New Year

明けましておめでとう～！そして、久しぶり！
Yeah, it's been a while since my last post isn't it?
*sigh* It's not like I don't want to blog more often; I just don't have the time to.

Second year is hell.

Well, I don't even remember how many pieces of assignment I've done.
Let's see: stats data analysis, last piece of anabio portfolio, lay abstract and gel documentation report for molmicro, presentation and report for Japanese and finally a discussion paper for proprac.
I was planning to do the hospital visit report but kinda procrastinated on it... Still haven't done it though.
No worries, since the discussion paper and the hospital visit report isn't even due until March.
Yeah, I worked ahead of time and got rid of the harder one first... There is an interesting story behind my discussion paper though.

It was kind enough for Anne (program leader for proprac) to give us the liberty to choose the title of our individual paper; finally relieved of group work (very thankful).
We could either choose to continue to develop the topic we did before or to choose an entirely new one; I chose the latter and opted to do the benefits of drinking green tea, focusing on the antioxidant, antimutagenic and anticarcinogenic properties.

At first I wanted to do on kimchi (yes, the Korean kimchi) but most of the scientific papers on it were either in Korean (which I still can't really read) or they have to be purchased, which totally isn't an option.
I got the papers that I needed ages ago... More like since she mentioned about the discussion paper.
Anyways, I spent the whole of last Wednesday writing it up and did up to about 1900+ words and decided to call it a day, since I've been writing ever since I got up in the morning.
I saved it and closed off Word and then decided to back it up into my pen drive, since my laptop is a bit temperamental.
The thing is, the files and folders in my pen drive has the exact name as those on my laptop; if you're smart enough, you should know where this is going...
So, the auto-play popped up and I went to where I save all my assignments and then... *wait for it*... Clicked on the file that I had in my pen drive and overwrote the one in my laptop.
And yes, the one in my pen drive was an empty document; I just erased off a whole day's worth of scientific reading and analysis, and 1900+ words worth of writing.
To think that I should have noticed that the file I was overwriting with was a blank document when it prompted me for permission to overwrite the file...
When I realized I just erased off a whole day's worth of hard work, it was too late.
Of course I scoured the net to find out how to retrieve my discussion paper but the outcome was grim; I had no choice but to rewrite the whole paper, AGAIN.

Come to think of it, I think it was supposed to happen for a reason.
Why? Because that was a first draft of the paper and I wasn't really confident in it. I didn't really know in which direction that I was going.
But I was more confident in my second attempt and... Wrote up to 13 pages which has about 2798 worth of words. It's a little over the word count (2000~ 2500) but that's just how much I can go on. 13 pages is probably because of the amount of graphs and figures that I've put in.
There are about 13 journals that I've reference from but that's only about 1/3 of what I have found.
I don't know how much it's worth but I'm hoping that it'll at least get a 2:2 for it or else I'd definitely flip.
Also, I didn't even get the feedback from Anne for the last discussion paper that we did, so I don't know how the correct format should be.

On a brighter side, I spent my first week of break at Leeds with my brother.
I really miss his kitchen and the en suite bathroom... Why can't they have IQ here?!
It was a whole lot of fun, meeting the MASSOC friends he keeps mentioning about in our weekly conversations and just being in the metropolitan city of Leeds.
Seriously, Sunderland is classified as 田舎 in my book instead of a city.
 There was just too much to see and do for a week to suffice but too bad... He has exams in Jan (which is next week) and I needed to return to at least do some revision.
Just didn't think that there wouldn't be as heavy of a snowfall this year, or else I'd have stayed till New Year before coming back. But then again...

Snowfall this year was really thin and the winter... Is rather mild, actually.
I don't know about the following weeks though, since winter runs through Jan and Feb, but the temperatures didn't really drop as drastically as the year before.
Snowfall was only on the day I left Sunderland for Leeds (16/12) and that was during the last molmicro lectures. Noel actually stopped midway and said "Oh look, it's snowing' and everyone just stared at him.
It hasn't snowed since then though and I'm hoping that it wouldn't.
Not that I don't like snow but after having to live through a really heavy one in my first year... It's rather bothersome to have it, mild or heavy.

Celebrated Christmas and New Year alone, like usual.
That's because Mom, Dad and Sis had gone to Harbin (yes... I wanted to go too...) and Bro was celebrating it with his friends.
It's rather sad that most of mine are back in MS though... はぁ...

...And that's the recap of my last few days of 2011.
Uni is starting again next Monday with 2 new modules being introduced; pathothera 1 and dipro (pathophysiology and therapeutics I & disease processes).
Just breathed a sigh of relief to know that it's 50-50% for coursework in pathothera, unlike my first impression of 100% on exams.
Speaking of exams... I seem to have a little more confidence in it as compared to pre-breakdown.
Mostly it's because the first thing I see when I wake up from bed is the two motivational bookmarks Mom sent to me : 'i think i can. i think i can. i think i can. i KNOW i can.' and 'think positive, stay positive'.
I love her to bits but can never seem to say it out loud... 恥ずかしいでしょ！
As for the exams, I'll just do my best and see how it works out.
I've basically been doing my revision almost every night other than on weekends, so I'm crossing my fingers that it'll be a smooth sail.
I'm planning to use my free Fridays to revise my Sem 1 subjects, one module per week, so that it wouldn't be a cram session come Easter break.
Yup, Easter would be spent on revision to prepare for the finals in May.
Then, I'll be able to go back for summer and have a good rest before coming back for my final year of uni.
うわ、ちょっと早かったですね… 信じられないでしょ。I'm halfway though my uni life already...
Jon's graduating in May and will soon be joining the working society.
Maybe I could delay it by doing a postgrad?
That means I'll have to get good grades... 頑張れなきゃ駄目だよぅ！
Now I'm deliberating whether to reread the pathothera notes or just laze and enjoy the last of my holiday...

PS: Just finished 華ヤカ哉、我ガ一族 キネマモザイク yesterday and I have to say, I LOVE 勇's route the most! 勇's after-story continuing from the first game and the alternate ending (second year in which 守 is introduced to the family and the fight for 当主 continues) were just... *giggles* 今まだ夢中だよぅ！
博 and 雅's were second best and I can't decide between them but 勇 is no doubt my favourite, which is why I kept him for last. 博 was sweet and 雅 was his usual ツンデレself... And I didn't even know that he could be that cunning. 玄一郎 is by far the most twisted character I've encountered, ever. And what's worse, he reminds me a little of my own grandfather. Thank goodness he doesn't own a giant corporation or have any political influences or else he'd be exactly like him. Right, that's all I'm going to spill; you'll just have to play the game yourself to know what I'm talking about.

I don't know when I'll be making my next post so until then, また今度で～！