April 2010
61 posts
6 tags
3 tags
3 tags
Moments of uncomfortable silence
Prof R: New Zealand is crazy. They're dumbing down everything.
Melissa: How so?
Prof R: Forgive my prejudice, but they've got a ton of Maoris and lesbians after funding over there since they changed their name from medical to the health research council. People doing real research can't get their foot in the door.
Melissa: ...
5 tags
3 tags
4 tags
Mum's old university photo
Opened up my inbox to day to see an email from my mother:
Hi melissa Here is the photo on my graduate day, in 1984, that time i was same age with you now. This year is 30th year since we went to the uni. Someone will organize for reunion, I don’t think I will come back for that. Uni life is beautiful.
I teared up when I saw it. It’s strange to know so much about what would happen...
2 tags
3 tags
“Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a...”
– from ‘House Of Leaves’ - Mark Z. Danielewsk (via Kindelling)
3 tags
2 tags
3 tags
Reading In Bed Emily Haines and the Soft Skeletons...
3 tags
2 tags
Les gens qu'on n’a pas su aimer
What is it about total strangers that make you want to tell things to them?
1am in a taxi, after A and J had gone and the cab driver turned around to me and said, “So you didn’t drink?”
I guess it was pretty obvious that I was the only sober person in his car. I explained that, for various reasons, I’d decided not to drink at social functions for a while. Not that...
3 tags
3 tags
3 tags
“Don’t try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough.”
– Arthur Freed (via kari-shma)
2 tags
4 tags
4 tags
Research integrity
Half past 7 in Prahan - the sky was pitch black, and the trees in Fawkner Park were indistinguishable in the background from everything around them. I’d come in for a meeting at 6pm, which hadn’t started until half past anyway.
Prof R. met me at the bridge between the old university quarter and the patient lounge on Level 3, having had to unlock the door. It was a spectacular kind of...
2 tags
6 tags
Nominal aphasia
Unbelievable.
Crappiest day ever!
3 tags
2 tags
Anthem Emancipator (via wedontneedroads)
5 tags
“April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing...”
– -from ‘The Waste Land: I The Burial of the Dead’ - T.S. Eliot
4 tags
3 tags
The god of small things
To be honest, I hate going out. I do it a fair bit, which is confusing.
Hein, when I sighed that I had antisocial tendencies once in his car, but he’d knocked me back.
“Don’t kid yourself,” he said. “You’re very social!”
“Sometimes I feel rude if I don’t go to stuff people invite me to, even if it’s inconvient to go. Usually it’s...
2 tags
4 tags
4 tags
3 tags
People who give so abruptly just as easily take it...
I’ve come to realise that people who act inconsistently make me uncomfortable/frighten me.
For instance people who talk to you a lot and all of a sudden stop talking to you; or people who never really talked to you before suddenly messaging you on Facebook announcing that they’d like to get to know you better.
It makes me wonder on what basis they decide these things — one day...
5 tags
“If I’d been a different sort of person, a braver sort, I’d have...”
– from ‘A Home At The End Of The World’ - Michael Cunningham
3 tags
2 tags
2 tags
2 tags
Asynchrony
I cut myself scoring chestnuts in tonight. They were soft, just boiled from the large pot beside me, still steaming softly. I drifted off. The knife slipped. The sight of blood momentary stunned me.
It had been so cold downstairs - nobody home, a glass of red wine, barefoot on hardwood. I’d been wearing Alex’s sweater from when I lived out East, the one I’d demanded as a joke,...
5 tags
“You have never been hurt before, never had a relationship end before you were...”
– from ‘The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming’ - Elliot Pearlman
2 tags
3 tags
4 tags
Soon It Will Be Cold Enough To Build Fires ...
4 tags
Little mouse
The world’s so dull and grey today, lifeless. Days like these make, listless - a throwback from being an only child for a long time.. I’d sit up on the windowsill of my parents’ bedroom as a child, foot dangling over the edge, grazing the tips of flowers - a game, waiting for rain. If I were lucky, I’d go over to Oliver’s place and we’d sit in his living room,...
6 tags
“The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.”
– from ‘Out Of Africa’ - Isak Dinesen, a.k.a Karen Blixen (via thoughtsdetained)
2 tags
3 tags
Won’t Back Down Mat Kearney
(<—-I...
5 tags
2 tags
Beta thalassemia
A general overview of Beta Thalassemia:
Haemoglobin Haemoglobin (Hb) is the major component of a red blood cell (RBC). It’s made up of little units called globin chains, each of which binds to a heme molecule, which binds to iron, which binds to oxygen. It is this binding that allows the oxygen to be carried by the red blood cell to tissues around the body.
There are 4 globin chains in...
3 tags
3 tags
3 tags
“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse,...”
– Virginia Woolf (via kari-shma)
2 tags
2 tags
