No English? No Problem!

Saturday, January 10, 2004

Body Worlds 2003

I have to say........ this exhibition puts a whole new perspective to the whole idea of signing your body up for science. As I walked through the exhibition, I kept wondering whether all these poor souls knew what was really going to happen to their bodies and the implications of what they had done.

Ok, some brief intro first. This exhibition is currently being held at the Singapore Expo and is basically a showcase of preserved human bodies. What makes this unique from your average bio lab display is firstly, the process used in preserving these bodies. The process of plastination, to be exact, which was invented by Gunther Von Hagens. It is basically the "forced infusion of anatomical specimens with reactive plastics", which seems to preserve the organs and even the nervous system.

It also allows the body to be preserved so well, pieces of muscle can be peeled away from the body, and even every intricacy of the central nervous system is preserved. This I can vouch to. In some of the exhibits, the nerves are preserved so well, they resemble nothing less than pieces of thread, covering our ( their? its? ) entire body. Also makes you wonder what happens if, say, someone sneezes hard in the wrong direction, or spiders decide on the cadavers for their holiday residence. ( Oh honey! This will be perfect! Look, even the web has been built for us!)

There was even one playing chess at a table, and Slayer and I were thinking that that could've been us in our chess-playing days. Eek. ( Noticed however, that they placed the black pieces inaccurately. :p )

They had specimens of the human body, ( male mostly. Slayer says sexist/generalist. I say we women know better than to just sign on the dotted line ) and a section to foetuses. The row of deformed foetuses is.... unnerving. There was a deformed foetus which had its ( his? her? ) brains and intestines growing out of its body, at abt 5 mths I tink, and the sign said it was a disorder present in every 1000 foetuses. Most times it's nothing. Sometimes..............

We tried to take some pix, ( yes, photography was not allowed ) with my camera phone. Since it wasn't allowed, the following took place:

Me: ( pretending to SMS ) All clear?
Slayer: ( Shiftily glancing left and right ) Clear. Quick! Do it now!
Me: There're people here! They'll notice us! ( Students on field trip standing ard us )
Slayer: Damn! She's moving nearer! ( Security staff )
Me: Ok, got it! ( Snap )

Aside: Slayer thinks the pix I took weren't too bad, and that I have a future as a budding paparazzi. My career prospects look so bright at this point of time. The 4 miserable pix I took can be seen on my camera pix website, link at top of page.

Viewing the exhibits is a morbidly fascinating affair. You look at it, and you think, "Good god, is that me? Could that be me?" Or rather that's what I mostly thought. The Slayer, whom I went with, for some reason, thought more in the direction of "Your dick is so small. I pity you." and "The dead foetuses are cool! They should have more!" ( She wrote that last thought in the comment book provided at the end of the exhibition, by the way )
As an aside, if you're reading this, I'm never going to such an exhibition with you again.

Excellent exhibition, especially for
1) budding doctors/nurses/anyone in medical field
2) anyone with a taste for the macabre
3) Jack-the-Ripper wannabes

More references, if I got your interest whetted:
Body Worlds website

Friday, January 09, 2004

Servers are Back Up

The Blogger servers are finally working again and I can continue blogging and reading once again. *PomPom*

The unfortunate thing is that I have nothing in my life to update about. *PomPom wilts*

Hm, so let's pick the nitty-gritty.....

Sylveracyd's website is coming up nicely, though a couple of pages need cosmetic arrangements, and some more organizing. I spent the entire afternoon yesterday before tuition alternating between helping Quet on ICQ with her report, ( Ya owe me, fren. Mwahahaha ) changing the order forms and cursing formsite's stupid arrangement, ( Form has to keep uploading every time I make a change. Bah! ) and using PS to change the logos. Gawk!

Then the new tuition kid....

Let's have some basic details. I got this kid thru Bunny ( er, for lack of a better nick, though Turtle may frown on me infringing his BF copyrights. ) and the kid's Thai, studied in Singapore for abt 2 years and now in P5. Firstly, I got terribly, terribly lost trying to find my way to the place, cos it's this super ulu-fied private estate bang between Hougang stadium and Heartland mall. Bleah. Then the kid turns out to be the most super-unmotivated-bochup-don-give-a-damn kid I've ever seen in my life, and yes, his English is...............bad.

God help me now, but I really need some damn creative-divinely-inspired way of getting this kid to even look at me, let alone do the work I set for him. I realise that getting assessments is prob useless and even ineffective, if he can't be bothered. Then when I call Bunny later at night and talk to her more about the kid, she tells me more horror stories about him, like how she went for lessons and when at their doorstep, he refused to come out for lessons and his guardian just said lesson cancelled but charged anyway.

Well, getting paid for not teaching........ hmmm......... I better think up some super creative way of teaching this kid English. Help!

Monday, January 05, 2004

Does anyone notice this weird thing with blogger that's going on? Everytime I try to access someone's blog which is hosted on its server, it just directs me to the main blogger page. Hello.........i think someone in tech support isn't doing his job well..........