Can't wait!

My sister is coming to visit me!!! I am sooooo excited!!! Can't wait for her to be here! Just one more week!!! June 30! She finally bought her air ticket... I was worried she would end up not coming cos' she was working and she didn't really check out the air tickets. I spent some time on the internet in the office (shush! O_o) earlier this month to check out travel agencies in Singapore that offer good prices and forwarded her the emails of the ones who replied. Then I had to keep calling her to check if she had called any of the agencies to check out the tickets.

FINALLY, on June 14, I got an email from her that she had booked her tickets! After that, I searched high and low (on the internet, that is. Thank God for the World Wide Web!) for the cheapest possible tickets to London and Italy. Booked the tickets after a few days of intense searching (when I was sure I had exhausted all options) and careful deliberation over how much time I wanna spend in each place. Then had repeat the process to find accomodation. Boy, does budget travelling exhaust one even before it starts (if I didn't have to care about my budget, I could have booked anything I want)! But I know it'll all be worth it when I'm there. :)

I thought to get tickets to Disneyland Paris for my sis cos' she really likes the fairytales and princesses. Besides, I've always wanted to visit Disneyland too. So she's the perfect person to go with! :) But gosh do the entry tickets cost! 41 euros for one adult, one park, one day! Naturally, I looked at the English website first but didn't find any good offers (for example student prices) on the ticket prices. Then I checked the French website to see if there are any differences in the 2 and to my surprise there are much more discounts stated there than in the English website... Wonder what that's supposed to signify?!?! People who don't read French are not eligible for the offers??? There's an offre etudiant that gives a 35% reduction for students on the entry, and there's a billet 'plus tot' which takes almost half the price off if you book the tickets 30 days before the day you go. I got that one since the timing was suitable and was really glad to have found that.

Guess I probably won't be able to update again before I leave for my vacation (2 whole weeks! Yipee!) cos' there are tonnes of work I have to clear before I go and I'm not even going to think about the work waiting for me when I get back... Hopefully can find the time to write about my trip when I get back. Dans (so), until then, ciao!

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Met up with my cousin, Mingwei, for dinner yesterday. He came with his girlfren, Wai Ling, from London where they are studying to visit Paris for a few days. We went to a nice little French restaurant for dinner which a French colleague of mine recommended. Dinner was really good French food with lotsa catching-up. They both tried foie gras for the first time. ^_^ Am glad they liked the restaurant. They were really nice to write me a list of places to visit in London (am going to visit London and Italy with my sis when she comes. Yeah!) even though they were both pretty tired. Had a really good time. Am really glad they came to visit. :)

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21 June was a lot of things...

Forgot to mention in my earlier post that 21 June was Fete de la Musique (Festival of Music) and I took a walk around the centre of Paris with some frens. The atmosphere was great!!! There were various bands along the roads, playing all sorts of different genres of music; Rock, Pop, Metal, Country, or just simply nice-sweet-folks-singing, etc... And people were just flooding the streets! Some, who looked like they had drank a little too much, (or perhaps people in Paris are just naturally uninhibited...) were happily dancing away, oblivious to others around.

Amidst all of the arts, music and cultural activities here, I must say I feel like I've been given lessons in things that I would not have noticed or been interested in, in Singapore. Stuff like going to museums, attending art exhibitions, etc. Getting a dose of the 'wen hua' (culture) as we would say in Chinese. Perhaps it's not that Singaporeans are not a cultured people like the Europeans are, it's probably just that She, being a young country, has just not been so developed in this area (and also probably because we have been brought up to think that arts are useless since one can't earn a living through arts). But now, the Singapore government has been trying to promote the arts and for young people to become more aware of the arts, even though it might be in the form of another campaign... Isn't that why the (endearing durian-, or fly-eyes-shaped, though I'd prefer to think of it as more like durian than fly eyes... heehee) Esplanade was built?

21 June was also the official first day of Summer. Summer here reminds me very much of home... It's so hot I feel like I’m in Singapore! And the worst is that air conditioners don't seem to exist here! (Though when I think about it, I can understand why; since most of the year is cold rather than hot; only about 3 months of the year is actually warm/hot, heaters make more sense.) But can you imagine our MRTs and buses without air-condition? It's like that in the Metro, RER trains and buses here. So terribly stuffy and smelly! And working in the labs just feel horrible too, cos' our labs are not air-conditioned... Heat makes me feel really sleepy... *Yawns*

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happy.happy.with my blog.

Am totally happy with my blog now... All thanks to my good fren, Norlizan! She offered to help me change my skin after she got to know that I had trouble changing it. *embarrassed* So sweet of her right? Thanks, Zan! And I also made her promise that she'd teach me after I get back home... heehee... I refuse to remain incapable of changing the skin of my blog! Even hope that eventually, I could design it the way I want it. Zan's good at html web designing and stuff like that (she's a genius, ain't she?), so with such a good teacher (I hope... hahaha...) I should be able to master something!

And since I'm tagged by her (feel pretty happy that she thought of me, though it might be due to the fact that most of her other frens have been tagged already. hahaha. First time I'm 'tagged' - it feels like playing 'catching' when I was young. haha), so here goes:

"Things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Make a list, post it to your journal... and then tag 5 friends and ask them to post it to theirs."
1) Eat junk! Especially chocolates and chips... They make me happy... :)
2) Cuddle up in bed with a good book. (Would have to turn on the air-con in Singapore if I want to do this. On this 'weather' note, I would like to mention that air-conditioners don't seem to exist here in Paris! And since it's summer now, it's so hot I feel like I'm at home! Can you imagine our MRTs without airconditioning? It's like that in the Metros here! Horrible!!! Stuffy, stinky, hot.hot.hot!) Back to the 'book' topic, the book should preferably be a humorous book, like Bridget Jones's Diary (I know, I know, I'm a little slow... but just couldn't manage to get my hands on one in the libraries in Singapore, they are always on loan. Was thus really happy to find this book here and it's practically new! *Glee*)
3) Get a haircut + colour at Omar's (my all-time favourite hairstylist though expensive...)! I love getting my hair cut. Always makes me feel a little different after. :)
4) Play with my nephew!
5) Go swimming or to the gym! (Though I would have to stress that it doesn't usually happen unless I get really motivated. Bwahaha! ^_^)

Can't think of anything else... So it's time to make 'nominees'... *drum roll...*
hmmm... but I don't have 5 blog frens to tag... *pathetic...*
So it's just Michael, Mingwei (if he ever drops by), I suppose. :)

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Today's Friday and I don't feel like working...

Arghh!!! am in an absolute bumming mode today...

Just had a telephone interview with ES cells International (in Singapore) in the morning, which 2 of my colleagues also had. Sighz... doubt I have much of a chance, since they are going back in July and I'm staying here till end Oct/early Nov.

But my interview went ok, I think. It was funny the way it started -- 'Miss Huang?' the guy asked. 'Oui!' I replied... I started apologizing while they (there were 2 guys who were present) burst out laughing... And I think amidst their laughter, I heard the guy say, 'Nous pouvons parle francais?' (which means, we can speak French?) So I suppose I took some of the tension out of that 'teleconference' (as they called it), though I still felt a little nervous. And since they called while I was trypsinizing my cells in the culture hood, my colleague had to help me take off my lab coat and gloves so I could take the call. Funny... :)

Their first question was, 'So, why don't we start by you telling us what you know about our company?' I thought, 'Yesssssss! I just looked at their website again this morning!' But oh boy, like how it often happens to me in exams, stuff that I read just before the exam and when the exact questions appear in the paper, I just don't remember... O_o I racked my brain hard for that tiny thread of memory I hoped was just stuck somewhere. I gave an answer about the company's main functions along with some statistics I vaguely remember from the website. And then, the guy said I don't have to go into details about the statistics, they just needed to know if I knew what the company was about in general. Man, he could have said that earlier!

So, the interview went on with the usual questions. They mentioned they spoke to my colleagues and I asked if I was the last of them on the interview slots. The guy replied while laughing, ' I'm not in a position to tell you that.' After which, 2 seconds later, he said 'Well, yes'. Jeehz... I wonder if being the last was a bad sign...

The interview ended with him asking if I had any further questions for them. I couldn't think of any so I said exactly that. And they said they would contact me in the next week.
Anyhow, I was really relieved after I was done with the interview. Looked at my phone and saw that it lasted almost 18 minutes. Felt like eternity to me though. Then realised that I forgot to tell them some stuff one of my French colleagues told me I could say during the interview. Gargh!

I just kinda slacked the whole of the day. Am glad am not too busy today. :)

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Of books and French...

Just finished reading Magician by Raymond E. Fiest. It was a departure gift from a thoughtful friend just before I came to Paris. Thought it a great book... Would recommend it to anyone who's a fantasy genre fan... Never thought I would get into the fantasy genre before... always thought it more a 'male' genre than anything else (forgive me for being politically incorrect here... was ignorant before. ^_^) until Zan got me reading Mercedes Lackey and thus introduced me to fantasy. Thanks gerl! :)

So, Zan, watcha u reading these days? :) Hopefully something I could find in the library here. But considering the pathetically small number of English books in the library, it might not be very possible... And I really oughta borrow some kids' French books so I could improve on my French, which, in my opinion, is a horribly difficult language to learn! It's been 6 months now and still, my spoken French is barely comprehensible! I can read and write ok, but when it comes to speaking, sighz... Gotta practise making the funny in-your-throat 'R' sound and to make my mouth form the '-eux', '-u', '-eau' sounds which are non-existent in English, or Mandarin, for that matter... And make myself sit down and study, which of cos, doesn't sound like it's gonna happen. Bwahaha!

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Feeling stupid...

Was bored today at work... din haf much on my hands today and thus did some blog surfing of friends on Zan's blog... They all have nice looking blogs, unlike my old and boring one... hence I decided to do something about mine... change the skin. And so I went about looking for something I like on blogskins... found some. Also found myself asking how I should go about putting tat skin I like onto my blog... I know I should have to download the codes and then use tat on my templates... but try as I might, I couldn't get it to work right... First the pictures dun show... then when I solved tat, the links dun work... etceterra etceterra... Started feeling really stupid... asked Zan for help...

Then a colleague (I'm supposed to be working rem?) asked me if I left the centrifuge machine on and I realised I forgot to put the blood in to centrifuge which I was supposed to do a couple of hours ago. And which I forgot all about while I was trying so hard to figure out how to make my blog look nice...

Jeehz... And the serum was to be used for proteomics... man... I hope I dun screw up the results because of tis... Now I feel so stupid (for having spent, no, wasted so much time on TRYING to change my blogskin and then NOT being able to get it to work) and guilty (for using office hours to do stuff like tat AND forgetting my work) Gosh... should slap myself for tat...
Am going to go now... staying in the office longer is only gonna make me feel worse... maybe some guilt food will help... :)

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