Travel Channel showcasing Singapore

While watching the Travel Channel, there was an advertisement on the host, Samantha Brown visiting Singapore. There is a sweep where one lucky winner can win a trip for two to my home country, Singapore.

The sweep started on November 1, 2009 at 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time ("ET") and ends on December 31, 2009 at 11:59 p.m. ET. I have not been entering for the sweep daily. Just a few more days and I hope that I am a lucky fellow.

It would be fun for the winner to experience Singapore, with its diverse culture, food, cleanliness, and low crimes.

The snow blizzard on Dec 19, 2009

Every local network's weather center forecasted a major snowstorm on Dec 19. It started snowing lightly in the early morning of Saturday when most of us were asleep.

By morning, the scenery was transformed overnight into a wintry snowscape, though officially, the Winter Solstice began on Dec 21 at 12.47 pm EST.

Initially, it felt kind of romantic with pretty snowflakes falling as I looked out from my warm apartment. However, as it continued to snow without abate and gusty wind picking up, it became scary. Cars were sliding on roads and pedestrians had to walk in knee-deep snow. This was the longest snow storm I had experience since I was here.

By Sunday Dec 20, the blizzard had stopped and everything was covered in snow. My balcony had snow dunes where it was 9 inches at the highest dune.

A cool idea struck me and I began building my first snowman, Feisty with the snow on the balcony. The snow was very dry, not conducive for make a snowball, let alone, a snowman. To overcome this, I sprayed water on the snow as I built. Ideally, you would need to form a snowball initially and then roll the ball around in sticky/wet snow. Imagine animation of cartoon characters rolling down a slope and forming a large snowball.

In this case, I made two snowballs, one for the body and the other for the head. I sat the body on a chair and added snow to it, layer by layer after spraying with water to cement the dry snow. After building the body to a sizable scale, I flatten the top of the body to place the second snowball and started working on the head. Since I had no carrot for its nose, I compressed some snow into a rod and stuck it in. The mouth was a red chilli, eyes were star aniseed, and buttons were dried flower pods from a potpourri. Instead of bundling it up with my cashmere scarfs, as pointed out by Charlene, I used two rags. To complete the look, Feisty, as I called it, was decorated with various hats (see Snow Blizzard album).

Then, I went outside, armed with a measuring tape to measure snow accumulation of the storm. The deepest was at 26 inches. There was this car, completely covered in snow but had a clearing on its driver's side, carved out by wind.

As the snow was deep, I could not resist making snow angels. The last time I made a snow angel, my jeans got dirty because the snow was not deep enough. Not this time, it was 13 inches deep.

I proceeded towards Sherwood Garden to take wintry pictures. Along the way, I saw private house owners busy shoveling their walkways or digging cars out. There were children sledding down a slope.

Houses covered in snow with Christmas decorations make great Holiday pictures. I walked around to capture the scenery but I did not last long as my feet were freezing after getting snow into my boots.

Five days later after the storm, Feisty was fighting to stay frozen. It needed some nose job and half its head was deformed. Things were falling apart. Well, as the saying goes, when a door closes, another opens. A row of icicles were hanging from the roof which looked fantastic. Let's see how long Feisty is going to last.

Blessed Christmas to you and wishing you joy, health and peace in 2010.

Snow Blizzard album

My best Christmas 2009 gift

Today, I received an email informing me that my manuscript entitled,"Conservation and Diversity of Influenza A H1N1 HLA-restricted T Cell Epitope Candidates for Epitope-based Vaccines" had been accepted in Plos One Journal.

Getting this 'baby' out was a fruit of setbacks, labor and toil. Now, I can enjoy the fruit and look ahead. It is the best Christmas gift to myself.

Blessed Christmas and may his birth reminds us of God's love for us.

Shopping spree

As I write this post with my laptop on my laps, I do not have to feel the heat from my laptop anymore. The heat was uncomfortable and for men, it is unhealthy for the scrotum.

Well, I just got this Logitech Notebook Cooling Pad
from Amazon. The fan works well, keeping the laptop cool and it is quiet. I bought it because 91 customers gave a 5-star review of this product.

Oh, by the way, maybe it is the spending season, I had ordered more stuffs (e.g. Kirkland Extra Strength Glucosamine HCl and Chondroitin Sulfate Tablets, Bower step down adapter, books, patches, calendar) from Amazon. Since running the Baltimore Marathon in Oct, my left knee has not been feeling right. It is not swollen, i.e. not inflame. However, I feel a cooling sensation even though I did not apply or take any medication. Glucosamine and Chondroitin are building blocks which help to maintain healthy joints. I have to see if these tablets help after three months.

For the step down adapter, prior to buying Nikon D70S, I bought a Nikon F55 which fits a 58mm lens. Among the 58mm lens I invested were a fish-eye lens and a macro lens. I am waiting to get the adapter so that I could try out wide-angle shots and really close up shots.

Argh, I need to rein in my spending spree as I had spent $250 on this Black Friday. I was tempted to rent a car and drive 1.5 hrs to Hagerstown, MD for the midnight sales. I wanted to experience the madness of Americans lining up in front of stores to get the deals. However, that night was raining and foggy plus I was tired. In the end, I slept through the night and drove to there in the morning. In all my shopping trips at Hagerstown Prime Outlet, I had never seen so much crowd before. Lines were long at the cash registers. Luckily for me, the few things that I bought were at shops which were not that packed. I was holding myself back from shopping too much.

First snow

White, big flakes falling from the sky,
Disappearing on the ground.

Temperature falling fast with strong wind,
I huddled in bed underneath a quilt.

With the ugly weather outside,
Outdoor plans were canceled.

Armed with a good book and a hot cup of tea,
my adventure began as I turned the pages.

A Day on Earth

Twenty four hours in a day,
One-third of it spent sleeping; Eight hours passed quickly.
Another one-third employed in working; Another eight hours elapsed erratically.
The last one-third engaged in living life, what do you want to make out of it?

Put on comment moderation

Recently, a group of Japanese had left their comments on one of my postings. Never mind that their comments were irrelevant to the postings, but when you click on their links, it led you to some Japanese porn site. After some Japanese-to-English translation, they were discussing about fantasies too!

This is my last straw. Please respect my blog, you know who you are.