50 Years and Counting!

SELAMAT HARI MERDEKA!!! (Happy Aniversary Malaysia!)

50 years. 50 freaking years. Here we are! Look at the past and compare it with the present. Now, imagine the future. Its gonna be one hell of a lifetime to enjoy all this! So take in every moment!

Boyfriend vs Husband

Saw this off Yahoo's News:

"Married men do less housework than live-in boyfriends, finds an international survey. But married women do more housework than their live-in counterparts.

“Marriage as an institution seems to have a traditionalizing effect on couples—even couples who see men and women as equal,” said co-researcher Shannon Davis, a sociologist at George Mason University in Virginia.

Understanding the dynamics of couples who live together but are not married has become more important as cohabitation around the globe increases. More than 5 million unmarried partner households (more than 10 million individuals) currently exist in the United States, according to a 2006 report by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The scientists analyzed surveys gathered in 2002 from 28 nations, from 17,636 respondents (8,119 males and 9,517 females) as part of the Family and Changing Gender Roles III Survey. All respondents were either married or cohabiting with a significant other.

Overall, they found men spent about 9 hours a week on housework compared with women, who spent more than 20 hours weekly.

"There's still a gender norm, since women do more housework than men regardless of union type," said study team member Jennifer Gerteisen Marks, who is working on a doctorate degree at North Carolina State University.

Regardless of the couples' relative earnings or work hours, cohabiting males reported more household hours than did their married counterparts, while the opposite was true for women, with wives picking up the broom less often than live-in girlfriends.

Other factors also came into play. Men who raked in more earnings than their partners did fewer hours of housework than men with lower relative incomes. "Those in the household with greater resources will leverage those resources to bargain their way out of housework," the authors write in the September issue of the Journal of Family Issues.

Couples who viewed men and women as equals were more likely to divvy up chores equally. But even in "egalitarian households," married men still contributed less to household chores than did their wives.

"It's consistent with prior research, which has shown that the roles of wives and husbands are very powerful," Marks told LiveScience. "In a cohabiting relationship there aren't such strongly prescribed social norms, which trickle down to things like housework."

Heck, that's it. Even I want a live-in boyfriend now!

PItcher Plant Exhibition

SO we caught the Pitcher Plant Exhibition last Saturday. It was held at the Old Courthouse, whereby they transformed the place by setting up display tables mimicking the forest. There were people spritzing water every few minutes which kept the plants damp and forest-like. We took a great lot of photos! Enjoy~

Wei Khee, Shariman, Lilian, me, Choulyin standing in front of one of the displays~
Chi'en Lee discovered this pitcher plant, according to Pn Jo Lee who told Choulyin (when Choulyin called her up to invite her along but she couldn't make it) It was appropriately named as...... Nepenthes jamban! (Seriously.)

Looking at all these plants made me reminiscence about form 6 when I had so much fun with the old gang, going places and pointing out plants and animals, wowing each other with knowledge about nature and how it works... I really hope to get myself into a company that deals with some sort of biology-related product like orchids or animals in the future.

Oh yeah, regardless of my wqarnings to Choulyin and Lilian to watermark their photos, I myself did not watermark my own photos.. Hehe! Lazy~~~

Ooh!

GOt this from TIff thru Friendster:

"Planet Mars will be the brightest in the night sky starting August.
It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. This will cultivate on Aug. 27 when Mars comes within 34.65M miles of earth. Be sure to watch the sky on Aug. 27 12:30 am . It will look like the earth has 2 moons. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287."

I love astronomy! I definitely will be staying up to check this once in a lifetime opportunity! Luckily for me, I have no class on Tuesday so sleeping late won't be a problem

Stark Struck

Last night was the best night of my life because I had one of my life goals accomplished!

IT was the Charity Cancer Concert whereby celebrities came and sang in order to raise funds for cancer patients. I dragged a friend along, who complied by uttering "Oh Hell no', "I fucking hate you!" and " Why did I let you do this to me!" So it was pretty amazing when, time passed and the event reached its peak, he was as high as I was.

There were many celebrities performing , namely Evenstarr, Juwita Suwito (correct ka?) and my long time favourite icon of Malaysia JACLYN VICTOR!!!!!

I met her! I spoke to her! She is like my idol of all times! I was estatic when she belted out four songs for us, the last being Gemilang.

Even my friends exclaimed to me, when it was over, "I can't believe I am seeing this!"

Star struck, indeed.

Its feeding time!

Promised a food post a looooooong way back so here I am. These are photos taken with my phone during my adventures eating around Kuching. Enjoy!

What's food without some good pizza eh? the nearest we can find to the perfect pizza around here sadly is at Pizza Hut.
DELICIOUS brownie ice cream! Frappe @ Travillion
The infamous dish that screams Malaysian: Nasi lemak with its sumptuous sambal, peanuts, fried anchovies and rice.
Another local delicacy: Laksa Sarawak, though many West Malaysian claim that this is 'curry mee' over there. I love it the way it is! Consumed at Bormill Food COurt from Ah Yew Laksa.
Barbecued Pork Noodles at hong Kong Noodle House
Special kolok mee situated at a coffee shop near to Dong Guan at Central Park. It's the stall at Chong Choon (Not to be mistaken with Chong Chun that sells nice laksa at Ban Hock) and they make their own noodles, with bigger strands. Some are even greened with spinach, making it a healthier dish :)

Studying Mojo

So so so its time for one of my weird philosophies. ( I have lots of them.)

Picture this. YOu have a set of teeth. Every morning and every night (or most nights, I imagine) you brush automatically without giving much thought about it. Two important factors contribute to how clean your teeth becomes: The act of brushing, and the toothpaste.

With very good toothpaste, the act of brushing need not be very hard as the combination will give you clean teeth. As such, you can also say the same the other way around: with a good brushing technique, even the lousiest toothpaste can be used to make your teeth pearly white every morning.

Now replace the whole thing with studying: The toothbrush is you studying, and the toothpaste is the additional help you get such as good textbooks, good lecturers, good tutors.

See, no matter how good the toothpaste is, its useless if there is no toothbrush doing any action. Likewise, you can have the best tutors and lectueres. But it still won't matter when you're not trying hard enough to make it work. And, if you'd realise, you can still brush your teeth without any toothpaste and still keep em clean (what I meant to say is, you can still score good grades even without good aid).

SO! This time around. No matter how crappy my lecturers and/or tutors are, I will work with them and acquire all the knowledge and skills i need not only to pass this time around but to survive the dunia anjing-makan-anjing. (dog-eat-dog world)

Hopefully this metaphore has inspired you somewhat to do better in your studies

Heat Mania

Okay. Feeling much better now. The winds have arrived and a very much cooled Ronnie is typing away.

For the past few days, my room fan feels more like a giant hair dryer than a fan. Crazy weather! The weather reports say that all this happen because of the storms in the South China Sea.. Storms happening in the sea blocks the monsoon clouds from reaching to our island, causing us to face this heat.

Please! I cannot stand another night of sleepless heat!

Last week was my first week back in Swinburne. I was naturally still part stasis part aware of the entrance into my second year. After 4 lectures only do I realise the weight of education bearing on me. Need to get textbooks, check up on notes for next week, get some info from seniors, checking on clubs and associations to jion. Am thinking of taking up some charity work with organisations I used to work with during my Interact years back in form 6. Any suggestions?

Bought a new wardrobe today. This would be my first such furniture. Yes, my family comes from a traditional mindset: Hand-me-downs shoud suffice to keep you lasted until you graduate, move out and get your own place. I came to realise that I can function better with the appropriate items to organise my life (If Americans can have such luxuries, then why should I be deprived?) And so I went out and got a wardrobe with my parents. It costs RM350, so I hope it as worth the cash and lasts as long as I want it to. WIth proper maintenance.

I read somewhere that grapes aren't good for health. They can induce coughing especially in children who suffer from asthma. Who'd thought?? (P.S. My brother has asthma)

Have started doing my homework this afternoon. No more slacking this semester! Am really gonna live out my resolution now. Work hard, play hard, keeping my friends close.

Although, a few more episodes of grey's Anatomy can't hurt

Registeration

I'm not one to complain, but this registeration crap is something worth bitching about. It was no less than total chaos! Let me exaplin it from a student's point of view:

IT all started with the night before registeration. Last year, it was chaos because hundreds of students had to line up to be registered. It was nasty, with students even lining and standing for a good 3 hours just to register. SO this year, the admin people got smart: They only released the new semester timetable the night before at 10pm, and they hid it cleverly deep inside the BLackboard system! Luckily I have good friends who told me it was out. I spent a good 30 minutes trying to work out my timetable, avoiding clashes and selecting the rightest tutorial time for me.

That was not as bad as the real day itself.

Firstly, it didn't matter how early you went. Neither does it matter where you stand in queue. See, they made us all line up on two separate counters. Only after standing in queue for about 15 minutes then do they announce that that particular line is for engineering students, and can everybody else line up on the other side? (Most of us lining up there are businesss students!! )

We felt it was unfair cuz tere was a long queue on the 'correct' business queue, so we just went to the business registeration counter. There we saw this guy giving the number stickers to people cutting queue!! Naturally, we all go cut queue and get our numbers loh!!

And that still doens't matter!! Cuz all that really mattered was the queue into the auditorium. Whoever lined up first got to go in first, register first and go home first!!

Damn pissed I tell you! Dahlah lining up at the registeration counter outside the auditorium was useless, getting number also no use! So i went and queued quickly, and eventhough my number was 30, i got to go in and register as the 10th or 11th person from the business side. From 8.30 am, i managed to get everything done by 9.40am.

SO I guess this defines the 'dog-eat-dog-world' persona everyone talked about. Oh well. Some things aren't worth bragging about. As long as we get it done, I guess we should overlook how it was done. Or is that being insensitive and jerk-like? You tell me.