"Ask Dr Rin!"

Haha, that's the title of a shoujo manga I've read about a girl named Kanzaki Meilin who possesses fengshui powers which she uses to help others through fortune telling under the name of Dr Rin. The Japanese title is "Dr Rin ni Kiitemite!".

Anyway, I decided to rename my blog as "dr.rin" for a while, since Rin is my name when written in Japanese and as of Monday (June 18, 2007), I now have Dr as my title, haha!I'm really happy, because for a year or so, I was starting to lose hope that I'd ever get through it! All I can say after Monday is Syukur Alhamdulilah!!! And many thanks to everyone, especially my family and friends, who supported me and kept me sane throughout the torturous postgraduate years!!!

So that's it for my first post after taking a break to study for my Ph.D. viva. I have some photos from the Monday going-ons that I want to put up but I'll do that another time since I have to get cracking at my corrections (Uh-huh, I have them, but then, it's the usual thing! Though I wished I didn't have to do them, haha!). Tschus!

Trip on the River Spree!

Okay, first of all, I think this will be my last post before I immerse myself in the preparation for my viva on June 18 (less than 10 days and counting!!!). Will probably post again with the outcome of this exam!

Anyway, today is also my last day at inLingua, will take up Deutsch lessons again beginning of July. Fortunately, I was able to spend a really enjoyable afternoon with people from my class as well as a few from other classes in inLingua. The school organised a tour of Berlin via a boat along the Spree River. The weather was really sunny and hot, a brilliant summer's day! Took lots of photos, mainly of my new friends, haha.I have too many photos of Berlin!

Here is a photo of the starting point (at Burgstrasse, near Museum Island) of the boat tour:

The following three photos are ones taken on the boat. The first is of Nehabat (she's a new Turkish student in our class, who only started this week), Bekir (also Turkish) and Wisanapat (from Thailand) - all three of them were wearing shades, the cool crowd, haha!

Here is me with Katerina (a Greek photographer) and Wojtek (a Polish artist). We were having a long serious chat about life in Germany, especially Berlin. I said I really liked living in Berlin, but I know my views are a little unrealistic, since I'm a bit "pampered" due to the diplomatic connections. I am constantly sheltered from the rougher aspects of Berlin. However, I think it's not too bad, because I am aware of these aspects, so I don't think my views are that unrealistic, haha!

This is Patricia, a risk prevention expert from Chile. She was enjoying the ice cream sold on the boat. I really wanted one, but I had to resist. I've been eating too much sweet things lately.

After the boat tour, the people from my class and one student from another class (she's actually sitting behind Patricia also eating an ice cream in the above photo - her name is Firyuza from Russia) decided to sit on the grass beside the Spree and have some drinks.

Here's Bekir trying to arrange Patricia's camera in order to get an automatic photo of the group. I think the photo looks really cool!

A candid photo of Patricia doing "camera Tai Chi", haha!

A group photo of "die Frauen". That's Olga (the girl from Belarus), who has her fingers above Patricia's head!

Okay, those were some of the photos I took today. It was great fun, so glad I decided to go! I really like the people in my class! I'm going to miss them the three weeks I'm away from school!

Well, it's time for me to sign off! I will be back in 10 days, I hope with good news! Tschus!!!

DNA = Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid

Science at work?Haha, I got this from Aniki (Japanese nickname for my brother!). It's just a bit of fun, you have no need to register to get your visualDNA deciphered, hehe. Anyway, this is what they think of me:

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

I think my visualDNA is relatively accurate. Why don't you give it a go?

"Creativity is a drug I cannot live without." (Cecil B. DeMille)

Being an artist at heart, it gives me immense hope when I come across the countless creative minds hailing from my homeland.Anyway, I was browsing the blogs of a number of artistic people I've met, one of them belonging to Meela's cousin, Wina (Silly Gooseness). I found a "quotes menu" put together by people involved with "Core Values", including my brother, Haslann and his girlfriend, Rozi.So I decided to post on my blog as well. I've never joined "Core Values" but my brother sings praises about it constantly, hehe. From the results I've seen, I think it's a pretty good course, but I think one must also want to change oneself for the course to be 100% effective!

Anyway, enough advertising, here is the "quotes menu":

Haha, yeah, one of my brother's quotes is there!Do you get what it means? I think I do, but I wouldn't mind your suggestions. And to be honest, when it comes to quotes, sometimes there is more than one way to interpret them! I wouldn't mind getting some feedback for my bro, either! Thanks very much, all!

Day Trip to Leipzig and Dresden.

I can't sleep so I decided to blog about the day trip my parents and I went on to Leipzig and Dresden, both German cities situated south of Berlin. Even though these two cities were both part of former East Germany, there was such contrast between the present atmosphere of these two places! I really like living in Berlin, I guess because I feel it's a rather cosmopolitan city. As a result, my overall feeling of Germany is quite positive, despite the cultural differences in attitudes, etc. However, every so often, my bubble is burst when I'm confronted with news of the current Neo-Nazi movementand controversial attitudes of discrimination towards foreigners (the latter I know to be an aspect that may be present in all communities, to a certain extent).

Anyway, the reason I mentioned this is because I believe we came across such attitudes while in Leipzig. I really did not like the place, the atmosphere just felt weird and tense yesterday. For example, we went into a cafe to have brunch and I felt we were treated somewhat differently, it was extremely subtle but it was there. I wasn't the only one who thought this!Maybe it's like a "small town" mentality, who knows! Whatever it is, it did not give me a good impression of Leipzig. Anyway, don't really want to talk too much about it, since it could all just be in my head. The only thing that I got from the visit was the interestingly designed buildings, shown in the photo below!

So next stop, Dresden! I was so glad to have gone to this city, being in Leipzig left such a bad taste in my mouth, that Dresden was like the delicious sweet that overcame that!Dresden celebrated its 800th birthday last year, I think. It's a beautiful place (with a friendly atmosphere!), well-known for its Baroque architecture, especially in die Altstadt (The Old City) where numerous monumentous religious buildings are situated, such as the Frauenkirche, Kreuzkirche and Hofkirche. The following two photos are of the Dresdner Frauenkirche, which is actually the largest religious building in Dresden. Hence, this city is one of the few places where the Cathedral is not the largest sacred building in a city. You can see my parents and Jun (the driver) in the first photo!

If you look closely at the photos of the Frauenkirche, you can see that the majority of the building is newer in appearance. The dark part is actually the original church but because of the bombings in World War II, many buildings in Dresden were destroyed. Therefore, projects are currently underway in order to reconstruct many buildings to their original state.

The next photos are of die Brühlsche Terrasse (the Brühlsche Terrace) which is built on the banks of the River Elbe. You can see the Hofkirche in the background.

Well, overall, it was an interesting and fun day, despite the initial unpleasantness.I got to spend time with my parents, take a break from studying for my viva and learn some news things about the world, hehe! I'm finally feeling sleepy, so I'm going to sign off now! Gute nacht!

Kawaii emoticons!

Hehe, I was bored and since I've been spicing up my blog, I decided to add emoticons to it. I tried to find scripts for them to add to my raw html source, and the only compatible one I found had icons that were too big to go well with my font size. So I have decided to accomplish "Operation: Emoticons" via the hard way - writing raw html code everytime I want to add an emoticon, I guess the "copy and paste" trick helps as well, hehe! I have now uploaded the emoticons I've chosen onto my webserver. Here are the following emoticons I will use from now on:

smile
grin
wink
huh?
ack!
blush
cry
sad
mad
kiss
nyaaa!

Aren't they just kawaii (Japanese for "cute"!)?Hope you like them too!

New bundle of joy!

Wonderful news! My goddaughter, Erika, now has a new baby brother! Well done to Christinah for all the hard work she put in bringing this new bundle of joy into this world! The new baby has been named Aaron Jamie, which I think are really good names! Congratulations again to Christinah, Andy and Erika-chan! Coincidentally, Aaron now has the same birthday as one of my closest friends, Debbie! :D So Selamat Hari Jadi to Debbie as well!

Anyway, to commerate these two events, I have decided to change the layout scheme of my boring blog, haha. I'm really pleased with the outcome, especially since I was modifying the raw html source of the original template I used. ;D

Okay, time for bed! Ja ne, minna-san!