Total = 55p + 20p + 26p + 10p + 33p + 3p + 5p = £1.55 and roughly 30mins in total.
Why did I agree to the £100 (for 3) dinner plan with the landlady - and eat sardine + pasta / canned curry beef + rice every evening?!
It will even be cheaper if the 3 of us cook together - because it is a fact that less food will be used per person if we cook in bulk. And obviously not everyday will be salmon day...
Anyway, to celebrate the end of the £100 meal plan, other than the salmon, I have also bought prawns, chicken wings, more chicken legs, strawberries, beansprouts, more lettuce, onions, pork luncheon meat, sweet corn, diced carrots, baked beans with sausage (it is good!), fisherman's pie (which I have already eaten - I don't know why I just like it) - and then I'll see what kind of permutations we can create. Almost bought a bottle of wine too but realised in time that I do not have an opener :P
The items I listed cost £13.87 - and with what we have with us now should be able to last more than a week.
Oh and also 4 packets of £2 for 2 cookies from M&S! I am officially a fan of theirs now...
Wait - before you put on your chainmail and shut the gates of your ears and heart I make a last appeal to invite you to do some soul searching with me. Like what we were told a couple of weeks ago, we need other people to tell us what our inadequacies are, it is not going to be comfortable and it will hurt, and it would be up to us to differentiate between the true prophet and the false one...
'The first disadvantage of an elite education ... is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you.'
In order to talk to people who aren't like me, I have to be able to think like them. Can I do that?
I have tried before. I will keep trying. It is a matter of whether I can humble myself enough so that I can listen to what others say and feel what others feel, and to move further out of my comfort zone. I ought to try doing some community service regularly - I will keep my fingers crossed now first, but I should whenever possible.
This is not a matter of class. It is a matter of whether I can relate to people effectively who have different backgrounds and different values, even though we might come from the same secondary school, university or scholarship board. When I do not understand why some people do and say certain things or hold certain attitudes, I have more often than not failed to stop and reflect why don't I understand before rebuking, surrendering, or evading altogether.
I should ask more of those questions - approach and understand people - and learn to think like them. I won't have to become them - but at least I understand where they come from, and I won't think - I am better.
'The second disadvantage, implicit in what I’ve been saying, is that an elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth.'
Extremely true - I am always telling people about the great things about my education, how amazing Hopkins is despite the extreme competitiveness...
And I do comparisons - I have to admit, those add to my self-worth and pride. And it creates misunderstandings and injures relationships, because I don't like people challenging me, or people to stand above me.
Must tell myself - I am not necessarily better. I shouldn't feel attacked (and react as such) when people challenge me, neither should I go and attack people whom I think hold views that are unagreeable to me - instead, I should, approach and understand them. I will always have to stand on my ground firmly - but I shouldn't base that on the defence of my self-worth!
'One of the great errors of an elite education, then, is that it teaches you to think that measures of intelligence and academic achievement are measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense.'
How afraid we are when we think we have blown a test; how bad we feel when we think that we have not learnt enough; how messed up we are when we feel that we are not up to expectation. What the author is setting us to think about is - does meeting expectations make us better people? Are we seeking the truth here when we are worried to the depth of our hearts about our grades?
We have practical expectations to meet, thus of course we have to do our best, but do we have to worry about them - and be upset at self and others because of these etc.? I am learning to see these more lightly already, hopefully you can too...
'But if you’re afraid to fail, you’re afraid to take risks, which begins to explain the final and most damning disadvantage of an elite education: that it is profoundly anti-intellectual.'
This is the most obvious - and I don't even have to think too much on this before commenting. We should be learning critical thinking from our schools, not learning how to answer MCQs and then calculating curves. MCQs, from my experience, do not teach you anything else other than answering them, and when you don't know what to do with them, they teach you how to trust your pencil.
I find humanities essays rather helpful in this in some sense, because we are forced to learn how to form our own argument, substantiate them with evidences and consider the fallacies of our argument, but then in order for them to be helpful I cannot see them as 'A'-generating machines. The few (one or two?) science essays are dreadfully hard to do, but it is also a rewarding experience. These are risks that I took, and I am glad that I took them.
Moving further out of our comfort zones - to be humble - to put my self-worth aside and to approach, accept and understand - to be able to both succeed and fail - to be able to take more risks - I guess, at this point of my life, I have to have all these qualities, which I am still lacking...
Just watched the Portugal vs. Germany highlights - missed the actual match because all 3 of us fell really sick that day due to some unknown food poisoning :(
They were back in shape again! The first Schweinsteiger goal was especially brilliantly done! They were completely unconvincing during the group stage but haha according to yc they were completely convincing Thursday night :D
Holland's magic didn't last - I personally think that it was because i) Russia studied their tactics and effectively counteracted them. There was hardly any easy break in the Russian defence last night ii) Compared to Holland, Russia's attacks were a lot sharper - the second goal at 113' was exceptional!
Okay guys, since Holland is out, come on all go and watch Germany! (For girls who actually care how the players look, I think Podolski, Lehmann and maybe Ballack are worth following :P)
The lab that I am in now is a translational lab - excluding students on rotation, there are more doctors in the lab than scientists.
This is not the easiest lab to work in - because, since a large proportion of them are doctors and they do the main work, when they start talking about doctor stuff, I can only listen. And in journal clubs they present clinical papers.
But this is the kind of work that I am interested in! This is what I want to do!
I actually see clinical relevence in what I am doing - my job is pretty routine at the moment (what can I expect for the first 4 weeks...), involving loads of Q-PCRs while still waiting for antibodies. But I know why I am doing it - the lab wants to identify genes and proteins that can be used as biomarkers for Barrett's oesophagus from a second microarray screen they have previously done. They are going to apply those as possible diagnostic markers for samples taken using a novel, non-invasive technique (vs. endoscopic biopsies) that they developed.
And I see how basic biomedical science fits in - two graduate students (both are doctors already) are working currently on 2 groups of genes that are obviously upregulated in the screen; in the screen there is also a third group, another very interesting, functionally-diverse, yet poorly-studied group of genes, that currently no one in the lab is studying yet.
The lab is working on actual human samples - people from the lab routinely go to theatre to get specimens to bring back to the lab. There are boxes of slides on the shelves with those samples on them (I hope I can eventually lay my hands on them). I am currently using cDNA made from samples provided by patients recruited for the study.
When I go for forums and seminars, people analyse clinical trials, statistical methods, diagnostic and treatment techniques and options. There are going to be great people coming to talk too; they brought in Tim Hunt 2 weeks ago, and they are going to bring in Andrew Wyllie and David Lane next Friday for the Cambridge Cancer Centre Symposium.
To be fair - not all talks are good, there are some I can't help falling asleep. But there are ones that are brilliant; like Tuesday's presentation on Bayesian analysis was great.
I am actually learning valuable things!
I am also given the chance to observe what exactly are the roles of doctors and scientists in such a setting. At this point it seems like scientists play the role of 'advisors' or 'collaborators' - advising and helping on the techniques and knowledge and procedures - but they don't set the direction of where the research goes.
Fundamental fact: there are things that scientists cannot do - even if we know how to do it we cannot do it. But there is no restriction the other way round - as long as the medics are willing to learn, they are can do anything a scientist is capable of doing.
Which means, if I were to go into this field without a MD, I have to be contended with a secondary role - which is making me rethink whether it is worth it to make the MD thing happen (with specialisation obviously). Most probably I will still do my PhD first, and I am NOT going to stay in Singapore for that - but this make speeding up the PhD an extremely good idea. Anyway, medical students who have PhDs are common both in the US and the UK.
This is what I want to do - and I have picked a long route towards it. I won't say that I am happy about it (I have tried hard but I have never really sucessfully gotten over this), because my decision then was partially driven by inconsistent A*Star policies (at least microscopically-speaking) and information that was fed to me then (people were so very extremely sure that there is no way of getting a medicine scholarship except the ridiculous SAF one, they were also so very extremely sure in drilling into me that getting a medical degree in the UK will cost my parents at least £200,000, and people were trying to convince me that a medical degree is not necessary in translational research - yes it is not indeed, of course, in an administrator's point of view), but well, if I could have done what I think to be optimal now, my life might have been completely different.
And now even I am determined to pursue what I think is worth doing there are still layers and layers of obstacles for me to overcome. I have real stories from seniors with me.
Honestly, I think asking my dad for advice is better than asking A*Star for advice.
Hard water is irritating - it leaves stains in kettles, pots and pans which require a lot of effort to remove.
But is it bad for health?
I think it is pretty clear from literature that it is not - but, the literature is conflicting in terms of whether it is GOOD for you. Drinking hard water will not increase your risk of developing cardiovascular diseases and coronary heart disease (a recent UK study - I just read the abstract - states that increased levels of magnesium has a weak correlation with increased CVD, with a P-value of 0.08 - we cannot make good interpretations out of this data). However, whether drinking hard water has protective effects as previously claimed - that is controversial.
Another fact: household ion-exchange water softeners puts Na+/K+/H+ into the water. Hmms, when you take ions out of the water, you have to replace it - that is A level chemistry - to maintain neutrality. Unless the softener precipitates the ions together with the anions in the water (or get rid of the anion as a gas) or the pH of the water is changed - if not, the addition of another cation is inevitable.
If the water is temporarily hard (i.e. caused by CaCO3) - boiling can get rid of the hardness provided that the ppt is removed. If the water is permenantly hard (caused by MgCl2/CaCl2 etc.), boiling won't work.
Hmms, whenever I filter my water, it is mostly because I do not trust the infrastructure - like the one in Baltimore, in which the water pipes might be 100 years old - and water hardness has not really crossed my mind.
Hahaha just eat and drink whatever - as long as you have a balanced diet! Sunday Chen Li and I went to M&S and I almost wanted to buy the whole food section back; she has to go against her stereotypical gender role to keep me from buying FOOD. Anyway, I have already finished the two packets of cookies that I bought (they are amazing). Oh well. I know that anything in excess is not good :P
And we were supposed to go and watch the Trinity fireworks tonight - but we were simply too tired after work to go anywhere. Tomorrow would be St John's May Ball, they have fireworks too, but Italy vs. France would be a lot more exciting :P
Plans for upcoming weekends: 21/6 (Sat): London (Bring Khian Hong and Chen Li around a bit, then go to St Paul's Cathedral and the Tate Modern) 22/6 (Sun): Need some time alone - thinking of going to Granchester to chill and read after church (heard that there is an orchard and a teahouse there where people can drink tea and chill - hopefully won't have drunk aunties and students there spoiling the mood.) 28/6 - 29/6: No plan yet 5/7 - 6/7: Dublin, Ireland 12/7 - 13/7: No plan yet 19/7 - 20/7: No plan yet 26/7 - 27/7: Khian Hong and Chen Li leaving, Sushi coming 2/8 - 3/8: Sushi is here: I am running out of ideas where to bring her to... 9/8: leaving for Avignon (That would be about it for summer :( )
AND A*STAR STILL HAVE NOT SETTLED OUR ALLOWANCES YET. I don't understand why it is so difficult to give us money - they know the UK regulations, and if they were to let us come here to work, what is the problem with abiding by them?
IF - I won't be too surprised judging by their record - they decide to drop the scheme in the future because they find it difficult to abide by the UK regulations (just like how they ceased their collaborations with Hopkins because of differences in vision and motives), A*STAR would have scored another own goal on the international stage. I won't be on their side.
The two of them from Wisconsin are living with £300 cash (which they have used ~30% to 40%) for the whole 8-week period, they have limited access to their money in the US because they do not have a BOA account, and yes they are running out of money. I am willing to help definitely - thing is, this shouldn't even need to happen.
One of our initial encounters with government bureaucracy - we just have to deal with it (not live with it!)...
'... I remember doing that when I was really young and visiting Disneyland with my parents and how happy I was back then. ...'
It is not Disneyland - it is the 'how happy I was back then'.
The moment when I saw this I was really stirred - how happy I was back then.
My parents used to bring me to the library a lot. Playground, cycling, hiking, excursions to offshore islands - making long distance bus/tram/ferry trips with my grandfather...
My dad used to like scaring me by sitting really hard onto the see-saw, thus making me fly from my seat for an inch or so - and that used to freak me out a lot. He would come attacking us with his moustache before he goes shaving. And every night, without fail, we would read something together before I go to bed. It could be a very difficult English novel which he himself didn't know all the words or it could be a couple of pages in the atlas - I loved maps, I still do.
During summer I used to go for all kinds of classes - I have learnt English phonetics, cooking for children, oral Mandarin, computer programming for children - and how much fun I had in them.
My parents never put pressure on us to learn or do anything except two: 1) study 2) discipline. There used to be a whiteboard in our house stating all the extra assignments my dad gave us, and there used to be a calender next to our beds with stars. If we were exceptionally good that day, we get a yellow star; good, green; a bit naughty, red; naughty, orange; very naughty, gold; exceptionally naughty, silver; unacceptable, it would be a cross (accompanied by a reason). If we accumulated 10 consecutive green stars (and I think 1 yellow = 2 green?), we would get a ticket which entitled us to a choice of entertainment - an extra trip to the park, the library, games arcade, etc.
Of course my parents played judge. And it was not easy - but within reasonable range - to get a yellow/green star. And of course, if we were unacceptably naughty, there was a feather duster on top of the living room cupboard waiting to be used against us.
My parents taught me how to do housework, and I willingly helped - and my mum just recently told me, that because of my poor skills, she would have to re-wash every plate and bowl that I washed after I had slept...
Now I am no longer at home. My parents had taught me what they have to teach me - and after doing that, they were completely confident of their product. They gave me the reassurance and let me out.
Now I am out here, seeing the world, gaining experiences, meeting people, making decisions - my parents never interfered. They didn't even ask me to go home. They let my sister out too - they let her go to HK to study, and told me, 'Bring your sister out with you! You have done so much travelling and your sister hasn't. Show her how you do it so that she can do it too!'
So they asked me how much they should give my sister, and she will be coming to the UK and subsequently going to France with me with £500 and 300 Euros. When she is in the UK, I won't be free - so she will be on her own for quite some time.
Meanwhile - they will remain in Singapore; my dad is still working, and my mum is volunteering and going for classes almost every day.
They trust us, because they are confident that, as children brought up by them, we can handle situations just like they had because of the education they had given us. They know that I will look after my sister, and she will look after me. They do not want us to be sheltered, and they started training us since we were young. They know that it is better for us to be outside rather than being at home, although they would have very much preferred that we stayed at home......
I do go home - but I do not go back for long. If I were to go back this summer to work for A*STAR again, unless I have a terrific justification, my dad is definitely going to try to persuade me not to. He still wants to see me - very much - but he has an opinion of what is good for me, and he is willing to sacrifice so that I can get the most out of my education.
They are still sacrificing for us. By not asking me when I am going to go home, they, still, are.
(That's why I was stirred - how happy I was back then. How much have our parents done for us!)
My mum has more than once told me, that the greatest joy for a parent would be - to see her child grow up to become someone who is not a liability to society, and the bonus would be that he can contribute to society. I shouldn't let them down. Not ever.
I am working pretty hard - learnt how to design and optimise primers properly from Pierre, and in 12 days I have validated 2 pairs of primers from genes found upregulated in a previous microarray and have since gotten perfect efficiency curves for another 2 pairs - with another one pair running in the machine now. By the end of this week I plan to analyse all 9 sets of primers that arrived on Monday and identify which one of those we can use in our actual biomarker screen.
I would be running out of genes to validate soon. Time to go back to the literature - and I have yet to figure out about tetraspanins. Argh. Have to talk to a bunch of people after I have an idea what is going on - prognostic markers and Hox genes and whatnot - should try to do that by the beginning of next week too.
And there seems to be a lot of ErbB2 going on - went for this talk today in which the guy talked about Tamoxifen resistence in BrCA patients; he has convincing experimental data suggesting that Tamoxifen recruits a co-repressor Pax2 to ER after binding, and Pax2 downregulation contributes to Tamoxifen resistence. These are interesting findings - so interesting that I feel that it is blog-worthy - because, from what I have been taught, Tamoxifen inhibits ER through competitive inhibition as it is just a form of oestrogen that doesn't work!
(N.B. Pax genes are developmental genes - sometimes they exist in pairs with another gene and the patterns of their mutual inhibition reflects morphogen input and thus dictates phenotype - e.g. in neural tube development.)
I am playing hard too. Went for formal last Friday, punting on Saturday, Oxford on Sunday; coming weekend - thinking of going to Ely probably; next weekend - Khian Hong and Chen Li should be going to London, contemplating whether to follow; confirmed air tickets for Dublin on 5 Jul - 6 Jul (Kenneth, Yunqin, Khian Hong, Chen Li, me) and looking for hostels; confirmed accommodation for Avignon and Marseille (for sushi and me) and now going to start searching for lavender tours - while watching EuroCup and House every night :P
I used to wonder why is it that exchange students to the US tend to go to more places compared to us who are resident there. Now I know why - because, when you actually stay there, you will have a million things to do over the weekend, in the evenings and during breaks to keep you occupied. But, when you are a summer student / exchange student, you don't - and thus, if you just stayed at home and chilled, you will find it a waste of time. So you will go somewhere.
StAG seems to have a bunch of interesting talks lined up in the next couple of Wednesday evenings - contemplating whether should go or not too. And King's evensong.
Haha oh well. Time to sleep... more work tomorrow! _________________________________________________ This one will sure bring back tonnes of memories:
Nothing can be found on the Internet. The song seems to have vanished.
Who are you my country More than celebrations and tears More than memories put together Or the summing up of years -
I see you enduring all weathers Sunshine and storm at your heart In your face the lines ever changing Tell the story where I have a part
You, my people, my home Our lives defend and uphold May the good we achieve, as one nation Be shared with the world!
As a new chapter begins From where we have come thus far Once again may it be written You are who we are
In you may we see ourselves Your needs, your strengths, in us That the work for freedom and peace Is mine as much as ours
You, my people, my home Our lives defend and uphold May the good we achieve, as one nation Be shared with the world!
Thursday 17 June 2008 19:45 BST (14:45 EDT) France vs. Italy
This one is a must watch!
Watched a match today with Grace in Oxford. They actually have it free on BBC1/iTV and also live streaming on the website!
No more antenna-extending to receive signals from Batam - and how can I forget the ghost that follows every player as a result of the poor, severely atmosphere-interfered signal? And of course, the need to stay up is eliminated (it doesn't mean that I don't stay up - oh well :P).
Last EuroCup I was watching in my Bedok Camp bunk with other medics, with vulgarities and slippers flying towards the TV when England lost (I was not part of it - I have never supported England) and when Greece won (okay I didn't throw slippers). Last WorldCup I was asking for scores from OBS instructors. This time I am IN ENGLAND :P
The Democrats have to win - they better win - the presidential elections this coming fall. If Obama is able to gather the political support and also continues to have the political will to deliver his promises effectively - which I am naturally skeptical of because of common sense - he can be a great president. There is some hope in him.
March 18 2008: A More Perfect Union.
He addressed the issue pretty well - I hope he will live up to what he says!
I am tired of 'winning the war against terrorism'. Indeed people are dumb enough to think that the 'war' against terrorism can actually be won. How do you define the war - and winning the war? Catching Osama bin Laden alive? Kill all radical religion fundamentalists?
To 'win' the 'war' probably means 'no more terrorist attacks and no more fear for terrorists' - but if you have a freaking 'war' mentality against this problem, you are NEVER going to win it. Yes if you fight it like a war, you will NEVER win it - all you can do is lengthen it forever and ever. Unless you nuke the whole Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and don't forget to put a shield over Israel first. Singapore probably will need to develop our own shield.
And an open market for medical insurance?! I don't know for sure but I think economics laws say that that should decrease cost but does that solve the problem? I won't think it would decrease cost at all but probably more gidgets will be added to the policies to 'value-add' them, given the vast amounts of treatment options there are available in the US - in an open market do the insurance companies have any incentive to extend their policy coverage to those people who cannot afford them at all now?
So the kid living on Bond/Chase will still not get medicine to control his asthma, and his mild attacks will be neglected, and he will need to be sent to our hospital for emergency care when he has a major attack, which is very expensive, and his parents cannot afford to pay the bill, which somehow the government or the hospital waives it in part, and the extra cost bourned by the hospital is transferred into a higher bill for the patient with insurance, insurance company pays more, and the consumer pays more for insurance, more people cannot afford it...
The Republican way of solving this problem is, according to Dr. William Brody, scary. Though he also said that no one will have a solution to this problem - it is virtually unsolvable - but it has to start somewhere, I believe he will agree. If not, ask the British to come and burn Washington down again so that they can start afresh?
The Democrats hope to end the Iraq war - which means the money can be used elsewhere. They are going to tax the rich people and companies more (are the Republicans afraid of losing investments? or is it some other stuff?), which means the money can be used elsewhere too. In our standpoint as foreigners potentially working in America, the Democrats might not make our lives easy - but anyhow I still want them to win!
Ma Ying-jeou has won Taiwan - East Asia will be peaceful. If Obama wins, there will be a new hope - change, as he campaigned - and hopefully he can really make the world a better place.
The landlady finally got the internet connection up and running. Haven't been blogging because I have been using lab internet sporadically (checking email is fine, but blogging is a bit... too much?), or internet cafe (when it costs like £1.20 an hour, there are more important things to do?), or not at all... So when I am at home, I had been either i) eating ii) sleeping iii) reading.
The UK is the place for snacks. 46p for 12 small packets of potato crisps, 27p for a roll of chocolate digestive biscuits, £2 for 2 huge bags of M&Ms or 2 huge packets of Kit-Kat, £2 for 15 apples, 50p for 4 cups of caramel creme dessert; foodwise, £2 for 3 litres of juice, £3 for 4 packets of frozen dinner, 20p for a packet of breakfast rolls, etc. Fresh foods e.g. meat is not cheap though - either the same or more expensive than Maryland.
Cambridge is a fantastic place because everything is centralised. There is everything that you will need, including Chinese food and Chinese groceries, within a 0.5 mile radius of the city centre. It is just that, I am based 50 minutes walk via a short-cut (4 miles) or a £1.70 bus ride away from the city centre. That doesn't stop me from going there at all though.
Khian Hong and Chen Li came on Sunday - and I showed them around town a bit yesterday after work. I basically managed to explain enough stuff to satisfy the curiosity of both of them - I was quite amazed by myself actually. I don't even live here and I can actually guide :P That is mostly based on my previous trip, input from friends here and also a bit of Wikipedia :P _________________________________________________ Sir Tim Hunt came down to CIMR to talk today! He is such a nice guy. His lecture was fantastic - how I wish I can have lecturers like him - and Khian Hong and me went to clash the dialogue session. We didn't ask him anything because we were not supposed to be there basically (although I wanted very much to ask him to compare American and British science) :P But when asked to comment on how 'Cambridge has changed', he said this (which I have heard more than once from more senior people from my lab):
'nowadays Cambridge UGs are expecting to be spoonfed ... they become very good at MCQs and writing essays ... but that is not what the reality is! Instead of something as 'virtual' ... things that are practical, hands-on ... are better...'
He graduated from Cambridge as a UG, as a PhD, he used to supervise students here, and he was a Junior Proctor. He moved to ICRF Clare Hall in 1991.
So, I didn't come up with this... Nobel laureates said it first, and I followed...
Though I believe that he would be an awesome teacher and mentor to whoever that is lucky enough...
Haha so far my working experience here has been pretty positive. By the end of these 11 weeks I will know whether I will 'definitely apply here for graduate school and if I can find a suitable lab I will definitely come' :)
