what do you think of accent snobbery? this highly exaggerated meaningless but flowery blabbering ties ups nicely with stephen fry's remark "I shouldn’t be saying this, high treason really, but I sometimes wonder if Americans aren’t fooled by our accent into detecting a brilliance that may not really be there."

and hugh laurie dated emma thompson...!

the microcentrifuge that i usually use was occupied, so i walked over 2 bays to use another one. and as i was pressing the open button i realised that it looked exactly the same as the one Wei had. the one that was broken. my heart literally missed a beat (:p). i know before i left san diego i said i wasn't sure if i was going to missed anyone or anything there, but sometimes nostalgia creeps in without me even noticing it.

So earlier this week it occurred to me that the word "aggregation" and "gregarious" should've come from the same root "-greg-". since aggregation means to form a clump/group, and to be gregarious means to be sociable, then the root should mean something to do with "coming together" or "socialising". which means it might have been intentional that the lead role gregory house from the show house m.d. be named "gregory", for the purpose of irony.

second that occurred to me this week. the chinese call hospitals 医院，meaning institutions where medics/cures are found. the japanese call hospitals 病院, meaning institutions where patients/diseases are found. the difference between the two cultures in composing phrases perhaps shows something quite fundamental about each culture's attitude towards the normal/abnormal/norms. could it mean that the chinese are more interested in corrections of the sick/deviants while the japanese are more interested in concentrating the sick/deviants. either way sounds less comforting than the english word "hospital".

and it looks like i'm unable to write long posts anymore...and milo with coffee is great.