Aiyah, missed the lunar eclipse. Even after Jane reminded me.

Oh wow. Blogger supports video uploading. How cool.

Lab dynamics are way too dramatic. My goal in this lab has changed. I'm pretty sure that publishing is out of the question, I'm not even sure how good my rec can be at the end. So the goal now is to learn troubleshooting techniques and people skills. Make friends. Do well in GRE, make sure I make good enough impressions on my teaching professors to get fantastic recs. If expts don't work, why should I stress over them? It's not like I'm going to get any amazing results anyway. Take things easy and focus more on life.

"You can't always be nice and gentle in life. Sometimes you have to be strong and angry." ~ Vanetta on making strong strikes in frappes. She's really amazing. I can't believe I can quote so much from a dance class.

It's this thing about attitude. Zhen zhen said some time ago that we have all been conditioned to be workaholics. Once we're free, we feel weird, awkward, want to look for something to do. Right now, lab's filling that space. And I enjoy my rec class so much cos it's somewhere else to focus my energy and attention on, something else that I can work on. People work hard in that class, I think a lot of it is because we're all used to working hard, of trying to be perfect. I'm never good at dance and I'll never be a dancer, but it's great fun now to work at it and feel the improvements. Same with lab, a lot of us are working even though conditions are terrible because of this belief that if we work hard enough, things will go fine. Brute force. K's student should never have stayed for an extra yr, M should leave now, TJ should have left a long time ago, maybe I should have found a way to wriggle into some other lab. But we didn't. Fear of change. Hope that things will get better. Believing that working hard helps. Stumbling blocks that a free soul wouldn't have. What to do?
Check other blog for details.

Photos from LA/ Pasadena trip
http://www.imagestation.com/6127277/3895557167

Harry Potter pictures
http://www.imagestation.com/6127277/3893582438

pictures from Del Mar
http://www.imagestation.com/6127277/3893576975

"Pretend you're confident."
"Think happy thoughts. Think of a day when things went better than expected."
That was so aimed at me. Haha.

We were talking about how americans are brought up to think that they are the best in the world, not completely wrong i guess, in many aspects, they are better than the rest. But we were saying how this attitude of we're the best and we don't need any help isn't exactly the best attitude to take. You get arrogant, close-minded, and stick to your own silly ways. And when you do need help, no one's going to give you any cos you think you're the biggest and mightiest. But then again, when Bush wanted to fight Afghan or Iraq, many countries were supporting him.. including this tiny island in SEA. So, moral of story, don't ever claim that you're the best, or that you know everything, cos you might just find yourself out of friends and out of help when you need it. Just know that you're good, don't have to tell everyone =)

This has nothing to do with pretending to be confident.

Perseids

Woohoo. My first meteor shower! So glad that I'm in the Northern hemisphere now. Went to Torrey Pines Gliderport to watch the shower. It was so cloudy that we almost left, then luckily, it cleared up enough so there's a big piece of open sky above us. And we lay down to watch stars shoot past. Amazing. We counted 15-20 in that 1h that we were there, it's a lot less than what has been seen by others, but we weren't there at its peak, and the sky's not totally clear. And it's amazing enough. When a star shoots by, everyone goes Wooo... Fun spotting them.

It was sufficiently dark enough to see a few things in the sky. I think I had a glimpse of the Milky Way, but I couldn't be sure cos it could be a wisp of cloud. I was looking for the big dipper and didn't realise that it's really low and can't be seen. I was looking for that teapot and didn't realise that it too was low. Too bad my star chart was used as a pillow. Haha. But we saw the summer triangle and some other stuff. I'm pretty sure I saw Pegasus' square. Star gazing is fun. Romantic? No. Not when there are 10 people trying to squeeze onto a tiny mat.

Made a bunch of wishes. Don't think they are coming true. That's sad. Maybe I shouldn't have made wishes on the Indian burial ground.

La Scala

This is where I live. Nice right?



The extreme high ceilings


The view outside. Mormon church in the distance.

July 4th photos

Waiting for the sun to set


Everyone prepared with lounge chairs

I really like my metabolic professor. Ok, this is not the first time I'm saying this. He has good professor-student interaction skills. Anyway, today he was saying how grad school demographics has changed and that nowadays there are a lot more people from liberal arts colleges than from big research universities. And I was wondering what's wrong with people like us from research uni, and he said, "Undergrads in research universities get experience working in labs during undergrad and they get put off by the stressful environment in labs, hasn't your PI put you off yet?"

Hmm.. Is he supposed to?
Then he said, "People compete with each other for authorships, for recognition, and if the PI doesn't deal very well with things like this, the environment can be very stressful".

I totally agree. This authorship thing is too connected to everyone's personal career. It takes too long and too much energy to get a paper and if at the end of the day the effort's not recognised, there's no decent paper, your career is quite screwed. It's no wonder that people fight so much. But then again, that's no reason to be mean, even less reason to step over someone else in the lab..

Sometimes I think these people behave so childishly. Something happens that they don't like and they run off to tell teacher. Man, aren't they embarrassed at their own inability to solve the problems? Not 爽 at people then start shouting at each other, shout until the teacher's office, "-cher, he bully me.." But prof's darn zai. He chased them out and made them settle on their own. Haha.

Many times I worry too much about trying to play the right role in the right place. Should I be a nice appreciative audience, should I be a constructive critic, should I be a robot? Am I out of place? I wonder why I feel such a big need to fit in, or to find the right niche. Sometimes I get confused over what that is. Maybe I should just stop paying so much attention to what I should be, and let it run by feel...

"If you can't remember any of those things, I have one more trick, just think of this: I am going to do it. It's simple but it works." ~Vanetta
It's amazing, and totally unscientific. But it really works.

Wandering around the practice rooms today. Now that I don't have a key, I have to go in the daylight hunting for an empty room with a piano that sounds relatively in tune and doesn't have too terrible a tone. And since my memory's pretty bad, I don't know which room has the good piano and so I opened the first door I see. And there it is, an electronic organ standing there, waiting for me. So I played it. Techniques organ, pretty old, like everything else there, but it's fun. Sadly it doesn't come with a pedalboard, have to reserve it somewhere. I'll do that some day. It was fun playing with registrations once again, feeling organ keys, holding chords again. Suddenly every progression sounds nice. Haha. I'm amazed at how much the electone is conserved from these ancestors.. Same volume pedal, same pitch bend/ rhythm stop footswitch, same knee lever. I need to figure out how to save registrations, maybe my new project should be on an organ instead of a computer.. Exciting. Made my day great despite the lack of colonies on my plates.

I'm ripping 5min worth of dvd and it's taking forever.. sian..

1 word. 1 word made me so happy today. I thought that something's terribly wrong when I saw my dicty clearing bacteria like crazy today. And P seriously sounded like I made a mistake. Then she showed S. S looked under the microscope and said, "phenotype". Yay! How exciting it is if it's a real phenotype! We'll see in a few weeks. I can totally understand why people work on nights and weekends, people work 12h days and 7 day weeks. If there're some exciting results coming up, I'll want to rush it out. If I can save a day by working till sunset, then I'll stay till sunset. But I have no wish or need to be workaholic yet.

Then the skepticism comes, the questioning, the what-if-the-cells-were-bad, what if it's not even dicty.. and so on. Science, we can never trust what we see, can we? I wonder how they communicate on the other side of the lab. Watching them today was really hilarious. People speaking in this language that is not their first language. Sometimes it's exasperating to get a simple point across.

Harry Potter! Can't believe I stayed at the bookstore for 3h waiting for it to be released today. Haha. It was actually pretty fun. People were really excited. The little girls near us who were waiting were like, oh can we ask that guy if we could touch the book?

Looking at the 3f photo on the blog. Even though I haven't seen most of them much since 3f time, somehow I feel that we looked so young in the 3f picture. Maybe it's because I have been looking at people who are older now, or maybe it's just that I've aged.

Having sequences align nicely. That felt so good. Finally got 1 thing working. I'm still admiring it. Haha.

I've always have something to fill up my life with. Something that takes up all the time I have. This summer I'm really free and suddenly I feel this emptiness, what am I going to do with the free time? When I was in Singapore, I always had my organ and tv. For the last 2 years here, well, I've always have some reading to do, and when I do have time, I just sleep or hang out online doing nothing. Now what? Life is getting boring. What is life? How do you live it? man. i'm getting philosophical again. I will read Nietzsche before this summer ends.

I asked a blunt question. I got an answer. Now I'm lost once again. Why did I do what I did? Should I even think so much? On the one hand, I really can't stand some things, on the other.. there was a point in the anser.. haiz.. let's just go strawberry picking.

Talked to this girl from dance today, haha, we had the same experience when we were young, same hair problem, same yelling teachers. I am so glad I switched class. This is getting fun, though I'm pretty sure my enthusiasm won't last the whole quarter.

People have such different lives. Harry has to worry about getting killed by Voldemort and all Ron is worrying about is his Potions finals. Harry looks into the mirror and sees his parents, Ron looks in and sees himself as headboy, holding Quidditch Cup. I feel like Ron. What am I doing every day? Why am I worrying about such trivial stuff?

People are selfish. I want to stop selling fish. What am I doing? Am I that heartless? gws.. for all of us..

Becoming very conscious of race lately. No matter how blind the society tries to be towards colours, people still look at each other as of different races, different cultures. I'm hanging around with too many chinese people, which is absolutely fine with me. I wonder how I'll feel when I go to a place with demographics like those in the midwest, or for that matter, anywhere else except for the West Coast. I don't have this feeling of I'm a different colour when I speak to non-Asians, but I'm pretty sure many of them see me first as a Chinese before anything else. It's like watching some sitcom/ drama, say Friends, and an Asian dude shows up. Not too usual eh? Summer classes. The demographics is even more skewed, 3/4 of the class are Asians, even in my music class. In labs, most if not all the undergrad lab assistants (fly carers, solution makers, autoclave people) are Asians. Someone who's obviously very sensitive to this high Asian population asked me why only Asians want lab jobs. I don't have a good answer except that maybe other people can find more interesting jobs, and that Asians are more likely to take summer classes and stay in San Diego in summer. She wasn't convinced at all.

Went to a picnic with my aunt's family and her colleagues. Her Chinese female colleagues. There are a lot of them. They are all so similar, stay in the same area with the same good schools, have young kids who need to be sent to many different classes everywhere.. Anyway, we had a picnic in a park on July 4th. The Americans next to us bbq-ed strips of meat. The latinos next to them made burgers and hotdogs and chicken. We had a potluck of all sorts of complex Chinese goodies. 粽子, 担担面, 凉粉, 素什锦, 绿豆汤, 杏仁豆腐.. Ok, you get the idea. Food is so much better than burgers, but it's not anything they'll appreciate. Just like how many Chinese never accepted eating raw vegetables.. There is definitely a culture difference that cannot be eliminated.

Last point. This person was saying how she doesn't feel like she's going 'home' when she's going back to her country and visiting parents and friends and so on cos she has no plans to stay at where 'home' is and work there. There's this conflict between integration and preserving the difference. How much should the society force integration and how much should individuals/ peoples retain their own characteristics?

4th of July. My first in this country. Fireworks are not that spectacular. Fireworks festival last yr in Singapore was much more impressive. But this country has really a lot of nationalistic songs. They can last through that 20min of fireworks. And I didn't realise that 76 trombones is an American song. Went to Coronado to watch fireworks. At a resort. There's a guy entertaining everyone before the fireworks and he has a fantastic voice. So had fun listening to him sing with his guitar and had more fun roasting marshmellows making smores =)

Why does the moon look so big when it's rising?

Almost everyone has noticed the same effect: the moon indeed appears larger when it is close to the horizon than when it is overhead. Yet you can prove to yourself that this is strictly an illusion. Hold a dime at arm's length in front of the moon. Regardless of the moon's elevation in the sky, the dime will just cover it.

The "moon illusion," as it is sometimes called, is entirely conjured up by the human brain. There are still several explanations for what the actual process might be -- some contend it's brought about by having terrestrial frames of reference right near the moon when its rising (trees, houses, telephone poles, etc.), allowing the brain to "focus" on it more closely.

Another theory says the illusion centers of the human perception of the sky as an overturned bowl, more distant on the horizon than overhead, which fools the brain into "correcting" the size of the moon for that scenario. In any case, here is a final test to prove that it's all in the mind. When no one is watching and the full moon is near the horizon, bend over and
look at the moon upside down from between your legs (!). The effect vanishes, presumably because you have flipped the scene reaching the brain by placing the horizon above the moon.
http://oldsite.smasweb.org/faq.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/bigmoon_000105.html

Why do male dogs lift up one leg to pee?
Dogs descend from wolves and packs of wolves in the wild have certain territories. They establish their territories by marking the perimeters with urine. They males lift a leg and pee on a tree so any passing wolf will be able to smell it and know he better get out of the territory that isn't his. So it's to pee higher.
As for the females, both cats and dogs, lions and wolves squat. The female doesn't have the dominate role (except in hyena packs) so they don't need to mark their territory like a male does.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070613015514AAdmfGC

Copyright, M.J. Grimson & R.L. Blanton
Biological Sciences Electron Microscopy Laboratory, Texas Tech University

People are how funny. Doesn't this look like a chiobu. Looks even kind of holy.

My pictures from the recent trip

The coast


The gull and Ghiradelli Square


The bike, the bridge and the boat


Crissy Fields

Crissy Fields stream and the world famous bridge

The sunny seaside town of Sausalito. Think of their view. Wow.


kiddies playing


This guy is a rock artist. He makes those hard to balance rock structures.




Sailing club at Tiburon. So many of them, was really scared that the ferry might hit one of them.


The bike parking lot on the ferry. The no. of bikes is pretty impressive.

We just had to try a tour, despite everyone's advice that Chinese tours suck. All they do is drive you to the place, say ok, now everyone get down take photo, then drive you off to the next place. I didn't think that was such a big deal, since I didn't need much hiking anyway. I was more afraid of them dropping us at some expensive cheaterbug souvenir shop and leave us there forever.

The reality was that we did drive a whole lot. And guess what? The driver doesn't know his directions. So we spent forever crusing around trying to find the right highway. Being stuck in a minivan with HK aunties and uncles who complain at every chance and losing your way regularly is not fun. I have absolutely forgotten how good Cantonese or Chinese people in general are at complaining. Even the way they speak normally sounds condescending. Gosh. But at least I can understand what they say..

Highlights of the trip:
1) Crater Lake. It's so blue. So serene. So beautiful. Haha, I had a fortune cookie that day that said that I didn't need to go to the mountains to be myself, that I can be productive in the noise. But the mountain was really beautiful.
2) Caves at Lava Beds. Caves created by flowing lava. Interesting cave structures. Can see how the lava used to flow and how it solidified. It's like history caught in action.
3) Catching up on sleep
4) Biking San Francisco coastline, Golden Gate Bridge and cruising down to Sausalito. That was absolutely the most amazing experience I've had in this trip. Firstly the solidarity was very enjoyable, secondly I got to so many places that I would never have gone if I didn't have a bike, like Presidio, Fort Point, Crissy Field and Sausalito. The experience on the bridge was ok, got some nice pictures. The cruise down to Sausalito was heavenly. For that moment, life is perfect. Downhill from the tall bridge all the way to sea level, between hills and flowers into a quaint little seaside town, kind of like La Jolla, filled with galleries and touristy shops.. And I met a group of NTU girls on exchange in Seattle.
5) Alcatraz. Finally got to go to the rock. This military base turned prison turned national park. The audio tour is fantastic, no wonder it's award winning. The stories are so fun. But life in that jail is really sad. A bed, a toilet bowl, a sink, that's all you get. No privacy, almost no entertainment. And oh, they play bridge when they have the priviledge to. Apparently they think that if you think of bridge all day, you won't be thinking of creating trouble. And being a prison guard must be such a boring job too. The jail is like, well, what Chicago looked like. 3 stories of cages on each side of the walkway.
6) Being alone on a trip. First time ever. Even though it's only for a day and a half. It's a good feeling. I can do all that I want, limited only by how much I want to trouble others to take picture for me and hope that they don't screw it up, limited by how much I dare to do things alone.. But overall it was fun. free. narcissistic. as.
7) Lemon tea. Cocktail bun. Eggtart.

Out of vacation. Back to reality.

I realised that I don't have much time left as an undergrad. I haven't changed my mind about undergrad life. I need to travel more. I can't decide if I should go somewhere that I really want to go, like Yellowstone, somewhere where I have friends right now who will not be there in 2 yrs time, like the Midwest, or do something totally different like go on a totally free and easy trip where I buy a train pass and wander around the country for a few weeks.

My photography skills are going down the drain. Recent photos have been terrrible even though weather has been good. Let's hope I take some nicer pictures in San Francisco.

My socialising skills need terrible brushing ups. And I really really really need to find excuses to socialise with my mentor.. And find a boyfriend.

"i just have this nagging feeling tt once i get back to sg i will feel the peer pressure to conform to whatever norms there are. cf here - there's no need to conform at all because of a clear identity that is distinct from the majority (based on language, colour, culture) and i can be a totally different individual in this society if i so wish to be." ~ hk (copied w/o permission)

Why can't I stop conforming?

Someone actually said they can hear that I'm from Beijing. Wow. I'm amazed. And telling my migration history gets myself confused over my identity again.

I've never been a huge Google fan, I don't go hunting for new Google widgets or anything like that, but I was playing with Google maps today and it's really quite fun. Almost missed my bus because of that. So Singapore's on Google maps and you can go search your house and see it. And yup street view's cool, especially useful since I'm going SF tomorrow.

Now that I've moved in, I realised how huge this place is. It's ginormous. It didn't feel so big when we saw it. I have to walk so many more steps to get from one side of the room to the other. In Canyon Park, when more than 2 people come visit me, there's hardly any space left in my room. Here, well let's just say that I can easily throw a party. The cathedral-like ceiling makes me feel small. Maybe that's how churches intimidate people.

Packing was a chore, moving a pain in every body part, and now there's unpacking and organising to do. The thing about moving to a sparkling new/ clean place is that my stuff are not that clean and new and seem a little out of place. A dusty table in a clean room. Kinda weird. And since the place is so clean, I don't feel good dropping hair all over. Haha. Tired. Sleep. Nite.

I'm running on adrenaline.. Not good. Or maybe it's cortisol, doesn't matter, just not good. Too much free sugar flowing.

Packing and moving are depressing things to do. Leaving one place of settlement for another is a major change, even if i'm using the same bed, same table, same everything.. If it wasn't because I've got tons to do and that there's some house-trashing party later, I would have sunken into depression. Especially with the recent depressing events in lab. Just wait till the adrenaline from exams fall off, when everyone leaves, when life's supposed to go back normal.. I don't know what will happen. P asked me today why I'm going for a holiday. She thinks I'm leaving to take a break from what happened in lab. I told her no. Why am I so defensive? I need to take a break, I need to find something to do, something to distract me from the end of year glooms, something else to worry about than what should I do in a boring house on a boring night. 5 days is pretty short but I hope it's enough, and I pray hard that it won't ruin the relationship btw me and my future housemate. I have a tendency to ruin relationships with roommates on trips.

Moral of story (let's hope the story has ended)
1. Check everything that I'm told, make sure I know as much as the teller knows, stop depending on faith
2. Don't do anything that looks secretive, no secrets, people are too paranoid
3. Join all the cliques, be good friends with ALL, I don't want to be dragged into politics, I'm just an undergrad who has been here for only 3 mths.
4. Learn to talk smoothly. Man I really wished I was some smooth talker yesterday, sweet talk people. I need that skill. The problem with being a good kid when I'm young is that I don't have much experience in trying to sweet talk myself out of trouble.. Never knew what to do under such situations. And people are forcing me to do something.. Aargh!
5. Talk more. If P wasn't so vocal, she would never figure out what we were doing. If I had talked more, these dumb things wouldn't have happened.
6. Grow up. I'm not a kid any more. I can't pretend to be a kid any more. People are putting me in a very difficult spot. Dragging me here and there to talk privately. I need to be an existent, take charge of my life
7. Be an existent! Be myself. Stop being so aware of myself and differences btw me and others. Stop trying so hard to blend in. I'll never blend in totally, should just be different, be individual. Mill says geniuses are the most individual people. So did Nietzsche. I should strive to be a genius, right?
8. Stick with my philosophy. Things are what they are. What's done can't be undone. No one's going to pretend it didn't happen (even though they act like that), live with it. Make the best out of it. End of story.
I'm really glad R is on holiday right now. Don't want to be dealing with another person. So jiayou jiayou, try to get clones before he comes back. =)

That's way too much typing for one post.