Tuesday, April 17, 2007

when death hits a little too close for comfort.

this morning in class my political science prof wonders sadly, why do such things happen in america so often.

Gunman kills 32 in Virginia Tech rampage

By SUE LINDSEY
Associated Press Writer

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) -- A gunman massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history Monday, cutting down his victims in two attacks two hours apart before the university could grasp what was happening and warn students.

The bloodbath ended with the gunman committing suicide, bringing the death toll to 33 and stamping the campus in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains with unspeakable tragedy, perhaps forever.

The rest of the article is found here ( http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/V/VIRGINIA_TECH_SHOOTING?SITE=WVEC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT ) and everywhere else. i clicked on every link there was on my "news" bookmarks on safari, and everywhere i went (except channelnewsasia.com), the headline just screams out the unimaginable.

i sit at my desk on the other side of the coast and i don't really know what to think. i thought about the victims. professors, students, my age, or even younger. their lives ended on a normal day of class with no warning. i thought about the families. they never got to say goodbye. i thought about the friends. i thought about the gunman. an asian male. calmly moving from room and room. shooting and reloading. shooting and reloading. finally shooting himself.

i couldn't really think anymore so i drowned myself in work. assignment for philosophy of science class. but here i am again, wordlessly moving from page to page, reading reports streaming in.

echoing my professor, why why why? sometimes i really want to ask God (and get an answer straightaway) why He allows such things to happen.

just barely 2 weeks ago, a shooting also took place way too close to home. details here ( http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003648679_uwshooting03m.html ). one UW staff member was shot 5 times by her ex-boyfriend/stalker, before the guy turned the gun onto himself and shot himself. on UW campus. it was horrifying and very very sad. she did everything she could to protect herself from the psycho, but he still found her. i was shell-shocked because it was really just around the corner (ok about 8 blocks away from where i live), but i took comfort in the Lord and the fact that it was a personal thing. it wasn't a random act of psycho-ness. it wasn't a shooting rampage.

this virginia thing, major shooting rampage. it was random. he just shot everyone in his sight. mercilessly.

okok stop. i am not as depressed as i sound. it's good that i had a good 40 min chat with sam. it's good i'm drowning myself in studying for my political science quiz on wednesday. ok. chat with sam really helped. i don't think he knows what big difference he does to my mood.

well, life goes on.

Labels: life in seattle, news, sam

This girl posted at 3:47 PM

Thursday, February 15, 2007

love never fails.

happy valentine's day everyone!

honestly, happy the-
most-commercialized-where-a-bunch-of-roses-go-for-USD22 day!

ok i'm so cynical. i'd rather express love on a more frequent basis rather than just once a year. y'all know what i mean?

but all things being said, i still miss spending the day with sam. this is the 2nd time we're spending it apart. last year he was in sydney. this year i'm in seattle. the only time we were together on the same piece of land mass is wayyy back in 2005.

my favorite description of love comes not from poems or sonnets or prose or movies.


anyway school's been just trudging along, dragging me at its feet. i miraculously passed my lab exam, which was something to thank God for. i passed! not with flying colors. barely. but still happy. now just gotta study harder for the midterm coming up. argh.

movie pre-valentine's date night with the girls of patricia place (that's the name of my apartments). 7 girls ordered subway/mexican wraps and went to watch because i said so and it was not too bad! i love romantic comedies/chick flicks. love diane keaton and lauren graham and mandy moore. haha the movie was quite funny and i had a really good laugh. =) seeing diane keaton being the mother to 3 daughters make me miss my sisters and my family EVEN MORE. sigh. i miss my sisters actually. i never thought i would. the hours of talking rubbish and talking good food and going shopping. i'm very glad that i've grown closer to them, because i was never close to them due to our huge age difference. and God really works in wonderful ways to bind us together. *smiles*

the weekend that just went by was a pre-CNY gathering of the patricia place and 5 NBS students from the other apartments, campus heights. that saturday started out with a huge breakfast of pancakes, waffles, scrambled eggs, french toast, hot cocoa with coffee. satisfaction followed, leading to my friend and i carrying 2 big backpacks and heading to chinatown to buy groceries for our steamboat dinner while the rest of them went shopping! hhmmpphhh. i wanna go shopping toooo! but we had fun grocery shopping. i love grocery shopping. esp in a chinese supermarket. on the way back we were loaded with very very heavy backpacks and 2 big bags that we carried in our hands. and as we began our tiring walk to the busstop, we started seeing CNY songs. hurhur. it was so funny. i think people thought we were mad.

we got home, sorted the groceries, rested abit, and proceeded to cook at 4pm. the other girls were supposed to be back to help with the prep. but those shopaholics didn't come home till like 5pm. (and one of them actually had the nerve to proclaim that she was the main cook! ok i'm just ranting but i can't stand it when other people take credit for what they never did.) so we washed everything and cut everything and prepared the 2 types of soup base for our steamboat. we had a LOT of food. and it was goooodddd. love how my 2 soups turned out. decided that red dates and shrimps just wouldn't be right. and that dried scallops should go with shrimps while red dates go with chicken broth. perfect.

(ps. ohmygoodness the cute seth-cohen lookalike guy from my graduate class is here in the library! hee. he's cute.)

the excess food was cleared by many many rounds of zhong1 ji2 mi4 ma3. and many many laughs. we washed everything and proceeded to snack on mandarin oranges and egg rolls. took crazy pictures using the multi-burst function and it was hilarious. reminds me of the neoprint days.

after saying bye to the campus heights people, after bathing and checking emails, it was girls night in and another round of gossips and rubbish games and getting-to-know-each-other and truth/dare games. and yes snacks. we finally dragged our tired feet back at 4am.

therein ends another weekend of fun.

looking forward to this weekend! its presidents' day holiday and i'm going outlet-shopping on friday and vancouver for the long weekend. yayyyyy.

but first. midterms. argh.

Labels: life in seattle, love, sam, UW

This girl posted at 3:37 AM

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

an inconvenient truth. seriously.

as i surf the net for my dose of current affairs (p.s. i'm actually quite back-dated already. i didn't know american idol started today, and that the golden globes came and went on monday.), i was struck at how bad the weather is all around. the flooding in JB and singapore. the snow and ice storms that struck a whole lot of US states. suddenly i'm so thankful that seattle has cold cold temperatures and 2-inch snow. only. praying for those affected. praying for good weather. mother nature unleashes her global warming rage.

42 killed as winter storms, floods hit US
Posted: 17 January 2007 1113 hrs

CHICAGO: A massive winter storm has covered swathes of the United States in a mantle of snow, sleet and ice, killing 42 people, threatening millions of dollars in citrus crops and leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity, officials said on Tuesday.

"This is a big one, affecting all the way from New Mexico to Maine," said Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Weather Service.

The worst-hit areas were Oklahoma, where freezing rain left behind a sheet of ice, and Missouri, hard hit by sleet, he said.

"With the ice, the trees come down on the power lines, and in Oklahoma it's going to take the rest of the week to get all that restored," he said. "The lines are completely down. It's not like it's a transformer here and there - it's the whole grid."

The storm, which began churning across the country on Friday, was caused by an enormous cold front that dropped temperatures by as much as 17 degrees Celsius and brought wave after wave of freezing rain and sleet as it moved slowly eastward.

It weakened somewhat on Tuesday, sparing major East Coast cities such as New York, Boston and Philadelphia from the worst of the ice and sleet.

The National Weather Service has issued storm warnings for central Texas, freeze warnings in California, Arizona and Texas, wind chill advisories stretching from New York to Maine, and flood warnings across central US from Louisiana, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio.

The storm has already caused ice storms in western parts of New York state, forecasters said.

In hard-hit Oklahoma, Federal Emergency Management Agency workers distributed electrical generators and bottled water to communities hammered by the ice storm, after President George W. Bush declared an emergency in Oklahoma on Sunday.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported more than 300 road accidents in which 14 people were killed, including seven in a minivan crash Sunday.

Some 103,000 people were also without power, according to Oklahoma's Department of Emergency Management.

Bush also declared a state of emergency for Missouri - including the city of St. Louis - on Monday, freeing up federal funding for recovery efforts.

State officials said eight people had been killed in the Missouri storms, including seven who died in traffic accidents and one killed by carbon monoxide poisoning - common when people without electricity use fuel-burning stoves for heat.

More than 300,000 people lost power in the state due to downed power lines, and a utility worker was injured, state officials said.

In Kansas, five people were reported killed in weather-related road accidents and one person died of carbon monoxide poisoning, officials told the Kansas City Star newspaper.

One person also died in a weather-related traffic accident in New York state, according to local radio.

In Texas, Governor Rick Perry called out the National Guard after heavy rain caused flash flooding. Local media reported two killed in separate weekend accidents on icy roads in western Texas.

And in California, where temperatures are generally mild, farmers braced for devastation to citrus crops worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has declared a state of emergency in the state, warned on Tuesday in a letter to the US Department of Agriculture in Washington that losses to the region's citrus fruit industry "will likely reach one billion dollars".

But Dave Kranz, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation trade group, said it was too soon to tell the extent of the damage.

"The freeze in 1998 was severe, but there were pockets of fruit that survived. That's the expectation this year," he said. "There are citrus groves that will have come through OK, but there is also widespread damage."

California accounts for nearly a quarter of the US market for citrus fruits, according to figures from state agricultural authorities, making it the biggest producer of fruit in the nation.

Some 51,000 homes and businesses lost power in upstate New York after a heavy layer of ice covered the area Monday, National Grid spokesman Alberto Bianchetti said.

The company, which provides power to around 1.5 million customers in the northern part of the state, expected to begin restoring services later in the day, he said.

More snow was forecast for later Tuesday and early Wednesday. - AFP/so

snow in its little dainty quantities is enough.


loving the phonecalls from sam. =)
and the skyping webcam sessions from home. =)
and a good dose of chinese food like winter melon soup and bah kut teh. =)

Labels: sam, seattle, snow

This girl posted at 4:22 PM

Friday, December 01, 2006

it's finally over.

6 core modules.

10000 lectures. ok it's about 66 lectures.

everything about neurology, brain, english, critical thinking, plants, fungi, development, fruit flies, frogs, zebrafish, mouse, worms, cancer, genetics, all kinds of diseases.

there were labs. field trips. playing with worms. times of mugging at NIE library, resource room. trips to meiji factory. lab reports. assignments. 830am and 530pm days.

and one semester draws to a close.

and i'm suffering from post exams withdrawal symptoms.

last paper today was a killer. so was yesterday's plants. my fingers almost fell off in the freezing cold and having to answer 5 long 20 marks questions. really. it was so sore and numb i thought i would lose my right fingers.

today as i walked out of the exam hall i felt relieved somehow. it was tough. having so many things to remember and commit to memory and having so many modules of chim concepts and i just couldn't help but keeping praying and talking to God and asking for His faithfulness, grace, mercy and strength and peace. it worked by the way. hence i'm still sane.

thankful.

post-exams this year was anniversary celebration with sam. dinner at a little charming french eatery smacked in the middle of little india. good food and affordable too! sam and i had starters main course and dessert each and it only cost $50 in total! we even had escargots. =) then how romantic we walked (cos i was ssooo full) to mustafa center so that he could get things for his trip to malaysia for a documentary shoot.

by the way sam's photo won 3rd prize in a photo competition! it's linked here. under the student category. it deserves to be 1st prize if you ask me. the 1st and 2nd prize photos were just ordinary. haha i'm not biased ok. its true. do see for yourself.

ok in less than 24 hours i'm off to japan! ohh i'm so excited. although i hope i don't fight with my sis. sam said we will confirm fight. haha. if we don't then we are not sisters.

soo many people are going overseas for exchange! joyce is leaving for sydney (one of my favourite cities in the world) before i return from japan and i'll leave for seattle before she comes back. which means i won't see her till next june! joyyyccee. enjoy sydney ok. it's a beautiful place. i almost went to brisbane for exchange under INSTEP had i not gotten seattle. just watched amazing race asia and they went to sydney! soooo beautiful the sydney opera house and harbour bridge. then my dearest melody is going to paris in january. peiyong is going UK. so are 2 of my BS friends. another BS friend is going sweden! grace is going to michigan, yehyang is going to boston.

so exciting! =)

this is a bad post.

i have many random thoughts running through my head.

BS people. all you of better be free on 18th! bbq/gathering/happy hour/get champ drunk at my house.

watching alias now.

youth conference straight after japan. yaayyyyy. =)

happy birthday clay!

happy anniversary sam. =) hope you like the brownies.

Labels: exams, random, sam

This girl posted at 1:41 AM