Menyeberangi Lautan Pasifik

Flew... two weekends since my last entry. When you have things to do, you don't realised how much time has passed until you breathe again.

Four more weeks of school then it's officially over.

Some fun stuffs first: President's Day (19 Feb) weekend aka Chinese New Year (CNY) weekend, I went on a skiing trip with 12 other NUS students and Floris (from University College Utrecht), which was AWESOME... haha, they use this word a lot here. We rented a bungalow at South Lake Tahoe for two nights, packed our sleeping bags in our rented cars, bought groceries from Walmart in Dixon, and sent our butts up into the mountains for a few snowy days. Within 2 hours drive from flat flat Davis, we found ourselves surrounded by snow capped mountains! What a wonderful change. The highlights of the trip, other than the ski adventures, were of course the dinners! haha... just mention food, and I'd lit up like a bulb. We had steamboat on CNY eve and then barbeque the next evening. It started to snow / hail at the end of our barbeque session. It was a cold night but the heat from the bbq pit made up of it. We had barbequed fish too, which was caught personally by Mr. Quek Swee Lye from the big lake! He couldn't do any extreme sports until March so he went fishing instead. Good job there! haha... The rest of us learnt skiing or snowboarding. We each gotten ourselves a usd138 package ski/ride lesson & lift pass for three days at the Sierra @ Tahoe Resort. It was one of the most competitive rates. They have lessons segregated for first-timers, second-timers, more terrains and all terrains. You can attend the same lesson twice if you need reinforcement. Otherwise you can safely move along the difficulty gradient. Skiing was so much fun! Going down the mountains isn't scary after all! You'd be concentrating on your body control that you forget about the speed hehe... but yes, the speedier it was the more addictive it was =)

Here's some photos from the Lake Tahoe ski trip:
Day 1 http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2095134429
Day 2 http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2095128752
Day 3 http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2095124993

Back in Davis, my lab attachment has been getting smoother and better as I get to know those little fish more. There's another graduate student, Ali, who's doing a study on Copepods, a kind of zooplankton. My, those planktons are so tiny-miny! But there's even smaller creatures called Rhodopherax that could take over the planktons. It took me almost 5 minutes of staring into the large bicar of delta water sample before I could make out the ultra-small organisms swimming in them. And when I finally SEE them, woa.... I realised there's actually so many of them around!! I asked Ali why of all things, he'd choose such a small creature to study, he smiled and replied, "It just so happen."

It's sad though that my quarter term is ending soon and I would not be able to continue my lab attachment here. But it is truly a rewarding experience and I have met some really wonderful people.

Last Friday, I went again to the I-club meeting. This time, it was also a farewell dinner for Meike, held at Little Prague. The restaurant was rather expensively priced (Alicia and I checked up the website haha), so we had home-made dinner before going. I ended up having dessert there =).... a slice of Peach Apricot Pistachio Cake. During this meeting, a number of people who'd been MIA during previous meets turned up. The usual group of Chee-Hae, Johannes, Jay, Carlos, Ziv were there. But as Alicia and I went slightly later, we had to join in the table with people whom we did not know at all. After us, three other latecomers joined in and the table had to "extend". Then the manager of the restaurant came and informed us (those sitting at the "extension") to move to another table because we were sitted at an aisle and thus, that made us fire-hazards lol.

Anyway, Alicia and I found ourselves in the company of quite a cool bunch! There was Ivanka, from Bulgaria, who's now teaching Introductory Chemistry at UCDavis. She was telling us about how she has to face mid-terms even now haha. Her husband, Jack is from Michigan and is working with Peace Corps UCDavis. They have many outsending programs for UCDavis volunteers and he became determined that Alicia should go on their teaching English abroad program, which is exactly what she'd wanted to do all these while. And we found out too that he's a AFS returnee (like me) from a summer program to Indonesia! haha... cool. He stayed on Java for some weeks and he said that he was amazed by the padi-field scenery. Then, there was Peter from the Netherlands, who was quieter, and Christian, with the now-famous hat =) Christians's here for a year, studying viticulture and enology. His family owns wineries back in Germany. So a big family of winemakers haha..

Here's photos taken at Little Prague:
http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2095120366

On Saturday, I had my share of limelight haha... in a latin and ballroom dance competition. Floris came by on Friday afternoon so help me in last-minute practices. (We ended up spending most of the time chatting and looking at our Lake Tahoe trip photos.) My dance classmates from UCDavis - Elena, Lucy and Sonya were taking part too. In the morning I rushed over to RiteAid to get a pair or nylon stockings. I realised I needed something to camouflage the ski bruises on my knee caps lol. Then I cycled mad to campus, where Andrei was waiting for competitors with no cars. He was a UCDavis student and now assists in the dance class. He was kind to offer us a ride to East Sacramento where the competition was held.

As there were no men competitors from our class, Elena, Lucy, Sonya and I could only take part in the Pro-Am category (our partners: professionals, us: amateurs). We arrived an hour before the competition started so that we could have some practice with our partners. It was the first time dancing with our partners. My partner was Jim and woa... he's also partnering a lot of other amateurs too! So popular eh? haha So I had to fight to get some practice time with him haha... We first practised the latin dances (Cha cha and Jive) and to my surprise/anxiety/horror/excitment he did all the patterns except the routine that was supposedly whats supposed. Do I make any sense? haha. Then off he went practising with another competitor. I was seriously doubting if I could pull it off haha... because Andrei had earlier informed me that there would be a set routine to follow, which we had learnt in class. However, it seemed that Jim was freestyling throughout..... aaaaa.... I was also extra anxious because I had always been dancing as a lead during class and now I have to dance as a follower. Five minutes before my heats, which was also the first, commenced, I finally had the chance to practise the International Ballroom dances (Waltz and Quickstep) with Jim. It was a little unnerving as all eyes were looking at us - the only ones left practising on the dancefloor. haha... talk about last minute. But he seemed so confident. Well, he's a pro =)

The emcee finally announced it's the UCDavis Ballroom heats. As I walked onto the dance floor, I remembered to keep my posture up and luckily, Jim constantly reminded me to "Keep the smile" haha... a few missteps here and there and many many covering up by both of us, we managed to pull it through. Later in the evening were the amateur competitions. The competitors pulled out all stops and were dressed to the nighs. The waltz had the ladies clad in flowing long dresses, as though they had just walked out of "Sleeping Beauty". The ladies later heated up the Latin heats with their attention grabbing costumes and an equally high-level display of dance finesse.

Here's photos of the dance competition:
http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2095119001

I was at the Yolo Fruit Stand, located at the mid-point of Davis and Sacramento along Interstate 80, when I saw this grotesque looking, vase - shaped vegetable. So I bought one, it's only 99¢... cheap! cheap! I have no idea how to cook or eat it but I was told by one lady to boil it and add some sugar. Either way, I'm gonna look up recipes and try one of them =)

It was a wonderful day today: clear blue sky and no rain at all! After four straight days of rain, this is definitely a big welcome. In fact, I was tempted to jump into the swimming pool as it felt like such a "warm" day!!!

Past noon, Johannes, a German graduate student rang me up for a trip east to Sacramento for groceries shopping. What a noisy trip! haha. Well, we went in his broken car, thats why. The side window on the passenger's seat was broken because of a attempted break-in on Friday. Luckily, nothing was stolen as there wasn't anything worth stealing. Except if you count maps of Davis and California, which were to Johannes, valuables haha... but we fixed it up with tape and plastic. And the wind on the highway kept hitting against the double-layered plastic, providing us with ear-piercing noise.

We went to Trader Joe's that sells specialty groceries - items that are not easily found elsewhere and many of the products are packaged by themselves. The plus point is that it sells many typical european foodstuffs. So I got myself a pack of Dutch mini stroopwafels (I've written about them on an earlier blog post of mine), Italian tiramisu ice cream, Spanish Salsa, Mexican Tortilla chips, Indian Chai (it's like spiced-tea), a wheat-shaped baguette and some Italian breads... and some other normal stuffs. There were also a host of other spices, sauces and cookies from different countries that I've never seen or heard before! Slurp... it'd be a culinary feast if I could get my hands on them haha...

On the way back from Sacramento, we stopped by at the Yolo Fruit Stand. It's where local farm produce are sold. So it tends to be cheaper and fresher than normal groceries like Safeway, Albertsons and Nuggets. It was timely too as I was running out of vegetables at home. I can vouch that the vegetables sold here are really fresh, judging from the stir-fried napa lettuce I had for dinner. It was succulent and juicy, something that was missing from the ones bought from normal groceries.

This weekend was well-spent. In between studying at home for a upcoming midterm, I managed to squeeze in other stuffs to do. Started on Friday evening with I-club dinner / meeting at Bakers Square, where it is famous for its pies. I had a filling sandwich with basil tomato soup, so I couldn't down another pie. So I made an appointment with Liwen to try out the pies this coming Friday. =) Looking forward to some good food!

On Saturday afternoon, I went for a rugby match with Johannes again! No, I didn't play haha.. it's UC Davis vs University of Reno, Men's Rugby. I'd thought it was like American football but the big difference is that the players wear no protective gears at all for rugby. It was a rainy afternoon, but the game had to go on. UN Reno wore white jerseys which soon end up all brown. Muddy muddy game! And violent violent game! Every other moment the players would pile up on each other and there would be some wrestling. No hold barrels! Next, you'll see a hand throwing the rugby ball out and the human pile dispersed just as fast in came together. It truthfully looked like a potential bone-breaking sport! But it sure looked like a lot of fun... I was at the side lines, sitting down to enjoy the game while eating my 干捞面 (dry mee) haha... taking good care not to get any rain onto my food at the same time. We only watched the second half of the game during which UN Reno had 2 touchdowns. UC Davis had none, sadly.

After that, I went for my dance class... and somehow signed up for a latin and ballroom pro-am competition haha... don't ask me what happened. It's gonna take place in two weeks in Sacramento at my dance instructor's student. Wish me luck!