New Zealand

And I went back in New Zealand again, for the second time this year. This time around was to travel around the South Island. This trip was a house trip as I went with two of my housemates, Hong and Amy. Too bad the other two housemates gotta work :P. So, we did a loop around the island (represented by the yellow line).

DAY 1

As soon as we touch down at Christchurch airport, we picked up the car and started heading south. The first destination was Lake Tekapo. By the time we reached, it was already dark. Couldn't see anything and there wasn't much to do. Had a taste of a proper winter :P

DAY 2

We woke up early with hope to watch sunrise. But to our dissapointment, it was cloudy. Nonetheless, the scenery was still amazing. The photos say it all.

As we were about to leave Lake Tekapo, it snowed!! Never have I seen snow, what more experiencing snow falling. The timing was just right.

We then continued our journey down south, driving cautionly. After all, it was first time driving in the snow :P. On the way to Dunedin, we stopped by Moeraki Boulders.

We reached Dunedin by midday and decided to visit the Cadbury factory. Each of us came out of the factory with a bag of chocolate :P

On the way to Otago Peninsula for our accomodation, we detoured to the Larnach Castle. It was snowing again!! We took pictures until it was too dark for anymore activities.

We stayed at a Lodge that night. It was one of the best budget accomodation I have ever stayed in. It was a complete house, just too bad we didn't have much food to have a feast. We had the whole place to ourselves :P

DAY 3

After a good night rest, we went to the tip of Otago Peninsula.

We headed back to Dunedin and walk around. We visited University of Otago as well. Amy and I were supposed to study there initially but we went to UQ instead. Haha.

It took us a while to find Baldwin Street. It is certified as the world's steepest street. Quite cool.

Done with Dunedin, it was a long drive to Te Anau. Nonetheless, the scenery wasn't dissapointing. A lot of 'wowness' and 'omg-ness' along the way. Haha. Everything was just simply amazing. We detoured to Lake Waihola. It was pretty.

We stopped for a night at Te Anau. The weather wasn't very good. The road to Milford Sound was closed due to bad weather and snowing. We were quite worried but nothing could be done as we would only find out about the road condition the next day. Just hope for good weather tomorrow.

DAY 4

The weather improved the next day. The road was scheduled to be open at noon. We got onto a tour as we did not want to take the risk of getting stuck there if the weather turned bad. So while waiting, more pictures of Lake Te Anau.

On the way to Milford Sound. The journey was splendid. Beautiful scenery.

Mirror Lake

The cruise

Milford Sound cruise. One magnificient view.

Due to heavy snowing the night before, the snow was one of the thickest in recent years. It has never been so white. I was lucky as our timing was just in time for the best condition. We took the opportunity of play with the snow.

DAY 5

Queenstown. As all 3 of us have different interest, we split up and spend money on different activities. Haha. Hong decided to walk around Queenstown and snap more photos. He also took the gondola up to get a better view of Queenstown. Amy decided to go for horse-riding to Glenorchy, which was the site of Isengard for Lord of the Rings.

And I went for Canyon Swing. Initially I wanted to go for the Nevis Highwire Bungy. But after much contemplation, I decided to try something different. As I have tried bungy at Lake Taupo, the swing would be something different. I just love adrenaline rush. I actually didnt feel scare. Maybe I have done too much jumping :P. I did two swings; one with a hand stand and another on a chair. Cool.

One night in Queenstown and another night at Frankton. More lakes to witness. This time was Lake Wakatipu.

Once again our timing was perfect. That night was the official opening of the Queenstown Winter Festival. We joined the crowd to celebrate and watched fireworks. New Zealand prime minister, Helen Clark was there to officiate the festival. So unexpected.

DAY 6

We visited Deer Park Heights as recommended by Joo Ann. It was much more fun than I expected. There were many spots for us to take more beautiful pictures. We spend more time there then planned as everyone was enjoying themselves. And there was the feeding animal part. I was pretty afraid of the alpaca. As they were almost my height and they came close for food, I felt like they were gonna kiss me anytime. Haha.

Next destination was Wanaka Puzzling World. I was left in the maze all by myself as both of them took the shortcut out. Boohoho :P

And there was Lake Wanaka. We had lunch by the lake.

A random pitstop along the way. Waterfall...

Finally, we got to witness sunset. The weather was much better in the westcoast. It was gloomy during the first few days of our trip and have not seen much of the sun. It was the perfect sunset. Another good timing.

However, two unfortunate incident happen after that. First, we ran over a rabbit. It came out from nowhere. And as we were speeding and it was dark, it was pretty difficult to avoid it. Luckily rabbit is a pest in New Zealand. Then, somehow we punctured our fuel tank. It was leaking all the way but luckily we were not far from our destination. By the time we reached Fox Glacier for accomodation, it was already late. Our car could only be repaired the next day. There were some tension in the air.

DAY 7

The car was send for fixing first thing in the morning. Luckily we bought insurance when renting the car, so it was fully covered. While waiting for the car to be fix, we went to Fox Glacier. I would love to do the glacier walk next time.

By noon, everything was settled and we could continue on with our journey. Thank god. We drove to Hokitika and Greymouth. As it was a Sunday, not much shop was open and there were nothing much to do in those town. So we decided to continue driving to Punakaiki.

Punakaiki was beautiful. I reckon it was much better than the 12 Apostles in Melbourne and Moeraki Boulders. I think many of the New Zealanders did not even know about it or have visited it because it was out of the way. But I would strongly recommend visiting it. The waves were strong and could even feel splashes of drops of water. I could stand there for ages looking at the waves and waiting for it to splash :). Furthermore, the combination with sunset at the background was just perfect. My favourite!!

DAY 8

After a night at Punakaiki, we stopped by Greymouth for branch. We then drove through Arthurs Pass back to Christchurch, completing our loop. Stopped by Castle Hill. My second time there. Haha.

We arrived Christchurch earlier than expected. I managed to find our way to Raymond's place. Could still remember. I was back to a familiar place once again. Haha. He showed us around Christchurch city. It felt nice to be back in Christchurch experiencing a different season. The lookout of Christchurch city, a place I did not visit during my first time there.

DAY 9

On our way to Arthurs Pass, we stopped by for some pie. Yum yum. We went to the Devil's Punchbowl. It was magnificient. The waterfall wasnt frozen much but that would do.

On the way back, Ray made a pitstop for us to play with more snow as we dont get this kinda chances in Australia, Brissy especially. Haha.

Then we headed to Taylor's Mistake. This time around, I walked further ahead than the last time. Haha. It was then followed by dinner at Q-Pot and witnessing Ray's practice dance. You guys were great! Casino was the last place we went to for this trip before heading home early next morning.

Thanks a lot to Ray for being a great host, sparing time to bring us around and not to forget sending me to the airport in the wee hours of the morning again. Waiting for you to come over to Brissy (if you ever planned to).

And with that, I have completed the whole New Zealand; both north and south island. Yahoo!!

The List

Normally is the countdown to the number of exam papers left or countdown to the days of freedom. But this time around, I wasn't counting down any of those. Just having two papers on two consecutive days, nothing much to count down for. Instead, I was counting the number of movies and drama series I have finished since the last day of semester. I think I have watch much more movies/series in this two and half weeks period than the whole semester. Lol. So just gonna list it down for fun. Haha. Movies P/S I Love You What Happen in Vegas Untraceable My Mom's New Boyfriend Training Day Varsity Blue Chasing Liberty The She Found Me Jumper The Bucket List Hacker The Interpreter Underdog Kung Fu Panda Watched in cinema Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Sex and the City TV Series Season finale of: Grey's Anatomy House MD One Tree Hill How I Met Your Mother Season 1 of: Gossip Girls Sex and the City Half way through 60 episods of: The Drive of Life (canto) There were times that I ran of things to watch and just dig out anything I could find. Every trip to IH to download from the intercollege network have been exciting. Haha. A quote from Kung Fu Panda:

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift.

That is why it is called the present

Oil Price

Multiple choice

What do you do when you noticed your friend's behaviour/mood changed all of a sudden? A. find out what is going on with their life and try to help if there is a problem B. give them some space and time and then approach C. wait until they come to you with their problem and in the time being, act like nothing happen D. not bothered with the change in behaviour/mood as it does not concern you What do you do when you are not happy about someone? A. confront that person and let them know what you are unhappy about B. keep quite but it shows in your face C. unhappy at that moment but forget about it soon after D. compliant to other people What do you do when you realize you are not treating others nicely? A. apologise and try to make up for it B. just treat them nicer from this point onwards C. feel bad but not bothered to do anything about it D. some people are just not worth it, so continue treating them badly What do you do when you realize your relationship with a friend is growing apart? A. put in afford to make arrangement to meet up and catch up B. give them a call on the phone or start a chat on msn C. can't make any time to meet up as very busy with work currently D. not bothered to meet up as there are other better things to do What do you do when you have a conflict of interest with a person? A. open to discussion and try to work out the best outcome together B. accept the other person's opinion and respect the decision made without compromising your own stand C. get a second opinion for a third party D. convince that person that your way is better I wouldn't say there is a right/wrong answer for each question. Each and every answer may be correct depending on the situation and the person you are relating to. In a certain situation, "A" may seem more appropriate but "B" may not be incorrect as well. It depends on how you set your priority, which is more important to you. Some answer may seem inappropriate or mean, but it may be the optimal solution in real life. Life is harsh and sometimes you gotta make decisions that you are not really keen on to survive.

TDM vs TCI

Therapeutic drug monitoring refers to individualisation of dosage by maintaining the plasma drug concentration within the therapeutic window. The correlation between drug plasma concentration and desirable response is much better than the correlation between dosage and response. This is due the variability between individual patients in drug response. TDM is useful for drugs that have: - large pharmacokinetic variability - narrow therapeutic index - desired therapeutic effect difficult to monitor - used for prophylaxis Nonetheless, toxicity may occur within this "range" as this range provides the highest probability of beneficial response with the lowest probability of side effects. The therapeutic range is not individualised and the patients are treated according to the population range and not own response. It is more concerned with maintaining within the range than response. Target concentration intervention revise the dosage in order to obtain the best response. Initial loading dose and maintenance dose are calculate using the population pharmacokinetic parameters to achieve a target concentration. The plasma drug concentration is then measured and used to predict the individualised pharmacokinetic parameters for the patient. Based on the patient's response, a new target concentration is obtained and the dosage is adjusted accordingly. TCI accounts for inter-subject variability. Nevertheless, TDM is widely used in patient monitoring. It is a valuble tool in assessing the drug therapy and protecting against toxicity. p/s: This is what you get from not wanting to study but feel guilty for slacking too much. Haha.

What do you do best?

What is your best quality about yourself? Playing computer games; sports (badminton, swimming, tennis etc); instruments (piano, guitar etc); drawing, singing; cooking, baking; photography, camping. Or something more abstract like public speaking, friendliness, time management, being organized. Or anything else. Yet a simple question as this seems difficult to me. I don't know what am I good at. I am never excel in one area. I just know a little of somethings. It is good but also bad. It then make me seems like I don't really know myself. Who am I? Why don't I have something that I am really passionate about? Or is there one but I am just not realising it? Anyone care to point out? I can't think of something that I am really obsessed about. Hmmm I remembered those schooling days where we were so obsessed about a particular celebrity/artists that everyone knows about it. We will know every single detail about our idol, having posters of the same face covering every single wall in our rooms, even having pictures of the celebrity in our purses. Then there were all the autograph books where friends would paste pictures of our favourite celebrity in it. Not to forget our nicknames were the names of the idols and even having email address with their names in it. Haha. The good old days. Anyway, my point is even back then I wasn't so crazy about a particular artist. I did have some favourites but come to think about it, it might be more of peer pressure than actually liking them. Lol. The only thing I can think off is I will be a good mother. Wahahahaha. Is not something I am good at currently but hopefully in the future. This is based on the number of 'kids' I had back in college. Practically, about quarter of the Chinese in AUSMAT were my 'kids'. Haha. Suddenly, I was everyone's "A mak". And there were a few occassions where people "yes mum" me here in Australia. OMG. I don't know what I did that got me into this label. Maybe I nag people too much like their mums. Oppsss. Haha. I am done with 'mothering' people for the time being until I have my own children =P So yeah, what are you good at? I will try to figure out what I do best. Damn. Is tough.

Friends

There will be time when friends surprise you. You will never expect yourself to have so much to discuss about or so much in common with some friends. Until something happen, sometimes it is the unexpected people that you turn to. It is only then you will discover more about your friend. Maybe because you share the same goals or same opinion about something with a not-so-close friend that makes it more comfortable to talk to them. Maybe in this situation, they will understand you more than others. Some friendship grows deeper. Creating a beautiful, genuine connection. Giving more support, sharing more love. It is also sometimes good to talk to an old friend. You might find yourself talking about things that you never talked to them about before. You might have not keep in touch with them for a long time, but you might be surprised how much comfort they can give you. Changes happen with time. Everyone changes. Even friendship changes. Some for the better, some not so. Give everyone a chances and you might be surprise what you will find out.