Vegan

Earlier this year, I found out that one of my friends has become a vegan. It was pretty shocking seeing as he was the type of guy who would eat anything, including army rations, which is reputed for being terrible, and has even killed a guy recently (a kid on some school cadet camp ate some army rations containing peanuts, and he died from an allergic reaction). While studying for my psych exam, I was wondering how far does veganism go?

One of the techniques for psychological research was called ablation studies, and involved cutting out parts of the brain and seeing how that affected animals. Flourens cut out various parts of the brain, and found out various things about the areas of the brain. Obviously, it's not something that psychology students get to do now, and it's not something you can do on human test subjects, but it did lead to some important discoveries.

Considering the fact that some vegans won't wear leather shoes because of an animal died to get that leather, would it be right to use information obtained through animal experimentation? How is it possible to avoid it? Some of the medicines we use now have been tested on animals, to see whether or not it has the desired effect, or causes any side-effects.

Also, seeing as vegans don't eat eggs even though the chicken doesn't have to die to lay the eggs, does that mean diabetic vegans won't use insulin produced from pigs (I can't remember what animal it was, and it's 6AM, so I'm too lazy to even do a Google search, but I recall watching something about how they can get pigs to generate insulin that can be used by diabetics - although I'm not sure how they get it out)?

I think in the past, dogs were used to set off mines in the ground so that soldiers could have "safe" passage through enemy territory, but does that mean vegans shouldn't walk there because the safety was obtained through the cruel use of animals?

Before you start flaming me, I respect my vegan friends. While I don't completely agree with their rationale (hence my not being vegan), I understand their reasons, and admire their ability to not eat all of the yummy looking things available to them. I know that I shouldn't, but part of me groups vegans with those crazy people that protest in front of KFC saying that they have genetically mutated chickens with a hundred wings and no heads, or something strange like that.

Oh, I should probably mention that I can't receive SMSes at the moment, nor send them. My phone has been like that for the past few days. So if you've sent me something, chances are, I didn't see it. Please email me instead. Sorry! Trying to get it fixed. T_T

WTB Temporal Lobe Lobotomy

My brain hurts. Trying to stuff a semester's worth of information into your head in one day is a bad, bad idea. I've had 4 days to study since my databases exam. In the meantime, I've picked up a copy of Guild Wars, picked up my PSP + FFVII: Crisis Core, went on a last minute doughnut hunt, and made so many plans for the holidays.

Taking a short break from studying, I've written about 30 pages of notes today, and my hand hurts. I don't want to end up like poor Horse-David and injure one of the tendons in my wrist from writing and typing too much (though I guess blogging doesn't help all that much). Oh well.

I was thinking about whether ignorance is bliss. I read a post (in the LJ committe overheardinmelb) about someone who ordered a drink from Boost, told them that there was something wrong with it and wanted a replacement, then overheard the manager telling the employee not to throw her old drink away because they could reuse it for another customer. The location of the Boost store wasn't disclosed, so ever since then, I haven't bought a drink from Boost. =/ The thing is, I used to always get a banana smoothie from Boost (soy milk and sorbet instead of milk and yoghurt - which I think makes it taste better because the sorbet makes it nice and thick). I had one every single day when I was last in Sydney - mostly because there was one near the bus terminal where I always went to.

I'm pretty sure there are some things you've read in this blog that you've thought, "Wow, I really didn't need to know that..." or things you encounter every day.

So just for my entertainment, could you please leave a comment (or an IM offline message) about something you think I didn't need, or want, to know? Thanks in advance.

(Comments warning: you might not want to read the comments, given my request. =/)

GW, Day 1

So rather than DotA-ing my way towards failure in behavioural neuroscience this semester, I've decided to start playing Guild Wars instead. The plan was for me and Autofix to play for a couple of hours in the morning, and then do some study during the rest of the day (his last exam is today). Instead, we've spent more than 11 hours playing the game already (although about 3 of those hours were spent downloading the game and its maps - Guild Wars is one of those download-the-areas-as-you-go MMOs).

After some initial wariness (OMG, you can't f***ing jump in this game!), Auto and I really got into it (the last MMO we both played was WoW, unless you count RO - which is another MMO you can't jump in! T_T). I still have a few gripes with the game. For example, your party is pretty much forced to be in the same zone all the time. Not like WoW where you can go somewhere, and the rest of your party can join you later (which I think is a better system), if you "zone" into another area, the rest of your party is dragged along with you - whether they consent to it or not. A couple of times, I was looking at some items/reading my quest log when all of a sudden, BAM!, loading screen. The other weird thing is, if you are in a party, and you die, you can't do anything until either you are resurrected, the rest of your party dies, or someone in your party "zones" (well, you can look at the game from their point of view, but that's just a superficial thing, really).

Still, playing the game with Autofix, and later MrMan5.5, was really fun. Auto and I pulled some big groups of creeps a couple of times, and it was fun to take them on or try to run away. This game seems really mixed in its difficulty sometimes. Also, a lot of the quests are just "take this to the person on the other side of the world"-type quests, not "kill x monsters"-type quests. For me, that made the monsters in the game more of a nuisance. I know they drop stuff, and I get EXP for killing them, but because most of the time they weren't part of a quest or anything, killing them felt more grind-ish.

OK, less complaining about the game now, it's not WoW! Levelling has been pretty smooth, the quests give a decent amount of EXP, and Auto and I are levels 6 and 7, respectively (this game has a level cap of 20).

DD lent me a spare account of his, so I'm just downloading various world maps at the moment (I'm waiting for Auto to get out of his exam so we can go looking for the game together). I guess the good thing about the map download system is that it's forcing me to study while I wait. >_< We still haven't done any PvP yet, but Auto and I have just unlocked 4 player groups, so now we can play with MrMan5.5, too. Should be fun once we can do stuff with Goaty, Ratty and MrAwesomePants, too. =)

I think I'm starting to get hooked though, and that might not be a good thing. Luckily my last exam is on Friday...

Oh, Baby, You Know Just How to Make Me Groan

You'd think that having a boyfriend would mean that I have someone who is supportive, and who comforts me when I rant to him. Instead, I get awful-joke-making MrMan5.5.

Anna: zzz, we have one slide on 3NF in our notes

i googled it

it said 3NF is like 2NF except that....

so i went and looked for 2NF

and it said that 2NF is like 1NF, except that...

>_<

MrMan5.5: LOL

just wiki it

Anna: i am

that's where the leading around is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_normal_form

MrMan5.5: @_@

reminds me of the dictionary definition of recursion

Anna: -_-

(See the Wikipedia entry about recursive humour if you don't get it.)


Databases exam in 9 hours, and I haven't even gone through all of the lecture notes or tute questions. Instead I spent most of today either:
a) Sleeping
b) Playing DotA
c) Watching Scrubs
d) Eating/Making food to eat

Ryan said that he passed the subject without even studying. Hopefully I'll be able to do that, too. =/

BTW, I'm kidding. Though he makes terrible jokes, and so very many puns, he is still awesome.

(S) Two Fodders Make A Writer?

I mentioned to Super Chris that I didn't like the idea of 9-5, and we started talking about career stuff. I said that I enjoyed aspects of software engineering, but that isn't where my strengths lie. For a while now, I've been thinking about how I really enjoy writing. A personality test (LOL, personality test *scoff*) suggested "technical writer" as a possible job for me. I think that I could probably write technical documents, but it'd bore me out of my mind. After mulling it over for a while, I had a crazy idea...

... I want to take part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Why is that so crazy? Well, for starters, it happens in November every year, which happens to be the exam period here at the wonderful University of Melbourne. It also involves writing at least 50 000 words in one month. Fifty thousand! That's as many as five ten-thousands, and that's a lot. I think it's about 1.7k words per day. I ended up writing about 1.1k words for my psych essay on Wednesday, but I was practically spent afterwards, and I don't think I could do that every single day for a month.

Still, I want to do this because I want to know if I'm cut out for this kind of thing. I know that
I could do this any time during the year, like after exams, for instance, but I think being part of NaNoWriMo will help me get over that initial hurdle of getting started. This is a story I started nearly a year ago, and although I had the plot and characters worked out in my head, I haven't touched it since I made that post. I just can't seem to start the first chapter.

The next problem is, what genre? That other story was going to be fantasy, and I figure since most of my years have been spent reading fantasy/sci-fi, I should stick with that, but lately I've found that my main interest is crime/mystery. I've also had a suggestion that I write some erotic fiction!

To try and get an idea of what I like to write (and am able to write - how on Earth can you get 50k words of erotic fiction?!), I think I'm going to start writing some short stories, and if you're feeling bored, it'd be nice if you could read over them and tell me what you think. =)

Hush, Listen

One of the techniques we learn about in psychology is listening to people. Sometimes you can get a lot of information from someone, just by letting them talk and fill the silence. Of course, it depends on the person, but some people (like me), can't handle silence and have this need to fill the void.

Anyway, I went to get my phone today, from some store run by Chinese people (which you'd think would be in Chinatown, but was actually near the Greek Precinct). The last time I was there with Sharon, the woman working there was speaking Mandarin with her, so I assumed she only spoke Mandarin and dragged my mum there with me the next time I went. So she has probably figured out that I don't speak Chinese (turns out she also speaks Cantonese and English). I was alone when I went there today, and the server that processes the stuff was taking forever, so I got out some HLT readings and waited. Another customer came in, and started asking about phones. She didn't speak Chinese either, so it took a while for them to get their meanings across.

After she left, the Chinese woman turned to the other guy working at the shop, and started bagging the other woman in Cantonese. I could tell because some of the things she was saying just happened to be some of the stuff I had picked up from watching Jackie Chan movies (*sheepish look*), and I was pretty surprised.

It makes me wonder if people are saying stuff behind my back when they're talking in another language. I know this is just me being weirdly paranoid, but every time I go past the Indian restaurant near my house, I keep thinking that they're saying stuff about me. T_T

It's not just people speaking in other languages. I fell asleep in business management in high school (I really only did it to get the two units of arts/humanities as the rest of my subjects were maths/science) a few times, and sometimes, I'd wake up to hear people talking about something interesting. I know this is terrible, but once, I pretended to still be sleeping so that they're continue talking about what they were talking about, and I could listen.

There is so much you could learn from just listening, but I find that it's something not very many people like to do. I'm not just talking about eavesdropping, but also listening to what people are saying, not what you think they are saying. I feel quite bad in that I think a friend of mine was asking for help at the start of this year, but I thought he was just emo-raging and went to play DotA. A couple of weeks later, he told me something that made me kick myself for not realising that he was actually quite depressed, and just wanted someone to talk to.

Unfortunately, I'm finding it hard to just chat with people online lately. Maybe because I don't sign into MSN very often, and don't have that many Gtalk contacts, so the number of people I talk to at night has gone down to about 7. =( I think I'm too impatient to wait for people's replies, so I go and find other stuff to occupy my mind, but then that makes me neglect the conversations I'm having. =/ I definitely want to spend more time listening to people though, so after exams, I'm going to try and force myself into doing more things with people offline!

Running Out of Time

First, I am making a public apology to Hungry Jacks. After reading this comment on my post The Coke Side of Life - Where's My Drink?:

The way to consider it is as follows:
The meal (as displayed in the picture, and in truth, if not always as written on the menu) is 1 burger, regular chips, and a regular coke. If you want any modifications to that meal such as no tomato, or fanta instead of coke, or onion rings instead of fries, ask for it and the staff will be happy to oblige. As most people do want coke, do want tomato(, and don't realise they could get onion rings instead of chips for a few cents extra) it is pointless to ask every customer the array of questions and time wasting, for the business and for the customer themselves.
-(no name)

I went to check out some fast food places. It's true, that at Hungry Jacks, the meal is listed as being a burger, fries and coke, so I apologise for making such a big deal about them not asking if I wanted raspberry Fanta. >_<

However, McDonald's does say, burger, fries and soft drink (it does have a picture of coke, though). KFC doesn't say anything with their meals, but for the argh, name escapes me at the moment, it's the one with the box containing a burger, chips, drink, potato and gravy and chicken. Anyway, it also says soft drink.

So apologies again to Hungry Jacks and thanks to (no name) for pointing that out.

In my diary, I have plans to mail out invitations to my "21st" soon. By soon I mean the 17th of June. That's in 5 days. I still have no venue, but I guess I have the weekend to look at stuff. Except for the fact that I have an exam on Monday! OK, so I was thinking after my HLT exam, I could do some study for databases while making invitations and looking for a venue.

I've also just started seriously studying for HLT as I finished my psych essay 2 hours ago and have been procrastinating since (although TS talked to me of his own accord!). Exam is on Friday, so I'm going to start the cramming now!

P.S. Cervical cancer vaccine sucks. Hate needles.

Faking It

Elliot: Oh, I have to make Kelso think I still work here so he doesn't have me arrested for stealing medical supplies. By the by, what would you have done if you couldn't give Carla The Pill?

Turk: I'd-a faked it.

Elliot: Guys can't fake it.

Turk: Really? Does this sound familiar? "Ohh, oh, baby, we're going all night. No, wait, don't move!" ...Sorry.

Elliot: [Reliving past trauma] Way too familiar....
-Scrubs: My Intern's Eyes (Season 5, Episode 1)

Yes, another Scrubs inspired post. I've been wondering, what's the point in faking an orgasm? They feel good, presumably you both want one (isn't that the reason for having sex in the first place - other than for baby purposes?), and if someone else is volunteering to do all the work of bringing you to climax, why wouldn't you take advantage of that?

Quick Google search turned up with: Faking Orgasms - The Who, How, and Whys of Faking Orgasms, which says that the reasons why people (yes, people, males are included) fake orgasms are:
-they want to make their partner feel better
-to end sex when they're tired ("Women report feeling like their male partners are not satisfied until
they “give” their female partner an orgasm, thus sex will continue
until the woman either has an orgasm, or fakes orgasm.")
-to get it over with
-feelings of expectation

There is also this blog post To Fake Or Not To Fake? about why some women fake orgasms:
-they feel their partner will be crushed if they don't orgasm
-think in order to hold onto their man they need to orgasm all the time
-are self-conscious about how long it take them to orgasm
-don't know how to reach orgasm, but don't want their partners to think something is wrong with them

So I guess I'm a bit selfish when it comes to sex, as I'm not really thinking about making sure my partner is feeling like he'd going a good job, I'm mostly thinking, "What do I want? An orgasm! When do I want it? NOW!" At first, for me, getting a guy closer to climax was just a means to an end - if he was feeling good, then he'd be more inclined to want to make me feel good. Things changed with Charmeleon, as he taught me that sex can be more than just orgasms for yourself. Seeing the affect of the things you are doing to him can be arousing, and the things you do during foreplay feel pretty damn good, too.

Sorry to jump topics a bit, but you're probably thinking about those lines that led to the famous "orgasm" scene in When Harry Met Sally:

Sally Albright: Most women at one time or another have faked it.
Harry Burns: Well, they haven't faked it with me.
Sally Albright: How do you know?
Harry Burns: Because I know.
Sally Albright: Oh. Right. That's right. I forgot. You're a man.
Harry Burns: What was that supposed to mean?
Sally Albright: Nothing. Its just that all men are sure it never happened to them and all women at one time or other have done it so you do the math.

I admit, that I have. A couple of times with AG and once with "That Guy" (although you probably don't believe me given the circumstances of our sex and what happened afterwards). Each of those times, I did it because I realised I just didn't want to be there any more and at that point in my relationship with AG, it was pretty much purely sexual, and the only reason I met up with "That Guy" was for sex, I figured I wouldn't get to go home until they thought I had finished (both of them had driven me somewhere, and since I couldn't drive at the time, they were my only way home). I just considered those extenuating circumstances though, and I really don't consider faking it worth the effort. I'm terrible at acting, and I'm not even sure I got away with it when I did it those times. The entire time I kept thinking, "He knows, he's just too embarrassed to bring it up." and every time the car stopped on the way home, I was terrified that he'd confront me and demand to know why I did it.

As I mentioned before, and as both the articles mention, if you bother to read them, is that sex doesn't have to be all about orgasms. Well, not sex, but I mean the act of lying on bed with someone and just interacting with them physically, shouldn't just be about both of you having lots and lots of orgasms, but it can also be just both of you massaging each other, or touching stuff that feels nice, and if you happen to make them orgasm while you're at it, just consider it a bonus.

Since I'm in such a confessing mood, I have something else to confess: I think I have what the female equivalent to premature ejaculation is. =/ I guess that's not so bad, as I don't have to worry about "getting it up" again, so we can keep doing stuff, but it causes this orgasm imbalance that, to be perfectly honest, I'm not completely happy with. I think the orgasm ratio between me and Charmeleon was something like 3.5:1 (I didn't have half orgasms, it's just that most times I would orgasm 3 or 4 times, so I just took the average), and I felt bad that I was getting so many and he wasn't. I also knew in my head that if he did orgasm after I had one, we'd be waiting at least an hour before he would be ready again, and sometimes we just didn't have the time to wait around for hours (well, mostly it was just me who didn't have the time - sneaking around behind your parents's backs to have sex is a very delicate art!) so either he'd have to fake it to make me feel content, or we'd just have to have this imbalance.

Actually, I just re-thought that confession, and I didn't orgasm nearly as much with AG (I feel so guilty about writing all this stuff about him after our relationship, it's like kissing and telling and I'm so mean! At least his identity is a secret) so maybe it was just Charmeleon.

Anyway, not that I'm encouraging it, but is it really possible for guys to fake it? There's the obvious problem of having to produce some... "evidence" that you just orgasmed (I'm reminded of that scene in 40 Days and 40 Nights where the guy fakes an orgasm, and the girl doesn't believe him, so she tries to look inside the condom, but he runs away from her. After a short chase, the condom ends up flying across the room and landing on the window where it's obvious that it's empty). After some thought, I figured it might be possible to put milk inside the condom while she's not looking (yeah, I said some thought, obviously it wasn't a lot), but that just seems weird.

"Hey baby, what are you doing?"
"Oh, I'm just going to get some milk - gotta keep these bones growing big and strong!"
"Why are you taking the box of condoms?"
"I, er... wanted to read the directions while I'm in the kitchen."

Toilet Paper

J.D.: You know, but she's not moving in permanently. She's just crashing for a while.

Dr. Cox: About a year ago, Jordan said she wanted to "crash for a while." Now my office is a nursery, my closet is my office, my clothes are in the entertainment center, and my TV is in the john, which I guess is kind of nice...I don't even know any more.

Ted: Same thing happened to me. After my divorce, I told Mariana I was going to crash at her place for a few weeks, and we've been sharing a bed for eight years.

J.D.: Isn't Mariana your mother?
Ted: Hey, who are we talking about here, you or me?

Dr. Cox: Lookit, here's the rule, there, porn-star: The moment her toothbrush hits your sink, you've got yourself a permanent roomie.
-Scrubs: My Rule of Thumb (Season 3, Episode 10)

MrMan5.5 and I were talking about my leaving stuff as his place, as mum has given me a pair of PJs to leave there for when I stay the night (I usually wear jeans, and sleeping in jeans isn't all that comfortable). For me, leaving PJs there is equivalent to leaving my toothbrush there. While it is more convenient for the nights we spend watching Scrubs when I'm way too tired to drive home again, it seems like we're moving a little too fast.

Not long after we started going out, MrMan5.5 nearly gave me the password to his front gate. When he said he was going to, I completely freaked out. It was like he was giving me a key to his house, and at that point in time (and still now, I believe), that was something I wasn't ready for. Not that I could get into his house with that password, I could get past the front gate and eat all the mushrooms in his garden (I don't like mushrooms), but that's about it. Still, it just seemed like something as little as giving me free access to his front yard had so much more meaning to it.

The thing is, leaving PJs makes things easier for me, as I wouldn't have to sleep in jeans, but would doing something like that also have other implications? He didn't seem to think anything of it when I brought it up, but what if it makes him think something unconsciously, and he thinks I'm ready to move in with him, or move to 'the next level', or whatever happens in a relationship after you have the cutesy, super-sickly-sweet stage where almost everything is awesome and it seems like nothing will ever go wrong? Not that we haven't had problems (the private blog has been working well, in my opinion), but mostly, things have been good.

We went down to his beach house for a couple of days last weekend, and staying there with him was awesome. Of course, there is that whole, "It's nice to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there" thing, in the sense that, it was a mini-holiday, so it wasn't like we were going to live together forever and I knew it would be temporary. Still, pigging out on popcorn and marshmallows while watching Scrubs with him was awesome, and I'd love to do that more often. Plus, he made me non-dairy, egg-free pancakes. =D

That's the thing, there are only so many episodes of Scrubs, only so many nights that I can spend eating marshmallows and popcorn (admittedly, they will last quite a while, but they're still limited!), and eventually, I wonder if spending time with him will still have that same magic that it has now. For most of our relationship, I'd only see AG maybe twice a week, and there was always some excitement there. If I were to live with MrMan5.5, I wonder if maybe I'd start filtering out his voice as background noise. Maybe it'd get to the point where we'd both sit in front of our computers talking to each other over Google Talk or during a game of DotA, without having any actual contact unless we were invited to go somewhere, and we'd have to argue about the best way of getting there and who would get to drive.

I know that I'm being silly, and it's just a pair of PJs, but what if that's just the start, and soon I'll have an assortment of stuff in his house? Not only will it be a pain to take home when we break up, but I'll start to wonder whether I've lost something, or just left it at his place. Plus, there's the other thought sitting in the back of my head - what if one day he's really angry at me, and well, there goes my copy of the first season of MacGyver. =/

Anyway, I'm going to stop reading into this so much, it's just a pair of PJs. I could bring them over every time I plan to sleep there, but most of the time I stay the night, it's wasn't intentional (MrMan5.5 fell asleep on my lap during She's All That - sif he found that movie boring! Then there was the time with Music and Lyrics and Enchanted - maybe I should stop trying to get him to watch chick flicks...), and PJs are so comfortable! I guess the best solution is to toss a coin next time I go to his place.

New Location for :|

I've been annoyed at Windows Live Spaces for a while now, mostly because in terms of features, it looks like it's trying to rip off LiveJournal and Blogger, but only taking the things they're famous for, rather than the things they're good for.

I'm going to double post my blog posts for now, for two reasons:
1) I want to see if I can generate interest from readers who aren't just reading my blog because they know me.
2) I want to let people comment on my blog without having to sign up for a WLS account.

So here is the last post I've written on my WLS blog that I'm not going to copy into this one, and if you want to know who I was referring to, you might want to dig a bit - sorry about that. Maybe I'll make a post someday describing who everyone is.

http://annatheannoying.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!B30ABD897A6DAD67!1730.entry