halfway home

i think i forgot to explain the title of the blog, thursday late afternoon. it's also the title of a picture. i was looking for a fancy name but couldn't come up with one so i just looked at my calendar and picked out the picture for May:

anyways, enough about the title. here is what i've been doing for the past 2 days...

we had to get to school early so we get an extra hour to work on our biology prac, so altogether we had a little more than two hours on the prac. woo! as simple as my experiment is, i only finished just in time, as we needed 5 trials. my experiment looks at the effect of pH on the activity of amylase on starch. so in the pictures below what you see is an amylase-starch solution being dropped into wells with iodine in them every 10 seconds. when the iodine no longer turns colour it indicates that all of the starch has been broken down into maltose. 

at pH 3 amylase is at its optimum... only took 90 seconds

as pH increases it takes longer to break down the starch:

and longer...

here's an interesting photo :) it's actually just the waste beaker, with all the buffers and starch and amylase and water and iodine.

pH 11 took its time...

anyways, this blog isn't about biology. sorry for all the photos, i just think they're cool...
yesterday i was mostly occupied with english :( stupid english, if only i could understand poetry. i took me a whole day to write the 1000-word speech script, and by the time i finished recording it was well into the night. since i talk extremely slurred and slow, i had to record and re-record so many times i got tired of listening to myself :(( to get within the time limit i sped it up with audacity haha, but it made my voice squeaky so i adjusted the pitch too XD i actually saved enough time for a conclusion yay

other than english, i caught up on my baking too. in the morning we bought strawberries that were only $1 per pint, so i decided to make something strawberry based - strawberry yoghurt cheesecake :)) baking really is the perfect antidote for me, the process of it consumes your thoughts and keep your hands busy. i was lazy so i just crushed up wheat biscuits and mixed it with butter and called it base. i divided the strawberries in two, half was pureed and half chopped for more texture. i didn't really do a good job decorating, just dumped some whipped cream and strawberries on top. anyways, i was pleased with the overall result. the flavour of the wheat biscuits were a little too overwhelming though :( next time i should use digestive biscuits.

may i introduce my new lover, mr electric mixer. up till now i've been making all my desserts manually, and it's such a CHORE. egg whites took half an hour to whip up properly, and by that time i'm usually drenched in sweat. i might as well have been beating with toothpicks. yesterday mum finally convinced me to get one, since i've been resisting because a) they're not cheap; b) i already had one back home but can't use it here because of the voltage difference. it's worth the money though, only took one minute literally to whip the cream cheese <3

my beaters collection/evolution.

a failed attempt at shooting a decent photo of the cake. it's better than it looks, i swear.

Tomorrow

first of all, thank you for stumbling onto my blog, whether by unfortunate mistake or happy accident.

i guess the real reason why i felt the need to set up yet another blog, my fourth actually, is that i need a different way of talking to myself than out loud. don't you just hate when you're humming to yourself while walking to the bus stop thinking you're alone, and next second bam twelve people suddenly apparate to your side and eye you with critical judgement? haha happened to me this morning in fact.

um. since it's only the first post i don't really know what will become of this blog, but i will try my best at sharing whatever trash is inside my head :)

for my own protection i shall remain nameless & faceless, just so you don't point and laugh when you meet me on the street one day haha. but i will tell you some things about myself, like friends do (?) i've just started my final year in high school, i have an addiction to greek yoghurt, i try and fail at playing the guitar, i don't know what i wanna be when i grow up, and i'm a generally pessimistic person (yea we all got that). please don't judge me :( just trying to be honest here.

maybe i should start by talking about school. this is what happened today:
1. in biology we carried on conducting our digestive enzymes prac. my experiment looks at the effect of pH on the activity of amylase on starch. although it's looking good, it is taking a long time, especially when no one wanted to share their tables with me today :( will need to get to school early tomorrow to finish experiment.
2. in english we did another bruce dawe poem, 'happiness is the art of being broken'. i just know it's beautiful, but i'm most certainly doomed if i'm lucky enough to get it for my oral. english classes are actually much less daunting now, having a good teacher really takes the pressure off :D
3. maths...was the usual, we finished our work on vectors, i think.
4. at break my friend and i buttoned up two lab coats and wore it back to back, so we looked like conjoined twins. it was raining and it was fun :)

i'm sorry, i hope i'm not boring you out of your mind, i'll try coming up with something interesting next time.

found this song last night. i don't think the band's very popular, but i like it. the laziness and roughness of the lead singer's voice, not to mention it features my man mraz.