! ARRRRGH. 😡

Oh, and we never did get to evaluate our organic chem TA. :devil:

If you’ve ever wanted to see a Taiwanese music video, here’s your chance. I found out that the network at school is a LOT faster than my own, so what I did was I downloaded this and sent it to myself to be downloaded again at home (these files are usually removed quickly.) Anyway, there should still be about 25 left.

Here’s the link:
http://s12.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3V19K9YCDVE4U3UYQE9TXS7SES

* When you download the file, change the extension to .mpg
* The video is for F.I.R.’s new song, and no, I haven’t watched it yet. But F.I.R. rocks (my favourite Mandarin band) so give them a shot.

Go ask Sarah for a translation 😛

So thanks to everyone for all the encouragement and helpful comments in the last entry. Even though things have settled down, I’m still debating transferring out. However, I’ll take some of your excellent advice and wait until exams are over.

To continue the drama that is my life in the chemistry laboratory…
Read the rest of this entry »

Is it just me, or is Sarah McLachlan’s song “Stupid” apt for describing more than just a relationship you really shouldn’t be in?
Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a page which gives answers to the eternal question: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Of course, all the answers are in French, but that’s not really the point.

Voici quelques réponses amusantes :

CAPITAINE JAMES T. KIRK : Pour aller là où aucun autre poulet n’était allé auparavant.
(Peut-être que le poulet fondera une vraie entreprise… )

NICOLAS MACHIAVEL : L’événement important c’est que le poulet ait traversé la route. Qui se fiche de savoir pourquoi ? La fin en soi de traverser la route justifie tout motif quel qu’il soit.
(C’est bien pratique, ça.)

BILL GATES : Nous venons justement de mettre au point le nouveau “Poulet Office 2003”, qui ne se contentera pas seulement de traverser les routes, mais couvera aussi des oeufs, classera vos dossiers importants, etc…
(Bien sûr, “Poulet Office 2003” tombera en panne la plupart de temps…)

JEAN-CLAUDE VANDAMME : Le poulet la road il la traverse parce qu’il sait qu’il la traverse, tu vois la route c’est sa vie et sa mort, la route c’est Dieu c’est tout le potentiel de sa vie, et moi Jean Claude Super Star quand je me couche dans Timecop quand le truck arrive je pense à la poule et a Dieu et je fusionne avec tout le potentiel de la life de la road ! Et ça c’est beau !
(Je n’ose rien dire. :biggrin:)

FOREST GUMP : COURS POULET COURS !!!
(Ca me fait penser à un certain professeur qui m’a enseignée il y a quelques ans…)

Oh, and be sure to read GWB’s answer. It is awesome :cheerful:

c,��Y”?�X?a*???��, to Bobby.

Now, off to cram for organic chem and matrix algebra! :biggrin: