Winza

And this is not how I would like to spend my mid-semester break.

I am bored and stressed.

How can I make my report perfect????

My final year project is getting along slowly, I mean as slow as a snail. Anyway, after all that fiasco from months ago with my project, I am now writing up my discussion. Despite I’ve got two weeks extension, I am trying to lock myself up in my study, so that I can complete my thesis, organise for my presentation and start working on the ColdFusion assignment. And it turns out that I have spent most of my time procrastinating, playing Zuma, surfing on youtube, wikipedia, listening to music and downloading movies - Snakes on a plane was the most recent movie I have watched. My favourite quote now is “Enough is enough. I’ve had it with these muthafucking snakes on this muthafucking plane”. Oh yes, and I am also pretending to apply for jobs so mother knows that I am looking for work. And it gives me a bit of practise in cover letters. I am not going to mention about the $$$ I have received from the geography dept - otherwise i would sound too arrogant…

In terms of social life, I went out to a friend’s gathering afteroon on Saturday, which I had to go in “after five attire”. It wasn’t a big deal, but the fact that I am so used to putting my hands in the pockets of my jeans meant that wearing something without pockets frustrates me. Anyway, at the gathering, I got to see some of my friends from high school and apparently everybody was exhausted by either uni or work. One couple tried to some talk science with Claire and I and more than half of what they said wasn’t even correct. On Tuesday, I spent the whole afternoon with Alan from uni in the city, browsing in jewellery shops as one of our friend’s brithday is coming up soon. Leo joined us in the evening and we had dinner at some Japanese restaurant in QV. The restaurant was playing the album First Love by Utada Hikaru and I couldn’t help singing along. So that was my social life for the week :p.

My presentation is in two weeks and I’ve been allocated to present in the morning. Great! That’s two weeks for me to treat my delayed sleep phase syndrome.

I better stop rambling bullshit and get on with my write-up.

Gallery Updated

Photo taken from Waterfront City, Docklands, on 26/09/2006 by Winza

What is science?

To me, science is the application of methods based on experiements and observations in order to broaden our knowledge of the things that exist around us. It is the process of identifying a problem, defining a hypothesis to explain the phenomena, then the application of methodological approaches to provide evidence so that something could be explained. Communication in science is also important and it cannot be done without patience.

My friend wrote a blog entry about a couple who we talked during a cocktail party on Saturday. The things they said were quite funny and I treated as a joke. However, my friend took it seriously. She argued that the meniscus is measured from the bottom, which is true in most cases when the liquid dips downwards. However, in cases where the meniscus is convex, it is read from the top. Therefore, both are right.

From my perspective, the couple were trying to make funny science jokes. If not, they were probably in denial and reject scientific facts because of the inconvenience science makes in our everyday lives, just like global warming skeptics, American politicians and other anti-environmentalists. For example, people always knew the risks of smoking, but they still smoke. Why? Because following scientific facts that refer to the consequences of our actions are so inconvenient that they choose to ignore it.

This is the same with global warming (I guess that I have blogged about this too many times already). People know that carbon dioxide is derived from car emissions and fuel combustion yet we are so dependent on cars and enjoying our usage of energy that some people choose to ignore the “facts” so it doesn’t interfere with their lifestyle.