Had lunch with Queenie from UCSD yesterday. She's on exchange and taking a semester in NUS. Of all places, Singapore. It was by accident that I discovered that she's in Singapore, and yup so we had lunch and I found out what she thinks about here. I'm really shocked to find out that her grades will be transferred back to UCSD as grades, not just P/NP. Tough for her then. Ed says Singapore is boring, cos it's so small. Does that make Singaporeans boring too?

My brain's not working lately, got off the elevator at the wrong floor yesterday and walked into the floor before realising that it's not my floor. I was wondering why I got the weird look from that lady. Then I got off at the wrong MRT stop when I went to meet the Assers, but luckily I noticed that the place looked unfamiliar before I exit the gates, and I just hopped back onto the next train. And I added my reaction into huge tubes instead of tiny pcr tubes just now when I was trying to do PCR. Luckily I realised before I try dumping the tubes into the machine.. Absentmindedness. Getting old.

Assers outing. Great to see everyone again. We are really crazy. They make me laugh so much. Embarrassed ourselves by asking the waiter to reheat our half-eaten muffins. Cherading with each other. FFs everywhere we go. Went esplanade and had a few wonderful rounds of bridge and asshole daidi. Had a great evening.

Was discussing about beliefs with Guoji. I said I believed in "wo3 jiao4". He said the society is created to suit people who believed in themselves. Those with self-confidence always win. And we are indeed "shens" who have created a new world. The virtual world. He speculates that one day we will all live in the virtual world because it's a world that we created, it's the perfect place in our minds. I said that the virtual world can never be real because you can die in a RPG and be reborn and try again. He said, "The character that you're playing doesn't know that he can die and start over again. He thinks he will die and that's it. How do you know that you are not just a character in the real world?"
Moral of story: Kill yourself and find out if you have another life

Fireworks and Singapore

Fireworks Festival, a photographer's dream. They tell you exactly where the fireworks will come from, when it will come and even make an announcement right before they start. Too bad I didn't get many good pictures, maybe a total of 5 proper pictures from all the rounds of fireworks I went for, at least I had a good time admiring the fireworks. =) Happy National Day.

Karaoke yesterday. Crazy. From 11 to 6pm. Absolute madness. I didn't know we could last that long, but it was shiok. The guys were as usual hilarious and wow, some people can really sing.

US people are leaving.. already. Slow down time. I don't want people to leave yet. I don't want to leave yet. Well, I do know people who are waiting desperately to get back.. people who are bored stiff here and can't wait for US.

"Not everything that's supposed to work will work. Welcome to the world of Science."
Isn't Science supposed to be absolute? If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Why is it so fuzzy?

"Me: Should we do phDs?
A: No!.. Oops, that was too fast a response"

"Don't complain about the system. Work around it. Or change it."
"Your goal is to get drunk at least once in your undergrad life. You must know what it feels like." erps, no thanks.

Sarah asked if I'll miss my RI and lab after I leave, I didn't have an answer for her yesterday, but I know today that my answer will be yes. I'll miss bickering with teh-c, trying to read in the students' office, sudokus and connect-fours, running errands in BSF, running off to Synapse when I'm free to play table tennis or to play, lunch with a whole group of people.. And of course i'll miss the time I spend in the lab. I am getting attached to the lab..

Respect. For my lab people. For my supervisor who can conduct a few experiments simultaneously; for always preparing everything perfectly for me so that whatever I need, it'll be right there in front of me, even though I didn't even realise that I'll need the thing; for doing things with such precision and skill; for planning everything so perfectly that they all happen at good times. Really appreciate that after working with Dave. I suddenly think that it's so hard to be doing research, where do you find out what to do? What happens if you're stuck? What happens if something is unsuccessful even though everything you've done is right? Who can you ask? Who can help? Where do you get the ideas on where to start in the first place? Where will my christina be? If you just throw me there with a project right now, I'd probably wouldn't be able to do anything.. I need to build up my inventory of experimental methods and improve my skills dramatically.

It's late. Seeing dentist tmr morning, sleeping now. I still have things to blog about, about my school.. Next time then. Nite.

Nothing I'm doing is working. Absolutely nothing. So far we've got 1 gene cloned, and it was done by Christina.. What is wrong with me? I'm not even doing anything remotely difficult, why am I getting such terrible results? I seriously wonder if I've chosen the right career.. if I can survive this career at all..
No point complaining. I should do something. Undergrad is time to prac all the lab techniques so that I'll be a pro when I grad. man, That's just my excuse. A shen once said that it's all about passion. Passionate about cloning? I'll try. I have to get something out of this 8 weeks.

Politics are also puzzling me. Who's with who against who what where? Especially when I don't catch every word cos I'm not listening hard.. People seemingly nice to each other says nasty things behind their backs.. Or I'm missing something out again?

On a different note. Touched a microscope for the 1st time today since A levels. So much for being a bio major. Almost forgot how to use one, how to find the best picture with best resolution, kind of like photography.. Microscope is fancy, very fancy, and the microscope guy is obviously super proud of it. But sadly, think I screwed up again.. D***, how can she trust me if I screw every single thing up? But how can I not screw things up if I don't know exactly what I'm doing? I need a nice long planned talk with her.. only I don't know what to say..

Outing with CBs on Sunday was fun. It's really good to be with everyone again, listening to everyone's crazy talks. Karaoke was fun, but the sit down and talk after dinner was even better. We should get together again.

Visited Yamaha and the class on Sun. Saw a list on the wall, Jasmine is still around, taking sat. Wonder if she needs a temp temp pianist..

Gosh, i really need to find out what's wrong and talk to her.. Come on, take charge for once, won't you?

I'm glad I have a hardworking mentor, cos that means that I won't be that slack.. I'm either working super fast to finish something or slacking around doing nothing.

I've suddenly lost the ability to blog. Always stare at this box and don't know what to write.

The problem with work is that it's compulsory. I feel that I have to stay there from morning to evening even though I have nothing much to do, i don't like this feeling. School is compulsory, but it's only for a few hours at a time, I have much more free time to choose to do work or not. Guess I'll have to get used to work. And stop screwing up the little things that I need to do.

SIngapore is small. Every time I go out, I see someone I didn't plan to meet.

Check out my photos down the page.

Europe Trip

Highlights:
1. Watching Les Miserable and Phantom of the Opera musicals. Very well-spent 35pound.
2. Flamenco show in Seville
3. Alhambra in Granada
4. Losing my best friend to the wind in Sierra Nevada and nearly losing ourselves too
5. Gaudi's architecture in Barcelona
6. Lots of daidi and floating bridging, with a bunch of crazy people
7. Being freakos everywhere we go and attracting stares

Experiences:
1. Watching the woman close the gate right in front of us and the guy tells us that we are late for our train when the train is right there and we were at the most 1 second late.
2. Buying the train tickets for the wrong day (sorry, that's my fault, didn't check my dates properly)
3. Walking lots of extra distance because of lousy navigation (mostly my fault too, esp that day in Granada after Alhambra, I gave up navigating after a while and let christine and bao do it)
4. Lying blatantly to hotel staff about the no. of people staying in our rooms.
5. Getting a whole uncut orange as the dessert when I asked for fruits.

Many times in the trip, I thought that all our motives in the trip are different and everyone is compromising to everyone else, but I guess that's life. We needed everyone in different ways and everyone must give way to other's wants..

Scroll down for pictures. Uploading them bit by bit, very very slowly.. so check here often

Back in Singapore

Singapore.. after 10 months. I thought I would feel completely at home, but there's still a slight tinge of unfamiliarity, of strangeness. The weirdest thing is probably that everybody speaks Singlish, ok that's not supposed to be surprising, but I feel strange when working people, like sales people and immigration officers at the airport speak perfect Singaporean English. I'm somehow surprised that they don't even attempt to speak less singaporean-accented English. I guess it's just me who has changed and started noticing these things.

2 days after I've arrived. I can get used to this life. Slack, sleep.. There's much more entertainment here than I have in SD any day.

Europe pictures and travelog will be up soon. Right now there's something buggy about this comp and I don't like to do much things with it. I'll post pics and stuff after I've fixed this thing.

I'm back people. Date me. Show me Singapore. =)

Barcelona Day 2

First time I see someone busking with a harp.


Big Picasso drawing on a building


3 people protesting outside the city hall


Buskers. Very nice music




Roman walls


Gaudi's architecture. This Gaudi is strange, he doesn't like straight lines cos he says nature is not straight. So everything he builds is wavy. Feel sad for his engineers. This is one of his masterpieces.

Barcelona Day 1

Chocolate Museum