I'm really happy. Thank you. 
Friday, September 28, 2007
I have met a third person who was willing to spend some time researching for me on ' the symptom '. and I am truly 感动-ed. Although the person will probably not see this.. All the same, 谢谢。 I do not take this for granted ^.^
Continue Reading...
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) 2007
happy 八月十六！
had a great time chatting away yesterday night with different bunches of people. =) wonder how was their latern festival celeb yestd. if only my group members had told be earlier that my meeting today is postponed then i could possibly join them.. but then again, it was some tradeoff. XD hope they've taken some pics for me to see. =P
Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) also known as the Moon Festival, is a popular East Asian celebration of abundance and togetherness, dating back over 3,000 years to China's Zhou Dynasty. In Singapore and Malaysia, it is also sometimes referred to as the Lantern Festival or "Mooncake Festival", which is just the same as "Mid-Autumn Festival" but with different names. It is not to be confused with the Latern Festival (元宵节) celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunar year in the Chinese calendar, which marks the end of the series of celebrations starting from the Chinese New Year in other continents.
The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar. This is the ideal time, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest, to celebrate the abundance of the summer's harvest. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar (the other being the Chinese Lunar New Year), and is a legal holiday in several countries. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomeloes together. Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:
- Eating moon cakes outside under the moon
- Putting pomelo rinds on one's head
- Carrying brightly lit lanterns
- Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e
- Planting Mid-Autumn trees
- Lighting lanterns on towers
- Fire Dragon DancesThe custom of celebrating the moon (Chinese 月亮 yue4 liang4 in Chinese) for both the Han Chinese and minority nationalities, can be traced as far back as the ancient Xia Dynasty and Shang Dynasty of China (20th century BC-1060s BC). In the Zhou Dynasty (1066 BCE-221 BCE), the people celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival to worship the moon.
The practice became very prevalent in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) that people enjoyed and worshipped the full moon. In the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), however, people started making round moon cakes (Chinese:月饼 yue4bing3), as gifts to their relatives in expression of their best wishes of family reunion. At night, they came out to watch the full moon to celebrate the festival. Since the Ming (1368-1644), and Qing Dynasties (1644-1911), the custom of Mid-Autumn Festival celebration has become unprecedentedly popular.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Beyond the 3 States of Matter
Beyond the three states of matter (solid, liquid and gas) exists 2 more states - Plasma and the Bose-Einstein condensate.
In physics, plasma is an electrically conducting medium in which there are roughly equal numbers of positively and negatively charged particles, produced when the atoms in a gas become ionized. It is sometimes referred to as the fourth state of matter, distinct from the solid, liquid, and gaseous states. The uniqueness of the plasma state is due to the importance of electric and magnetic forces that act on a plasma in addition to such forces as gravity that affect all forms of matter. Since these electromagnetic forces can act at large distances, a plasma will act collectively much like a fluid even when the particles seldom collide with one another. Nearly all the visible matter in the universe exists in the plasma state, occurring predominantly in this form in the Sun and stars and in interplanetary and interstellar space. Auroras, lightning, and welding arcs are also plasmas; plasmas exist in neon and fluorescent tubes, in the crystal structure of metallic solids, and in many other phenomena and objects. The Earth itself is immersed in a tenuous plasma called the solar wind and is surrounded by a dense plasma called the ionosphere. A plasma may be reduced in the laboratory by heating a gas to an extremely high temperature, which causes such vigorous collisions between its atoms and molecules that electrons are ripped free, yielding the requisite electrons and ions. Artificially created plasmas have many practical uses. For example, electricity turns the gas in the tube of a neon sign into a plasma that gives off light. Electric rockets may someday use plasma fuels for long trips through space.
The Bose-Einstein condensate represents a fifth phase of matter beyond solids. It is a phase of matter, in the sense that solid, liquid, gas and plasma are phases of matter. Bose-Einstein condensates form from matter that has been cooled to near absolute zero. They were predicted in the 1920s by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein based on Bose's work on rules for deciding when two photons should be counted up as either identical or different. Einstein formalized and generalized these ideas, and the result of their efforts is the so called Bose-Einstein statistics. This is the description of the statistics of identical particles that can share a quantum energy level with each other (as opposed to Fermi-Dirac statistics, which describe identical particles of which you can only put one in each energy level). One of the results that one can derive from this statistics is the existence of stimulated emission of photons, which is the effect that is used in creating lasers. Einstein also applied the statistics to atoms instead of photons, and discovered that at a certain very low temperature, all of the atoms tend to drop into the lowest accessible energy level. The effect can be understood in broad outline by considering the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which states, roughly, that it is impossible to know both a particle's velocity and a particle's position simultaneously with certainty. When a group of atoms is cooled to a low enough temperature, however, their velocities become very certain; they must be moving very slowly, or, stated more technically, they must have low quantum energy levels. This causes their positions to "smear out", effectively causing the individual atoms to overlap each other. In a Bose-Einstein condensate, the many overlapping atoms can be considered to be a single super-atom, with all of its constituent atoms sharing a single quantum state. The Bose-Einstein condensate therefore is a rare example of the uncertainty principle in action in the macroscopic world. Bose-Einstein condensates are extremely fragile. The slightest interaction with the outside world can be enough to warm them past the condensation threshold, causing them to break back down into individual atoms again; it will likely be some time before any practical applications are developed for them.
Jack and Jill
English has to be one of the hardest languages to understand. Read the paragraph below and try to understand the meaning.
Two individuals proceeded towards the apex of a natural geologic protuberance,
the purpose of their expedition being the procurement of a sample of
fluid hydride of oxygen in a large vessel, the exact size of which was unspecified.
One member of the team precipitously descended, sustaining severe damage to
the upper cranial portion of his anatomical structure; Subsequently the second
member of the team performed a self rotational translation oriented in the same
direction taken by the first team member.
In plain English what does this translate to?
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after!
Friday, September 14, 2007
10 Things You Might’ve Been Better Off Not Knowing About Your Body
10 Things You Might've Been Better Off Not Knowing About Your Body
Andreas Vesalius De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (On the fabric of the human body in seven books), 1543
1. The average human body comprises enough fat to make seven bars of soap, enough iron to make a medium sized nail, enough potassium to explode a toy cannon, enough lime to whitewash a small chicken coop, enough sugar to fill a jam jar, and enough sulfur to rid a dog of fleas.
2. A complete skeleton is worth between $5,000 and $7,500 to a medical student; your skull alone would fetch only about $450.
3. Your mouth produces about one quart of saliva per day
 | 4. Demodex folliculorum has eight stumpy legs and a tail, is about a third of a millimeter long, and loves nothing more than to recline in the warm, oily pits of your hair follicles. Most adults have this mite, usually on the head, but especially in eyelashes. And often, they're in nipples. |
5. You have approximately 4,000 wax glands in each ear.
6. The average adult stool weighs about 4 ounces. And half of the bulk of your feces comprises the dead bodies of bacteria that live inside your intestines.
7. The average male foot exudes half a pint of sweat each day.
8. If it weren't for the slimy mucous that clings to and lines the walls of your gut, your stomach would readily digest itself.
9. The average person will pass about 11,000 gallons of urine in a lifetime.
10. A man weighing 200 lbs. would provide enough meat to feed 100 cannibals in one sitting.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
时光机 - 五月天
那陽光碎裂在熟悉場景好安靜， 一個人能被多少的往事真不輕？
誰的笑，誰的溫暖的手心我著迷，傷痕好像都變成了曾經。
全劇終，看見滿場空座椅燈亮起這故事好像真實又像虛幻的情境。
只是那好不容易被說服的自己，藉口又頂不住懊惱的侵襲。
its good to be staying in a same hall with some interesting friends - well, they will have self-access to my level~ and because of that, I've just gotten some surprise moochies right outside my door from my friend. soO nice an encouragement for tml's test =)
i love surprises . it brightens up a person's life =) wouldnt it brighten yours? 麻李麻李Ω！ There you are, some nice flowers for my readers!
Monday, September 10, 2007
oh my 天 iM so surprised that a friend from design who stays near to my block brought me food! chilled mood cakes and delicious moochi from the recent food fair - which i missed. the moochies are sooo nice with all those ice-cream fillings and chocolate fudge in the core of the filling. oh my that's so nice of ah kien to go around doing the deliveries despite tomorrow's quiz =) yummy!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)