AH BENG: Eh, don’t be like that lah. You also must understand your girlfriend. Everyday never see you, she also can get fed-up. Keeping girlfriend not easy, you know. Like people make fried rice. Must put the char siew, the onion, the egg, all mix properly. Fire cannot too hot, and must all the time fry (:D). If not, romance sure get burnt. Chao ta. -- Michael Chiang, Army Daze pp. 78
Bundle this together because it's of the same theme:
Haha that's why people call me 'the love guru'. Freaking a lot of theories but no result. Hopefully I have more luck with my experiments... Going to do Western blot on tissues. Hmmms.
Woahhh found millllllionnns of Doraemon episodes on YouTube!!!
Haven't been happier :D :D
Theme song! Haha don't laugh. This is MY childhood :D
Feel a little weird cos it's supposed to be 叮噹,叮鈴,大雄,靜宜,技安,阿福 etc... recently they got changed to really Jap-ish names. Something to do with the author's wish I heard.
Well, it's still the old Doraemon! Haha nothing is changed except the names! Those episodes will take me one whole semester to finish :P
Prof. Tan Chorh-Chuan gave this presentation some time ago to some Duke people I presume. Just take a look at the URL.
Basically he highlighted some important BMS policies in the presentation. According to him, building up our translational and clinical research capabilities is of critical importance (of course it's about the economy and money and IP etc but I won't disagree).
And and, according to the news, they are setting up a new regulatory body to coordinate HR issues between NUH and NUS-SOM. This can potentially lessen the workload of clinician scientists rather substantially - they will still have dual responsibilities but at least they won't be overstretched as much as they are now. Hmms Dr. Berman is a clinician scientist (he's a practising pathologist and he is also my PI), Brian is a practising vet, and both their lives don't look stressful to me? :P
Ok. I am prepared to ride with the wind. I don't mind getting my M.D. in Singapore (which might be better actually if I were to practise in Singapore), on 2 conditions.
1) 11 years of bond is simply too insane. I am not so desperate yet. I can still survive with a PhD only. 2) I want to do my PhD in the US, UK or Europe. For one simple reason: I need a graduate degree from a respectable institution outside Singapore. I might not stay in Singapore forever - who knows what will happen 20 years from now?
And basically Singapore cannot import all our M.D. Ph.Ds - I don't think an American doctor will know how to communicate with a grievous Cantonese-speaking 80-years old auntie that came to the hospital to accompany her husband who is getting treated for some sort of lung cancer. Well, no matter who the patient is Hopkins patients speak English?! And they will be mostly Americans :P
I can imagine how stressed the auntie will be when confronted by this ang moh doctor who doesn't understand her. Worse - she can't understand the ang moh doctor also. It's inevitable for practising clinician scientists to be in contact with patients. Hmmms bottomline is, as we are building up our research capabilities, our standard of care cannot be compromised. It should rise as we become better - if not the efforts will not serve its purpose and will be misdirected.
Singaporean clinician scientists are needed, whether local or foreign trained - and I am insane enough to offer myself to be trained (yeah to most medical students and doctors in Singapore people like me are insane). So train me! All you need to give me is the money. I'll settle the rest :D
Haha regarding Penal Code Section 377A, I realise that Singaporeans have a very strong tendency to confuse issues. Family values have nothing to do with crimalising homosexuality.
Other examples (which I have discussed) include confusing the Singapore government with Singapore as a country, and confusing voting against the ruling party with not being loyal/patriotic.
Singapore really needs to work on this. If we are to truly become a global city our people need to understand these fundamental differences. We need to teach our kids these universal values in addition to our traditional Asian values and religious values (which hmmms I don't think we are very successful anyway).
We can't repeal S377A until Singaporeans can tell that there is a fundamental difference between protecting the family and criminalising homosexuality. If the government forces the repeal it might shaken its authority, and worse still, strengthen conservatism among Singaporeans. The government can choose to enforce the law in a very lenient way, or even not enforce it, but it still can't be repealed yet.
I am sure the government knows this; the dilemma is that the opinion in favour of repealing is also very strong. I think that the government will eventually still decide to keep it, because it has been portraying a conservative image for as long as I can remember, and I am sure they cannot change this overnight.
We can wait, but something serious needs to be done about our national education and the development of a civil society. We cannot allow this kind of confusion to persist.
In Singapore, I have never had a Friday afternoon whereby I have one essay to revise (almost completely), 3 history papers to read and 2 exams to study for.
In Singapore, work has never been stressful so far. Although I might be busy, but I would almost be exclusively working for someone; meaning, I don't have to find literature to read myself, interprete literature myself, design experiments myself, find positive and negative controls myself, etc. All I have to do is just follow instructions and maybe design a bit of experiments.
In Singapore, I know what is going to be on the exams, because there are these things called 'practice papers'.
In Singapore, things come to me by themselves - like the $300 that A*Star just gave me. I don't have to work very hard to get something.
In Singapore, someone would have done all my short-term life-planning for me. I don't have to think about 'what classes to take for next semester' or 'what to do for summer' etc.
Arghh America is not like that. America shows you all the possibilities of life, tells you how good you can possibly become, and all you need to do is work towards it. Though the catch is the 'working' part - you have to do everything yourself. You can choose to enjoy life and slack too - it's just that you know what the outcome will be.
Maybe I am a little too ambitious. If I had only aspired to become a doctor like the one I have been seeing since I was a kid probably my life would have been much easier.
Oh well. There is this cool (yeah glioblastoma is cool - not so much when you actually get it) lab in SICS dealing with brain tumour stem cells. I never knew that someone in Singapore is interested in tumour stem cells - maybe I can work for them during my 1 year RA and help them figure out something (stain for nestin?) :P
I was looking through my previous blog posts on my dashboard and I realise that I blog much more when I am in Baltimore. It doesn't matter whether I am busy or not. I also tend to MSN much more in Baltimore too.
Argh I don't know what that shows. Probably it just shows my strong desire to keep in contact with people :P It's not like my life is very sad these days... I go out quite often? At least studying is not the only thing I do!
Anyway, this is a nice kid's choral version of Kit Chan's 'Home'. Forgive me for posting so many videos because i) YouTube is my main form of entertainment now ii) You can't blame me for being excited over finding out how to embed a video in my blog...
Didn't manage to get my driver's license done - passed everything (yeah with flying colours) but was not allowed to start the practical test because of some problems with my car. It's not the fault of the American bureaucracy; it's more like my fault. I should have been more careful when I parked and I should have checked the conditions required for the vehicle way before today. Well, have arranged for repairs and got another date for the driving test. Hopefully it'll be fine this time.
Zaobao has recently started to offer English translations of its articles for a fee (erm why isn't ST doing the same?). It's great in a sense that it can reach out to a wider audience, but it's just simply too expensive?! It costs like S$454.75 to translate the article that I am going to post below. A bit too insane isn't it.
I don't think any of you is going to actually read it (one thing - it's a political essay in Chinese - and maybe GCS will try, and then he might have something to say depending on whether he feels that it is worth his attention or not :D), but I'm posting it anyway. This article has something to do with what China can learn from Europe regarding political system reforms. Political systems in the European countries have in a large part affected their culture and values; and of course the reverse is also true (or perhaps even more true). Oh well, I like Europe a lot (one reason for keeping me in the East Coast for graduate school :P), so I might be biased, but I do think that their systems can show us how development can be sustainable yet not antagonising cultural heritage and social security. It depends on what you want really - a German postdoc in my lab once said that they don't really mind giving 50% of their salary to the government because they know that they are going to get it back somehow, when they most need it perhaps.
I do know that their systems have intrinsic problems (which can be quite serious), and they also have political problems internally that make further reforms difficult. There is no perfect system though; like I said, it depends on what you want.
Hahaha this one is not as exclusive because it is in English. And this is seriously extremely funny... Go spend some time to watch it! It'll really make your day!
Haha anyway, went to cycle + picnic today! The cool weather made the trip really enjoyable, despite the many upslope stretches that we have to negotiate :P Basically went along Gwynn Falls Trail most of the way, from Inner Habour to Westport than back up northwest. After that we cycled to Fort McHenry also...
The most classic thing that happened was, haha Yiran said this:
'Wah I have never been to this place leh. It really completely changed my impression of Baltimore!'
SEE? Baltimore is NOT THAT BAD! :D
And Joseph fell because he went too fast and got too excited as he entered a tunnel. He didn't notice that there was a patch of slippery soil on the ground and that's it. Obviously nothing happened to him :P I find this highway interchange outside downtown really amazing. You won't feel it while driving on it but, when you look from below, the complexity is simply perplexing... Don't know what Joseph is doing :P Line-up: somewhere in the middle of the trail. Don't know what Joseph is doing again. Fort McHenry! A very significant place in American history. And nice sun indeed :D It's this flag on this flagpole that inspired a poet from Baltimore to write a poem which became the lyrics of 'The Star Spangled Banner' eventually... It has something to do with the Battle of Baltimore :P
Today there was this girl in class wearing a green pullover. For a moment I was thinking: what is this TKGS girl doing over here?
Goodness. I've officially started to hallucinate.
Had been pretty busy with work the past few days. The first round of midterms, papers, etc. were finally over yesterday and of course it is time to relax a little. This won't last long though... Judging by the fact that there are stuff piling up I would have to start clearing them before they reach critical level. Sigh I guess from now onwards I can only possibly relax when this semester is over.
It is hard to be an undergraduate because you don't seem to have enough time to pay full attention to anything. That is stressful. Oh well, I don't think the life of a graduate student is better though.
And I don't feel very confident about the classes this semester. It might be because I am not certain of what is going to be the format of the exams. I heard that history exams are mostly MCQs and fill in the blanks but seriously I don't know how the exams for the class that I am taking now is going to be like. The two biology upper-level electives are more analysis based than anything. We need to write short essays for my signalling class exam, and I expect short essays too for molecular biology. Finally essays hit - it's not true that Americans only know how to do T/F or MCQ. There goes another myth.
Genetics is supposed to be relatively simple, and indeed it actually is, but I have no idea why I still kind of screwed up my first exam a bit. It's not fatal but then, hmmms need to work harder, especially for the graded homework problems. Argh if I have read the supplements before I did one of the problem sets I wouldn't have to worry now at all! :(
Have a month to work on this problem:
> How do you figure out experimentally the structure of an actively transcribing chromatin segment - especially for a single-copy gene?
Nicholas has been reading Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion and he asked me what do I think of it.
Honestly I have not read the book. I have The Selfish Gene but I have not read it either. The only thing that I have read that is written by Dawkins is a letter that he wrote to his 10-years old daughter which basically asked her not to believe anything other than things that can be proven by empirical methods. I remember also that he seems to be quite against tradition and establishment.
I would hate to simplify (because I seriously don't know what he has written about), but probably I can still talk about an absolutely secular philosophy in which people believe that if given the time, science can explain everything.
I find that intrinsically problemetic.
1. How do you define science?
The line between science and philosophy is very unclear, especially at the level of theoretical physics. It is easy to say nowadays that something is scientific while others are not when you are in a field like medicine; but in theoretical physics I wouldn't expect every theory to be provable by experimental means or direct observation. So is that still science? Those people are working towards a grand unifying theory which governs all - what then is the difference between that and mathematics in Plato's philosophy?
Question: in that realm, what is science explaining then? Is it explaining anything? Or basically has it morphed into a philosophy or religion? Mathematics in Plato's system is certainly just part of his philosophy and not a science.
So, since the string theory doesn't have empirical data supporting it (I don't know about this bit), are we supposed to dismiss it as completely worthless and refuse to believe in it? Extending this rhetoric: does it mean that every belief and theory that is not based on empirical data is completely worthless? If so, we won't even be here today - because science won't even look like what it is now today. The history of science didn't go this way - it was only during the Enlightenment (18th/19th century) that the current secular approaches of science were widely accepted. The Industrial Revolution was based on science before that...!
2. Can I explain why I am sitting in this room in Baltimore typing in my blog about scientific philosophy?
It seems like I can - but in fact, no. I can't.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to answer everything using empirically provable methods. It is downright MEANINGLESS. Basically, if I had made an alternative choice somewhere down my life - e.g. In 1997 I could have bowed down to my dad's pressure and went to RI; in 1999 my mum could have given up insisting that I switch to DHS; in 2001 I could have chosen to do LEP instead of trip-science - I would not be sitting here typing these. Why did I make those choices that brought me here? Why didn't my dad force me harder? Why didn't I be more insistent in 1999? I DON'T KNOW.
This just has to be accepted. Yes, things like why does a young rat that is licked and groomed by its mum is more tolerable to stress can be explained by molecular epigenetics. Yes, the patient has cancers in his lungs, intestine, liver and brain all at the same time because he inherited the Li Fraumeni syndrome, and not because God wants to punish him. But things like why did we become friends cannot be explained molecularly - it can't even be explained socially! If A and B are basically exactly the same in terms of character etc., why is A my friend but B is just a stranger to me?
Random chance? NO IT'S DEFINITELY NOT RANDOM CHANCE. If you ask a string of questions you will see that. There is a certain level of certainty to it. What makes that?
It is meaningless to tackle this question using science or even social science. It is more meaningful to use religion or philosophy to answer it. What creates that certain level of certainty in everything? Scientific theories like evolution can explain things up to a certain extent - it will finally hit a wall when the question goes to the level of how did the first cell come about or how was the first protein molecule made. Science can only say that it formed by random chance - which is something I find extremely unconvincing. Because you can attribute anything to random chance - and you do not have to explain further or be responsible for it.
Moral of the story: Science has its limitations. Science cannot explain everything. Science is there for us to explain natural or social phenomena and through that improve our lives, but it is meaningless to force it to do anything else other than that. Think about it.
So that people from the East Coast of the United States of America can have more choices when we are flying to Europe (or when I am flying home). And it will help UA/CO/DL/VA/NW/BA etc lower their ticket prices.
I am quite sure LON - NYC is always in high demand... Just that I don't know what is there between the EU and the US and what agreements the airlines have between them that will hinder this process. Anyway, that's a start. I have 7 more years to see that happen.
Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium! Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, Dein Heiligtum. Deine Zauber binden wieder, Was die Mode streng geteilt, Alle Menschen werden Brüder, Wo Dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
It's a very familiar tune. English translation:
Joy, beautiful spark of God, Daughter of Elysium! We enter fire-imbibed, Heavenly, thy sanctuary. Thy magic reunites those whom stern custom has parted; All men will become brothers Under thy gentle wing.
Love, love changes everything Hands and faces, earth and sky Love, love changes everything How you live and how you die Love can make the summer fly Or a night seem like a lifetime Yes love, love changes everything Now I tremble at your name Nothing in the world will ever be the same
Love, love changes everything Days are longer, words mean more Love, love changes everything Pain is deeper than before Love will turn your world around And that world will last forever Yes love, love changes everything Brings you glory, brings you shame Nothing in the world will ever be the same
Off into the world we go Planning futures, shaping years Love comes in and suddenly all our wisdom disappears Love makes fools of everyone All the rules we made are broken Yes love, love changes everyone Live or perish in its flame Love will never never let you be the same Love will never never let you be the same
Hahahahaha no matter how cool you think you are you will still do stupid idiotic senseless things despite your cool friends' cool advice (e.g. wanting to beat someone up for no apparent reason, etc. :D). If you friends are intrinsic morons then you're definitely screwed because no one will be able to tell you that you're being a moron too.
Basically even if you died once you'll still die again -because every single case is a unique case, and you'll once again turn into an idiot. There is nothing you can do about it. If you can still think straight then well nice you have successfully transformed yourself into superman.
It is useless acting cool. You can look and sound extremely cool and pretend to be absolutely sensible, but you know best that you are actually not - because nothing is under your control, you know nothing, and all you can do is pray to God that things turn your way. I am sure you won't want to beat someone up if you are absolute sensible.
How to be cool like that? It's like, how to be cool when you know that there is an exam coming up and you have absolutely no idea what the professor is going to put in your test? You can be cool only if the results absolutely doesn't matter, or you are completely sure that the results you want will realise.
So a suggestion to my friends who actually bother to read my blog. If you know some idiot likes you but too bad you can't reciprocate, you have 2 choices:
1. If you are a nice person, bring him/her back to his/her senses with the most direct way as soon as possible. It saves you and the idiot time, energy and resources, and if that person refuses to continue to be friends with you then so be it. In the end he/she will still thank you for it. It's a good deed.
2. If you are an evil person, play the person a bit. Send out messages that are ambiguous and retain hope in him/her. It will be great fun when you tell your friends about your observations and results - though this absolutely violates my ethical code - unless that person seriously deserves it.
I don't have a chance to choose between 1 and 2 yet. Hahaha my sister has done it quite a few times already though. She is quite smart when it comes to these things :D
Notice I didn't mention choice 1.5: sometimes people don't mean to choose 2 but they somehow do things similar to 2 less the great fun part. 1.5 is as harmful to the idiot as 2; it is just more forgiveable. If you are the 1.5 kind, talk to my sister. She will teach you how to execute choice 1. Works for both genders.
So please. If you (or someone you know) have to do this to me please choose 1. I promise I won't hate you - I will really hate you if you choose 2 and I find out somehow eventually. And don't you dare 1.5 me. Choose 1. Please.
