A listing of topics covered in my classes this quarter. I'm really wasting time before it's right to cook dinner. Going to make 3 dishes tonight. A) Pan fried sole fillet B) Xiao bai cai in oyster sauce C) Cubed potatoes with peas and carrots

Speaking of fillets.. haha.. yesterday when i was grocery shopping at my local market, i saw a new fish on sale. They were selling sand dabs (these are small flatfish, not unlike plaice and sole.. much smaller than those two though, and they are game fish, i.e. caught by line fishing). Anyway, i asked the guy how i should cook the fish.. remember this is a small supermarket and i frequent the place weekly. He had no idea too, coz he never tried them too. Anyway, before the sand dabs, i had already asked for 1/2 lb of squids... and he had packed them and priced them for me already. SO, i said.. let's have 1 fillet and i'll try it out. And he asked for my squids back and he unpacked them and slip in the sand dab for me FOC. Hohoho...

OK, it wasn't a big fish... probably cost around 2-3 bucks.. but still. And he told me to tell him how it turns out.

So, it is a very bony fish. Very bony. Reminiscent of freshwater carp. Plus it's small.. so practically there's little flesh. It is yummy though.. quite like sole and plaice.. not so firm-fleshed as salmon and cod, and neither that flaky as the tropical fish we get... Not likely to buy it again though. TOO MANY BONES. No wonder it isn't very popular in Western culture, who aren't very happy to deal with bones. That's why it's rare to see whole fish for sale here.

Biosci 121: Biogeography

1. What is Biogeography
2. The physical setting
3. The Geographic Range
4. Distribution of communities
5. Dispersal
6. Speciation
7. Extinction
8. Plate Tectonics
9. The Quaternary
10. Geography of diversification
11. History of Lineages
12. History of Biotas
13. Island Biogeography: Species richness
14. Community Assembly
15. Gradients of diversity
16. Biodiversity and extinctions
17. Conservation biogeography
18. Biogeography of humanity

Biosci 250: Human Behavioural Biology

1. The evolution of behaviour
2. Molecular Genetics
3. Recognising relatives
4. Behaviour genetics
5. Ethology
6. Neuroscience and endocrinology
7. Chaos, cellular automata and neural nets
8. Aggression, competition, cooperation
9. Sexual behaviour
9. Parental behaviour
10. Language
11. Stress and fear
12. Schizophrenia and depression
13. Religious belief
14. Personality
15. The biology of individual differences

Biosci 257: Plant Biochemistry

1. Auxin & Protein degradation
2. Photoreceptors
3. Plant Lipids
4. Photosynthesis & Stress
5. Brassinosteroid signalling
6. Sugar Transporters
7. Plant cell walls
8. Disease resistance responses

Polisci 4: Intro to Comparative Politics

1. What is Comparative Politics?
2. Political Institutions, Development and non-development
3. Property Rights, authoritarianism and economic growth
4. Nationalism, identity and the state
5. State making and war making
6. The colonial Legacy and the state: Can the European 'miracle' be emulated?
7. When the State fails
8. Reconstructing failed states
9. Democratic institutions and their establishment
10. Corporatism: the organisation of economic interests in advanced industralized economies
11. Communist, one-party states: the Soviet Union to Russia
12. Variation in Democratic Institutions
13. State Budiling by Design
14. State formation, development and democracy