keep believing

They can conquer who believe they can.
- Virgil

When a man is willing and eager, the gods join in.
- Aeschylus

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.
- William Arthur Ward

Step 0 is a motivation and confidence step. It is a reminder that you got this far in chemical engineering because you can solve problems. The more different problems you solve, the better a problem solver you will become. Remind yourself that you want to learn how to solve chemical engineering problems, and you can do it.
- Wankat, Separation Process Engineering

Lin WANTS to do it, and WILL BE ABLE to do it. 9:07am
– FLY

Hmm.

I had a straight eight hours meeting yesterday, the first long meeting and the longest one we’ve had so far, and I’m expecting more of this in the next two weeks. We are in a pretty bad state and with a really bad sense of urgency. Having your own friends as your group mates eliminates the pains of long meetings, but somehow it reduces the work efficiency and the responsibility/discipline aspects as well.
But bottom products, though are less volatile, can be useful, too ;)

I had my most disastrous test of the semester early last week. It crashed me down and turned me blue, but I recovered too quickly it’s kinda scary. Oh well I don’t need to get all emo and whiny again and again, as long as I remember to, and actually do, study harder.

YC and I :)
I happened to have my camera in my bag during our lab session and took it out with a reason: to take pictures of the apparatus for the lab report.
We should have posed with the pipettes and beakers right.

ISCF had an outing yesterday, prior to the event there happened two things that are too sweet I just have to remember them.

1. Gabie did this brainteaser for the publicity, and sent it in an email, without any mention of the event..

From where I started to where I am today
The journey has been long & tiring
from nothing to some thing I am today
It’s not been an easy journey..

And she got a reply from a sister, who genuinely asked her if she’s okay. We laughed about it, but seriously, how sweet is that..

2. I had to conduct a recce before Friday, by myself. Casually asked two friends to join me, and guess what, I went to survey the place with five kind souls :) under the drizzle and in the dark. They didn’t have to do it, and I know they were not exactly very free. Thank you, arigatoo gozaimasu, itadakimasu, omatase shimashita!!

It was drizzling, if not raining, on Wednesday evening when we conducted the recce. It rained heavily on Thursday evening. And it rained on Friday morning.

But it was shiny and warm on Friday evening when we had the event ;)

-

When times are good, be happy;
but when times are bad, consider:
God has made the one
as well as the other.
Therefore, a man cannot discover
anything about his future.
Ecclesiastes 7:14

Calvin and Hobbes

Thank God It’s Saturday. Because tomorrow is Sunday. I lovee Sundays.

There are 4 more weeks of school, and there are 6283290127393484 of work/assignments/quizzes/projects to squeeze into these four weeks. I need to get really stressed out and start working really hard really soon.
Hehe I’m of course exaggerating, but I’m serious about starting the engine really soon.

6 webcasts to watch, for the projects’ sake. And a recce for outing this coming Friday!

A Daughter’s Letter Home

Dear Mom and Dad,

It has now been three months since I left for college. I have been remiss in writing this and I am very sorry for my thoughtlessness in not having written before. I will bring you up to date now, but before you read on, please sit down.

YOU ARE NOT TO READ ANY FURTHER UNLESS YOU ARE SITTING DOWN. OKAY!

Well then, I am getting along pretty well now. The skull fracture and the concussion I got when I jumped out of the window of my dormitory when it caught fire shortly after my arrival are pretty well healed now. I only get those sick headaches once a day.

Fortunately the fire in the dormitory and my jump were witnessed by an attendant at the gas station near the dorm, and he was the one who called the fire department and the ambulance. He also visited me at the hospital and since I had nowhere to live, because of the burned out dormitory, he was kind enough to invite me to share his apartment with him. It’s really a basement room, but it’s kind of cute.

He is a very fine boy and we have fallen deeply in love and are planning to be married. We haven’t set the exact date yet, but it will be before my pregnancy begins to show.

Yes Mother and Dad, I am pregnant. I know how much you are looking forward to being grandparents and I know you will welcome the baby and give it the love, devotion and tender care you gave me when I was a child.

The reason for the delay in our marriage is that my boyfriend has some minor infection which prevents us from passing our pre-marital blood tests and I carelessly caught it from him. This will soon clear up with the penicillin injections I am taking daily.

I know you will welcome him into our family with open arms. He is kind and although not well educated, he is ambitious.

Although he is of a different race and religion than ours, I know your often expressed tolerance will not permit you to be bothered by the fact that his skin color is somewhat darker than ours. I am sure you will love him as I do.

His family background is good too, for I am told that his father is an important gun-bearer in the village in Africa from which he came.

Now that I have brought you up to date, I want to tell you that there was no dormitory fire, I did not have a concussion or a skull fracture. I was not in the hospital, I am not pregnant, I am not engaged. I do not have syphilis and there is no man (of any color) in my life. However, I am getting a ‘D’ in History and an ‘F’ in Science and I wanted you to see those marks in the proper perspective.

Yours,
Your Loving Daughter.

Yesterday started really bad. I wasn’t feeling very well in the morning I wished I didn’t have to go through the whole day. And it was going to be such a long day with labs and meetings which I couldn’t escape from. I literally had to drag myself out of bed, and to my classes and meetings. The headache stayed throughout the day, but thankfully my lunch buddies brightened up the day, lab session went smoothly, project mates were kind.

And, I finally received the email:

Dear

Attached you will find the acceptance letter of the ETH Zurich.

We are happy to inform you about your acceptance as an exchange student at the ETH Zurich in the next Spring Semester 2009.

:)

Sounds like an old news? Not really. I was offered the place last year, but during the summer holidays, I received an email saying that my CAP might not be good enough to bring me to Zurich and asking if I’d like to go to a German university instead. I was so upset. I chose ETH at the last minute and wasn’t very hopeful, but got accepted and made all excited about going there, only to find out later that I’m too stupid to go? I almost felt cheated.

But through this, I truly learn:
Men plan, God laughs. from ER, 1995
Man proposes, God disposes. – Thomas Kempis

I need to start planning and proposing for my Europe experience.

I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

:)

–

Random Fact:
The rainbow is a symbol of gay pride. Use of the rainbow flag by the gay community began in 1978 when it first appeared in the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade.

The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.

And if you don’t know what the main thing is, you may find after years that you’ve been majoring on minors and minoring on majors.

- Don Richardson

I told a coursemate before that Pat is a shampoo commercial star in Indonesia and he was so close to buy it. Cheers.