so spring break's finally here and i still haven't managed to finish my essays on time and i'm rushing off to toronto tonight before going off to cancun on tuesday and i still haven't bought my train tickets to toronto nor my bus tickets to buffalo where i'll be flying to cancun (but at least i got those plane tickets) and i'm in class now with my bag at home still unpacked and i slept at 5 yesterday which is why i'm rushing through everything today because i woke up late and that was because i was reading manga and watching anime which is what i've been up to for the last 2 weeks which also explains why i've yet to finish my essay and i realise my last few days of cancun accommodation have yet to be booked nor is my diving there but at least my dive gear is on its way to toronto along with my shades which have taken forever to fix or so i hope.

right. more updates in a bit. once i end class.

it seems oddly fitting, that on the eve of chinese new year, i'm sitting in my room at 3am writing my paper on shark legislation. having pored through countless agreements and resolutions on regulatory measures for shark finning and overfishing issues, and looking at statistics and random bits of trivia, i've learnt the following:

1) sharks are apex predators, which means there're very few of them
2) people like their fins, so they get fished a lot. even when people don't mean to catch them, trawlers just happen to drag sharks in
3) there're over 350 species of sharks
4) shark meat is used to make fish and chips in australia and a few other places
5) a dead shark's fin may sell for $100 or so, but a live shark in the bahamas generates $2.3 million in revenue each year
6) whales and dolphins are afforded more protection than sharks because they're mammals and hence considered wildlife, not fish
7) sharks are immune to cancer tumours and heal wounds amazingly quickly, among other things. however, you're as much of an idiot as those cavemen in history that believed eating the heart of your enemy would make you braver if you honestly think that eating shark cartilage will award you the same healing abilities.
8) allowing this trend of overfishing sharks will hurt you in the long run, since sharks get rid of all the sick and diseased fish, so with no sharks, you get more sick fish, and you eat the sick fish and die. that and the fact that the whole food chain will go mildly crazy. like the octopus eating up all the spiny lobsters in Tasmania since no more sharks are left there to eat the octopi. then you run out of nice seafood just because you wanted shark's fin soup. that and the fact that you end up with grumpy divers.

so moral of the story? it's late and i haven't slept and i'm mildly incoherent. plus vastly bored of researching. oh. and don't eat shark's fin for CNY. it's more ecological than not leaving your tap running or half flushing the toilet bowl.

p.s. since it's CNY, i kept it at 8 points. happy chinese new year everyone! (year of the rat!)

amidst researching for my essay (the introduction of which will shortly come up once i've written the basic draft), i got sidetracked by the smithsonian life list. since i've spent time at the smithsonian in DC, the name caught my eye, as well as the items on the list. so here they are, with a quote thrown in for good measure (taken off the site). i skipped the headings and comments, so for the full article and further descriptions, go here.

– Mesa Verde
– Pompeii
– Tikal
– Petra
– Pyramids of Giza
– Taj Mahal
– Easter Island
– The Great Wall
– Aurora Borealis
– Serengeti
– Iguazu Falls
– Machu Picchu
– The Louvre
– Zen Garden of Kyoto
– Uffizi Gallery
– Fallingwater
– Yangtze River
– Antarctica
– Mount Kilimanjaro
– Grand Canyon
– Pagan
– Parthenon
– Angkor Wat
– Ephesus
– Venice
– Amazon Rain Forest
– Great Barrier Reef
– Galápagos Islands

"We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to,"
-novelist Graham Greene

looking at the above list, there're 2 places i've already been to, 2 that i will probably do by the end of exchange, 4 that i hope to have done by the end of exchange, and 2 that i reallyreally hope to do in the near future (if i only had the cash). the rest either don't interest me all that much or i'm in no hurry to do. go figure =P

right, so much for the break...now back to saving the sharks.

spaghetti with prawns

fried rice with random assorted meats

black pepper beef and lettuce

fish and vegetable stew (yeah i just threw in potatoes carrots and lettuce. then very green so i added ham. and there's about a pot of it that i didn't photograph)

baked chicken, linguine with mushrooms