Together wisdom go for it, please!

Goddamn it I'm exhausted. I finally finished going through all of the stuff I had to do today at around 23:00. That's hell of a long day.

I'm still way behind with reading. But I think I can make it. These next weeks aren't that tough concerning the amount we have to read. I do have to do a report on a biophysics experiment we did about membranes for next Thursday, but I have it under control. I find it quite easy and natural to understand. So that's good =)!

Another thing is my Japanese. My Japanese teacher made me do a Japanese test. I had to translate written sentences from Danish into Japanese. For example one of the sentences was this one: "My friend is holding a party tomorrow together with her younger sister". The translation is: Watashi no tomodachi wa imouto-san to ashita paati o shimasu (literally: me (possessive marker) friend (topic marker) little sister (the -san ending then changes it to another's little sister) ('also included' marker) tomorrow party (object marker) make). NOT exactly easy, eh??

But I did alright! And now I've just skipped a whole year. And I'm at level 2. And wow, it's tough. The first lesson today was kind of 'what the fuck, what am I doing here' :P. But luckily I learnt quickly and during the second half of the lesson I started answering questions and stuff too. The teacher was really evil, hehe. She kept asking me to read out my answers for the class. But I did alright and didn't answer (much) wrong. And I now have tons of homework for next week. There are a lot of words I need to brush up on, and our teacher even gave us a Japanese cross-words we have to do for next lesson. Intensive, but nice!

That team is way nicer than my old one. Much more fun people. And I made a new friend there too :D! He lived quite close to me, so we took the train back home together and we talked a lot. Fun, fun. He studies software enginerring at a place called DTU (The Danish Techical University). And I promised to bring a cake with me next time. I'll be sure to keep that.

I also went to a meeting today at our university bar. It was a kind of introduction to all the new prospective voluntary workers. We heard some short speeches about the different aspects of the work we do there, as well as played a fun game where us, who had worked there for some time, were blindfolded and then had to be guided around to different places of the bar by the new ones. I managed not to fall, and my "team" (each 'oldie' each had two 'newbies') had fun, so success ^^!

Tomorrow I have no lessons. Well, except a course that's supposed to help you understand biophysics better, but I don't really need that. But I do have a few things that day anyway. Washing (needed! I think my washing machine dream had to do with that, actually), a 7-hour shift in the bar and finishing the stuff I need for my application to the Australian university I'm applying for.

The Continuous Dream

Just a quick post here.

In the recent development of my constant dreaming, I've finally decided to do a dream log. I've heard that writing down what you dream every time you remember is both healthy and fun. And it should also be fun for myself to read later on, I guess. If all goes well it'll also lead to more frequent lucid dreaming, which is of course always fun (lucid dreams are dreams where you are able to consciously control what happens). You can find the link on the right (under "Other blogs") or click here.

I've also added a sort of "reaction" comment thing underneath each post. So if you won't bother leaving a comment, you can at least put a checkmark in the box saying if you found the post funny, cool, boring, interesting, weird, stupid, clever or all of the above.
EDIT: I can't get that stupid thing to show more than three options, and I have a headache after looking through all that html coding to try and find the problem. Until I fix it I will just give three options to choose from. Weird, stupid/boring and cool. That should about cover every possible feeling you might have towards the post after having read it.

There's also a nifty little search box on the right if you for some weird reason want to search for just that special post that you can't quite remember the weird title of, but would like to read anyway.

Quietly bouncing up and down

I'm really tired. No wonder, really, since it's 3 o'clock at night. Once again another Saturday gone by. Once again, I managed to read an impressive 0 pages. And once again, I have a lot of reading to look forward to tomorrow :P..

This week has been unremarkable in the occurrences of chronic weird dreams. I still remember my dreams every single time I sleep and they're as weird as ever. A few days ago, I dreamt I was a Russian paparazzi photographer who had learnt how to stop time by a special hand movement. I won't recount the plot of the dream (yeah, this one actually had one) but it had to do with global conspiracies, robots and me saving the world from a would-be dictator.

Believe it or not, but I'm actually getting a bit tired of remembering my dreams after every time I wake up. I wake up feeling a bit drained, still thinking about the weird stuff I dreamt. I hope I'll get back to normal soon.

Yesterday (Friday) was up early for lectures, then home and sleep a bit, and then I was off to a dinner with two friends. It was a feast, I tell you. We were only three people, and I dare say we'd made enough food for at least double that amount. And the food was exquisite. It's been a little time since I ate that much good food :D.

After that glorious dinner we went to the theatre. I'd never been to the theatre before. And it was truly great. It was a comedy called "Dwindle" ("Skrump") and it's truly a long time since I've laughed that much. It was epic, and I loved every minute of it. It even had a famous Danish actor in it that I knew, and that made the experience even better.

Afterwards one of the two other friends I saw the play with had to go home, and it was only me and the other guy. We decided we would only drink a single beer and then head on home. Well, I really wanted to see a bar I had heard a lot about, called Wall Street. But we couldn't find it. So we wandered a bit around aimlessly, talking and seeing a bit of Copenhagen by night. After a while we decided to just head into the next pub/bar we saw. And that place happened to be an Irish pub called "The Dubliner". And what a cool place! Really nice area with loads of decorations and a really weird, huge, circular window in the ceiling. Plus a live band that played epicly well. And they made the best Guinness I've ever tasted. Seriously, it was good. I could have drunk ten of them. It's got to be the only beer where I actually like the foam as much as the beer. It's truly delicious if the beer is well poured. And the bird in the picture is really cool too!

And well, one beer somehow became many. We were enjoying ourselves a lot and after the first promised beer it was suggested we had another. And well, suddenly it was around 3 o'clock or so (I had no idea what time it was, but I remember getting to bed around 5 o'clock). And we were both a bit/quite/very drunk. I had left my backpack at the guy's appartment (it was the same place we had the huge dinner) so I had to go by his place first. And once I got there it was so late and he kind of commanded me to sleep over :P. I really couldn't be bothered to take the bus all the way home at that point either, so I was happy to oblige. We drank some more beer, had some cake and leftovers from the dinner, talked and watched TV.

First we watched a French TV channel. It was really weird hearing French again. It was a random program about a fishing boat in France. Afterwards we chanced upon an episode of MacGyver. It was truly ridiculous. After having seen him in a Family Guy episode I had always thought MacGyver was just a joke character, but he actually is from a serious series (haha, sounded funny). And he can seriously make weapons from the most ridiculous things. In this episode he set fire to a pine cone and tossed it under a car, and the car promptly exploded. I mean, come on. He could probably make an atom bomb from a used pencil and three bent nails.

The next morning I awoke by myself at 8 o'clock. That meant I had slept little over 3 hours. But I didn't feel tired. Just a slight hangover. On my way home I was met by quite a lot of looks. It might be connected to the fact that I was dressed way too nicely for a normal day. One good thing though, was that I now have semi-short hair, and since I use wax to mess it up, it hides morning hair really well. So I didn't look completely hopeless =).

As I came home home, I immediately went to bed and awoke about 6 hours later with one hour to spare before a friend came visiting. Change of clothes, shower etc. Then off to badminton for one and a half hours and another huge dinner. It was really nice.

I do realise that this post has been quite full of snippets. I'm just so goddamn tired, so I can't be bothered to connect things in any real meaningful way. I'm so tired I'm even starting to see things. On my way home on bicycle from the friend's place I sometimes thought I saw people in the shadows. That they might actually have been real people is another matter. It was Saturday and 2 AM, so it was absolutely possible.

Ah, well. Now I'm finally off to sleep. Hopefully I'll have a quiet night of dreams.

Beacon

I'm beginning to get a little bit worried about my dreams.

I've always considered myself very good at remembering my dreams, but lately I've been able to remember my dreams every single day for over two weeks. And the bad thing isn't that I can remember it all, but that I'm beginning to confuse parts of them with reality. They're all about my life here at university at the moment. And while some of the dreams are weird (like people competing in the Guiness World Records for the title of "World's Biggest Drinker" or asking me to make them green pasta), others are way more realistic.

Just this evening I dreamt I was reading in our cell biology book. And I remember what I read. It's scary, because I don't think what I read was actually true. It had to do with gene expression being connected to a group of Rho and Ras GTPases and kinases, respectively. I mean, come on, wtf is this. What kind of sick dream is that.. Ah, well, I guess I'm finally going insane?

On another note, I got a little further in Eternal Sonata yesterday. And I have my second Japanese class tomorrow that I'm really looking forward to! I've learnt half of the katakana (one out of two Japanese phonetic alphabets) already in just this one week by practicing a bit during lectures, and I'm quite proud of that =). I'm also going to the theatre this Friday with two friends, and that's gonna be really nice. I've never been to the theatre before, so I'm sure it will be quite an experience!

This Friday I had a huge dinner at my place with a friend. It consisted of entrecôte, french fries, bernaise sauce and everything. Quite exquisite. Afterwards I was invited to a concert by a group named Infernal. I kind of wanted to go, but because I had plans the following day plus a built-up lack of sleep I decided not to go.

The following day, Saturday, I went to that birthday party. I managed to get lost twice on the way there (I travelled by bike). And on the way home again (around 1 o'clock) my GPS had somehow lost its battery, so I had to go all the way on memory. And my visual memory sucks. But anyway, I made it spectacularly well. And because of that experience, I can now find my way there again without any help :D. The birthday party was really fun too. Got to talk to a lot of people and had lots of nice (free :P) food and wine.

On a more general note. I kind of feel like I'm moving in shadows. That is to be understood that time is moving without me being able to see anything. These days are kind of fleeting. The weekends disappear, and there are not that many days I can truly single out from the others. It's weird, because new, distinct things are happening every day. I hope it's not this way it feels to become old :P. Meh.

Merlin is a protein

Don't believe the title? Then look here. Kind of a ridiculous name to give a protein, but what the hell :P. I've seen worse names.

Methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenylalanylalanylglutaminylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolylphenylalanylvalylthreonylleucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylserylleucyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanylglycylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolylphenylalanylserylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthreonylisoleucylglutaminylasparaginylalanylthreonylleucylarginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylglycylvalylthreonylprolylalanylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionylleucylalanylleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonylisoleucylprolylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginylleucylvalylphenylalanylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylglutamylphenylalanyltyrosylalanylglutaminylcysteinylglutamyllysylvalylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleucylvalylalanylaspartylvalylprolylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolylphenylalanylarginylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylalanylprolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleucylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylaspartylaspartylaspartylleucylleucylarginylglutaminylisoleucylalanylseryltyrosylglycylarginylglycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylserylarginylalanylglycylvalylthreonylglycylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginylalanylalanylleucylprolylleucylasparaginylhistidylleucylvalylalanyllysylleucyllysylglutamyltyrosylasparaginylalanylalanylprolylprolylleucylglutaminylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylserylalanylprolylaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylalanylisoleucylaspartylalanylglycylalanylalanylglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycylserylalanylisoleucylvalyllysylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisoleucylglutamylprolylglutamyllysylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalanylvalylglutaminylprolylmethionyllysylalanylalanylthreonylarginylserine for example is worse.

I couldn't even bother to colour all the 267 amino acids that make up this thing. As you can see, I gave up after colouring ten.
Luckily some clever people have decided to shorten it to tryptophan synthetase A. For which I am quite grateful.

Be happy I didn't write up the scientific name for the protein titin. That one has 189819 letters.

I've now been at university for one and a half week of my second year. And I've decided to go to Australia to Monash University for the first semester of my third year. It's quite a process to apply for this, and right now I'm going around asking teachers to write a letter of recommendation for me (which the universities need). So far I've gotten 1 out of 4, that I plan to get. By the end of this month I need to have gotten at least 2 as well as having researched exactly what courses I want to take at the university, plus writing an essay about why I should be the one to be accepted to the university. Meh.

I've also met the freshmen who started on my course this year. They seem alright, even though according to the tutors from my year, the girls (who outnumber the boys 5 to 1) are skanks. Yep. And they sure can drink :P. Last Friday I drank shots with two of them, and omg they're crazy :P. That night was generally pretty weird. I ended up missing the last night bus at 5.30 and had to take a taxi home. Never tried that before, and it wasn't especially fun. Luckily I shared with two other people, so it didn't cost me a fortune. I slept until around 4 the next day. Meaning my Saturday was kind of lost. And I can't really remember what I did Sunday. Fact is, I'm way behind with the reading. But I'm trying to catch up now.

I also had my first Japanese course yesterday. It was kind of fun. But it annoyed me that I already knew everything we were taught. And the next lesson we're having I know all the stuff as well (the use of the particle "wa" and the word "desu"). But I'll see what happens. Some of the people there were REALLY weird. So I don't feel so weird when I'm there, lol. It's also weird that nearly everyone there also knows some Japanese like me and watch anime. I'm really not used to that. And it freaked me out that an emo guy dressed entirely in black with black coloured hair who sat in front of me to the right, kept looking back at me during the class. Scary. I haven't really talked with any of the others yet, but I plan to do that next time. The trouble is that we don't really get breaks, so we don't have that much of an excuse to talk. Maybe group work will be introduced though, and that should be alright.

The first thing we had to do in the class was tell the others why we had chosen Japanese. The weirdest explanation came from a guy whose job it was to program. He told us that while he programmed he had a second screen beside him which would play television series. And since he had now watched about every long English series that existed, he had turned to Japanese anime. The only trouble was that he had trouble programming while also looking at the subtitles. So now he wanted to learn Japanese so he wouldn't have to look at the subtitles all the time. Yep.

As the last thing that I'm going to bother to recount, we had some quite weird lectures these past few days. We tested some kind of new lecturing system, where we're each given a kind of remote control, with numbers on it. During lectures, multiple choice questions suddenly pop up, and we have to press the button that we think corresponds to the answer. It's actually really fun, and makes you not fall asleep and actually listen. I really hope they're going to implement it.

Finally, I'm getting a bit tired of those annoying spam mails, that claim to give you such amazing "opportunity". I don't know how many people from Nigeria who have offered me millions, if I would just help them transfer money to some weird bank account. I've also won the British lottery about five times now, I think.