transposable element

on and off i’ve been entertaining the idea of going back to school. not a phd (i already gave up on that a long time ago) but something more technical, more skill-based. if one can earn an online degree on nursing, i would be interested, as i’m not keen on studying here in singapore. and much as i would have preferred to study in the philippines instead, i couldn’t very well leave the rest of the family here in singapore, huh? so distance learning would have been a good alternative, except that nursing isn’t exactly cut out for distance learning, eh?

oh well, perhaps i’m better off building on what i already have instead of pursuing something altogether different. i know i enjoyed teaching at the university, both in the philippines and in germany, so i could probably aim for an online teaching degree. or i could build up on my laboratory research experience and attend a refresher course on the advances in biotechnology. or perhaps i could further my writing and specialize in scientific and medical writing? ahhhh, that’s the quandary of being a jill of too many trades. it’s a struggle to choose!

um, valentine’s day? what valentine’s day? sorry, but in this part of the world, cupid had to step aside and make way for the silver tiger.

oh and yeah, ‘wan shi ru yi’ loosely translates to ‘may everything work out as you wish’. i know that you must be getting inundated with the other more popular greeting ‘gong xi fa cai’ which doesn’t mean ‘happy new year’, by the way, but something more in the likes of ‘may your prosperity grow’ (enlarge your wealth doesn’t sound too smooth, eh?). in practical terms, may you have a greater cash flow, hehe, like water from a non-stop Kohler faucet.

anyways… take your pick of greeting, and welcome the first lunar year of the decade with a big roar! most of the forecasts i’ve been reading advise prudence and caution, suggesting volatile, unpredictable, even adverse times during the year of the white tiger. matters not. remember, YOU are the master of your own destiny (kinda talking to myself here)!

i thought that having fishies as pets was the simplest, but well, it turns out that maintaining an aquarium isn’t that simple after all. barely a week after we’ve installed the tank and all paraphernalia, the water already turned a bit murky and obviously had to be changed. fortunately, we just have a small tank and we didn’t need water softeners, so replacing water (we just replaced half of it) wasn’t too much of an effort. we had to use chemical dechlorinators, though.

we need to empty the entire tank, though, clean it, and put entirely fresh water. how often this exercise needs to be done, am not too sure. oh well, not my problem. hehe.

when we first moved into our current flat, i loved the shine of the newly polished marble flooring. see, we had large ceramic tiles in the common areas of our previous flat, and while it was really low-maintenance, it kinda gives you the feeling you’re lounging and watching tv in your bathroom. so the marble floors (and parquet in the bedrooms) came as a pleasant change.

until i realized how difficult it was to maintain that polished shine. it was too late when i learned that spills and splatters from fruit juices and anything remotely acidic can easily leave etch marks on marble that apparently can only be removed by professional grinding and polishing. just two months after we moved in and our living areas are a nice mottled, speckled marble. ack!

any ideas for quick (and cheap) fixes?

my flickr pro account has expired and i’m still thinking whether i should renew it or shift to smugmug. the latter costs 15 bucks more annually, but the galleries are just, like they said, gorgeous. but then, i’m not really that much of a photo geek. eventually, i just want to have an online repository of pictures as a backup to my external disk and SD cards, without having the entire world wide web see it. geez, i swear sometimes i have the feeling it’s hopeless to cope up with technology in this digital era!

how do YOU store your digital photos and videos?

i’ve been talking about ‘starts‘ in my last entry, but for people on this little red dot, the time for a fresh start is yet to come. the year of the silver tiger starts in a week, and if you are into geomancy and chinese horoscopes, this website does a pretty comprehensive job of summarizing the forecasts for 2010.

apparently, my true ba zi element is “strong wood rat”, and according to the horoscope, i “will do pretty well this year”. hm. not exceptionally well, but at least, it’s not the worst.

not bad. i hope 2010 lives up to the forecast (or should it be the other way around, i.e., the forecast should live up to real life?). perhaps i should look back to the last years’ forecasts and check if they held true…

christmas may have been over, but the little ones in our household just got new presents last weekend. jan got a small aquarium tank and 7 little fishies. he (and his father) has been bugging me for a hamster and i conceded on the pet issue by compromising on an animal that is least likely to be in the way. i already declared that i am not lifting a finger on the upkeep of said fishies. my official reason is that i am not condoning the domestication of animals for one’s entertainment and caprice. the truth is, i just couldn’t be bothered, hehe.

mia, on the other hand, got an ikea miniature kitchen and some wooden play-food, which turned out to be nice gifts for her… and her 7-yr old brother as well!

it was hubby’s birthday, and it was the kids who got special treats.