banana milkshakes and Biochem

Yesterday I woke up feeling rather crafty. So instead of my new usual breakfast of milk and cereal, I toasted some bread and put butter, jam, and bananas on it. And if you're thinking, "WTH that sounds lame" then oh my friend you are so wrong. Because it was the ultimate best sandwich that my taste buds have ever had the pleasure of tasting. 

Just kidding, it was just another sandwich.

The sad thing is this is the most effort I've ever put into making breakfast.

Later that day I got to work on that Biochemistry game project I mentioned previously. I came up with a design  for the back of our playing cards:

I find the biomolecules floating around in the back kind of cheezy,  but I'm too lazy to think of a better way to incorporate those darn molecules into this design. 

Rap said it looks like old-school bubblegum packaging.

. . .

Today I went to a Biotechnology conference in school. In a nutshell, the purpose of the conference was to bring in different kinds of institutions (from the Department of Agriculture to scientists in the academe) for an open dialogue. The main topic was the role of Biotechnology in agriculture. Okay I guess it sounds boring coming from me. But I thoroughly enjoyed the talk, except for the parts I couldn't pay attention to because I was cramming for my Biochem exam. Teehee.

The speaker was a Mr. Peter Davies, a Plant Biology professor from Cornell University, and what a great speaker he was. I don't wanna explain point-for-point his presentation (I don't think I could, anyway), so I'll just leave it at that. 

The best part of the conference was the open forum, where all sorts of professionals (scientists, mostly, and one guy from Greenpeace) began raising points against Mr. Davies. The dialogue got heated, and that was fun to watch. A lot of scientists came forward and said that, contrary to what Mr. Davies was asserting, there has been no scientific proof that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are safe for human consumption and for the environment. Mr. Davies always had a great reply to anything thrown at him, even when that Greenpeace guy threw him a personal comment about America not signing the Kyoto Protocol.

When the conference ended, Rap and I badly needed to meet Mr. Davies (Rap, especially). So we wedged ourselves in between a herd of Biotech students to wait for our turn. All the while, Rap was bobbing up and down all excited. Eventually we did get to talk to Mr. Davies (and snap a picture, thanks to Ms. Malou!), and the first thing Rap said to him was, "I'm sorry I'm fangirling. You're like a rockstar!" Oh how you embarrass me so. 

Mr. Davies is tall. Very, very tall. So tall that I think a small person could ride on my shoulders, and still not come up to the man's shoulders. He's extremely nice, too. When Rap told him that we had a Biochem exam to run to in fifteen minutes, he said, "Oh you better get going then. Biochem is everything. If you can ace Biochem, you can do anything." (Uh oh. As if the pressure to do good in Biochem wasn't enough already.) We said bye to Mr. Davies and then hurried off to our exam.

. . .

The exam wasn't so bad I guess, but I definitely didn't ace it (if to ace something means to get an A in it). I feel like I have let Mr. Davies down.

. . .

After the test I headed home, feeling strangely crafty yet again. I decided to make a banana milkshake. Sounds fairly easy, right? Well apparently I managed to screw something up in the process, because the end result looks like this: 

Brown, unfocused muck. Yuuum.

I guess that's a normal thing. Bananas do turn brown when you cut them into pieces, right? Right? 

The thing tastes all right. It's creamy and slightly frothy as a milkshake should be, but the color just throws me off. It looks light brown. I wouldn't be complaining if I were making chocolate milkshake or something but dear God, this is bananas! Hehe, wordplay.


Speaking of things that are bananas, oh my goodness I'm almost at 30,000 views!!!