Wanted to post this for some time already but was always lazy.
The process of getting this driver's license is not only a mythbuster, but it is also a very valuable learning experience. Let me tell you why. (Okay I look like crap in the photo but that is not important.)
I started the whole process on 4 Sep 2007.
In order for me to get the license, I need a car - a rental car is not allowed, and I don't dare to borrow zx's brand new SUV. Anyway I got GCS's car, went for registration, got my tags, then I realised that the car needs to be sent for inspection. So I did.
Well, I paid $400 for everything, almost - because I have to change some bearings inside the car, the engine frame, the muffler, the wipers, and goodness knows what. Great - I felt more safe driving my car and I got it properly registered.
Then I paid $35 to take an exam in order to get a certificate to prove that I know what alcohol and drugs can do to me.
In the meantime, an unfortunate accident happened: while I was parking I wasn't careful and I wrecked one of my headlights. It doesn't really matter much so I didn't bother.
On 15 Oct I went to the MVA to get the license processed. I breezed through the documentation and the law test - because I went well-prepared - but I was rejected for the practical test. They say that I have to fix my headlight first. Oh well.
I tried to get it fixed on the same day - but I couldn't. The reason was simply - my car was too old, they could not get the part that I wanted immediately. At the same time, I started to have problems starting the car - the battery didn't seem to be able to hold any energy (couldn't expect much from a GCS-bought Walmart battery, although it was only 1-year old), and there was apparently something wrong with the starter too.
I sent it down to the mechanic to get the starter changed, and got them to get rid of the 'check engine' light on my dashboard - the MVA regulations said that the test car cannot have any warning lights on. For that I paid another $200. At the same time the headlight arrived; it was $70. It was almost the end of November by the time I got all these done.
The car died again after Thanksgiving - this time, it had to be the battery. It was finals period and I didn't even have time to bother, so I waited until after finals before I went to change the battery myself. And now the car is fine.
Then, after I came back from Singapore, I went for the driving test again. I was once again rejected - because this car is only high-tech to a certain extent. The normal diagonal seat belt sets itself up automatically, but the lap belt doesn't. I was rejected because apparently I didn't even know the lap belt existed.
So, I went again the next day - and finally I got it. The driving test itself was so easy that probably one would still pass with only Daytona experience. All you need to do is: drive forward, reverse, parallel park (and the slot is humongous), three-point turn, all done in a course without any other car in it, and that's it.
So this is how I got my Maryland license. I definitely didn't have as powerful a story with my Singapore license as this one (I did that in 6 months from the beginning till the end, and in between were basically just all lessons which I got scolded almost everytime (well I am completely useless when I need to pick up a skill), and the trick to pass is to put your test date on Valentine's Day (14 Feb) 4pm (or CNY eve or Christmas eve or MAF or Hari Raya eve) when the uncles all want to go home early).
Who else wants to try to get a Maryland license from scratch - i.e. begin even without a car? I can be your advisor. Free-of-charge.
When I tell Americans that I am on scholarship and I have to go back to Singapore to work after I am done with graduate school, a lot of them will make this comment:
'This is good! At least you have a job waiting for you, not like us...'
I have to agree that yes at least I do not have to worry about finding my first job etc (which is a headache I know), but I also have to point out that this is not necessarily a good thing. Why is it not necessarily a good thing, well, there are too many reasons that I can think of and usually I will not elaborate too much, other than talking briefly about the restrictions that our contracts have on us.
Seriously, if I am an American at this stage, I wouldn't have to think and talk so much about various career related issues with so many people. It would be pretty straightforward (though I won't say simple) - continue doing what I am doing, apply for summer internships, study for MCAT, apply to as many MD/PhD programmes in the US as possible, and hopefully I can get into one.
Of course you can argue it the other way round - basically if I follow faithfully the path that is laid nicely in front of me I shouldn't have any trouble at all as well. It is just that, as I think back, a path chosen when I was just out of high school and was relatively ill-informed on various things cannot be the best path that I could have chosen for myself. Thus, what I am trying to do now is to maximise whatever I can get from the path that I am supposed to follow, and make use of it to the best of my advantage.
Actually I shouldn't be thinking about too many things too much. So what if Singapore's model of research funding is not sustainable? So what if it is simply unrealistic to expect us to start our own companies after 5 years working as a post-doc? It is not as if we can do anything about it at our level; why bother (Singaporean mindset)- unless we can find a group of dedicated individuals within the scientific community to become active in policy-making.
Sigh sometimes I don't know why I actually think so much. These thoughts don't actually help me a lot but sure they do make me worry about my future (and worrying is always unnecessary, because usually nothing positive comes out of it).
Anyway, I have (finally) settled my classes for this semester.
1. Developmental Biology 2. AIDS 3. Landmarks in Biochemical Research 4. Microbiology 5. Concept of the Patient in Anthropology 6. How Electricity Changed the World: A Cultural History
plus research.
This semester is packed with a lot of material dealing with the social aspects of medicine, and my biology classes are quite diverse - no choice, because these 300-level classes don't go as deep as I would want them to (if they are of similar topics, they tend to repeat stuff) and I couldn't get myself into the 600-level classes. I'll make sure that I have a fair share of that next year.
School has started! My finals will end on 14 May, which is almost the last day...
Lives of doctors in the US and the lives of doctors in Singapore are very much dissimilar.
I don't know why I didn't realise this earlier - actually I have some of the information at hand but maybe I am just too willing to accept the rosy picture and conveniently ignore the reality.
The current reality is this: Singapore is short of doctors. Whereas the US has plenty.
Logical conclusion: if I am licensed to practise, will my boss (i.e. the Government of the Republic of Singapore) let me spend 75% of my time in the lab? Will I only have 2 cases in a morning to see or 13 cases a week to evaluate?
Hell no. I guess after all those work I would not even have the energy to read journals. Let alone all the planning, management, mentoring, problem solving, networking, etc etc etc. I know where my limit lies.
The medical school in Singapore is already over-capacity. Duke-NUS is only taking in that many students. To make up the numbers MOH still needs to source doctors from outside Singapore.
If the situation remains this way for the next 10 years - the problem is unlikely to alleviate with an expanding and greying population - there is no way a clinician scientist is going to have a good life. Unless A*Star says to MOH, NO YOU CAN'T TAKE AWAY OUR RESEARCHERS (in caps and bold) - under the current leadership this is extremely unlikely.
We can only count on the US professors in A*Star to do their job for this situation to turn towards our side. Not likely - because Singapore is not the US. If our healthcare system is supported by a whole bunch of overpriced medical insurance plans and we constantly have people like Howard Hughes, Andrew Carnegie, etc. we will be able to afford to train doctors and put them in labs only. Unfortunately, BUT fortunately for our people, our system is not like that. I don't want that to change.
(Economists please correct any factual or assumption errors - leave a comment.)
If I am the Government, I will deploy my resources to benefit the population the most, and the immediate need of the population is front-line health care. NOT research - putting you in a lab you might come out with something great in 10 years, but if I deploy you to the max now I can fulfill the needs of 40 patients a day. 40 x 52 x 5 x 10 - that is a huge amount of patients. The risk might be lower to just buy solutions from other people than to come out with the solutions ourselves - we may not even succeed in coming out with these solutions in the first place. At least, in that case, the taxpayers will not doubt where their money went to.
No wonder Prof Ren told me: if I intend to hold a MD, a PhD in Singapore would be good enough (he said 'Singapore provides excellent PhD training'). He also says that my decision should be based on whether 'I want to spend more time in the clinic or in the lab'. Of course his is a perspective from Singapore - initially I don't really understand it but now I think I do.
It seems like in Singapore, if you are a doctor licensed to practise, research is secondary, not primary. It seems to me - the reason why they are providing resources to train MBBS/PhDs is that they need these clinicians to bring what the basic/applied scientists developed into the hospital, develop it further and then inject it into the IV lines. It is not fully expected that they will come out with things the basic/applied people come out with. They want these doctors to have a PhD so that they can have the formal training to equip them with the ability to understand the language of basic/applied science, so they can actually function effectively when carrying out the translation because they don't have to learn-as-they-go.
The Government needs them to complete the sequence of biomedical initiatives (no wonder A*Star says that this is 'Phase 2' of their biomedical initiative) - from the DH5a that I clone my lentivirus vector in to something that can enter someone's IV line and cure him - and Singapore's clinical researchers are at the end of this spectrum only or at best, mostly.
(Not a very good strategy in my opinion, if you have limited resources. Look, 3 - 5 MBBS/PhDs a year with heavy clincal duties is not going to make a lot of difference. If they really want A*Star to become something like the NIH, they need a whole group of committed people with the enough experience and the right perspectives. And whoever funding must be committed too, and all these are long-term commitments. I am willing to be there if I can contribute and if they want me - if they want me.)
This is not the only role a MD/PhD plays in the US. MD/PhDs are dotted all across the spectrum. They can be as clinically inactive as they want; Bert Vogelstein, M.D. is not actually practising anymore, from what I understand.
I don't think practising medicine can be secondary to lab in Singapore if you are licensed to practise. Thus, if I were to become a successful scientist, I have to do what a scientist does. My post-doc years are all in Singapore - thus I need to get my PhD training from a great mentor outside Singapore.
I will continue to gather information, and track changes in Singapore. In the meantime, it would be more wise to look out for more opportunities in the basic medical sciences. Haha and, history :)
After 1.5 years with the green shoot I found this blogger template that looks pretty nice. So I adopted it, changed it a little (removed the commercial stuffs and added some stuff here and there), and put it here. Since this coming year is the year of the rat I suppose Remy should be a suitable feature :)
In case you guys don't realise the bottom of the page features Remy looking across the Seine towards Tour Eiffel!
Haha should blog a little about what I am doing now.
Well I am back in Baltimore again. Baltimore is a synonym to 'work' so as expected I am supposed to be doing work. So I have been going down to lab everyday, designed a set of experiments that would last me through spring semester, continued with some other experiments, and read a little literature.
Other things I have done including administrative stuff like emails to A*Star (for 3 different reasons), emails to accounts office, shuffling classes, emails to professors, making an appointment for driving test (tomorrow), ordering transcripts, etc etc etc.
Things that I should have done but not done yet include filing claims for my return airfare and editing my history paper.
Play stuff. Watched 2 movies, watched some bits of Mythbusters, started playing StarCraft, Gerald came for a few days last weekend, finished reading a book, gone out for dinner quite a few times, going to New York and New Haven coming weekend, and in view: ski trip, Embassy Dinner and our own Reunion Dinner.
Looks like I play more than I work. I don't even bother going to lab on weekends and public holidays like today (MLK). I have blots waiting for me in the fridge but I decided that it might not be a good idea to do it now because if I do I won't have anything to do on Tuesday :P
Well I also tried shuffling my classes around for next semester. I tried emailing professors to get me into graduate level classes but they didn't allow me in - hence my plans about beating pre-reqs busted. Though now I have second thoughts about Nervous System II - I suppose it is going to be repetitive and boring so I emailed Schroer and hopefully she can let me into AIDS. When add-drop resumes I will try to get into a paper-discussion based Biochemistry class too - keeping my fingers crossed for the moment.
Oh and I should start to get ready for tutoring.
School starting in 1 week. Now, warming up for second-half - exactly 16 months to graduation (21 May 2009). Which is actually really, really soon.
So Gerald was here for a few days. Brought him around - since now I have a car I can do so so much more easily. Think slightly more than a year ago when Wen Yu came - I had to take the shuttle down to JHMI and then a $15 cab ride to the travel plaza to pick him up. Now I just drove there and drove back :P and now can bring Gerald to tour the school, Fort MacHenry, Peabody, and Inner Habour all in a day. The money spent on the car is worth it.
Though I had to go to lab for Monday and Tuesday - if not we would have gone to every single visitable corner of Baltimore already. Haha I am quite proud of my local knowledge nowadays :P ______________________________________
Songyu says that I have the funniest mother in the world (see previous comment). Hahaha not only I have the funniest mother I also have the mother with the most ideas ranging from life to government, the mother with the most activities outside of home, the mother who ask her son to edit her articles to newspapers the most often, the mother who gets excited the most easily, the mother who shows admiration to her Korean drama idol the most openly, etc etc etc.
She still goes volunteering 3 times a week (KWSH, NUH/CCF, CPC), take classes 2 times a week (yoga, English), helps out at the charity organisation she works for on an ad-hoc basis, go have lunch with friends, and yet every time at 6pm she would be watching TV (following 3 series all the time) because she has nothing to do while waiting for my dad to come back. Now she has a new addition - she enrolled in some community college for the elderly (the youngest limit is 50 - and she is just nice 50 :P), to take classes on, huh, I have no idea now.
The only thing that I need to worry about her now is that she runs around too much - especially now during Chinese New Year period she always has millions of radish cakes to make and she always insists in giving them out personally. Though my dad does a good job in keeping that in check :D
She always tells sushi and me that the most difficult thing for our future partners would be to deal with the dynamics of our family. We are very open, quick-witted, direct in criticisms, wide in terms of interests, we take nothing to heart, yet we are never stingy in giving compliments, assistance, care and love.
My mum also said that, the most important advice she would give to my future partner is, she has to read my blog - at least most posts - so that she can make an informed decision of whether she can tahan me for the next 50 years. Haha that can be pretty true - I try to portray myself as true as possible here. This will also reflect how I have been changing along the way :)
Sushi already hated me for posing her photos for some strange reason no one else other than her comprehends. I am going to pose more of her in action :D
Teaching a group of aunties, hmmms, jazz dance warm-up moves ><
Notice I made some changes to the Related Links column.
I changed 'HY Junior' to 'Sushi'. And I did the same thing for the shortcut in my browser.
I think this is the best nickname I have given her so far. Firstly, no one understands it except us. Secondly, it is easy to remember. Thirdly, it just comes out so naturally. And of course lastly, it describes her recent changes very well :D
Now even my dad is using it.
Hahaha it was just so funny. Before I came back to the US we were watching this video made by dad a year ago when they went to Korea (without me naturally - and they will be going to Osaka without me again soon). HY Junior at that time was so different: almost in all aspects, including how she dressed, how she spoke, how she acted, etc.
I just couldn't help making fun of her - that time she was 'cute', hence she can still be HY Junior. Now she just 'sushi' - or to be fair maybe a 30% sushi - so now I have no choice but to call her sushi.
It was just ONE YEAR. See how much she changed - Hong Kong seriously changes people. I guess even I cannot be immune to that if I ever move back.
It is not necessarily a bad thing. Somehow you have no choice. Even I changed - as I have recently posted. And we will continue to change.
Good luck for your upcoming semester! :)
Ah and I am still jet-lagged. Will be extremely tired by 8pm, will go and sleep, and then will wake up at 4am. I have to get over this soon.
(If you are interested to find out what 'sushi' means to us, walk around London and try to identify girls from HK. They dress and carry themselves in a particular way, and they speak Cantonese in a particular way as well. They occur at the highest density around the British Museum, Chinatown/Leicester Square/Trafalgar Square, and Oxford Street/Tottenham Court Road. My sushi is only probably 30% there.)
The first arrow represents the Union of the Crown in 1603 and which is finalised by the Acts of Union of 1707 between England and Scotland. The second arrow represents the Act of Union of 1801 between England and Ireland. ________________________________________ > Chun Hang:
You can reply here. I decided to write it here because that post is a bit too buried already :P
1. I don't know where did you sense my 'unwarranted disdain' for the Cambridge system. I read through my replies and posts and nowhere did I say that their system is inferior to ours. I merely used theirs as a contrast to ours - we have no one to monitor our progresses while they have supervisors to help them, which in fact is a strength in their system - and from what I understand supervisions are a great help but they can also be a source of stress. It is the same for us.
2. I probably made a mistake when I placed academic freedom and the absence of close guidance in the same paragraph. Though assessed coursework and deadlines have no link to academic freedom either: academic freedom, in my definition, means that you can do whatever you want that is available (contrast allowable), and when it's not available, you can go do it somewhere else. Assessments and deadlines are limits to the freedom an undergraduate has; it doesn't mean that we don't have freedom because of these deadlines.
I give you a challenge: do a secondary major in classical philosophy or art history or English while you are pursuing math or BME as a primary major, and graduate with 1st class in both majors in 3 years, without compromising the depth of training in your primary major. For me, it is perfectly possible and I don't even have to seek permission to do that. The only thing that holds us back is whether we have enough capabilities to handle the work.
3. The classes that I placed out are Calculus I, Calculus II, General Biology, Chemistry and Physics, which teaches the students basic differentiation and integration, what is the Krebs Cycle, what is ionic equilibrium and the three laws of motion. That explains why American colleges offer 4-year courses while usually British universities offer 3-year courses.
4. Of course they take only 5 minutes to run through polar coordinates. You already know it - why would they bother teaching you again properly? It is different in the US - those guys that have to take Calculus I have NO OR LITTLE CLUE what dy/dx means! Why do you think it is incredible for me to place out those classes? _____________________________________________
A friend told me before: we shouldn't compare the US and UK systems too much (he's referring to the medical education system) because it's hard to tell which one is more superior - it's more politics than anything, and anyway, the emphasis of both systems are different. Also, research in the UK might be at a disadvantage because of problems with funding (which I would really wish to find out whether this is true through a summer internship), and it's unlikely to be because of the quality of the faculty, the teaching, and the students.
I am proud of my school. We have a short yet brilliant history - modern medicine originated in Baltimore, we have the best hospital in the US, a medical school and BME programme that are consistently top three, as well as a brilliant music conservatory and school of advanced international studies. We have people like Bert Vogelstein and Francis Fukuyama with us.
Though I didn't say other schools are not as good as we are. Cambridge has a long and even more brilliant history; Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Charles Darwin all came from there, they are the second best in the world overall, that's where the DNA double helix was discovered, and they have people like Andrew Wyllie and Steven Hawking with them.
I criticise but I don't hold anything as inferior. Tell me if you don't agree with me - here, via MSN, in your blog, on Facebook, etc. and I'd love to hear from you and discuss it with you. I learn more about the world this way - in fact through a few of my friends-cum-readers I have learnt a lot :P
I am wondering wonder how much I have changed throughout the years. And how much I will change in 2008.
Have been re-visiting some of the previous posts. This is one important function of a personal blog - to track your own changes along the way.
GCS commented: I 'have the worrying trend' of becoming more religious as I get more stressed. Hmmms. I don't know what is wrong with that, because rational people can still believe in things that are not empirically provable, as long as we know where the boundary should lie. We have different ideas as to how 'faith' should be defined as well; I won't go into that. This is one change - I used to belong to his camp. Now I am shifting to the middle of the spectrum. Why, and what? I don't know.
I tend to annouce my study/career plans on the blog too - which change all the time as circumstances change. There is a general direction, but so far I never seem to be able to decide on the details. A scholar has his life planned out only if he doesn't want anything else other than a secured job. I don't just want to be a pawn.
My attitude towards a scholarship changed too. I still do not yet feel cheated but realised that a government scholarship might not be the best thing a high school kid should aim for. I am going to tell that to my DHS juniors in summer. This is something that you won't completely believe unless you see it for yourself - like I told Wen Hann, if I have stayed in Singapore I would not have known stuff that I know now, hence I wouldn't have known that staying behind might have been a better choice if I have stayed behind. Complicated, but true.
At the beginning of this blog I was hopeful in terms of relationships, though recently my old self came back - i.e. the importance of relationship issues returned to the original level. Though some stuff that are done cannot be undone; I want to apologise (for not being sufficiently understanding and for being stupid) but don't know how to, so I just left it as it is. Mr. Koh says that I am a 'kok' (?!). Oh well. So be it.
(Alright alright. Sorry for not being sufficiently understanding and for being stupid...)
Even my reading preference has changed. I ceased reading Chinese books altogether for the previous year, and I started hunting down fantasy writers and enjoyed their books (sorry I don't enjoy my class readings). I only see Chinese on the computer screen over the Internet these days. Learnt a bit of Chinese Internet lingo but don't want to use it.
Also recently watched a record-high number of plays/musicals in a year, entered the cinema at a record-low frequency, read a record-high number of pages in English, wrote a record-high number of pages in English, started to like hiking and the outdoors more, figured that I can actually become a history student, and started to be able to sleep soundly on planes.
Good? Bad? Too bad I didn't write this in 2007. Should have. In 2009 I'll see what I can add, what I can remove, and what I can keep.
I will continue to morph. My door is always open. Come in and try to change me. I still have a lot to learn, and I have leant a lot too, from various people and various things. I will go out and find stuff that can change me as well - this will never end, and it sounds scary, but the life of a person is, like, that.
There is this general restlessness in me. I am already 23 and I am still an undergraduate - not the most productive thing a 23-year-old can do isn't it. I (or rather WE) can't help it but still, I just can't wait for graduate school to start. Whether or not that is for a PhD, MD, MD/PhD it doesn't matter - I just want graduate school to start. I consider that as the start of my career.
Also, with all my career goals and the flying involved it is almost impossible to find someone whom I can engage in a long-term relationship with in the near future. Because I am me I prefer to have plans way ahead - and that completely deters me from engaging in relationships that I know will definitely run into walls because I have to leave the place for good. And this contributes to part of the restlessness.
Haha it's just that, I'm not alone!
KH was asking me what keeps me motivated, and I told him stories about scientific discoveries and so on. Well, a simpler answer could be, I want to help people in need, and I want to contribute to the world. Since I am good at academics, and since I am interested in biology, I decided to enter the path of medical research. The thing that keeps me motivated is my strong belief that advances in medicine depends on research, and no matter what research we do, eventually the piece of the puzzle that we laid will contribute to the overall advancement of diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and patient care. Research forms the basis of clinical care - without research, we might still be prescribing mercury baths for syphillis patients and weapon-salve for knife wounds.
And I must really thank Mr Yue, the ex-DHS vice-principal, for giving me the initial opportunity that showed me the way.
So 2008? 1. Continue to prepare myself for the beginning of my career. 2. At least one Europe trip :P 3. At least one Hiking trip
Okay last year I took off from runways 17 times, and had been through 11 different airports (SIN, BWI, MDW, BUF, JFK, FRA, LHR, HKG, ATL, IAD, NRT). Let me see what will happen in 2008 :)
The process of getting this driver's license is not only a mythbuster, but it is also a very valuable learning experience. Let me tell you why. (Okay I look like crap in the photo but that is not important.)
