If my parents ever decide to open a florist shop or a fruits stall or a chicken rice stall, I am pretty sure this photo will be shamelessly blown up and displayed at the most prominent position of the stall.
Waiting for something to finish incubating - everyone else has gone home.
Today is a mad day. I know that since yesterday - thus I slept at 10:30pm yesterday and woke up at 7:00am today. I definitely have to do that procedure today, because if I don't, it will mean a 3-week delay.
Sigh. It is not at all fun to lead a life with classes starting at 8:30/9 and ending at 1 everyday, and then you know you'll have stuff to do all the way till most of the time at least 7, and then you would still have some form of readings and/or homework and/or papers to do - in addition to that, I don't have anything in the fridge now that can be cooked quickly, I still have to find time to get food for Thanksgiving dinner - namely, I still have to run the household daily routine myself.
I left the house at 8am today. Other than the 10 or so minutes when I was back to keep cupcakes and to get rid of some disgusting trash, I have been outside working all along. After I am done with work in the lab, I will still have to go to Giant.
If not, I will have no breakfast tomorrow (I have to eat tomorrow morning - I need to stay up tonight, and food will become necessary at 4am), no milk to put into my coffee, and nothing else to drink other than tap water. The SSA will have no turkey for Thanksgiving.
This is when I really want to go home. When I am back, I know that however late I am home, there will be food on the table or in the fridge for me, whether or not I am free my parents will still go get groceries over the weekends, every morning when I wake up there will definitely be clean clothes for me to wear (and 95% of the time breakfast on the table), and most importantly, there will always be someone who loves me at home whenever I go back.
Whoever is reading this - it is not true that we have a medium/low level of stress constantly throughout the semester without stress peaks. That is NONSENSE.
We have high stress peaks at least once a week, and constant medium-stress throughout. You will understand when you are constantly under assessment - you will never want to mess up ANY one of them. Even if it is worth only 5%. When you have a couple of 5%-s, you will only have 10 hours to prepare for any, and the 10 hours means 10pm to 8am. It always ALWAYS happens to us.
I am not expecting people to understand. Haha I am feeling less stressed now compared to when I started. The timer beeped lol
At 7:45AM there are already FOURTEEN people on the waitlist of the D-Bio Lab session that I want (capacity = 20).
I waitlisted myself for thursday, and I am already the FOURTH on the list.
Idiots. If the motivation for you to take the class is to torture salamanders and chickens or an easy A, get out. I need it to graduate. Before I get someone to forcefully expel you through some other means.
Now my research has come to a stage where - I have to squeeze out all my brain juice just to form the next hypothesis.
It is pretty clear what the next steps are going to be, and we are pretty positive that we will be able to see a phenotype after we get our assay running and the knock-outs coming in. What phenotype though - that is the thing that I completely cannot predict.
Established literature doesn't seem to help much - accept for an experiment someone did as a control but they didn't make any story out of that. I know what those proteins I am studying are used for in various circumstances, but I just can't fit those functions into our experimental system, given the new model that a new PI in Hopkins recently established - and his data is convincing.
He came over to Hopkins from UCSF recently - when I went to listen to him on Friday I was pretty amazed by his presentation actually (we are using his protocol(s) already, and I used that chance to make myself known to him). What is more amazing is, I saw a familiar name in the presentation...! When I downloaded the paper today, I went to google that name and attempted to find out if she is actually THAT person that I know.
And indeed so. The HCJC Student Council President when I was in J1 is listed as one of the authors. She didn't even go to UCSF for college, but apparently she decided to go there for an internship after she graduated. Now the post-doc she used to work with works as a PI next to us.
Read the interview of Bianca by the SMA here to get an idea of what I am talking about:
This is an interesting song though. I have posted the lyrics once, but I have not posted the videos before. There are 2 good versions (both using the same music track):
From Mainland China: Cute animations, but unclear words (simp.):
From Taiwan: Clear words (trad.), but the presentation isn't that great.
Key Vocab: 症候群 = Syndrome 免疫 = Immune (adj.) 內分泌失調 = Hormonal disorder 過濾性病毒 = Some kind of virus 三字經 = Swear words 啞鈴 = Dumbbells 食慾不振 = Can't eat 歇斯底裡 = Hysteria 四肢萎縮 = Muscular dystrophy 才華洋溢 = Very talented 形影不離 = Always together 兩人三腳 = A game where two players tie two legs, one from each player, together and they are supposed to walk 連體嬰 = Siamese twins 示威抗議 = Protesting 海峽兩岸 = China and Taiwan 衣索匹亞 = Ethiopia 厭倦 = Getting sick (of things) 疲憊 = Tired 心悸 = Palpitations 夢囈 = Talking while sleeping 精神不濟 = Lack concentration 瞳孔放大 = Enlarged pupils 顫動 = Shaken
How to go back to medical school like that? Last minute mugging power has dramatically decreased. The C&T midterm is pretty much a disaster.
Sigh. When I am back, I will just have to do less random things. Meaning, I will have to devote more time to studying :(
Don't really like C&T - it is not as inspiring as I thought it would be. The research process seems to me way too random - to a certain extent it sounds like modern alchemy. It lacks the elegance of what basic biology can offer.
Oh well, there is still a final exam and a project which will add up to 40 - 50% of the total grade. No more messing up can be afforded...
I realised that I actually have very packed schedules - when I thought I have a slack week.
Today: Morning: Class starts at 9 (conveniently skipped it), quiz at 10:30, all classes ended at 1. Afternoon: Rested for 1 hour, lab ~ 2 - 6:30 Evening: Small group till ~9pm. Supposed to meet people to study after that but cancelled at the last minute. Late evening: Homework homework homework paper paper paper... (and spending 45mins or so replying emails and blogging.)
2am is early when it comes to sleep.
Tomorrow: Morning: Class starts at 8:30. I never skip Adv Cell Bio although I have S/Ued it - it is one of the more useful classes I have, provided I can keep myself awake. All the way till 1pm, with a short presentation at 11am. Afternoon: 1pm: meet with Dr. Norris to discuss grad schools. Then, chiong to the medical school to help Dr. Lotan with UGS organ cultures. Evening: 6pm: dinner. 8pm: Veritas Forum. Late evening: Study for Cell and Tissue Engineering midterm...
Thursday: Morning: C&T Midterm at 9am. Classes till 1pm with 1.5h break. Afternoon: Head to the med school from 2pm. Dr. Kuriyama seminar at 3pm at Welch. Thursday is mice day, if there is no mouse, check out the UGSes and read papers. Evening: prepare for sessions on Friday. Stuff to read.
Well at least Friday Saturday Sunday are still pretty empty... Need to figure out a way to stain the organoids though. This PTEN thing is getting curious. I don't know what is happening, can't even form a hypothesis from the data so far... Need some inspiration from the literature.
Okay. WHEN CAN I START EXERCISING AGAIN?! I don't want the army to come after me after I go back.
Die la. Next semester I am planning a 15.5 regular credits semester, with the only superfluous things being Immunobiology and Adv Dev Bio/Genetics, but I am also planning to do a medical tutorial + probably more stuff. And I don't know if I can get enough data for publication by June - doesn't look too good at this moment...
The most interesting comment that I have gotten for the previous post was from tk.
He said that I sound 'permanently scarred'.
Woah lao. Not so serious la.
If I am permanently scarred,
1) I won't talk about it openly 2) Whenever you people mention it I will confirm flare up 3) There won't be any lesson learned, I will just continue to hate that person 4) I won't even move on with life and hope for anything.
The fact is,
1) I am talking about it openly now 2) You want to say it say lor, I don't care - I might even join in the discussion 3) I learnt something I think? And I don't hate her that is for sure 4) Am I not moving on with life?! Ask me and find out for yourself.
It just isn't very smart to, when everything is over, press reset and then make the same stupid mistake and wrongful assumptions again. That would indeed be not moving on with life...
And why people always say that I am emo... Wishing for someone who cares for me and loves me means that I am emo meh? Aiyo. It's just like, even if you don't want to study it doesn't mean you don't hope for an A in the exam...
Please hor. Don't need to introduce any girl to me. And please don't think too much - thanks a lot. __________________________________________________ Since I got back from Cambridge I have always wondered how does our East Baltimore Campus compare to the size of Cambridge's City Centre.
Today I finally took 5 minutes to do the measurements on Google Earth - and I think our hospital campus is at least 30% the size of Cambridge's town centre.
I measured the walking distance between the two labs that I currently shuttle between. It takes me 10 minutes to navigate the maze of tunnels and bridges, but if I do not use the tunnels (which provide warmth and a shorter route), the distance between the two labs is 0.54 miles. That basically spans the whole campus diagonally.
That is the distance between University Arms Hotel at the southwestern corner of Parker's Piece to the Round Church at the junction of Bridge Street and St. John's Street. That is pretty much 80% of a side of a crudely drawn rectangle that marks most of town centre - if you define the span of town centre along that stretch of streets to be from Lensfield Road along Regent Street etc. to Quayside.
Erm. It is THAT far. A post-doc in my lab has suggested that I should get a bike :P
Dr. Lotan: I actually have enough money to hire a tech, so that we don't have to spend time preparing all these and thus can concentrate on the experiments and solving the staining problems... Me: Hmm yeah!
Do I actually worth more than a tech?
If I am, that is very good news indeed...! ___________________________________________________ Yesterday evening I was with Jo, Peter, etc. at the Election Watch.
People are very excited. After Obama's victory speech, supporters started celebrating on the streets. They were cheering all the way, blocking the traffic at the junction of 33rd and St Paul. At 3am the police came, took away a couple of people, including one of our professors :P
I wasn't there, but at least a friend and a teacher were there. It was pretty awesome. McCain got owned.
Alright. As a foreigner from Asia and a pseudo-European, I am very excited too. We now have a reason to be optimistic.
Although Obama has said that he is going to pull out of Iraq, I honestly do not believe that he will end the wars started by Bush irresponsibly. There is too high a price to pay if he does so; both politically and in terms of actual security. That is, I would be utterly surprised if he totally gives up American military presence, even gradually, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Middle East and Central Asia.
What I am expecting is, he is going to get his people to work out a way to maintain minimal military presence in those areas until American military presence is not needed anymore. But the important thing is, he is not going to start anything new. Europe doesn't want anything to do with war; Europeans want peace, and they want America to be on their side of the cause to help get it. Bush dragged everyone into war, and criticised France and Germany for not cooperating; Obama will not do that. If he does, I will be surprised.
Obama represents a new way of doing things, and a new attitude. He represents a stronger sense of social justice, and he represents a more active pursuit towards it. He has inspired a lot of young Americans to feel and think that they can make their country better, and in his victory speech he has asked them to put that into action. The Republican way is to advocate - you are responsible for striving and making yourself better, and naturally people around you will become better. The Obama way is, as you make yourself better, think of how to actively make other people better too.
Obama is about rebuilding America. Like Prof. Pomata (Italian) said today, the reputation of America as a great nation as been tainted by the Bush administration, and now it is Obama's turn to reinstate it. The Obama administration will be a more responsible one, both towards the American public and other nations. His mission would be to claim back the high moral status America has in the world, and I am pretty sure that he can do that.
And look at how he speaks. During his victory speech, he said, 'The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.' If our PM Lee were to say exactly the same thing, he would go, 'The global financial situation is bad, investors' confidence is low, we will have a hard time ahead, and we ask all Singaporeans to bear with the government even when the policies are bitter and difficult to swallow'.
I wonder why Singaporean youths wouldn't care less about politics and their country.
He also said, 'I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for 232 years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand[;]' 'So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. ... In this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.'
It is basically the same thing as the previous paragraph; phrased differently, and appealing to a larger cause.
It is this larger cause that is inspiring a lot of people. If, because of the Obama administration, young Americans start to have a stronger sense of public responsibility, social justice and service, we can foresee America to have a rather dramatic attitude change in the coming years. This is when America will truly be great, and this is truly how we can have more reasons to be optimistic.
That is why I am excited. Not just me - people around me, all of Europe, Kenya in Africa - everyone is excited. We are excited because we know that there is a good chance that - Obama will bring a new attitude to America, and because of that the world will become a better place. Obama can be a great president. We will all see.
The most ridiculous thing I did was 3 weeks ago in Sandtown, when I got my car stuck between the curb and the car in front when I have 3 others in the car with another troop outside watching me park. I have to reverse the car up the pavement at a right angle before I got my car loose.
Today I went to church as usual - and drove my car to Wolman to see if anyone needed a ride. No one was there. I was suspecting if there was something I missed already, but I still wasn't smart enough. I drove to church anyway, and saw everyone was inside, and after a while people started walking out. Then I saw Grace.
Me: What time did this service start? Grace: 8:30?
Erm. I forgot about DST. I thought it was 11 but err it was still 10. What an idiot. ___________________________________________________ So yesterday went to play paintball with a couple of people. It was fun - and once again it proved that I am not exactly very good at shooting games. But it was still fun - ran around for half a day in the sun (it was AMAZINGLY warm and sunny - if we decided to go today it would have been cold and cloudy again), and I actually did successfully personally capture the flag and brought it to base once.
The day before we were down at Fell's Point to see what's the deal for Halloween. Well there isn't much - basically just imagine a lot of crazy people dressed up crazily doing random crazy things; not the kind of fun that we would find 'fun' (i.e. same category as New Year's Eve's Time Square). So we ended up in Vacarro's eating copious amounts of Vanilla gelato, Belgium waffles, Tiramisu, cream puffs, chocolate eclair, rum cake, etc. Jo was amazed at the fact that, me, being a junior, has never been there before, when Grace had visited rather frequently over the summer, and he himself keeps going to Little Italy for good food...
This is not Fell's Point - this is a house near our school :P
My car is honoured to have Baoluo posing on it!
See how no one is looking at Jo.
The crazy crowd.
Realised a cheaper way to eat my lunches whenever I need to go to lab. I can actually go to the North Avenue MacDonald's (on the way), order 1x double cheeseburger, 1x McChicken, 1x small fries/4pc McNuggets/side salad and drink water from my lab's water fountain in my UK imported This Water bottle for $3.18 in total. It is rubbish food (>>remember it is staple for a lot of people living here), but it keeps me alive. Well though, I don't think I can sustain meals like that... It is very boring food!
Today I went out again - this time to the B&O Railroad Museum. As some of you might know, I am a train nut (proof = the MALLARD sign I have on my desk that I got in York), I prefer trains to planes whenever logical, and although I don't seem to remember any train names or models (Mallard, Silver Star, ICE, Eurostar, TGV, the Flying Scotsman, the Caledonian Sleeper and Shinkansen being the exceptions - let's not consider Amtrak and MARC), I still love trains. So I am happy that the topic of a small history paper that I have to write requires me to go down there to look, take photos, and ask people questions.
The museum isn't big - it is hardly half the size of the one in York. However it is a significant site - it is from here the first railroad in America started. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, linking Baltimore and Ohio River, was built originally as an alternative transport route linking the East Coast and the Midwest to compete against the Erie Canal which cuts across upstate New York. Its first stone was laid here in 1828, and the first stretch of 13 miles to Ellicott Mills (now Ellicott City) opened in 1830. The whole thing was complete in the 1850s I think.
To me trains have a couple of types. The sleek ones like the ICE are modern and fast, the okay ones like Amtrak are older and slower but comfortable, the ugly ones like the one linking Cambridge and London, the New York City Subway, the MetroNorth and the Picadilly Line can only merely function to carry passengers, and there are also the historic ones with that kind of font, those logos on them, those classy names and that kind of locomotives:
A B&O Locomotive
The MetroNorth...
Haha next time when I have kids, they will definitely have a lot of toy trains and tracks to play with. That is because those stuff are not mainly for them, but for my own amusement :P
This is our post#1. It is over THIS particular gathering that we decided to start this blog.
It has been 4 years. Since then we have been talking about the status of the S.A.D. (Single and *ahem*) club, and after quite a bit of a stir everything goes back to how it used to be. We have left the country, gone back or going back soon; travelled the world; did whatever our hearts and our minds called us to do; continued to be establishing our professional status; moved on with life with our partners...
How much we have gone through since then, how much has changed, and yet how much remains unchanged?
I am coming back to Singapore soon to celebrate GCS's ORD. Hang in there.
By the way, HAPPY HALLOWEEN! (Heading down to Fell's Point in 3 hours...)
outside Harry's @ the Esplanade
effects of esctasy
seven eleven
groping abt in the dark...
5 handsome "humks"
and more! girls lost in time... b&w makes the pic feel kinda timeless eh...
the four pretty girls!
phantom of the steamboat
the 4K steamboaters! the first time we have a gath where there are more girls than guys.. haha.
"There You'll Be"
When I think back On these times And the dreams We left behind I'll be glad 'cause I was blessed to get To have you in my life When I look back On these days I'll look and see your face You were right there for me
In my dreams I'll always see your soul Above the sky In my heart There always be a place For you for all my life I'll keep a part Of you with me And everywhere I am There you'll be
Well you showed me How it feels To feel the sky Within my reach And I always Will remember all The strength you Gave to me Your love made me Make it through Oh, I owe so much to you You were right there for me
'Cause I always saw in you My light, my strength And I want to thank you Now for all the ways You were right there for me You were right there for me For always
Hey yo.. do you all remember this song? I think the lyrics mean a lot more to me now... when we have left dhs... really glad to see so many ppl turn up for the last steamboat & pubbing gath. I had a great time. I do miss 4K. Hope we will all keep in touch, if not face to face then at least through this blog k?
