Fear

Shannon: "...let's share our fears..."
Amanda's turn: "I'm afraid of being old, alone and with only cats..."
Everyone: *chuckle*

20min later..
Shannon: "...now let's share what we can do about our fear..."
Andrew/Allen: whispers to each other.. "amanda can find a man..." *chuckle*
Amanda: "huh? i don't get it..."
Everyone: "well..maybe you don't NEED a guy..you can live with all women"
Amanda: "WHAT????" *shudder*


Inspired by brent, kwan, sam, faith & queenie...(c'mon, you know you want to make one too!!!)

Spiritually
- spiritually mature/humble/confident. Be the leader in the relationship.
- missions.. (e.g. china)
- a servant
- sensitive and led by the spirit
- challenges and encourages me...and vice versa...

Intelligence
- smarter than myself..in life..not books...wellll..okay, maybe book smarts too would be nice
- to be able to share/ encourage my interest in science...understand my bio analogies and nerd jokes. There are these two profs at school..one does work on evol'n bio, the other neuroendocrine... they're married and have done research together.. quite cute
- speak good english =) ...i.e. proficient enough to take care of all english related/ letter reading/ bill paying/ tax doing/ form filling stuff =) and be able to help me with my english
- bonus if he can speak mandar (rubs off well w/ the parents)
- technology proficient...."router? what's that?"

Emotionally/ Personality (alot of the things i list here reminds me of my dad =) ...my parents are so cute together)
- confident/ passionate/ assured- in everything and whatever he does, no matter what he does. None of this Hamlet stuff
- makes me feel confident and assured
- lots of respect to himself and others
- *** HUMOR! ...bonus if it's make me pee my pants kinda material.. =) but then again, i laugh at most things
- light hearted.. not overanalyze
- family oriented...kids, parents, grandparents, me =)
- 3D...not as in he's human..but personality wise
- doesn't make me feel like i have to entertain him..and not feel like he needs to entertain me
- endures my special week each month where i'm 'not myself'...and if he can't, he should be smart enough to buy me chocolate
- "sensitive"/softy...but not queer (Herby)
- musical...cuz i'm not..he hee....i can only serenate him with gr7 piano repetoire

Physically
- chinese...sorta ashamed to say it..but the more i grow up, i more "traditional" i've become
- active...not obsessive about working out (ahem, adrian) but enjoys being active
- challenges me but not make me feel obese

This is alot. But i write these things from where i am now, knowing that when God allows this match to play itself out, any wishlist that i make will have no role in any of it- b/c this is what 'amanda wants'...thru her eyes...not what 'amanda needs'..thru the ultimate Matchmaker's eyes. Someone once made a statement along the lines of, 'when you feel that you deserve the love of someone, it means you don't love them enough'. I never want to feel like i deserve his love. No, i don't want a Superman, i prefer Clark Kent

ha haa..oh my, i feel quite.. girlish. no more backstreetboys

Next 2 weeks

5 exams within 9 days...*tear*..with the exception of gilmore girls, OC, oasis & sunday morning.. i'll be in nerd mode.....nnnnnnnn......ow.

i watched 'father of the bride' on the weekend..and teared up. Parents are so awesome. I love mine.

whaaa

A bitter cold thursday. Yesterday was not any better, huge storm, roads blocked, DVP slow from lakeshore...and 10am neuro lecture. Being the "smart" one that i am, i decided to drive, even though my dad insisted that i ride the rocket. I drove local to "avoid the traffic".. it took me almost 1hr to get to school, it usually takes me 25min. The last segment of my journal involved a steep hill in a "valley" (part of UTSC property...we call it "the valley" ^__^) ...i was going a little fast, so i breaked...then i swirlved...did a 180 and half way fell into the dipped side of the road- that woke me up. Luckily, there were no cars for a while, eventually i got out. High cortisol level.

Today: school from 10-7pm, 4hrs of lecture, 5hrs of break. Efficient?..yes =) 1hr of the OC (so wrong, they're going into lesbian territory!) ...1.5hrs of plant physsiology...couldn't do it anymore.

Just something that's been on my mind since yesterday's neuro tutorial..my TA, whose working on her Phd for faculty of medicine downtown told us about grad school. I was really interested and been thinking about it for a while. She talked about grants, applying and finding a supervisor. My friend asked her about grades, she said at least a 3.6 for the "easier" faculties at UT...but she needed a 3.9 for faculty of med...i think so myself, "3.9? are you crazy..?.. meanwhile i'm struggling with my B+"...- more cortisol secreted. So much for that plan.

Seems like all the programs most ppl are in are "practical"..whether it be business admin, HR, ITM, ECE/Con-ed, Eng etc etc, they know where it can lead them, where they want to go and how their skills can be used. In the past while, many ppl have asked me, 'so amanda, what do you want to do after uni...be a brain surgeon *chuckle*?" (admit it, you did that at one time or another)...that question has become one of the things i fear, up there with questions asking my weight or GPA lol...primarily because i feel 'put on the spot', 'caught in the act' ..."uh oh, what to say, what to say, think! think! think!"

In high school, i wanted to become some health professional.. dentist, pharmacist, physio, optomitrist, chiropractor and (dear i say it..) a doctor...mainly because if i were to ever do missions long term, these skills would be the most "practical"..everyone needs medical attention, especially in rural areas. The aspiration of becoming a general practitioner quickly died.. then it was pharmacy, it's almost like a doctor and you'll be a LEGAL drug dealer...after first year chem, i realized that was also a dead end. I also realized a bachelor in science means nothing and does nothing...you need at least a masters to be useful. At this point you're probably wondering, 'WHY THE HECK IS SHE IN SCIENCE?"...because i like it? because i enjoy it? because i'm curious. In high school i took 1 "business" related course, oac economics..it ended up being my highest mark (b/c of my super easy teacher) but i hated it..that was my "nap" class. I can never see myself studying anything related to business.. i'd stab myself in the middle of a lecture (probably not b/c hopefully you get the melodrama), if you saw how i was during the budget discussion at the annual meeting at church, oh my, that was close. So now, i don't know. I feel like i'm at a 'dead end'...is God closing doors? But why would he give me a passion and curiosity for something i can never excel at? ...sigh.. it boggles me. In high school, this missionary doctor that went to peoples when she was in high school came and shared...she said she's not a smart cookie, she's just an average Jane..only avg marks in high school but wanted to be a doctor...so she had to work a little harder than everyone else in order to get the same results as those smart Jane's..i think i need to work harder, maybe not 3.9 but not settle what those current three digits....OR..perhaps it's like a chemical pathway..you don't just make pyruvate straight from glucose..there are lots of intermediate steps in between.. ah, wish i knew which mechanism i'm part of.

If not, i'll transfer into arts or mangement (heaven forbid)

...this is how you know i'm pmsing =)

Oh, here's the science tid bit for the day...in molecular bio we were talking bout sequence binding in DNA's..so if you chopped it up into sequences, how long will it take for it to find it's complementary partner. In DNA, there's some highly repeated sequences, moderate and more "unique" sequences. So as you can imagine, those that are highly repeated can find their partner faster and so on. The prof mentioned that the "unique" ones may take weeks or even months to pair up....then he talked bout other stuff..but when he mentioned that, i thought about finding your spouse (since some specific ppl have been mentioned alot about that lately *no names* =)) ...how for some ppl, they may find their pair faster, others moderate time frame and for those "unique" individuals, it might take them longer..but they're the segments of DNA that are "more important" =) ...i dunno, the analogy sort of breaks down from there. Point being, at the end, it still find its pair, just a big longer =)

wuheee

Sitting in the 5th floor of the science wing.. in the last hour of my 4hr break. The weight of my ethnic eyelids are rapidly increasing as the effect of my morning stimulus gradually recedes. Once again, my efforts to be productive at an educational institute are in vain- hello blogspot!
My companion comments, "is this how all our tuesdays will be like?"...i manage to create a slight slit in my optical openings..and mutter out, "aiya". Hi-ya, truely an "aiya" day. To think that from now until April, i would spend 8hours of my day in this concrete building, whose only resemblance would be to a nuclear bombshell during the days of the Cold War, "oh mommy". You win som, you lose some, i only had school 3 days a week last semester.

For my two neurocourses, have to read 5 journals/review articles each week. I realized one thing, small print makes me dizzy...and in turn makes me want to vomit. A large part of my weekend was experiencing this sensation..."BAH". However some good did come out of it. At this point of my academic career, i think one of the most interesting careers one can have in the discipline of science is research. So needless to say that these articles really impressed me and further augmented my interest. Now, this is the part where i go on about what it was that was so interesting. For neuroIII..we're learning about the visual system right now. In our eyes, we all have a lens in which focuses images...our lens cells are the only cells in our body that are transparent. How? It's because all of the oranelles-nucleus (DNA), mitochondria, ribosomes etc are gone. How? Because early in developement, lens cells start "apoptosis", which is basically "cell suicide" by releasing enzymes that kill organelles, however before the cell dies, this mechanism is turned off so it doesn't REALLY kill itself...thus making the cell transparent in a sense. However this transparency comes at a cost...since there's no DNA, it can not replicate itself and make more lens cells...or even proteins, which account for why our lens become more rigid with age and bifocals are needed. So we have the same cells from birth to death, crazy! So why is this anything of anything, who cares? There are HUGE implications in this area of research for diseases..for example, if we can figure out how these cells can naturally start mechanisms for apoptosis, we can induce it in cancer cells...thus killing them and they won't spread. Also if we figure out how these cells can STOP apoptosis, it can be usd for neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's or Alzeihmers..which is caused by the death of neurons. Just a little tid bit i thought to share with y'all.. i thought it was so cool.

It's tuesday and as the first section communicated, i'm super tired. The course readings are beginning to pile up..and i'm determined to actually READ my textbooks..while its respective lectures are still going on (i.e. not cramming during reading week).

i went to my first tutoring thing yesterday. Met up with some ppl and went to the school. We had gr 2's...they're cute. I forgot how fun elementary was. Oh the days. There were more tutors than kids so they're going to extend it to gr3's also. Three of us were sharing 2 girls. They were highly distractable...and didn't get much work done. One of them started rapping "drop it like it's hot"..and told us she loves BET...i was shocked. Grade 2!!!..aiya..another little boy was trying to pick up one of the girls...what's wrong with society now?

I decided to bring out my cd's from the boyband days. Those were the days. I was blasting backstreetboy's "Millenium" cd...and as i listened to the lyrics..i was shocked by the content in their music mainly because there wasn't much and if any did exist, it was illogical. In one song they sang, "I need you, it doesn't matter if it's wrong or right..i need you."... UMM....riiiiiiiiight. It's sad that i didn't see this back then. Sometimes i wish i can go back in time and meet myself back then...oh man, i would've set myself straight. Another note: romance is so overrated..romance is not love. Love is when one of my parents wakes up early to open the store even though they're super tired because they want the other one to get bit more sleep. Love is when my dad waits until 9pm to eat instead as the food gets cold so i can take a nap. Love is sacrificial and selfless. Love is not backstreetboys singing about how they don't care about what's wrong/right...because they want you there...bah you nick carter!

Mic commented that i'm pmsing today...can you tell? =)

[Continued]...at home now. Long day, long drive and hungry.

Randomness

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ADRIAN!!!

Just got back from oasis. Narita, "i thank God for your leading tonight's bible study, it was super" =) ...all glory to , no, not blogspot..but God!

Where to start...
I think in my last entry i wrote about how i dropped a course to "treat" myself. Well the 5th one is back...so now, 3 bio and 2 neuro courses...and the neuros are all 3rd yr *tear*...WHY YOU ASK? HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING FROM SUMMER SCHOOL? ....WELLL....After going to neuroII tutorial, my ta said that the prof is retiring after this year. And since there's a quota at UT that only a certain % of your students can get A's, usually profs make courses "hard" in order to follow this. But since he's tiring, there isn't as much pressure from admin...and she said how this is the only year neuroIII will be offered w/o a tutorial...so if you're ever going to take it, take it now! Yep...so i got home and registered...even though i've missed a whole week of lecture (yikes!).. and the first midterm is in 2 weeks!!! (double yikes)..and like neuroII, all readings are from primary journals...1 per lecture...but he doesnn't really talk about them, they're our own thing... I'm really excited cuz from what i've read, everything's been really interesting...it's crazy what some researchers do..where do they come up with this stuff???...i just don't know if i can handle it when 2 weeks from now come...i have 2 exams every wednesday for 2 consecutive weeks..and another exam 2 days after the second wednesday...oh mama..on top of that i start at 10am everyday... 5hr break on monday, 4hr break on tues, 2hr break on wed, 4hr break on thurs and NO BREAK ON FRI =) ....praise God cuz i'm getting my money's worth

so for the past 2 thursdays, i've been working out at the gym w/ andrea and some other pplduring our 4hr breaks... this week we went to "body conditioning" class..he hee...so hard..but so fun.. and so much pain now..he hee.. good stuff =) ...and starting next week i'm gonna start playing vball again on thursday afternoons =)) yay! ... and i think my first tutoring thingy for this club i joined, "C.H.I.L.D." is next week...we get to tutor elementary kids from this local school...kinda excited..but kinda scared cuz kids these days can be kinda rowdy..

i dunno...all in all, i'm excited about all these things..but also kinda scared that i won't be able to commit...there's also small grp that i've commited to...but kinda re-thinking now... mainly because i don't see a difference from that and any other bible study grp...i understand that starting up small grps was a way to unite the congregation..and much more...but there's already oasis...and sunday school both of which where we do book studies..so is this really any different? .. i dunno if that's me being pessimistic ...but i was kinda hoping for more of a 'women's grp'/accountability/mentorship..

another random thought...i'm not in "love" w/ Herby anymore..sigh...i went to ask him a question..that i learned from his class but was applying to anohter course..he's so intimidating.. so i just "like" him now =)

So tonight's bible study...again, i really enjoyed it. During our group discussion time..

Amanda: "I've had this burden to go to china since i was in gr11..but i've kept putting it off thinking that i'll be more mature...or more ready...or ____etc etc...and i don't have enough faith right now or support...or ____ etc etc...so God won't be able to use me as efficiently than if someone else went"...

Andrew: "God can't use you until you go."

Amanda:....silent *WHOA*.... BUT this still doesn't mean i'm going anywhere...just kinda cool

BGYB51

Third evolution lecture. During my 4hr break, i was studying ...and had a few questions...so i went to ask the prof. One of the evidence she gave for evol'n were intermediate organisms.. there's fossils of orgnaisms that were reptiles w/ feathers...showing they they were in intermediate stages.. evolving into a bird.. so...my question: shouldn't there be these intermediate organisms ALIVE now? ...why are they only in fossils. I went to her office, hoping to catch her off guard with my question..he hee. She said how it's only when we're looking back that we'll realize when a species will diverge- we can't know in the present. And once say "x" diverged into reptiles and birds...it's impossible for the new reptile to evolve into a bird because it's already gained it's special adaptive structures ("fit") as a reptile....so then i asked how come there's no intermediates of prime mates and homosapians walking around...she said some think chimps are intermediates of humans & orangutans..it's 'relative'...

then i told her how i'm skeptical about all this evolution stuff...i told her how i understood and its makes sense..on a micro level.. but as a whole...i can't accept it. She was super nice.. she said most ppl can't.. but it's alright. Tha's the thing i love about utsc..the profs are so helpful and sincere =)

Btw she does her research on sexual cannibalism in spider ...lol =)

Weekend..so tired

Super relaxing, non-studying, chilling and more chillaxing weekend, but tiring...very nice indeed. So...finished first week of this semester...i was really excited to start school. I got 2 of my books adn started reading..1 week ahead in plant phys..1 week ahead in evolution...and 3 weeks ahead in neuro =) ...that just leaves molecular bio and cognition...but i'm pretty sure i'm going to "treat" myself and drop cognition cuz i took 3 courses this summer...but we'll see. As the week progressed, i realized how much i enjoy school. Studying is not the hard part..it's STARTING to study..but once you sit down and really get into it, it's all smooth sailing (i'm like that at least).. like with exercising..i'm SOOOO lazy..haven't "worked out" since late august..cuz i'm lazy to start...but once it got going, it felt very nice...so yes, andrea & i went to work out..jogging, stairs and bike...my thighs have been in pain since thursday..

friday was long...had class til 1..then went to vaughan mills w/ adrian, brent and sam.. i think brent & sam were super bored but i thought it was really fun. Those guys are so funny...and nerdy!!! ..he hee...this is what happens when a bunch of science ppl get together.. they start "applying" their "knowledge" =) Sorry guys, that i was so late for the meeting...but i thought it was quite productive ...let's be "efficient"!

saturday was also long...what happend? ...read brent's blog =) but after we finished being "drunk" on tea from Timmies...and then "drunk" again on tea...and then plotting to steal a chair...i went to my grandparnets for dinner..then small group.. i was super tired.

thanks scott for this morning's message...Haggai 1:1-15..P.Scott talked about, "no more prayers, no more promises, no more signing cards..just go!"...for the past while, i've felt that church has become so much of a routine. I remember when i first started attending tcac..i was super thankful that God led me to a church (i was looking for almost 3yrs) near me..and with such an awesome family...i was super excited each week to go there to learn.. But now i think i'm taking it for granted..underappreciating...routinish.. that's dangerous. And for a while, each sunday morning, my prayer is along the lines of ...'Lord, be with me this week that it might be different..to be disciplined..to spend more time with you'...so this morning..no more flattering words...just gonna "go"...see ya

Back

So many things on my mind...all the while i'm too busy sticking my nose in textbooks.

A few months ago i blogged about how i'm "nervous" about taking BGYB51-Evolutionary Biology....so far, i've only been to one class..she introduced what we'll be studying..i got the textbook today and read about 2 chapters..i found myself very cautious..reading every statement...carefully trying to find a "rebutal"...although it's exhausting doing so, i think it's already began to make me more careful about what i take in.. just because it's in a textbook doesn't mean its fact. A hardcover and many old people with many many abbreviations after their names doesn't mean we can let our guard down and just sit passively and let ourselves "be fed". But i've just become more "nervous". I'm honestly scared. In class, the prof said she's not here to challenge our personal beliefs..she just wants to us to be more "open minded". ha...a nice way of saying it. How can it not challenge personal beliefs when all that your present, you do it from a biased point of view? ...and presented as fact, not as a theory. After all, it's the "THEORY of evolution by natural selection". Sigh...i'm gonna be visiting her during her office hrs lots this semester.

...at the same time..i'm "mad" at myself because i can't..and don't know how to counter the points that the text provides...forget micro-, even their explanation for macroevolut'n sounds about right. Arg.

And...can't God USE evolution as part of his creation? ...Lord you're with me..you're with me as i sit in that class..as i read that textbook..Lord give me wisdom as i wrestle with this topic...even if that means to take that humble position and just relying on simple faith.