I am happy that Sushi is finally here - have not seen her for 8 months! And apparently to the eyes of English people she is 'ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL'. Mum asked me if I were proud, hahaha I just fund this idea ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS. Though have seriously reminded her to exercise common sense when she is outside! Some French guy just tried to chat her up at Piccadilly Circus yesterday and invited her to dinner lol!
Well, on the other hand I am not that happy - or rather, sad... regarding something else. It has to reach this point somehow I guess, if it continues this way, sooner or later - I have a limit too don't I... I am hoping that, I have been wrong all the while including now - classically my kind of over-thinking, being too self-important...
Je m'appelle Hélène: should become the new SAD theme song. The 'no matter who I am no other fellow human being ACTUALLY cares about me and loves me' feeling is overpowering in the song.
How many of us actually have that feeling? That is, the feeling that your whole person is supported only by who you are in the eyes of others, and once that is gone, there is nothing else of you - and it's the end.
I know where to run to though, and I am extremely thankful...
Anyway, spoke to Prof. Swain from SICS - will be meeting her when I come back to Singapore to discuss opportunities and also will be asking her for some opinion and advice. Will also be meeting Prof. Gluckman on another occasion, waiting for the administration side to reply...
She also referred me to a Cambridge professor dealing with epigentics who was newly appointed as an adjunct professor in SICS. I went to chat with her on Wednesday (which seemed strangely like a Tuesday to me the whole afternoon when I was out); it was a pleasant meeting - and she told me about what they were hoping to achieve in SICS through the growth, development and metabolism programme.
One exciting aspect of it is that they are moving from rodent models to non-human primates - long-tail macaques - as they study the sustained metabolic effects (type II diabetes mellitus) of early epigenetic changes within the foetus even before it was born. Literature is dotted with data from rodents - rats and mice; Prof. Anne uses imprinting as the model, I am not sure what Prof. Gluckman does though.
I was telling her, it would be good for me if I can do a project in that area for my one year - because, despite my coursework in molecular biology and development (there will be more...), I have NEVER touched anything remotely resembling a ChIP assay, a bisulphite PCR, and designing any experiment that has anything remotely related to epigenetics. I don't even know how they actually study the acetylation or methylation status of the lysines in the histone tails - protein sequencing? Structural analysis? There must be cleverer ways. Actually the answer lies in the methods section of a paper that I have - too lazy to read it now :P
So now comes the question - what should my PhD be. Since I am interested in translational research - should I go get myself properly trained as a basic scientist as I do my MD (if I ever), or should I just go straight and learn the business of translational research right as I start graduate school? Haha if doing both is possible of course that will be awesome :D
I can think about it later - it depends on whether I can get my medical training done though...
And she asked me to apply for Gates. Errr I will definitely try, but whether I can get it is another problem... Anyway I will need to become a Singapore citizen first!
Sushi is coming tomorrow!! :) :) :) And Midsummer Night's Dream is hilarious :D
NOTICE to anyone who is still in Britain: Use the promo code NEWTEN for 10% discount off standard fares on National Express. I don't know if it works with Coach Card - you have got to try. Doesn't work with funfares. Useful when travelling to and from airports - will save you the cost of 2 packets of Walkers Sensation when Tesco is having discounts, or 5 stalks of celery when Sainsbury's is having discounts.
Lazed my weekend away. Fixed my bike, went to church, went shopping - basically I was out of my room for less than 6 hours in total for the whole weekend.
Anyway. 3 more weeks - and that's it. Time to leave - and get ready to return to Hopkins.
Have finally finished arranging my itinerary for the subsequent weekends; I still have not fixed my France itinerary though. Waiting for Kenneth's reply before I can book Chessington and Dungeon, and I am still trying to figure out how to go for evensong and can still save money on the buses to Gatwick.
It costs a lot less to do Cambridge - Victoria - Gatwick. But the last 010 leaves at 8:35pm! The last Gatwick bus leaves at 9:00pm, but it costs like £28.80 per person. If I were to take trains, I will have to change twice and it costs also around 30 pounds. I am running out of ideas...
Oh wait - meanwhile, other than travelling, there are more stuff to do. The great opportunity presented to me can potentially make my holiday in Singapore extremely fruitful. I need to send quite a few emails around!
Just witnessed the nicest sunset ever on my way back from work. It is that prefect sunset that consists of a flaming sun gradually merging into the purplish hue that covered the rest of the sky.
No photo - I won't bring my camera to work?
Some time ago KH and I had a chat which made me realise something:
The main reason behind me rambling all the time is my innate wish to be at the top of everything which leads to, although I try to deny it, hardcore competitiveness and the tendency to always compare.
I have been expressing my worry that in the future we might have to fight with one another for resources and positions - undeniably this is likely going to happen. I worry because I am afraid of losing the fight, and I complain even more when I realise that the criteria towards winning the fight is not something I am good at.
I hate people who play with office politics, or politics in general - but, when I feel that my survival (or superiority?) is being threatened, I can more or less use some of these tactics ---
See what evil this can eventually lead me to. I might eventually become someone that even I myself hate.
I have to get rid of the competitive mindset - can't I just do my best and try to pursue my interests and let everything else go? Why bother about comparing with what others are achieving?
It is important to know what is happening around me and what is likely to happen in the future. But my course of action and my attitude towards such information is my own choice - I should not be oblivious or simply willfully ignore them, but neither should I be overly conscious - which is what kind of my tendency now.
Shireen once said to me - it is 'your choice to be disappointed'. I can't blame anyone or anything for that.
Two months in Cambridge and in this lab has taught me what is meant by living a life - work hard when needed, enjoy whenever you can; bask in the morning breeze while cycling to work, there is no need to rush to anywhere or squeeze with anyone; over the weekends find a pretty spot to have lunch picnic with friends or just spend an afternoon alone...
Keeping my fingers crossed for now, because there are still 2 years ahead of me - I really hope that eventually I will be able to put down all reservations and decide to come back here for graduate school once I am able to identify a suitable project.
Even on the practical side, it would make complete sense - dad has been advising me to get a professional qualification; the extra 2 years that I gain could be used in this aspect or further develop myself through an extra post-doc position. Yet another important thing would be, I could possibly be in an environment to learn how to live a person's life, a life which is not governed by the achievements of other people, and one which I can willfully choose to enjoy.
I have never had a chance to learn that. These two months gave me precisely that - this is one of the best decisions I have made in my life.
Not getting enough RNA for experiments, probable RNase contamination.
Seems like I am a killer of all IHCs: it never works probably consistently whenever wherever I am doing it.
Good thing is, I am already getting quite a fair bit of gene expression data. I just hope that the IHC evaluation will work soon! I have only less than 4 weeks left :(
....... Spring Singapore chairman Philip Yeo, who helms the school's advisory board, said that many fresh graduates in science and engineering have a strong technical grounding.
However, they lacked equally important skills in other areas, such as training, managing and retaining staff, for example.
'We want future technical people to become CEOs of start-ups,' he said, calling MBA training a necessity, not a luxury. .......
I will make it clear: I AM NOT INTERESTED IN BECOMING THE CEO OF A START-UP.
Training, managing and retaining staff - yup I will need those skills; everyone needs those skills. But that doesn't mean that I have to become the CEO of a start-up.
If you are interested, good for you - go sell your astariximab, astaravir or astarozipam, or the new machine that can make proteins like PCR, whatever - leave me out of the whole business and politics thing please.
When they start asking me 'so, when are you going to create something of economic value?' (apparently yes they asked the PhD students [in Oxford?] precisely that during a lunch meeting), it would be the time for me to start preparing myself mentally to leave. This is not something that I can 'hope' won't happen to me - anyway their idea is not to create a strong academic centre like Hopkins or Cambridge but START-UPS that will generate economic revenue.
Though I don't understand how do you create start-ups that produce good and respectable products without a critical mass of good and respectable people supporting those stuff that are going to be sold. That means you will have to first create a strong academic centre like Hopkins or Cambridge (a bit of history: most biomedical companies set-up in the 70s in the US came from the Bay Area and Cambridge, MA).
It annoys me when I think back - I decided to join A*STAR because I preferred research over clinical medicine (since I do not have an option to do both then), it is as simple as that, because the world of an 18-year-old is simple.
Well, as the world becomes more and more complicated as it reveals itself - there is nothing I can do about it because of the contract; and it annoys me even more when I realised that the only way to stay happy and contended is to continue to blatantly ignore things that you find out along the way so that I can still live in the world of my 18-year-old self. Unfaltered strong and unquestionable loyalty to the government of the Republic of Singapore will definitely help too, especially when my values do not match theirs.
Unfortunately I do not ignore things that happen around me - worse I THINK about them and sometimes too much. It is not always bad, it made me decide to follow Christ, but sometimes it really makes me worry - how do I reconcile my bond obligations and my vision of my future? I do not have an unfaltered strong and unquestionable loyalty to the government of the Republic of Singapore either - if I do, there will not be any problem at all, because I will still be happy even if they ask me to sell laksa in the Biopolis foodcourt.
And the government of the Republic of Singapore is not like God: they do not have plans that are definitely the best for you. They have plans (amendable at any instant) for you that are definitely best for THEM - come on, believe this, economic development and investment return is paramount, so they have to follow corporate rules...
(Singapore DOES NOT EQUAL TO the government of the Republic of Singapore - in case you still do not realise.)
So how? Since God always has the best plans for us, I actually do not have to worry - whatever will happen will happen right? All I need to do is to let go and trust him...
I know. Tell me a better option if you have one. Breaking bond is out of the question.
Hahaha sushi, of course things learnt in school all become different when you enter the hospital... I still remember what kind of an idiot I was when I went for my first cover duty as a medic :P
Remember the marathon and rectal probe story...
(Haha and to explain why we always get screwed, quote my labmate (an honourary clinical fellow in Addenbrooke's): 'I am in a bad mood today ... too bad there isn't a house officer around!')
Experience: same thing for lab :P
Maybe I don't have to be excited at all but today I went to the endoscopy suite and actually saw the patient (saw, not met, no talking involved) who provided the material for my work today :P I made cDNA from a mixture of normal squamous epithelial cells, Barrett's epithelial cells, and gastric cardia epithelial cells donated by him through an endoscopic brush, it is now sitting in the -20 freezer, waiting to be PCRed tomorrow :P
That would be my career, haha I hope... less exciting than doing TKR or making people walk after TKR but hopefully it will be a small step towards something more important!
10 things that a modern middle-class Singaporean should know how to do:
1. Speaking, reading and writing English 2. Speaking, reading and writing in his/her mother tongue (Chinese for us) 3. Use a computer (to do whatever) 4. Do housework (laundry, dishes, ironing, floor, etc...) 5. Cooking (important life skill, simple edible dishes) 6. Driving (for doing grocery and esp. emergencies) 7. Cycling (important life skill, for going to the bank or buying lunch) 8. Swimming (important life skill) 9. First aid (important life skill, for saving lives, including your own) 10. Good interpersonal skills
Obviously, because the list comes from me, I score a 90% :P I have bad interpersonal skills.
FCF played this during sermon while I was still in Baltimore and I heard it again in the film 'In America' that I bought for 3 pounds. The lyrics come from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8:
Ecclesiastes 3 1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
Running low on ideas as to where and how to travel for the weekend :( there are too many limiting factors (time, cost, possibility for Kenneth to stay over etc.) that restricts our choices...
I am all for nuah-ing in Cambridge though! My order for Good Omens has arrived - I definitely will have something to do :P I have 3 books waiting for me to read... And I have always wanted to get Kenneth to come up to Cambridge (to nuah), but if he can't stay over it defeats the purpose...
(The reason behind the problem with Kenneth staying over has been an issue for us - pardon me for not elaborating here because it WILL be endless rambling...)
Anyway trip to Ireland has been fun - it wasn't very nice because of the rain and the midgets that bit me all over when we were in Glendalough but the company is all that matters:
It is always nice to have a group of us doing something together! Doesn't have to be anything big, it can just be a weekend trip or cooking something nice for dinner, but as long as there is a group of us doing something together, it will be nice.
Now I am trying to put together things that are going to happen from 26 July onwards!
1) Organ trading: Singapore just recently sued 2 Indonesians for selling their kidneys. However, before you start to question how on earth those two guys managed to get through the committee interviews, there is a more fundamental issue that ought to be given due consideration:
Tang Wee Sung is not going to have another chance to survive if he can't find another kidney that matches him, and he is sure to be charged. Under current moral standards, he is more guilty than the two guys selling their kidneys.
But see, if you are the patient, would you rather die or would you rather break the law and take the risk? And more fundamentally, why is the commodification of human body parts considered morally deplorable? Is it actually necessarily morally wrong and must be banned by law?
GCS has written something on this, as an extension to a discussion we had last year: Organ-trading: Revisited
(I would like to draw your attention to Yaofeng's article on human evolution too! Pages 35 - 37.)
2) Cambridge: I am falling in love with this place. No wonder Grace kept saying that she wants to come back.
Saturday KH and Chen Li went for a tour to Stonehenge, Windsor and Oxford. So I was alone:
Thus, after doing groceries, I came back, packed a box of biscuits, a flask of tea and some stuff to read, took my bike and cycled down to Grantchester, found a tree by the river, and sat there until the wind got too strong.
Today the sun was shining and it was all warm and nice - so our whole lab took our lunches and went outside to sit on the grass and picnicked. Haha this isn't the first time: sometimes a couple of people will also just go out and sit in the sun to have tea after lunch or during teatime.
It is never hot - today it was 28deg and I asked Marianne whether this is considered hot. She said, 'YES it is almost 30!' It is never cold - Kelvin told me that night after formal that at 5 deg he would have needed to wear some I-don't-know-what-but-I-know-it-must-have-been-something-really-warm coat. And snow doesn't even accumulate - when it snows.
There is no need for a car at all - a big backpack + a bike are all you need for groceries. Nowhere within city limits is more than 40 minutes bike ride from where you started... That would be roughly the time required to get from Milton to Trumpington. Yet you get almost everything you need, including decent Chinese food and groceries, great concerts, cinemas, bowling alley, pubs, and of course places for picnic. If you have a railcard, London is 50 minutes and can be as cheap as £9.50 away.
Europeans are in general a lot more environmentally conscious too. I have seen people literally digging out a huge bunch of reusable bags at Sainsbury's, a sight that I have yet to see in America. It might not be very obvious in Cambridge but if you travel outwards, especially in Germany, you can really feel it.
In my lab PhD students seem to be very well mentored! I am not too sure of the full picture but I feel that the working environment here is indeed good. Like I told Joseph, where in America can you find a place where breaking 3 times a day is official (Anna: is ENCOURAGED) and work still gets done :P He doesn't find my other reasons very good but this one is the ultimate.
Another thing: clinical researchers here are very conscious about applicability of their work within the NHS. Which means, they have to find cheaper ways to do things. It is a problem: it limits the kind of work that can and will be done, and I can definitely sense that Cambridge still can't match Hopkins in terms of resources. But considering Singapore's situation - where resources WILL BE an issue - to learn how to work effectively within generally limited capabilities can be crucially important. And I certainly do not doubt the brains here, and because of the Cambridge tradition, student support will definitely be there.
(Research is important, but extending quality patient care to everyone regardless of economic and social status is even more important! At least this has to be true in Singapore!)
3) Hogfather revisited: Small lies, big lies, the sun and the flaming ball of gas. Believe.
The book is a lot better than the show. Got the DVD for £6 - and the show, well, completely removed the suspense and destroyed the jokes. Some parts even seem abrupt. But if you have not read the book or have no time to, it is still a show worth watching...
