i think i shall take a hiatus from blogging cause i don't seem to be giving very meaningful posts, as in you know, posts that actually give a lot of introspection or other. i think im mostly giving out mental diarrhoea instead. haha.

i think over the past week i've just learnt the true meaning of learning. it's about pushing your mental limits and questioning your understanding of the world. while approaching it from your own little shoes. ok lemme share it with you anyway, even though you didnt ask. let's say since i'm taking life sciences right, so i learn about the way the world works, or at least what goes into God's making of a living organism. and there's just so much to begin with, the defense mechanisms, the biochemistry that goes on, the development from a one celled organism to a fetus, there's so much we have to actually remember, [all of which is compressed into the facade of one module we have to take to graduate] while actually He's just simply made them all just like that. It's pretty amazing, and overwhelming when you think about it. and while learning all these things its easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amt of memory work we have to do. but true teachers would tell us that its about constructing knowledge and not merely regurgitating it. this, as many many ideals that we have been exposed to is yet an ideal, and therefore it's hard to do. muaha.

anyway yesterday Tuty kinda made my day by giving some of us with free tix to go watch puteri gunung ledang! apparently her neighbour works for a company that sponsored the show. it was pretty impressive. haha. the ambition was there, and i totally salute tiara jaquelina. and it was the first time being so groupie-like trying to take a photo of the lead casts after the show. the only pics id have to show you would be of people in front of me trying to get pics. haha.

*chin up gurl!*

good evening peeps. and so today i have the news of telling that despite the fact that i have so many burning views within me that are just dying to blow, i shall be civil and put them into words, and i shall not decide to write in my diary simply coz it'll be over-repetitive and cause i tend to write heartfelt stuff in my diary and here id just like to record more of an overview of my life, and its also for my frens to know about, some of whom i really miss, and i won't get to see in another two weeks cause of the dratty exams.

and so, first up, the issue of exams. i feel its pretty well paced up if i continue being consistent this coming week. given the fact that i went to school on a freaking sunday while my other frens were out raya-ing cause i was worried that i couldn't finish revision, i kinda burned my monday instead cause i was so dead tired. but i will persevere. PERSEVERE!

and then there's the heart issue. dee's been giving me a lot of useful advice on this, such that i can get over whoeveritmaybe soon instead of next year [according to my presumptions, i take quite a number of n years to get over a guy. where n=a specificed number larger than 0] and so the rationale is: i tend to like people that i look up to and i want to exemplify. like there's characteristics in him that i really admire and i'd like to have in myself. and so the idea now is to just roughly analyse what issit exactly that i like about him and try to emulate it. he'll seem less charming then. hopefully.

and then there's the issue of screaming at my siblings, but then, i think it's just exam stress.

ok, that should be all for now. apart from a few buzzing issues that are around my toes, i'm pretty settled. on to mugging! for Him and His pleasure alone.

*I just had to post this up*
For the sake of pure memorabilia, sharing, and short destressor btw immuno revision and biotech report, i have this! :) raya photos...haha...but as you will see later, it's more like blooper raya photos..haha. geez.

on the morning of Syawal, the five of us Mustapha kids sat in Nenek's house (mom's side) playing with our cousins who are unfortunately on purpose not in the photo. We were the first to arrive! (well at least before the others came into the picture. or rather, not. haha.)

from left to right: me, muhd luqman, siti adilah, siti afiyah, muhd imran. (yes, we have such common but beautiful names. =))
and then there was some...

imran is SO trying to act cool.

anyway check this out:



circled according to families. Just 3 of the 10 families under the Othman clan. hehe!

and this one was when no one was looking:


this was at tok umi's (dad's mom's place):


and at tok ala's (dad's aunt's) with fahira!:



and then there were some ex MS exco outing photos. note: this was not meant to be exclusive. upon stepping down, we were just a bunch of frens wanting to replenish the ukhwah we've had forged over the past year. the ending was so memorable with everyone asking for forgiveness from each other. kak aishah: was it like this last year? me:nope. cause i think over the past year we accumulated a lot of dosa towards each other lah. haha! =P

so over at my place:



since there were so many cameras, we took funky shots with each. so mine was the "so scared crazy coz i just saw a ghost" look. of course kak aishah looked calm cause she's not afraid of such things. hehe;)(at kak aishah's place!)...



all the gurls look over here!



yasmin can still afford to smile while on the phone...


me and filzah chilling at the back of the bus!

me and gorgeous anah and a totally extra, uncalled for and insignificant orb in the bottom left corner of the photo...


me and tuty. i love it whenever we take photo and try so hard to smile alike. haha.


me and babe-licious yana



me and nini!

and lastly, a very inspirational lady, kak aishah:)




It was a hard choice between gg for either MS or RG jalan raya, but I decided to go with the former coz it was planned much earlier...felt quite bad that the gurls couldn't come over at night thou. :( it's not like there's not next year, insyaALLAH. :)

my lab report!

ok since we're on the topic of sharing painful moments, I was thinking of explaining my latest lab report so that I can understand it better anyways. I'm kinda stuck, so explaining it out in layman terms would make me understand better. and it can teach you something too!

Alright, so basically the experiment involves us being provided with a gene of interest, and via in situ hybridisation (which I will explain later) we will create RNA probes that will be localised within particular organelles or tissues within the zebrafish embryo that contains the gene of interest.

You start off with being given a simple RNA sequence made up of only 4 nucleotides (AUCG) which runs off to about 200+ bases, which you can run off at the NCBI website.
I guess you could try inserting as many sequences made up of just A-C-U-G and they can link you up to a particular gene. use blastn. It's pretty cool.

ok back to in situ hybridisation. This involves a circular DNA plasmid that's just uh, circular, that contains the gene of interest. By linearising it and cutting it out using restriction enzymes, you can create complementary mRNA sequences. [For those with no bio backgrd, DNA is basically a whole recipe book -made up of only 4 bases A-T-C-G that codes for proteins all around your body. The mRNA is like specific recipes that are only taken out at particular events ie, if the cell needs it. The final dish would be the protein that the mRNA codes for, that makes up your skin, hair, signalling molecules, among all other proteins in your body.]These mRNA sequences are then mixed into a test tube containing zebrafish embryos in the hope that it will hybridise (stick to) the genes that it complements. The gene would only be found in organs that produces it and thus would highlight (using a coloured marker stuck to the mRNA) the organ. The final product would look something like this:



this is the right view of the embryo, highlighted using an mRNA that hybridises the keratin-8 gene which codes for skin proteins...



and this is a close up of the dorsal side of the embryo, where we can clearly see the muscle that has been highlighted by the myosin light chain 2.


And so being given the probe sequence, we're able to find out more about the gene and what it really codes for as found in scientific literature. And being given the pictures, we can deduce the morphological characteristics that it codes for specifically in this experiment (which took a total of 5 days! open lab prac, meaning we can go in anytime we're free to complete the experiment.)

And so now, knowing those two, the question is, so what? We're supposed to find out how much has been found in scientific literature about the development of the two genes, and infer our discovery from what has already been found. Either that or go back in time and pretend that we've found a novel discovery. Either way, we're required to write a ground break research paper in that format. So well, a lot of readings I have to do.

So, didn't understanding that make u feel a lot smarter? :)

emotional carcass
everytime i come back only to blog i just face a blank screen, without wanting to remove the bad things inside me that are dying to come out. I'm confused, on one hand it's not advisable for us to let other people know about the bad things happening in our lives, and we're suposed to face these things with a stronger heart. but i don't believe in facades. I suppose the best is to kinda make it a sharing session, where you're not really complaining, but you're trying to figure things out. As this is gonna be sorta a solemn post, if you're not ready to read it, fine, but don't tell me you left, otherwise i'd think you don't care, which you might not in the first place, here to just get some gossip or scorn at the lives of others you think are worse off than you are, and then I wouln't care less about a person whom I can't call a friend in the first place. -haha, ok whatever lah, i'm just in that kinda mood. you can leave if you want. ok moving on!-

i think it's the time of the sem where everyone is pushing themselves to the limits cause it's just the last stretch until the end of the semester. I'm not complaining.

okay, I'd get to the point. See, ever since I as far back as I remember, I keep getting these bouts of depression. Of course, in contrast to that, I can feel extremely happy and contented with life at times. You may think it's normal, and maybe it is, but what bothers me is that my depression severely affects me, it paralyses me to the point that I can never do anything when I'm in that state. And you know what's the worst part? I'm usually depressed over things that I could not control. About a racist comment I overheard, about guys not going to friday prayers at the mosque when there's absolutely no reason for them not to go, I was even depressed once about a song written for American Idol2. It was during start of the Iraq war, and the producers wrote the song "I'm proud to be an American" for the finalists to sing. I found the song positively twisted. Here you are trying to get innocuous American citizens to run the political agenda, and they're all so positively sure that what they're doing is for the best of others living 476000 million miles away. It made me sick.

I finally figured it out sometime recently. I've always had this perfect worldview that I've stuck to for thus long. Just ask any of my close friends, they'll think I'm cuckoo when I turn all philosophical, but of course the true ones view it as a strength of mine :) And it bothers me when this world view is not enforced in society/real life/print telling me the news/etc.

And recently, I don't even think about this world view anymore. I'm just letting live and let live. And somehow I feel like I've lost part of me, being so unbelievably rationale and non-idealistic.

So that's my challenge. How to balance this one out..I think the best way is to have your own personal views which you don't try to impose on others but work through in your dealings with people, and in going about the dealings in life. And if I really can't afford to be idealistic and have to face the facts, then it's time to compromise, maybe I can still do the things I wanna do, but maybe just not the way I'd imagined it to be. The idea is to change, while still sticking to your essential self.

The important thing is to strive and push myself until the very limits or the end, which ever comes first.

Verily, with every difficulty, there is relief.


For lose not heart, nor fall into despair, for ye must gain mastery if ye are true in faith.

*phew* thank you for sitting through the pep talk I wanted to give myself.

now for an inspirational song!

Anna Nalick - Breathe
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