time of your life...

Last day

2007-06-10T17:54:00.000-05:00

It's the last day, and probably the last 2 hours I'll be a Malaysian. Will be becoming a Singaporean citizen soon.

Hmm, will need to get used to this switch in identity.

2007-06-05T19:15:00.000-05:00

I'm finally done with classes! No more lectures, tutorials, written tests for the rest of my life...at least from this end. Today I got an email about an undergraduate course starting in the fall, asking for teaching fellows. How interesting to teach PCR and DNA replication to undergraduates, who've never heard about them. And as I've been warned, how potentially dreadful it could get, given that rabid Harvard undergraduates fight tooth and nail for every quarter point in every problem set and every test. After all, each and every one of them wants stellar grades to get into medical/graduate/law school. Some insist on several-hour-long tutorials late into the night.....imagine, "Night of the living undergrads"...

And it's commencement time now; they've put up a huge tent with hundreds of chairs in the middle of the yard, and dozens of banners representing the different houses and departments. Some of my friends doing Masters are graduating. Farewell, and good luck with the real world! I overheard some guy talking to his friend while in the kitchen; she was in the Hague and talking about how things work there. Wow, what a different world. I'll be staying here in my bubble for quite a while longer.

Joined a lab! i.e. where I'll cry, sleep, eat (when no one's looking) and enter catatonic states when my results don't make sense for the next 4/5 years. It's a weird feeling knowing I'll be working at that bench for half a decade. But the principal investigator has some interesting ideas, and finally! I might be able to create knowledge rather than just regurgitate it as I have most of my life.

Moved to a new room for the summer, to a dorm building across the road from my old one. It's twice as big, and more importantly has an air-conditioning unit attached! Take that, hot muggy New England summer.

I'm flying back to Singapore this Friday. My postdoc remarked that I didn't seem excited at all; I'm not. Not that I dread going back, but I just don't feel homesick at all. I've been away 10 months, but nope, nothing. Explained to her I've been away since I was 12. Can't beat one of my friends though, who did not go back to Singapore once during his entire undergraduate degree. If anyone in Singapore is free to meet and catch up, over lunch, dinner, coffee or booze, drop me a message!

I drink lots of booze.

Went to New York again a few weeks ago. The famous bull in New York, from a not so famous angle.

And in the Museum of Modern Art, a classic manga shot.

Feeling kinda random this evening. Maybe it was the 6.30-8pm nap.

What happens in Vegas...

2007-04-07T09:41:00.000-05:00

We ate SO much.

In Vegas everything is subsidized by the casinos, so most things are cheaper than you'd expect from a tourist trap. And since our party didn't really gamble, we came to Vegas for the buffets (the buffets!!).

Day 1, MGM Grand buffet. We had just arrived and were tired, but hungry. Since we were staying at the MGM Grand Signature, we decided to just look for a cafe for quick bite in the shopping area in the hotel; we'd planned to go to a buffet the next day. Then we passed by the MGM Grand buffet area, where a $16 buffet beckoned. What the heck right? A lunch in any other restaurant would easily cost $10 or more.

Dude, we'd never seen more variety in any other buffet. Jen was slightly scared; there was just too much choice. A whole Asian section with chinese food and sushi, mexican section, chicken cooked several different ways, and ditto for beef (oh the steak tips), seafood (shrimp salad!).......and the freaking dessert spread!

We learned many valuable lessons that day. Divide and conquer (everyone get a different set of desserts), teamwork (everyone eat a bit of everything). We missed our target of 20 desserts by a wide margin, even though everything was mini-sized.

Then we went back and slept for 2 hours.

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Gambling - We weren't so hot with this. Us being the poor graduate students that we are, we stuck to the penny slots. Penny slots ie 1 cent per pull. But you can bet on up to 30 lines per slot pull (horizontally across, diagonally, and weird V/W shaped lines), so our money did run out pretty fast. I lost a whole $5 on the slot machines, through the 4 days there.

Give me back my money!!!!!!!

I'd say around 75% of the machines in the casinoes are slot machines, all with the exact same software but with different 'themes', like "Indian Princess", "Texas Gold", "Gone fishing", "Pagoda Treasure" etc. The others were blackjack and poker machines, also with 2 cent bets. Boy did we go crazy.

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But one of the things to do in Vegas is to check out the different casinoes, and this is where Vegas really reveals itself to be less of a city and more of a theme park. There's the Luxor, a black pyramid that shoots light into the sky at night, there's a "New York" complete with mini-Liberty, a Paris with mini-Eiffel Tower and Arc of Triumph, a Venice with indoor canals and gondolas! Not to mention several huge man-made lakes in the middle of the desert. In Vegas, if you can go over-the-top, you do.

Watched a very Vegas-y show, and got drunk.

We were sitting in a bar which had a live band, and the only ones cheering (going "wooo wooo wooo") since most others were much older, and the 4 of us were also high. So of course the lead singer beckons for Srinjan to go up and dance with her, and of course we force him to go up, where he boogies with her in front of a group of strangers.

He runs back quickly, but lead singer isn't done with us yet. Horrors, she asks all 4 of us to go up. And doesn't stop asking till we do. T_T So we were dancing to Outkast, just the 4 of us in front of a whole bar of amused strangers, some even taking photos and one woman a video. We're dreading the day it appears on Youtube, titled "Four crazy young kids TRYING to dance".
Thus I see why the promotional tagline, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas".

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Strangely enough though we were in the middle of the desert, it was chilly.

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The highlight of the trip was the Wynn buffet, which Frommer's rated as 3 stars out of 3. Dude it was one level above the MGM Grand buffet; the juice they served us was the best I ever tasted. JUMBO shrimp, teriyaki steak, buttersquash ravioli etc etc. And dessert again: tiramisu was heavenly, and the ice-cream... sorbets usually taste of ice, but the mango sorbet here was like cold mango puree, and whatever the hell banana foster ice cream is....wow...

We managed 24 desserts this time!

And walked at 1/4 normal speed for 2 hours after that.

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Other random things:

Biggest Hawaiian T-shirt in the world! We thought of going in and asking the guy: "Do you have that in blue?"

The Scream, Vegas rendition. The chocolate fountain is extends above the photo; it's twice as high as you can see here, with three streams of molten chocolate twisting and flowing aside each other: white, normal and coffee (we think).

The glass walls kept her at bay.

A cashout voucher of 10 cents, from my daily gambling allowance of one dollar. I borrowed the dollar from Jen; I think she's not very happy at me losing 90% of her money.

Ghost Rider is an awesome movie and its release has automatically divided everyone into the world into the cool and those who have not seen it.

The other things Vegas is famous for.

Ever the British gentleman, even with a Playboy bunny.

Bath soap + jacuzzi jets = Bubble MAYHEM.

We actually couldn't stop laughing at how freaking many freaking bubbles there were. The foam flooded the bathroom and threatened to invade the hotel room proper. This picture only shows the "After", when we managed to get rid of some of them.

Viva Las Vegas

2007-03-25T12:01:00.000-05:00

It's spring break! Feel my pain; it's been a long long term but we only have a week's break (as compared to 5.5 weeks in Uni of Cam). Mid-term exams, lab rotations (just started a new one this week, hopefully I'll join this lab), as well as tax season (I've to submit tax forms to the USA federal govt, the state govt, AND to Singapore!). Got tickets back home to Singapore (June 8th-June 28th, anyone free?), and am looking for housing for the coming academic year (living in a house with 3 other coursemates - geekfest).

Tomorrow though, Vegas! 4 days with Srinjan, Derek and Jen - staying at the MGM Grand Signature, which should be quite an upgrade from my dorm room. Most of our planning time has gone to which buffet to visit; some time maybe we'll hit the casinos. We had a practice poker session with fake money - the others have now limited me to only bringing 10 bucks to the casino, so that I can't lose my life's savings.

I'm going to make a beeline for the 5-cent slot machines; since gambling has a negative expected return anyways, this way I'll be able to 'enjoy' gambling for longer. Mum's asked for 20 bucks on red 25 on the roulette wheel though.

Glitz and Glamour.... with graduate students. How incongruent.

The Boston skyline

2007-03-11T18:54:00.000-05:00

The view from the Top of the Hub restaurant, on the 52nd floor of the Prudential Tower building in Boston. I especially like the sailing boats, trapped between ice floes on either side.

Good place for special events.

Snow

2007-03-05T22:52:00.000-05:00

There's the half-hearted attempts at snow in Cambridge, UK. There are the arctic blizzards that snuff out all life outdoors and raise ground level by several feet here in New England.

And sometimes there's the snow that sprinkles down like icing sugar, coating the land with a layer of frosting. And when the wind blows, the snow flows along the roads like souls down a Stygian river.

The latter happens when it's very, very cold. But once in a while it's worth it.

The thawing of the Charles

2007-03-04T01:28:00.000-05:00

We've only had two instances of huge snowfalls so far this year, one just last week. Covered everything in snow/ice, and even the Charles River was frozen (never seen a river frozen before; and the Charles being several times the size of the river Cam).

It was warm yesterday, and sunny. And though it's going to be -9 degrees Celcius again tomorrow, just for that one day we could go out and explore.

Winter's a clingy lover, but looks like spring's finally on its way.

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Tons of admin to do these days. Finishing up my current lab rotation, arranging flights back for summer, housing for next year, and filing taxes (TAXES!) for the US federal government, the state of Massachusetts, and Singapore. All on top of coursework.

But Srinjan (Queen's College guy) and I managed to import Pancake Day into the U.S.A., at least for our class. None of the Americans have ever heard about Pancake Day; weirdos, how can anyone not love a day devoted to eating pancakes?

We put together a good selection: blueberry pancakes, chocolate chip pancakes, raspberry pancakes, with maple syrup, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, rainbow sprinkles, strawberries and butter. With a tub of Ben and Jerry's that we didn't even manage to get to.

Saint Patrick's day is coming up. Apparently you've got to wear green, and drink green beer. Jen's a big fan of it. =)

=)

2007-02-28T00:58:00.001-05:00

Yes it's true.

Insomnia

2007-02-15T04:20:00.000-05:00

But yeah, I've gotten way more out of Harvard than I expected.

=)

Not a geeky cake

2007-02-11T01:09:00.000-05:00

Apparently I've been watching too much South Park.

And the whipped cream icing melted when they put it on the cake.

But I love it nonetheless =)

25

2007-02-05T23:37:00.000-05:00

I'll be 25 in 25 minutes. (coincidence, I didn't plan this)

First birthday in the USA. First birthday in Harvard. First Birthday in graduate school.

Should I be feeling introspective? Flashbacks on things I've done in my life? Gather together my thoughts and plans for the future?

Men have conquered empires before they were 25. Men have done much better, but at least I've not done much worse.

Quarter of a century. A third of the expected lifespan of a modern man.

Thing is, funnily enough I don't really feel anything. I've just watched 24 (won't be 24 anymore!) with friends, and tomorrow I've class at 8.30pm. The maelstrom of thoughts and emotions is nowhere to be seen.

But I'm having dinner with friends tomorrow night, and that's always the highlight of my birthdays. Cos it's not about me, but about you guys.

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Will be going to Vegas for spring break, end of March. Staying in The Signature at MGM Grand, so stay tuned! And I'm planning to pop by the UK in June, to see people, and hopefully, drop by a May Ball. Anyone going?

Two-double-oh-seven

2007-01-21T22:59:00.000-05:00

It's 2007!

First countdown in the USA. I was with the MIT people down at Boston Harbor to catch the fireworks. It was incredibly, unbelievably cold (both because of the general coldness, plus the ocean breeze) ....so we decided to play tag to warm ourselves up. Seemed like a good idea until we realized that breathing hard only causes us to take in more freezing air into our lungs.

Bunch of Harvard and MIT students running around like chickens. Schoolyard days were the best.

Fireworks disappointing though; Guy Fawkes at Cambridge UK were way better.

Most of January was spent studying for exams and writing up papers for Fall term; last vestige of Fall term (stem cells finals) was on Wednesday, and we've been partying ever since. First off was 24, Jack Bauer is back! For once I get to catch the episodes AS they come out... yet another fringe benefit of coming to the USA =D

Celebrated the 2nd birthday of a coursemate... so obviously we needed another geeky birthday cake. Considering that she's a neurobiologist:

(for non-biologists: it's a neuron. Wiggly things to the right receive signals from other neurons. Long thing on the left sends it to other neurons, or to a muscle)

And ice-skating...at -8 degrees Celcius. Only my second time ice-skating, and this time around we're doing it in below freezing weather at night. Got more stressed out than during my finals. As if the loss of balance wasn't enough, with my trenchcoat on everytime the wind blew it effectively became a sail.

I'm so pleased with my ninja mask that when I lost it I bought another one. Except that it doesn't protect my eyeballs. One day I'll start wearing my swim googles as well.

Or a bubble ala the ones guinea pigs and hamsters run around in.

It's is/going to be a great 2 weeks of break. Let February and Spring term never come.

And hold the winter too.

Savour the last moments of a dying year

2006-12-31T11:29:00.000-05:00

It really doesn't feel like a year separates today and Dec 31, 2005.

Winter holidays were a good break; had Chea Lu over from the UK, and finally an excuse to do the whole tourist thing around Boston. It still doesn't feel like a home city to me; being still unacquainted with most of it.

The statue of John Harvard in Harvard Yard. Also known as the statue of three lies: no one knows what John Harvard looks like, so they got a student to pose for the statue. "Founder" and "1648" are also etched at the bottom of the statue, though John Harvard was neither the founder (just someone who donated money), and Harvard Uni was founded in 1646.

Does wonders for your confidence in the university, huh.

Oh and if you look closely, the statue's left foot is shiny. That's because tourists rub it for luck.

And undergraduate students are well aware that stupid tourists rub this man-made object for luck. So they pee on it.

Finally discovered what my Harvard ID is good for: free entry into the Museum of Fine Arts (but not the Museum of Science! Argh!).

Popped over to New York to visit Chan Lek, he's doing a Ph.D in Rockefeller there. It was was interesting to see Rockefeller, it being representative of the research institute type of university, versus one with a proper university campus. In fact, it has no undergrads, and very few graduate students. To me it'd be like being a graduate student but without the student life aspect.

Rockefeller is amazing in some ways though. Access to Chan Lek's apartment requires a palm scan (beats my ID card anytime). And the apartments are located in Manhatten (the expensive part of New York), with rent highly subsidized (cheaper than my place!). All Cambridges are cursed to be expensive.

Saw Times Square, Chinatown, Central Park, New York Stock Exchange blah blah etc. BUTthe place to talk about is this Japanese restaurant Chan Lek brought us to. First off the place served good (and cheap!) Japanese food, mmm. However the atmosphere is crazy. They've got Japanese songs blaring overhead, not the modern pop some of you enjoy, but what sounds like World War II era marching songs alternated with 1930s-Geisha-bubblegum-pop. Surreal. Also, umm weird bondage drawings of women on the menus (wtf??); weird as in not sexy, but of some woman licking a skull.....One of the waiters had a Japanese accent...but he's black. You haven't seen it all till you hear a black guy with a Japanese tongue serve you your katsu don.

Someone's obviously thrilled with the place.

Back in Boston now, spent the past four days watching South Park and putting off all my coursework, all due in January. Urgh.

But it's the last day of the year, a time to reminisce.

Term is OVER!

2006-12-20T01:12:00.000-05:00

MCB 155 finals were terrible...but I can't be bothered...

TERM'S OUT!!!

The last leg of the year

2006-12-16T19:50:00.000-05:00

Three more days till the end of term.

There's been so much work the past month; the pace of term now seems radically different compared to the first half. I never drank coffee; now I take a cup every day. I've not seen much more of Boston, and eat microwave dinners half the time.

Just one more exam on Tuesday, and then we break for winter.

The Harvard Medical School campus is huge; like a tumour that's metastasized out of control. One professor described it as a medico-industrial complex. Several full-service hospitals, plus numerous specialized institutes and the medical school proper; it's larger than the main Harvard campus at Cambridge, MA. I'm doing my next rotation there; it's an interesting glimpse into the life there, as compared to where I am now: a hospital/research institution versus traditional university-based lifestyle.

Winter's coming too. The weather has been as impetuous as in the UK; someone mentioned that the New England climate must be a female. 2 weeks ago it was below freezing, and everyone was sure that was the start of winter. First snow a week ago; powder snow that just drifted around like sand, not the wet snow of England. Shows how cold it can get. But this week's really warm, as if spring was coming. Change of temperature's like the hot flashes of a menopausal 50 year-old. It'll cool down soon enough though.

Caught the Geminid meteor shower a few days ago too. Supposedly the most spectacular of the yearly showers, which sadly before always seemed to be best viewed from the states. Caught 5 in 20 mins, which I guess wasn't as frequent as I imagined....and it's hard to wish for anything in the space of half a second...

Still...

Busy and cold

2006-12-05T01:59:00.000-05:00

It's been the busiest week this semester yet; first cup of coffee in at least the past few years to keep going. After this Wednesday our class is going out to binge eat and maybe get drunk. Apathy about courses has started sinking in.

And first snow in Boston this morning; tomorrow it'll be below freezing for the first time throughout the day.

And it's starting to turn dark at 4pm now. Folks, this is the New England winter. Where the locals have promised knee-high snow (at least) for months.

Two more weeks till end of term though.

Geekihood

2006-11-12T22:49:00.000-05:00

It was our coursemate's birthday, so some of us decided to bake a cake.

And decorate it, biology style.

Check out the geekiest cake in the universe:

Hint: blue dots are Nitrogen atoms, red dots are oxygen atoms. Biochemists should be able to solve the birthday boy's name.

And that's chromosome 22.

We revel in our geekiness.

Departmental retreat at New Hampshire

2006-10-29T23:36:00.000-05:00

Just finished my first ever exams in the USA...two midterms on Wed and Thurs, whew. Considering that most of us only started studying the day before I shouldn't complain so much, but just the concern about the exam was weighing upon my head the entire week.

Funny though, I've never felt so unconcerned about an exam, so much so that I was wondering if I SHOULD try and stress up a bit more about them.

Anyways, we had the departmental retreat at New Hampshire last weekend.

It was BEAUTIFUL.

Check out the moon in the centre of the picture. You had to be there.

Everything I imagined the USA would be, in its wonderful outdoors. The resort we were staying in was at the foot of a slope used in the winter for skiiing, and at other times held a great nature trail for hiking. A raging river fronted the resort, and beyond that more mountains to complete our front door view. This was day 1, and we were ready to skip the lectures (well, the whole idea of the retreat is to listen to professors give talks about their work) and go hike all of the next day.

Then on day 2 it rained the ENTIRE day.

Urgh.

Well at least we did manage to spend time together and bond as a class, as well as with the other people in the department. And other activities too...the much dreaded G1s (1st year graduates) vs faculty volleyball game went as badly as we thought it would be, with us losing the first two of a best-of-three series within 10 minutes.

We played indoors as it was raining outside.

Now who's that dashing young fellow with the ball?

10 minutes of play, final score of 3-15, 1-15. Guess three practice sessions doesn't cut it.

Biolympics with geeky games: Twister but with a twist, had to form a specified DNA sequence the bases of which were printed on the twister sheet; charades of a sort to guess biological terms; guessing what highly magnified pictures of lab equipment were. We revel in our geekiness, seriously...everyone in the class just loves geeky jokes.

Scavenger hunt, didn't do so well in..had to drink a beer every few items, I've never drunk so much beer ever: film a condom ad??; get a professor to sign a body part (my cheek); dress up as ninjas.... and one of my teammates lost his pants.

And just food every few hours (breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner and snacks provided in between).

Halloween party. Catholic schoolgirl outfits drew attention.

Cat in the middle isn't just any cat, she's a Schrodinger's cat! Wahahahaha..... will need to think of a suitably geeky costume next year.

And on day 3, first snow.
The mountains up front have become snow-tipped, which was an amazing change from day 1. We just went out and stared.

We smile, but it was incredibly cold. I think it was colder than the coldest I've ever felt in Cambridge, UK (-2 degrees Celcius for me). Fingers freezing.

The resort we stayed in is on the left.

And with the rain finally over, we had to explore just a tiny bit of the place, to take that little hint of a hike we might have been able to take.

Gushing stream,

obviously missing some posers. Check out the next cover of GQ.

Isn't it just so inviting?

I wanted to know you so much better.

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Going to meet this professor at Massachusetts General Hospital tomorrow, may be interested in joining his lab, fingers crossed! Need to unwind this upcoming weekend.

Krisflyer!

2006-10-20T23:17:00.000-05:00

Been busy with lots of work...am reading papers on Friday night =\ Quite a bit of stuff to post, but for now something I've just discovered!

A friend just messaged about redeeming frequent flyer miles..so I remembered I've got some too...45000 Krisflyer miles in particular..and went online to check what that'll get me: (for my own records too)

Boston - Anywhere in the USA (including Alaska!!!!) -> 2 round trips
Boston - London -> 1 round trip
Boston - Singapore -> 0.56 round trip
Boston - Beijing -> 0.45 round trip
Singapore - Hong Kong -> 1.5 round trips
Singapore - Adelaide -> 0.9 round trips
(But can't travel from Singapore...will be stuck in Singapore while they process my passport and visa =\ )

Need to start planning my vacations!!!!

Mmm....haha ok need to get back to a paper, it's midnight.

Settling in

2006-10-04T22:28:00.000-05:00

I've just watched 3 hours of TV straight. The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, the season 3 premiere of Lost (!!!) and the series premiere of some show called The Nine.

It's Wednesday night, ie all my papers and assignments have been handed in for the week.

It's a curious feeling; Wednesday nights feel like Friday nights to me, like I've no more work to do for the week (lab work doesn't really count). The Sunday to Tuesdays are a killer though. But anyways TV was good, it's been a while since I've just sat in front of the TV and watched whatever came, and in the USA we can watch the shows as they're released (as opposed to downloading it a week later...I remember the frantic wait when 24 episodes would show in the states, but only be available in the UK some days later...all of the 24 junkies asking everyday "is it out yet?!").

And I've just realised that my midterms are at the end of the month. Was just discussing them with my coursemate also from Cambridge (Cambridge in this blog will always refer to the original one in the UK; back then ), I'd be studying 2 months before. But now the midterms seem like just another assignment; grades don't really matter to graduate students. It's a curious and liberating feeling; I go into classes with no pressure at all, and still wanting to do well, but more for learning's sake rather than grades? What's more interesting is that many undergraduates take the same classes we do, and THEY are incredibly anxious for their GPAs, many wanting to go to medical school after. In one of my tutorial sessions, there's 1 engineering graduate student, 18 undergraduates, and me. And I'm the one content to lie back and relax.

But it's not that classes aren't interesting; I wouldn't have taken the Mathematics for Biologists class if grades did matter, seeing as how I'm struggling with the maths, and part of it is Matlab programming which I'm totally new at. Learning for learning's sake.

Anyways, halfway through the TV session, I realised I was actually feeling at home, and maybe I've settled in nicely to being a student here. As I said, it's not like Cambridge UK, where the medieval gates and spires just hit you in the face and you step straight into a fairytale. It's more subtle, and I don't know when the transition was, but I now identify myself as a Harvard student.

And even while I was typing the word "Harvard", I paused. Hesitant. As a friend who's just graduated from Harvard alludes to in her own writings (yes you), it comes with a complex series of emotions. You're definitely proud to have gotten in here, but somehow also mollified that others would find out, kind of like coming out of the closet, or admitting that in fact you DO like McDonalds (but worse). And in being hesitant of (or even slightly ashamed about admitting) the fact, I wonder if it also smells of a hint of pretentiousness. I hope not.

One of the entires in The Guide to Harvard Lingo: "The H-bomb"
- One drops the H-bomb by admitting to be a Harvard student in a conversation. Though sometimes used to strategically impress people on the outside, it more often refers to the downside of admitting to a Harvard affiliation, ie it typically kills the conversation.

- Also an edgy student magazine about sex.

Hmmm.

I can see, right now, most readers googling "H-bomb".

Still deciding whether to buy a Harvard sweater; this will be the only place on earth I can wear it.

And back to the TV session; feeling more at home and relaxed, you then are able to venture forth and explore the place. Last Saturday was kayaking on the Charles River; wider and thus a much nicer place to be on the water, but not as scenic as the River Cam. Pleasant nonetheless, in keeping with the tone of the place.

Brought back memories of rowing. One thing I'll do is to learn sailing; we've to pay for lessons here though, unlike that other university just down by the river.

Check out the sky.

The finger in the upper left corner is a bummer, I know.

There's a long weekend coming up; I'm hoping to explore Boston proper, and get some new clothes...there's also a hike in a reservation on Saturday, might go for that too. Lots of chemistry labs are having their open houses to attract students these weeks, and that means free food, always important to a graduate student. All in all, Harvard's giving off a nice buzz.

Survived the first week of classes

2006-09-24T11:31:00.000-05:00

Finally, time to catch my breath...

I've had classes arranged such that on Monday I've 5 lectures/tutorials, each 2 hours and stretching from 10am till 8pm. Three classes on Wednesday; this means that for this term I'll be frantically working from Sunday till Tuesday night, and I just finished Round 1.

It's been hard to get back in the right frame of mind for studying; reading scientific papers critically is though enough, but worse still is the Mathematics for Biologists class I'm taking. Biology and mathematics occupy incompatible parts of the brain; our first assignment was a review of high school calculus that I would have taken half an hour to finish 8 years ago, but have been struggling for 3 days since Sunday to work out.

Hooray for the Master's student in statistics living on my floor.

I work better in libraries. I think it's the reminder that there are people around; when trying to work in my room I inevitably turn on MSN messenger. Thus I've been trying out a few libraries here. The Widener, the central university library, had a nice reading room with a tall skylight ceiling, but horrors, the largest academic library in the world keeps office hours. In contrast, the Lamont undergrad library is 24 hours a few days a month.

In the end, nothing compares to that veritable Nest of Nerds, Christ's College library, open 24 hours a day for most of the year.

I've started labwork too. Apparently I have an affinity for Canada, since all three of my past supervisors have been Canadian; Cambridge Part II, the one year attachment in Singapore, and now in my first rotation lab here. Only one of them was French Canadian (Oui Oui! Baguette!), and an ongoing project I've adopted is to understand from firsthand accounts the attempts by Quebec to secede from Canada. Messy, full of controversy and conspiracy, with the classic French vs English rivalry thrown in for humour. I like.

Tired, so here're some pictures for now.

The incoming students of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, 2006. The rhino's one of a pair standing in front of one of the biological buildings; apparently the rhino is our mascot.

Our class, plus a few others, dressed up for the Gala dinner for life sciences students in Harvard. Apparently one of the few occasions in our life here that we get to dress up. Back in the UK we dressed up once every 1 or 2 weeks, huh.

And the undergraduate welcoming ceremony I mentioned previously. Definitely has become part of those students' lives forever.

And here's a martini.

2 weeks in

2006-09-14T22:08:00.000-05:00

Ok as of today I've been in Harvard for 2 weeks... A lot of things have happened, and a lot more little things that struck me, so I'll try to give a feel of the place; Note: disjointed entry ahead.

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My class seems like a nice bunch of people; I was just talking to one of them today and we were remarking on how there didn't seem to be any psychos in it, but who knows? One might go all Alfred Hitchcock on us a month into the course. But for now things are great; we're 15 strong, which is somewhat smaller than the 26 of last year. There's a former marine in our class (4 years, wow kinda like having an NSman around but more siong), a coursemate from Part II Biochem in Cambridge (together we represent the undergrad uni with the largest representation) and a good mix of male/female and USA/international. Everyone's friendly, though we observed that the girls in general were more chatty than the guys (mostly shy)? Hmm...

Our department is having a retreat in October, and every year the faculty of my department play a beach volleyball game with the incoming class, as part of the 'bonding' that is supposed to take place in all retreats. Apparently they're REALLY into the game, and take it VERY seriously... they beat the incoming students every year (after all, they have every year to practice, whereas most ppl come in not having played volleyball for decades...and we've barely lived through two). We've been told by our seniors that the faculty tend to have loose intepretations of rules... referees, who are often graduate students, are outranked by worked up professors. Yesterday was our first practice session; we're eating sand for sure.

The university knows its graduate students well; every event they want graduate students to attend is shamelessly advertised with free food. With the past 2 weeks of orientation, most of us have forgotten what paying for food feels like. For example in the first week of September, my department orientation started everyday at 10am with breakfast, followed by lunch at 12pm, dinner at 6pm and often another pizza and beer event squeezed somewhere in between (the pizza boxes during one event would have reached two storeys high). Considering that they also gave us free laptops (I'm typing this on my new Dell, suck on that MIT students =P ) we've been very happy and content; kinda like the cows they feed up before they're lead to the slaughter. Classes and labs start next Monday...

We've had our opening ceremony in Sanders Hall, complete with speech from the interim president of Harvard Unversity and the Dean of the Graduate school of Arts and Sciences. The speeches were ok; I guess I expected something more inspiring. I had passed by the undergraduate opening ceremony a few days earlier, held in the open yard, and that stopped me in my tracks. A choir's singing wafting through the sunny autumn yard, followed by an awesome speech on international relations and Harvard's place as a mover not observer of current and future events... Considering that graduate students are going to be here for 5 years or more, it'll have definitely been nice to have a more uplifting start to our time here.

But we did get a lot of free food.

Harvard's architecture, I think would impress anyone who's not been to Oxbridge. Coming from Cambridge (UK) however, I just keep comparing most of the buildings here to Robinson college... red brick buildings, lacking any of the medieval architecture typical of the older Oxbridge colleges. The place just doesn't strike you as forcefully as Cambridge did, in the sense of finding yourself somewhere totally unimaginable and fantastic. So for friends planning to visit from Cambridge, don't expect too much =P

And I've already met a few who I've not seen in ages: Jean, Shen Han and Herman are here for attachments or exchange programs... apparently I just missed a few others =\

I've spent half my time trying to sort through the admin here; registering for courses, signing up for lab rotations, applying for a credit card, social security number etc. The other half is spent watching the Colbert Report on youtube (hilarious! Why can't we get news like this back home? Hmm well on 2nd thoughts I guess I know why)

Oh and it's great that now all those cool online tools apply to you once you're in the USA, things like typing an address in Google and having it automatically display the address on a map, local tv listings when you type a show into Yahoo! etc etc. Oh plus the fact that Harvard is mostly wireless, and more importantly that my laptop now holds 3 hours of charge (as compared to 25 mins on my old one), it's possible to just sit on the grass in Harvard Yard and chat online with friends.

Just one of the many things I need to remind myself to do NOW and not later. Cos later goes past too soon.

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Oh and in case no one knows yet...the hacker of the post below is "J"...seems like going to MIT really turns you into a computer geek overnight =P

YOUVE BEEN HACKED

2006-09-08T13:55:00.000-05:00

KAH YONG TAN YOUR COMPUTER HAS BEEN HACKED!

MUAHAHAHAHAH!

- MIT HACKER xoxo

First weekend on in Cambridge 2.0

2006-09-04T15:35:00.000-05:00

I'm munching on a peach as I slowly write this... imagine that, a fresh, firm peach; saw it at the local grocery and had to have one, just cos it's something I wouldn't usually see in Singapore...

I've been here in Harvard for 4 days now; alternating my time between meeting friends, and shopping to furnish my room.

I think it's interesting (to me) what I have and have not been doing... I've spent a lot of time buying daily necessities, like a wastebasket (not the first thing you realize as a necessity, but you realize it real soon after), clothes hangers, toiletries, cups etc etc... I've forgotten how many things you really need to lead a normal life, and especially interesting are the little things you always took for granted but now realize how important they are... I'm still looking to rearm myself with cutlery and crockery, and start cooking again; man that's something I've missed...

I've NOT seen most of Harvard yet (at least not this time around)... I've not even seen most of the main yard; you know with it being "I'll be here for a long time, and I'll see it sometime anyways"...which is exactly the type of crime I promised myself not to commit again; hopefully sometime this week I'll have time to explore the place proper.

The university compound is actually fairly small, compared to neighbouring MIT... I really hate to admit it, but MIT really just reeks of coolness... like campuswide wireless internet, GPS tracking of their shuttle bus, and just various little things here and there that remind you that you're in one of the few places on earth where geekiness = cool. My university is just stuffy.

Everywhere though I keep getting surprised at the differences between the USA and UK or Malaysia and Singapore... like looking at the wrong side of the road when crossing (that's an accident waiting to happen one day, watch for it), total strangers just talking to you on the street or subway (some guy just sat next to me at a cafe and started telling me about his Vegas job, his private jet plane, all about his racehorses for half an hour... then asked to 'borrow' 5 bucks for the transfer charge for his USD14000 betting slip)...I was especially tickled by the sight of a plane pulling a banner advertising cable TV in the sky; to me it only ever happens in the movies or TV... and the alarm clock I bought uses the mains power as both an energy source and timing mechanism; apparently the Americans don't believe in batteries and quartz crystals...

I've not taken many photos yet, which is a pity as Cambridge, MA is a beautiful place in autumn (my favourite season), but here are a few:

My room! Feature to note: my chair has a rockable bottom, I'm guessing this is the solution to students sitting on two chair legs and falling backwards.

Here's a view of the Charles River from Shireen's (another ASTAR scholar, in MIT) place... hmm my room doesn't quite have the same view; mine oversees a carpark...

Tomorrow's my department orientation, a full week of activites, none of which include real work, so I have to rejoice for now... and tomorrow I'm getting my new Dell laptop (free for my department, haha, so join Molecular and Cell Biology!)

I'm HERE!!!!!!!!

2006-08-31T00:34:00.000-05:00

I've just arrived in Cambridge, USA! Staying with a friend in MIT right now, will move into my dorm proper on Friday. Flight was long but comfortable, all my things arrived intact, and I'm not missing any limbs. It STILL hasn't hit me that I'm going to spend 5 years here, maybe that'll come with the first piece of coursework.

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Update: 5.30am, 1st Sep 2006

Hmm jet lag's woke me up at 5am, but I guess it's not too bad considering I had 5 hours of sleep. I'm moving into Harvard tomorrow, and the huge mountain of admin-ish stuff looks daunting: register with international office, move into dorm, furnish dorm, open bank account, try to get a phone plan... and all this on top of meeting friends and getting to know new people...

Wow, I'm a fresher again.

Citizen Ka(h)ne

2006-08-28T19:48:00.000-05:00

I've just opened up a letter lying on my desk, which turned out to be approval of my application for Singapore citizenship.

Apparently I was supposed to renounce my Malaysian citizenship and then take the Oath of Loyalty on the 18th of August...but I only came back to Singapore a few days ago.

Have asked for deferment of all this, but still not looking forward to it...the whole process is going to take weeks, if I do it next year when I'm back for summer holidays. Basically it'll be:
1) Renounce Malaysian citizenship - 1 or 2 days? ; then
2) Take the Oath of Loyalty to Singapore, and apply for a Singapore passport - 1 to 2 weeks??; then
3) Apply for I-20 visa form from USA - dunno how long, ages?; then
4) Get form and apply for visa at USA embassy - 1 week.

I'm going to have like a month's disruption (or more!) in the middle of my studies, great. Anyways, I'm not going to be bothered about it now. Just spent the entire night packing; slept 2 hours, and sleep deprivation gets me first lethargic, then drunk(ish), so now I'm slightly stoned.

As I was telling someone, it hasn't really hit me yet that I'm going to Harvard... mentally I kinda feel like the rest of the week will be spent in Singapore as usual, with the slacking and normal routine... but in about 2 days' time the change will hit me ready or not...

This might be the last post till I settle in in my dorm room and get an internet connection, unles I manage to find internet terminals in the airports. So farewell! Goodbye to all my friends here, and I'll see you in a year's time!

Go west

2006-08-26T10:22:00.000-05:00

Flight SQ0022
Singapore to Newark, New Jersey
Departing: Aug 30, 11am
Arriving: Aug 30, 5.40pm
Duration: 18 hours and 40 mins

Flight CO1198
Newark to Boston
Departing: Aug 30 9.30pm
Arriving: Aug 30, 10.48pm
Duration: Not that long compared to above

I'm still trying to pack...way below the weight limit (think I'll have 35kg, out of a 64kg limit --> UK bound ppl read and weep)... but I'm hitting the volume limit, cold weather wear is damn bulky...

Boston's climate (from Wikipedia):
The hottest month is July, with an average high of28 °C and a low of 18 °C. The coldest month is January, with an average high of 2.2 °C and a low of -5.6 °C. Periods ... below -12.2 °C in winter are not uncommon, but rarely prolonged. The record low temperature is -28 °C, recorded on February 9, 1934.

If global warming ever had an effect, here's to hoping it's working on Boston.

And I'm staying in Perkins Hall Room 422...it's a small room; here's a picture of it from the uni website:

T_T big step down from my gigantic room in Staircase 4 in Christ's....

3 more days to meet up with people and say goodbye.

8 planets now

2006-08-24T11:47:00.000-05:00

As of today, Pluto is no longer considered a planet.

Goodbye Pluto.

Back to Malaysia

2006-08-13T03:46:00.000-05:00

So I'm finally unemployed!

The lab held a BBQ to celebrate my good riddance, amongst a few others....

That's a Margarita in my hand...Funny enough how I never learned to drink in the 3 years in Cambridge, where the halls are overflowing with wine, the pubs gushing with beer and the garden parties with liberal amounts of champaigne, but rather in the 1 year here in Singapore...

That's my supervisor...yeah I can finally let loose the terror I've felt working for him this whole year, haha...

And he even gave me a parting gift:

Apparently when he approached the bookshop counter his first request was for "Seduction for Dummies"...when they told him there was no such book he requested for anything with seduction...haha and he was with his girlfriend so the counter lady was looking at him weird....

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So I've been back in Klang for a week now...have been sleeping most of the time actually, I think it's the sleep debt accumulated over the one year...like 4 naps a day or something like that....but on Saturday the family went for my brother's convocation at the Multimedia University...it was set up during the dot-com boom, when everyone was crazy about information technology, hence the name...

Man it was soo long....we had to wake up at 5.30am to get there by 7.30am...the ceremony started at 8.30am, and the crazy thing was that they had 3 speakers, each speaking for about half an hour...so that's a 1.5 hour long wait...

And get this, they got the VIP to hand over the graduation certificates for 3000 graduands....assuming 5 secs per student that's over 4 hours.....it started getting unbearable after the first hour or so...and then just got plain surreal....you could see the faculty and VIPs on stage getting bored, but they're unable to doze off or read a book, so they've just got to sit there for 6 hours and bear it...especially since most of them are very old, I imagine that the thought "Why am I here wasting the limited hours left in my life??" must be constantly on their mind...

So glad that our Cambridge graduation ceremony is less than an hour long, and you actually feel happy while going through the ceremony...

Family picture...we don't actually have many of these, seeing as how I'm usually overseas, and my brother (until recently) and my sister both live in hostels away from home...

But so this time with all of us here, my mum decided to have studio photos taken of the whole family...pictures still developing though...

And with the extremely long covocation, the sun and drizzle throughout the day, and the lack of sleep, I've fallen sick...fever and flu...what a waste of holiday time man...lying in bed and just feeling like crap...

Timeless

2006-07-31T13:24:00.001-05:00

Times of transition induce nostalgia fits; found the videos to "Voices that care" and "That's what friends are for", songs that defined our graduations and goodbyes...

To friends away, or to be so,

Over-sentimental? With these, always...

Quintessentially summer

2006-07-30T03:06:00.000-05:00

And so with the ending of our attachments, with goodbyes to those leaving, the scholars decided to celebrate with a BBQ... mmm... undercooked meat with carbonized exteriors, a bomb of food poisoning AND cancer in the same package....

Starting the fire...

And what more apt than burning sugar on a stick?

Smiling is uncool...

We did better with the alcohol this time, managed to finish a bottle of Sheridan and a bottle of cognac between the 30 of us... and people started singing oldies like "Take me home, country road"...how few of us (including me) actually knew the lyrics ; man we're getting old...

Posed picture became a candid moment when camerawoman Huili exhorted us to be so, and tripped on the drain while taking the shot...

Farewell all, and good luck for the next half a decade..

Almost a year.

2006-07-23T11:01:00.000-05:00

I've started saying goodbye.

A week left in the lab; I'm due to give a labtalk on Friday, summarizing everything I've done in the past one year. Imagine, the first entry in my labbook, 2nd Aug 2005.

I've also had my scholarship award ceremony last Friday, typical affair with certificates, photographs, minister handshakes and reception. My dad and brother came down for it:

The men of the Tan family.

Oh and my brother and I managed to ride at the back of a truck when meeting my dad's friends; every boy's dream...but every mum's nightmare. She'd kill us if she found out, haha.

Have seen some friends for the last time, maybe till I next come back a year later.

Ending work on the 31st of July. I'll be in Singapore till Aug 7th; if you're free do call me up! Staying in Malaysia till Aug 26th, and then back to Singapore for 2 days before flying off in the 28th.

It's not really really hit me yet; maybe sometime when I start packing for the states.

Milestone on the road of life

2006-07-14T05:44:00.000-05:00

It's been a journey.

I've touched the top, and grazed the bottom. And the bottom has taught me something more, and I pray I'll never forget the resolve I found there; to fight against its bonds and the drive to one day rise above all this.

Today, somewhere in Singapore, a dream was reborn.

Equilibrium

2006-07-02T02:22:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I think I'm more numb to emotions than most people are.

I've been asked if I've ever been angry, cos some people have never seen me so. It's something I learned when I was 13 or 14 I think. Once I was extremely angry at a friend, but instead of lashing out as usual, a thought managed to penetrate: I always regretted the action the next day, and always wished that I could take whatever I said and did back. So why not take the here and now as a pseudo-2nd-chance given to my future self, and rectify the situation?

And I found that my rage melts away after a day, and I was inevitably grateful that I didn't say the things that I might have. And so I've learned to always contain my anger, and never act on the impulses that come with it; to not trust my judgement until I've calmed down and can manage to analyse the situation with a calmer mind, and in the meantime force myself to be at least cordial with the person.

I usually believe that things will work out in the end; the protagonist of a story is more often than not triumphant in at the end of the book, and we are all the leads of our own stages aren't we? But I wonder if it's not the bubble surrounding everyone who's not faced true adversity, that buffers me from the pain of tragedy and giving up hope.

And I wonder because at rare times, I have plunged deeper into the valleys of despair, and it amazes me how sharp and alien it feels; the last time during my final year exams in Cambridge, when I truly thought that I had screwed them up, and along with them the dream of going abroad for a Ph.D.

One reason I love scenic places is that when travelling down the Norwegian fjords, or taking in the Atlantic Ocean while standing on a cliff in Wales, the sheer majesty of nature manages to wash away the pretences of society and force you to deal with the fact that you are a small person in a big world, with wonders far beyond your comprehension (it's easy to understand how a mountain forms, but when the 5cm picture turns into a one kilometre high mound of rock, the images in your mind seem pitifully inadequate) .

It's a disjointed entry...triggered when I wondered if people see me the same way I perceive them, that the landscape of emotions some friends seem to go through dip lower and rise higher more often...And also by the fact that I'm standing at a crossroads, dealing with difficult admin issues which may prove to divert my life one way or the other, running through the gamut of emotions...And emotions then show that you're alive, making you feel more solid than a two-dimensional character on a two-dimensional piece of paper...

Two more months...and I might be off and away...

Bintan

2006-06-18T09:49:00.000-05:00

So ASTAR decides that with my batch of scholars leaving for PhD overseas soon, it'll be good for us to get together and mingle, to get to know each other better before setting off.

Hence, a 2D/2N stay in Bintan, fully paid.

=D

Haha WELL...on Friday we left Changi on a ferry bound for some major tropical bumming...I've never actually been to any of the Indonesian resort islands, which for some reason all start with B (Bali, Bintan, Batam), and had no idea where they were...interestingly enough though we leave by ferry from the east of Singapore, travelling east for an hour, the time in Bintan is actually an hour BEHIND Singapore...

Bintan turns out to be big...it's twice the size of Singapore...but divided into two parts, the northern resort part and the southern non-resort one...as Wikipedia Travel states, "Bintan Resorts is a colony of Singapore in all but name"...haha Britain must be so proud now... "aww my little colony is having colonies of its own"...

Also from Wikipedia Travel: "The area is separated from the rest of Bintan by barbed wire, checkpoints and armed guards......Behind its barbed wire Bintan Resorts is, like its mothership Singapore, stultifyingly safe. You can even drink the tap water" .............yup that's the mark of Singapore all right...

We arrive at our resort Nirwana Gardens in the evening to be greeted by a welcome party, with drummers and dancers and welcome drinks...

Dinner's at a kelong (fishing platform on wooden stilts) restaurant, with a ten-course seafood meal of crabs, fish and gong gong (sea snails, where you get the meat out of the shell with a toothpick....the Bintan brouchure claims that it's an aphrodisiac, but I don't feel any more frisky...I imagine it's a ploy people use to get tourists to eat otherwise disgusting things....like oysters)....and of course, with the beach resort comes the obligatory pina colada =D

The night sky is amazing...try as we might, none of us could identify a single constellation, not even the usually conspicuous Orion or Big Dipper: because the sky is so clear, there are SOOO many more visible stars that you get lost trying to trace any patterns...

The resort looks like a castle at night...didn't have a tripod to compose a better shot though..

Well by the time we get back it's late night, so while no outdoor events, it does mean World CUP time! Don't usually watch soccer myself, but in a group hey why not?

There's a pub near the lobby showing the game...we catch the great Netherlands-Ivory Coast game...the pub was surprisingly empty, though the resort was supposedly fully booked...where have all the soccer fans gone?

The next day after breakfast we pay our dues...in return for this trip we have to spend the early afternoon discussing issues pertaining to our scholarship...

After all that hard work (all 40 mins worth of it), we find that of course it's raining....

So after lunch, it's back into the meeting room, where some start giving tutorials on Texas-hold-em (poker)......

I join a vigorous game of pictionary...huh we're playing indoor games at a tropical resort....but the skies clear toward the late afternoon, and we finally get to soak in the sun sea and sand....a few go on an all-terrain-vehicle ride around and through the jungles of Bintan, whereas I opt for kayaking with a few others...it's nice to paddle along underneath the wide open sky (and the sky does seem wider while you're at sea, with no trees or buildings to restrict your view)...nostalgia hits: we went kayaking along the fjords in Norway a year ago, and admittedly that was more magical....and the same problem hits us now as then: no one wants to being a camera onto a kayak....so no pics of arguably the best scenes so far on Bintan...

Dinner's at another beach cafe, with another pina colada...hmm the rum's getting to my head...

And we gather later on in someone's room for all-night cards and more World Cup...this sets the tone of the night:

Yeah right...15 of us and they finish only maybe a cup's worth of each....and as a guide to how expensive some things are here:

While looking for mixers for the alcohol,
Me: "It's SGD12 for 6 cans of Sprite"
Vijay: "Wow guys that's cheap! Let's get 12!"

Again....alcohol makes people smiley....

And our all nighter lasts till 2am..haha not the most impressive of late-night parties...still we had to catch a 7.30am coach to the ferry terminal, so I'm still groggy from lack of sleep now...Will be getting more pics from others, and I'll put any with more of me up..haha

Macritchie Reservoir

2006-05-27T09:04:00.000-05:00

Decided to visit Macritchie Reservoir last Saturday...it's been a while since I've last been there...

For the uninitiated, Macritchie Reservoir is one of the big water catchment areas in Singapore, as well as part-nature reserve part-popular trekking route.....the last time I was there was in 2001, during one of the annual 5km jogs there that every school in Singapore seems to hold...and thus it wasn't really a chance to enjoy the more scenic aspects of the place...

So yeah! The plan was to hone my amateur photography skills while enjoying a nice leisurely walk through the reservoir, since I've never actually seen most of it....so if you've a few moments to spare join me on a stroll won't you?

The route: I started at 2pm at the lower right star, and basically traced the red arrows all around the reservoir; according to the map it's about a 12km trek...In general, the route flanking the water was nice, with a romantic wooden pathway, whereas the route cutting through green in the map is just boring jungle... I'll update the map as we go along...

The quaint little path... I found it amusing how the path had to dip to accomodate the tree branch brazenly sticking out sideways for a drink...

A wider view of the place from the spot marked by the red dot ...hmm dawn or dusk might have made for a more striking sky, and the water could try to be clearer, hmph....the reservoir is actually several times longer than the panorama captures though...it's a looooong walk....

The aforementioned schoolkids on their once-a-year-is-enough brush with nature jogs would turn left here, to the main road and jog back to our starting point...but we shall plough straight ahead onto the jungle path, and this thus marks the point I step into the part of the reservoir I've not seen...note photographer non-chalently gazing at some uninteresting arbitrary point in the trees...

The jungle itself is boring....

Emergence from the jungle! Not a particularly scenic point, I thought it was an interesting spot to mark the boundary where the wild chaos of the jungle meets the manicured turf of the adjourning golf course..

Further on a nice spot to try out a 360 degrees panorama of Macritchie Reservoir...do go take a pan-nable look =D it'll take a while to load though, but I think it'll be worth it...the golf course is on the left and the reservoir on the right...

We then head back into the jungle...and chance upon a lookout tower! I'm starting to feel tired now..the tower is quite a challenge...and the view's not fantastic actually, just a homogenous patch of green treetops...

I had planned to follow the yellow route, but...HURRRRR...and worse it's 5pm, whereas the treetop trail closes at 4.45pm....

Stairs...HURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR......

I reach the ranger station...feels weird to finally see a building here... but I'm not complaining about the water cooler and washroom....

Would love one of these right now though...how cool to take it out for a spin in the jungle?

A short distance later the trail flirts briefly with the adjacent country club before plunging well back into the jungle...
<

waaaaaaaaaaay back.....it'll be 50 mins before I emerge...I pass two guys walking together, the older one walking barefooted along the rocks....and apparently imparting some advice about life to the younger guy....mewonders about the wisdom that when learnt makes you want to walk through the jungle barefooted....

And I've returned! 4 hours to circumnavigate Macritchie Reservoir... hungry and tired.....someday I'll tackle Bukit Timah Nature Reserve...

The words say "I was here 4 hours ago"

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In other news....today I submitted my application for Singaporean citizenship...so I listed my roommate Ming Jenn as my local contact when I leave for the USA....the immigration officer takes a look at my form, and asks me if I'm cohabiting with him....

I don't get the underlying connotations the first time; it's not a question you expect...so I answer "Yes I'm renting a place with him".....she then looks at me earnestly and asks "I mean, are you COHABITING with him".........

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I'm not gay while my friend (another scholar) who's also here to apply for citizenship laughs her head off....I'm made to write down 'Single and not co-habiting' next to MJ's contact, and sign.....hurr............hmmm.....would Singapore not accept gays as citizens? Haha the immigration officer cheerily asks my friend the same question half a min later.....

Sunset over Biopolis

2006-05-07T07:57:00.000-05:00

From my place.

Been such a lazy Sunday...just want to melt into my couch...

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10.30pm update:

Crazy indian guy (see http://nimburst.blogspot.com/2006/01/hes-back.html) is back! He was shouting today, after being absent since end January, and this time got more drama....

He was shouting on the ground floor this time, and apparently someone called the police...no less than FIVE police cars and ELEVEN policemen came...they surrounded him and I think were trying to talk to him...and one suddenly made a grab for the guy, missed, and 2 of his colleagues tried, but the indian guy dodged, and for some reason they tried reasoning with him again...

Meanwhile quite a few ppl were out watching, and our neighbour, this elderly guy, tells us that he's actually talked to the fellow before...apparently the crazy guy's not crazy, sane but he gets drunk sometimes, and what's more he lives on the 15th floor of OUR block....recall that I live on the 16th floor...hmmmmmmm................

Anyways I think the policemen accompanied him back to his flat....wow FIVE police cars?

Photos from Trish's farewell drinking session

2006-04-24T09:36:00.000-05:00

Haha photos from the Friday night event..basically one of the ppl in the lab, Trish, is leaving for the USA in May, for a 1.5 year attachment in Indiana, so the lab had a farewell for her....and when a bunch of Caucasians go out, the drinking promises to be crazy...

The head of the lab proposes a toast...note sangria in my hand...tastes like there's little or not alcohol, so I gulped 1.5 glasses down when my pulse starts racing and breathing becomes laboured...

The lab!

Left: Frozen margaritha. They ordered jugs and jugs of this.

Right: Sangria. Preferred this actually.

Toasting Trish, who's going to leave for the USA.

Alcohol makes everyone smiley.

So after the initial rounds of drinks and dinner, the lab decided it was time for a change in venue, to Rav in Boat Quay, which promised music and dancing. And beer!

You know you want a close-up.

And Tiger beer sucks.

Yes that's my supervisor, Chris. Canadian charm. So what's that I'm holding and concentrating on?

Tequila shots! Foul things that burn your throat. But at least I see how the salt and lemon thing goes along with the liquor; anything to get rid of the taste on your tongue.

Check out the mass of glasses on the table. I left at 10pm, tired and dazed...apparently the party ended at 3am. Went to meet Mingjenn to go home, who had eight glasses of champaigne from his company event...ok THAT beats me hands down =P

So yeah, I'm an alkie now.

CH3-CH2-OH

2006-04-23T06:52:00.000-05:00

Hmm out drinking three times in the past week...wow...

Saturday:
One Rochester Park - a mojito cocktail.

Thursday:
Loof - daiquiri cocktali.

Friday:
Cha Cha Cha at Holland Village - 2 sangrias, 1 magaritha
then adjourned to
Rav at Boat Quay - a tequila shot, some Tiger beer (which sucks).

*hic*

Nigerian spammer theme song

2006-04-14T08:55:00.000-05:00

Something I found hilarious, following on my previous post about Nigerian stars...apparently the theme song for Nigerian spammers (those folks who tell you about rich ppl dying and needing some of your money to transfer his assets overseas, with a commision to you eventually) is called "I go chop your dollar"....hahahahahahahahaha.....

2/3s there, and expanding your horizon

2006-04-11T07:25:00.000-05:00

I've just passed the 2/3 mark on my attachment in IMCB, only 4 more months to go. A week was infinity in primary school, a blink now. What a shame that time passes faster the older we get and the more we learn to appreciate it, but I guess it would be a greater one if kids were forced to reckon with time. Ah well.

And I've just gotten confirmation of my place in Harvard, whew! Mail (carrying my acceptance form) notoriously disappears over the ocean; what chance does one puny sheet of A4 have against the gigantic vastness of the Atlantic, which swallows whales and oceanic ridges with ease? But it's arrived nonetheless, setting into motion events which will eventually settle into a place to harbour me for the next leg of my life.

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I went to the Miss Singapore finals LIVE last weekend! =D thanks to having a friend in the finals; think I should have taken a picture of the ticket, but forgot to =\ The finals was held at the local national tv station Mediacorp, at Caldecott Hill. Incidentally, I have a friend staying opposite the tv station, a former roommate from ACS(I) who I've not seen since secondary two. Relying on old and fuzzy memories I found his house, but apparently he's overseas in Tasmania studying architecture (what a coincidence, I've another friend in Tazmania doing her undergrad as well, is Tazmania a popular destination?)

He told me years ago that schoolgirls would line up in front of the entrance, in wait for their favourite actor or actress to drive out, then run after the car screaming. It's always seemed a little bizarre to me; that each small country would have local celebrities that have crazed up fans like that...Nigeria probably has those, which we will never hear of, but who young Nigerian girls worship, and vice versa they'll never know who Zoe Tay or Adrian Pang are. How globalized are out thoughts, really?

I'm sidetracking a little here. My housemates are I were talking one day; I mentioned how before coming to Singapore at the age of 13, I thought live my entire life in Klang (my hometown, some small obscure place half an hour away from the capital...we're famous for one thing...check out the Wikipedia travel guide's entry on us, in particular noting the "Get Around" "See" "Do" "Buy" and "Drink" sections....http://wikitravel.org/en/Klang....but really, come and drop by Klang one day if I'm there!!) ....yeah anyways I thought I'd do my primary and secondary schooling there, maybe do a twinning program where I spend 3 years in college in Klang and 1 year overseas, then come back to Klang to get a job, raise a family, retire in some house, maybe my parent's, in Klang.

And therein lies the issue, that it seemed to me most Klangites, and maybe a significant portion of Malaysians, had the horizons of their minds stretching only to encompass Malaysia. They were aware of there being 'a world' out there, but it didn't intersect our lives personally (in the sense that it seemed like that; trade and diplomacy were definitely there, but it just seemed like this Other thing not affiliated with our ordinary lives). Most telling to me then was that our national English broadsheet The New Straits Times devoted 25 pages on average to local news, including "Pothole found on road in obscure district", whereas world news was granted 3. Before 13 I didn't know what was going on with the world, and more critically didn't know that there WAS a world for things to go on in.

Fast forward to the present, and all that has changed. I've done 6 years of schooling in Singapore, 3 years of undergrad in the UK, and am waiting to start 5 years in the USA. All in all, I've actually spent more years of my life out of Malaysia than in (0.4-5 in New Zealand, 13-19 in Singapore, 21-23 in the UK) I'm living a life 12-year-old me would never have dreamed of, and I'm defintely ensuring that my kids (if I get them) grow up true citizens of the world.

Tall leggy girls in bikinis. Haha caught your eye! Ok back to the topic, Miss Singapore Universe finals. Haha 16 of us , 4 family members downstairs with VIP tickets, while the rest of us headed for the balcony. Apparently the place holds 700 ppl.

First time in a tv studio during a live recording, and it was interesting. You know the commercial breaks? When you're sitting at home watching tv the host bids you "brb" just before the commercial cuts in, and when the commercial ends he's there smiling like an old friend with a 'welcome back to the show'. In actual fact during the commercial break they just ignore the studio audience...well I actually didn't really expect anything else, but thought maybe they'd give a little light-hearted banter or chat with the audience...just thought it was an interesting fact to note...not too bad during a beauty pageant when the focus isn't on the host, but I wonder what David Letterman or Oprah do during a commercial break..do they just sit there ruffling through their notes while the audience stares at them in awkward silence?

Apparently David Letterman studio tickets must be requested a year in advance...I'm getting me some when I'm over in the states!

Yup yup so the event wasn't too different compared to watching it at home I think, but it was good to be able to shout your support and know that the people you're supporting might be able to hear you...a friend watching at home just told me she thought she recognized my voice over the tv shouting *blush*....

And congrats again to Juliana for making top ten! =D

Housing! And more random stuff

2006-03-27T07:31:00.000-05:00

I just deleted 12 comments from my last post...was initially pleasantly surprised that so many ppl wanted to comment on my lab pic..haha...but it turned out to be 12 essays (by bots, prob) criticising the Malaysian government's policies....

Anywhere else I'd have been very interested, and I agree with some points even...but not on my blog!!! It's a place for friends to comment, not for ppl with agendas to spam!! Urgh...

Anyways I've survived one week w/o my supervisor! Haha he and most of the ppl with PhDs (postdocs, principal investigators) are in Canada for a symposium, and lotsa skiing....scientists often organize symposia at vacation-y places...I'm wondering how many scientists go for these things (which are paid for by their employers) purely for fun..haha...

And yup it's been exciting and challenging trying to do stuff yourself...designed and ordered some primers to amplify DNA, which worked! Wow! Haha small thing, but good enough to give you a minute sense of acomplishment...And I must say it feels sooooooo good to have your own workstation (I've taken over his for these 3 weeks)....have your own computer, your own desk....waaaaah after 7 months of being a nomad, it's good to have a home!

Interestingly enough, disaster after disaster has been raining down on our lab this week....first out -80 degree Celcius freezer goes up to -60 degrees without warning (it's a VERY BIG thing...we keep precious cell samples there which need to be kept very cold)....and this morning we arrived in the lab to be told by maintenance ppl that a pipe burst in the pantry next to our lab...resulting in a 2 inch flood throughout the lab...This shorted out several computers (including one of the PIs! And all his files on the floor)....flooded our tissue culture room (water level dangerously close to our incubators on the floor where we keep our growing cells)....

Wonder if that's a sign....

In the meantime, I've been looking at housing in Singapore...considering that I'll be living here when I finish my PhD I thought I might as well check out the options while I'm here now...Hmm there are several options, in order of increasing price:

1) Government Housing Development Board (HDB) flats. Cheapest, roughly averaging around S$250,000, but if unmarried, I need to be 35 years old before I can buy one :

2) Government HDB Executive Condominiums. Roughly around S$300,000 to S$400,000....sort of in between a flat and a private condominium...

3) Private condominium. These are where you get nicely designed units, fully air-conditioned, with lotsa facilities like 24-hour security, swimming pool, gym, BBQ pit etc. Of cos, the most expensive too, ranging from S$500,000 to S$650,000 to up, up, up!

4) Landed property. Forget it.

All things considered (price and quality of life), I'd like (2) or (3), but the government isn't building any new units for (2), so I'll have to wait till someone sells, and (3) will have me paying off my housing loan when I'm 50. Doesn't help that I would like to live near my workplace (Biopolis), but this happens to be one of the most pricey areas for property.

Maybe I'll buy a car and live in it.

Haha I guess I'll have to hope that my investments pay off! Else I win the lottery, which is very very hard to do, even more a challenge considering the fact that I don't buy lottery tickets...

Or maybe I'll rent somewhere for 5 years, till my bond is finished, then emigrate somewhere....

At least I've housing for the next 5 years in Boston settled; I just mailed in my housing request form...dorm-style rooms for the next year! haha I miss living in a college...

Some stuff

2006-03-14T08:31:00.000-05:00

Nothing much happened during the last month, so haven't been posting for a while...but I just watched the Miss Singapore 2006 prelude show, showcasing the 25 contestants who made it to the semifinals...

I'm seriously impressed...

...by the director, who, given 25 of the most beautiful girls in Singapore, can make a show so boring it feels like a cheap karaoke video....it was so tacky and slow, the hosts lacking any enthusiasm whatsoever, and most of the contestants sounded so timid and boring....at least Juliana was good!! =P Go MSU20!!!

Haha my institute (Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology) must be the company in Singapore with the most employees in Miss Singapore...we've got TWO!!! (The other one is Weng Yi Fei....go to ch5.mediacorptv.com/2006) How many does YOUR company have?

Anyways finally got a picture of my lab..tada!

My supervisor's the guy in front, in the gray shirt...French Canadian guy, fairly crazy but damn smart and funny, haha...bottom left is one of our two principal investigators...his surname is Cool, so we're like the Cool lab...hahahaha....wel actually the Nurcombe/Cool lab, but that doesn't have such a nice ring to it...

The Duke of Edinburgh's coming to Biopolis on Thursday...yet another VVIP visit...haha...

The Big H!!

2006-02-23T10:29:00.000-05:00

I'm going Boston for sure!!! =D haha now I just need to decide which uni to go to...

The Return of the K

2006-02-18T22:32:00.000-05:00

Wow, where to start?

People sense the passage of time by the number of events that happen; the more things that occur the longer a day seems to feel, and in this sense my trip felt much longer than a mere week and a half. So much happened that awed, excited and challenged, and I come back feeling like I'm completed a pilgrimage.

I've decided to chronicle events semi-chronologically, with random digressions here and there about things that caught my attention. Bear with my boy-meets-world style of writing, it usually is the way I approach new experiences...with a sense of awe.

And one more thing: as I was packing I noticed that I had left my camera charger in Malaysia when I went back for Chinese New Year = low camera battery = few or no photos.

T_T

P.S. For the uninitiated, this was a week and a half trip to the USA for graduate school interviews. Warning: long entry.

Feb 8 – Unprepared:
Februaries in Cambridge (UK – importance of clarifying this is greatly heightened during my trip) are pleasant affairs, where the spring sunshine sashays in and gently leads winter out the door. For some reason I assumed the weather in Boston to be similar, and didn’t bother either asking my friends currently there, or even checking the weather on the internet. Assumption: 10 degrees Celcius, and I packed accordingly.

As my earlier post mentioned, I found an internet terminal in Changi while I was waiting for my flight. After checking my email, I idly decided to finally look up the weather forecast.

Boston: Min -5 degrees C, Max 2 degrees C.

Urgh.

Feb 8 – United Airlines: Singapore to Tokyo, Tokyo to Chicago, Chicago to Boston:
It’s been the longest journey ever. All in all, I spent 33 hours in airports and airplanes; this served nicely as a prelude to screwing up my biological clock completely, given that Boston is approximately on the opposite side of the globe from Singapore.

Actually, United Airlines wasn’t as bad as my friends said. There was a surprising amount of leg space, there were fairly few people flying (and hence I got to sleep across 3 seats). Service was acceptable, food alright, and for the flight to Japan at least there was a cute Japanese stewardess =P

Feb 8 – Arrival in Boston. Start of Harvard recruitment weekend.
I arrive in Logan International Airport in Boston, step out and stop dead in my tracks.

IT IS COLD.

Thankfully, Harvard will pay for a cab fare to the airport, haha. This you will see sets the theme for the entire trip: university spending big money on small recruit. Consider the destination: the Sheraton hotel in Cambridge (US) =D

Which brings up a matter that requires clarification: Harvard (and MIT as well) is situated in Cambridge (US), a town next to Boston. According to someone I asked, the people who founded Harvard University thought that the town it is situated in should have a scholarly sounding name, and hence plucked the name Cambridge from Cambridge University in the UK. A lot of self-introduction goes on during the next few days, and everytime people state which university they are from:

Me: “I’m from Cambridge”
Other person: “…”
*moment of silence, I learn later expecting me to continue with an ‘MIT’ or ‘Harvard’*
Me: “…”
Other person: “…”
Me: “I’m from Cambridge University in the UK.”
Other person: “Ohhhh….”

Anyways I arrive at the Sheraton Commander Hotel, which is so named because George Washington once visited some spot near it, I think. It’s a good choice, since apart from being a high-class hotel meant to impress recruits, it’s got big red glowing letters on the outside visible from half a kilometre away, which easily acts as a beacon to blur recruits wandering around like lost sheep.

Check in; nice big room! 2 queen-sized beds (me plus one roommate) with FIVE pillows each (arabic numerals can’t convey emphasis the way capital letters can), on top of all the trappings expected of a Sheraton room. This is NICE. but don’t get too used to it. Another recruit and I later agreed: this will be the only time we (future) grad students will be staying here; grad students are generally poor bastards scavenging to get by.

I join the reception down in the meeting room; a group of graduate students have come to talk to all the recruits staying in the hotel. I meet some people and promptly forget their names; by now the jetlag and long flight have taken their toll on me and I sit in a zombie-like daze listening to other people talking. Nice selection of food and drinks (another point to note), but I’ve no appetite. Oh but I meet my roommate, a Princeton guy named Drew, whose girlfriend is also here as a recruit; how cute, they applied together to the same unis, and their principal investigator (PI, guy whose lab you work in) actually wrote their references recommending them as a pair.

I head up to my room soon and promptly fall asleep.

And wake up at 12am. And again at 2am. And 4am. And 6am. Hmmm.

Feb 9,10 – Department of Molecular and Cell Biology (MCB), Harvard University:
Early morning greets the recruits as we gather in the lobby for our guides (one of who pleasantly sings a greeting to us). We walked from the hotel to the department, and I continually lose heat from my scalp. I have no gloves, no hat, no scarf, and only a thin autumn jacket. The others note wryly that half my sentences are exclamations of cold. I brought along a cup of hot chocolate, thinking that it’d warm me up, not realizing that I need a hand out of my pocket to hold the cup. Some graduate students think it helps by telling me that it’s actually a surprisingly mild winter.

…………..

Aaaaaaaaanyways, we enter the department to inviting warmth and a generous spread of pastries, cookies, spreads, fruits and drinks. This is breakfast, and it looks incredible. Money spent on recruits.

We meet the faculty, they introduce the program, and 2 hours later we break for tea, where the food and drink outside have been topped up. More talks, and we break for lunch. The recruits surmise that between the early mornings, the long talks and the endless food diverting blood from the brain to the stomach, the department is clearly planning to dumb us recruits down for the afternoon interviews, to numb our minds and hence better able to penetrate our defences and learn what fools we really are.

HAH, they’re wasting their time. My jetlag is doing all that and more already.

Sure enough, in the afternoon I start staring vacuously into space, and my mind feels like warm jelly. I start each interview with a disclaimer: Hi there Professor X, I just flew in from Singapore yesterday, on a 30 hour journey, and am still functioning half a day out of sync. The slime mold you see now is not representative of the capabilities of the guy you’re going to recruit into your department. He thinks much better, I think. Yeah.

Of interviews:
I (and some other recruits) had been speculating on the nature of the interviews we would face. We were certain that they would be hard, intense affairs, with the professors asking pointed questions about our research:

Prof: “So tell me about your research.”
Recruit: “Uh well I work on blah blah blah….”
Prof: “Oh that’s interesting. But tell me why you use this technique on this gene?”
Recruit: “Uh…well I think because it’s blah blah….”
Prof: “YOU STUPID FOOL!! I WILL EAT YOUR IMMORTAL SOUL!!!”

The whole thing can only end in tears.

Of course, we ask the graduate students what the interviews will be like. They say don’t worry, the professors are nice, but we all know graduate students are on the side of the professors, who grade the students. In fact, later on one professor does talk to us about interviews, about how he knows we each have our 5-10 minute shield, our little summary about what we do. He KNOWS?!

My first interviewer does ask me some questions about what I do, but after a while starts talking about HER research, which is good since it means I don’t have to talk and look like a fool. This is symptomatic of most professors actually, and later on in other universities there ARE sessions where all I do is listen to the professor talk.

But more surprisingly a third of the time the professor actually asks: “So how can I persuade you to join our department?” A prestigious university soliciting ME to join them? Somehow it feels wrong; I imagined the correct state of things would have involved the recruit begging for the honour of washing test tubes. But yeah! They mention sailing, do I like sailing? There are free sailing lessons on the Charles River. The weather isn’t all that bad, I stayed here for 20 years, I’m sure you’d like it too. All us faculty care deeply for students, you can approach us for anything you need.

In short, the interviews are actually two-way dialogues, each party courting the other, I imagine much like marriage, as it involves similar lengths of time (5 years for a Ph.D) living with each other. It’s a curious dance, with them realising those who make it to the interviews probably did make it to interviews at other universities as well, and we realising that they have a pool of recruits to choose from, of which they take typically 60-70%.

My mind however screams horror at me going into an interview with Harvard professors in my zombie-like state. I blink on the order of seconds, and sentences enter my brain with a significant lag, not helped by the halving of processing power. I’ve also got that foolish smile on my face, the one that you have when you’re very sleepy, and hence contract your cheek muscles in the hope that upturned edges automatically make a smile.

More often you just look like a doofus.

Feb 11 – Gearing up, Migration to MIT
Well that’s it for the Sheraton, god knows when I’ll ever stay there again. I meet some friends (Linjuan and Herman) for lunch, and drag them shopping with me - need winter accessories.

Because weather forecast for Feb 12: huge blizzard that will engulf the northeastern United States.

Everything’s on sale, which is good. I pick out gloves, a scarf and for the first time in my life, a hat! (well if you don’t count the cap I had to wear as part of the Boys’ Brigade uniform in secondary school). Along with the hat comes hat hair, which is a novel problem. But the hat is AWESOME. It’s got a face mask that I can pull down to shield my face from the wind; check it out:

I look like a terrorist, or bank robber…haha….

I travel two Metro stops (Boston equivalent of Tube or MRT) down to MIT. MIT is SO COOL!! They’ve just got this coolness factor built into the culture that other schools don’t have. Case in point: Linjuan shows me this contraption that MIT installed in the Metro station next to their campus. It consists of big chimes located in between the tracks, with several hammers poised to strike the chimes. There’s a lever on the platform that you can reach, which is connected to the hammers.

Moving the lever causes the hammers to move, ever so slightly. The game is to time the lever movements to resonate with the hammers, building amplitude and eventually striking the chimes, which results in a surprisingly delicate but beautiful cascade of notes wafting through the station. Very very cool.

I meet the other recruits (for MIT) and MIT graduate students in their 1st year party room; equipped with a pool table!! Plus for MIT, since Harvard didn’t have one. Had dinner with the guy whose house I was staying in – decided to stay at a grad student’s house instead of a hotel, just to see how grad student housing is like. Oh and met up with Juliana and Yiqi (another A*STAR scholar), who were also going for MIT interviews.

Feb 12 – Blizzarded!
I wake up in the morning, glance out the window and the snowstorm from hell stares back. Man. The snow’s not the gentle dusting we get in Cambridge (UK), but a proper, kill-you-if-you’re-homeless-outside type. It’s very very cold, the wind’s fairly strong…looking out the snow looks like how it would be if you were in one of the tiny houses in a shaken snowglobe.

It’s a 15min trek to the department. Wow, the snow’s about 2 feet deep. I step out of the house and my leg promptly sinks into the snow, up to mid-calf level. Interesting. The city is deserted. There is NO ONE else apart from us on the streets. There are no cars on the road. It really looks like the city has been desolate and abandoned for years, and the snow just makes the whole thing all the more eerie. I pass cars entombed in snow and ice – good luck to the owners.

We spend most of the day at the department idling. There was a lot planned: trips to Boston, tours around the campus etc, but the snowstorm’s put killed all plans. Some of us trudge off to watch Good Night and Good Luck at the local cinema…the 15 min trek there was an adventure.

Which brings up a point, how come so few of this year’s Oscar-nominated shows are showing in Singapore? Good Night and Good Luck (about McCarthy and the communist witch hunts) and Crash don’t seem to be coming, while Capote and Munich haven’t arrived yet.

Update: a new blizzard has hit the northeastern US again, just a day after I get back. This time temperatures are Max -2C, Min -12C. Do I really want to be here for 5 years? Hmm.

Feb 13 – MIT interviews, UCSF phone interview.
Had interviews today, and my first was with Harvey Lodish! He’s the guy who wrote the textbook on Cell Biology, ie he’s responsible for most undergrads’ knowledge of biology. The interviews went better than the ones in Harvard, since I was starting to get over my jetlag. Haha, also, I had earlier arranged to take a phone interview from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in the MIT party room…somehow it felt WRONG.

And the phone interview was jarring. The 4 professors on the line actually asked detailed questions, like why did I use this technique? What results did I expect to see? What’s the function of this gene? I was caught off guard, and I think I babbled out answers without really giving much thought. Awkward pauses dominated the conversation; without seeing each other, we didn’t know how to cue the other party to resume the conversation. At the end of the half hour interview I hung up sure that I had lost UCSF. Ah well.

Update: In fact, yesterday one of the UCSF professors emailed me saying sorry for the awkward phone interview (this email part of my acceptance email =P but I’m jumping ahead of myself, haha).

Dinner with a Nobel Laureate:
We were split into groups for dinner, several recruits with a few faculty each, and my group had Bob Horwitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, 2002! In fact, I was seated with him along with 2 other recruits, and for the entire dinner we were peppering him with questions about winning the Nobel Prize…just so, you know, we’d be prepared (haha kidding!!!).

Apparently he was attending someone’s wedding at some ski resort in France, and so the call from Stockholm (where they announce the Nobel Prize for Medicine) was routed there from his lab in the USA. However, the host (who picked up the phone) spoke no English or Swedish, and didn’t understand what the caller was saying. He got across to Bob the fact that he had a call from Stockholm, however….but apparently it’s a popular prank amongst scientists to call up their friends on that day pretending to be Swedish and telling them they won the Nobel Prize.

So Bob (this seems wrong….I should be calling him Professor Horwitz, but all the professors we meet insist that we call them by their first names) sits down with the radio and TV on the whole day, waiting for a public announcement.

When they later meet, the chair of the committee tells Bob that he was feeling down; there were 3 winners of the Nobel Prize for Medicine that year, and the chair whose job was to call the winners didn’t manage to get any of them.

Another anecdote: The Nobel committee is bound by strict rules to call earliest at 11.30am Stockholm time, which translates to about 3am in the morning in the USA. Hence a professor’s wife picks up the early morning call:

Wife: “Who is this?”
Nobel committee: “We are calling from Stockholm, and we need to speak to your husband.”
Wife: “Yeah right.”
Nobel committee: “No no really we really have an important message that we need to give your husband.”
Wife: “Yeah right.”

Apparently this goes on for a while, before they convince her to get her husband.

Feb 14 – Valentine’s Day in Baltimore
I catch a flight to Baltimore, alone, since I’m the only one from the group in MIT going for Johns Hopkins interviews on that day. I get this Russian cab driver from the airport (again, paid for by the university) who starts warning me about Baltimore being the crime capital of the United States. Apparently murders used to occur once every day, but they’ve now got it down to twice every 3 days. Nice. But that’s why Johns Hopkins is so good: they’ve got tons of gunshot wounds and trauma cases to practice on.

The hotel is nice, only 4 storeys but definitely 4 star. I lament spending Valentine’s Day alone in a crime-ridden city in a foreign land, but ah well. Thankfully, I call the admissions officer to announce my arrival, and she says that there are two other applicants meeting two graduate students for dinner, and would I like to join them? Definitely!

Feb 15 – Johns Hopkins Medical School
The medical campus is HUGE. It consists of the heart of the city, with many interconnected buildings and affiliated hospitals. Apparently Johns Hopkins is the biggest employer in the state of Maryland, outside the government. There are like close to a thousand labs, in contrast to Harvard Medical School’s 300 or so…Johns Hopkins as a professor tells me is the biggest medical school in the USA, focussing largely on research applied to human disease. It offers a nice contrast to Harvard MCB and MIT Biology, which are small departments focussed on basic research.

Not much to say about the interviews, fairly standard affairs, but just walking from one building to another…the sheer size of the place is hard to comprehend. Some graduate students have told me that they chose to join small departments cos in a big medical school you might find yourself drowning in the crowd. Hmmm.

Anyways I took a flight back to Boston in the evening, popped by Leah’s place to chat. One of the more animated people I know, haha it’s always interesting to talk to her. In return for wasting her time when she's got a research proposal due the next day she rewards me with 19 books to carry back for her.

Feb 17 – Flight back and delays galore; unexpected detour in Japan!
At 3am I decide to head out, back to Logan airport for my flight back at 7am. It turns out to be even more of an adventure than my flight from Singapore to Boston.

I reach the airport, only to find out my flight from Boston to Los Angeles is delayed, which would cause me to miss the connecting Los Angeles to Tokyo flight. Hence the airline puts me on a 9am flight to Chicago instead, from where I’ll connect to Tokyo. Great, more time in the airport.

I reach Chicago, to find a thunderstorm brewing. This delays the flight out to Tokyo by 2 hours, and yup, it means that when I reach Tokyo in the evening, the flight to Singapore has already left.

My sianness is tempered however, by the fact that the airline is putting us up at a hotel for the night, to catch a flight at 11am the next day. This means I’m actually gonna spend a night in Japan!! Score!!!! I can’t help laughing out loud as I leave the airport for the hotel, and step into Japan proper (and not just lingering in the transit area). It’s my first time in Japan!! The hotel’s only 10 mins away from the airport, and it turns out to be yet another free stay at a 4 star hotel. Dinner’s provided, and I head up to the Japanese restaurant for what will be my first authentic Japanese meal in my life.

Which turns out to be….interesting. The miso soup and chawanmushi are good, but rice is served with sashimi, which tastes…different from the ones back home. It tastes even more raw than those I’ve tried here, and the raw tuna especially tasted weird. True to Japanese form (in the sense of doing gimmicky things), the orange they served is halved, the flesh cut into regular octamers and placed back in the skin, which then looks like a bowl.

By then it’s 9pm, and I decide to take the free shuttle to downtown Narita. On the bus I strike up a conversation with an American United air stewardess, who firstly warns me that there’s nothing to do in Narita at this hour. All the shops are closed, and there’s not much difference from any other regular city. She turns out to be correct, and I pace up and down the streets to find that everything’s closed. Some things catch my attention however; I enter a Pachinko shop (some sort of Japanese slot machine) and see a few people playing at this hour….I also enter a Japanese minimart, looking for quirky Japanese food products.

Note the typical Japanese approach to English grammar.

This is a 3 litre paper carton of sake! It’s huge…I put my hand there for a sense of the size, but it doesn’t come out well in the photo.

Ah well, not much to see. Will have to come back and visit Japan proper one day.

More interesting Japanese stuff in my hotel toilet. See the console next to the toilet bowl?

It’s a control panel for a spray system, that shoots jets of water to clean your….posterior after you….well I think the illustrations explain it all, hahahahaha.

Results are….interesting. But very clean. Maybe this will one day be to toilet paper what toilet paper was to leaves.

Crazy Japanese game shows:
At night I switch on the TV, flipping through channels. One catches my eye.

It’s this game show, where the contestants are out on a soccer field. The contestant stands in front of the goal in the penalty box, and there’s a goalkeeper in front of the goal. Apparently the idea is for someone to kick the ball in from the corner, and the contestant has to head the ball into the goal. Innocent enough.

But the goalkeeper is wearing a full body protection suit, the type firefighters wear, and the contestants are wearing helmets. Ah ha, the plot thickens! The twist: the ball is soaked in fuel and lighted with a blowtorch. The contestant is supposed to head a fireball.

One guy does his manly gorilla roar before his turn, then promptly runs away when the ball flies towards him. Another guy manages to head the ball in, goal!! But his head catches on fire, and he runs around like a chicken as the game show staff try to chase him with fire extinguishers.

Hahahahahaha seeing the show is way more funny than I can describe it here. Crazy Japanese!!

Feb 18 – Replies!! JAL is good!!
This is the first hotel breakfast I’ve had which serves baked salmon. Btw the abundance of pictures of Japan is due to my guarded usage of the camera and cameraphone during the trip, but now I can just drain the batteries without care. So here’s a picture of my breakfast. They’ve a mini Japanese garden outside where I take a walk after.

My flight back is in the morning, this time with Japan Airlines. I arrive at the airport with time to kill, and discover an internet terminal. Check my email…..two new emails stand out, with UCSF and MIT in the titles. Click click.

I GOT INTO MIT!!!! And UCSF!!! Wahhhhh I’ve somewhere to go for grad school!!! I’m more surprised at getting UCSF than MIT, considering how badly I thought the interview went. Haha I couldn’t help but feel cheery for the entire day. Now only if the other two schools would get back to me, *fingers crossed*. Will delay deciding where to go till I get all my replies, but even if I get rejected by the others, at least I’ve somewhere to go now!!

And the flight back. Wow, JAL is really good. There’s tons of leg room. The personal entertainment system is a generation ahead of SIA’s, with a snazzy interactive menu. Airplane earphones are usually crap, with lots of static etc, but not for JAL. Because the earphones provided are made by SONY. The sound comes through crisp and clear, like any quality earphones. Food is good. And the cute Japanese air stewardesses =P. They’re all really short though.

I watch the Godfather on the way back, been meaning to watch it for some time, cos I’ve heard so much about it, being on everyone’s list of all time top movies. I found it boring though, surprisingly. Hmmm. I skip Godfather II and decide to just sleep.

Touchdown in Singapore, and back to life here.
It feels weird to be back, and now as I’m slumped on my couch typing this I feel like the events of the past week and a half seem so distant. But something’s changed: now I know where (roughly) I’ll be heading towards for the next stage in my life. I was watching Just Like Heaven on the plane from Chicago, and reading Tuesdays with Morrie (a birthday gift from a friend), both hitting on the theme of carpe diem…hmm yup I’ve decided to make the most of this half a year I have left here.

I Found Internet!!!!!

2006-02-07T11:17:00.000-05:00

I'm at Changi Terminal 2....alone....and the shops are closing...was walking around alone till I found an internet terminal!!! Haha it's now 12.15am, my flight's at 7.15am....I forgot to factor in my waiting time at Changi, so my whole journey is about 36 hours I think....wah....

Off again!

2006-02-07T01:33:00.000-05:00

I'm 24!! Two turns of the chinese zodiac; it's now the year of the dog again. So old....but as Allan pointed out, haha 24 is the name of my fav TV show, so at least now I've something in common with Jack Bauer...remote as it may be....got an incredible CD from the lousy guys in Cambridge, with all their lousy faces on it...hahahaha thanks dudes!! The walk down St Andrew's to Christ's was magic....

And I'm flying off to Boston tomorrow morning! Actually I'm going to go to Changi airport tonight, and wait till 5am to check in...Hmm travel plans: Feb 8-11 Harvard interview, 12-14 MIT, 15-16 Johns Hopkins (in Baltimore), and flying back to Singapore on the 16th...That burns a full 8 days of my leave...T_T the pain, the pain....I think that leaves me with about 3 more days of leave till the end of my attachment in July....gonna be in Baltimore alone, apparently it has one of the highest crime rates in the USA...hmmm......

And I'm not properly packed yet...never been so unprepared for a trip, just started packing clothes yesterday....still have documents and papers to print, miscellaneous electronics and toiletries to pack...and I need to get some quality reading material, cos I'm flying United....wanted SIA but the uni wouldn't pay for it, cos SIA's double the price....

United's ok as well right? I mentioned I was flying United to my lab mates, and:
1) Sorrowful expression: Oh no! I HATE United!
2) Their seats very small!
3) The angmohs like to sit sideways and thus it's very squeezy
4) NO. PERSONAL. TV. NONE. I'm going to DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
5) Service sucks.
6) As if all these not enough, apparently air stewardessess not pretty.

T_T

Update: I just realised that I'll be spending 26 hours in planes and at airports in transit (2 transits!!).... 26 hours with all the above .....URGH....

He's back!

2006-01-25T07:57:00.000-05:00

The three of us have agreed: our place here in Commonwealth has extremely negative spiritual energy....it's like Sunnydale from Buffy (which was sitting on the door to hell), except that we don't have blonde bombshells going around kicking ass (the only ppl kicking ass being my bored housemates when they're feeling frustrated).....

Don't get me wrong, the place location-wise is fantastic...it's 20 mins walking distance from my workplace, just next to an MRT station, and is very close to Orchard by bus...furthermore being on the 16th floor we don't get mosquitoes, and it's much cooler than on the ground level....

But:

1) There are TONS of old people around... the Commonwealth housing estate was apparently built in the 1960s (according to some cab driver), and the people who moved in then haven't been moving out...there's nothing wrong with old people, they're very nice to us, it's just that they keep dying...and thus there's a funeral every 2 weeks or so...the undertaker must be extremely familiar where to set up, plug in sockets for lights etc by now...

2) There's a unit on the ground floor which is abandoned....the door is splashed with red and white paint...and the windows are broken....we think they maybe had trouble with loan sharks...but judging from the dust that must have been ages ago, and still it's abandoned....

3) While I was away in the USA in Nov, Mingjenn and Ling Seang (my housemates) were walking out to the elevator, when they saw stains on the floor (they thought it was candlewax??)....following the stains, they came to the lift, and by the light there they could see that it was blood....a pool of blood on the floor, leading to one of the units (all this on our 16th floor, mind you!)....shortly after, the lift brought up 4 policemen, who followed the bloodtrail to the unit, went in, and came out with some guy arrested....

In fact, the police seem to come to our estate quite often....we see them maybe once a month...

4) Crazy middle-aged Indian guy!! Some middle-aged guy wearing only pants regularly appears on the 15th floor of our block, and facing the block opposite shouts out to the world...shouting not being the puny things most of us are capable of, but parade commander-type bellowing, the type that you might see on National Day commanding thousands of troops....

And he's got some MAJOR issues...he shouts like the world has not only wronged him, but also all his past lives, and is promising to wrong him for all his future reincarnations....... we tried discerning what he says, and I once creeped up to just above him (I'm on the 16th floor, he's on the 15th)....it's apparently a mixture of Hindi (I think) and English...I caught the words "Be good to be and God will bless you...If you insult me God will punish you" (in the tone of vengeful deity), and his sessions usually last half an hour...imagine shouting like that for half an hour!!

He used to be a weekly act, waking us up on Sunday morning to make sure we don't sleep in too long......but then early December he stopped...and we haven't heard him since...until now!!! He's back!! In fact he was shouting just as I was writing this.....hmm hmm kinda nostalgic in a way...we've wondered why no one calls the cops or the mental institutions...

Ling Seang and I were thinking of approaching him, tapping him gently on the shoulder, and asking him in a pleasant tone "Excuse me Sir, it appears that you have some frustrations. Would you care to share them with us?"

In other news someone's requested to have her picture put up...haha no specific picture asked for, so here's one I find interesting:

Presenting, Cambridge Lawyer Miss Yanyan! I like the "deer-caught-in-headlights" look =P

Decided to put up more pics of my friends. Another Young Lee pic during his recent visit to Singapore:Ming Jenn: The last face I see before I sleep, and usually the first I see when I wake up (on weekends)...I'm going to need professional help after this...=PDr Lim looking uncharacteristically non-powerwoman-like:

Ling Seang took this. Don't get it either.

Interviews

2006-01-20T12:27:00.000-05:00

Today....this morning....and again just 10 mins ago.....Boston......

MAN.

=D

Reign of water

2006-01-11T09:39:00.000-05:00

MAN! It's been raining every day for the past 2 weeks...and it shows no signs of letting down.

So this is what monsoons are like...raining for like most of if not the whole day, like in the UK, but with the pure intensity of a tropical storm....hmm it's really a dampener when you want to go out, and it's making my walks to and from work an experience....

On the plus side though, the temperature's really low....like REALLY low....it's 23 degrees celsius minimum in Singapore, which is REALLY REALLY low....these few days I've been sleeping without the fan on, which I've NEVER been able to do before...in fact I actually took out my UK jacket (the brown one) to use as a duvet....brought that along for my USA trip, didn't think I'd ever need it here....my roommate suggested hugging each other to conserve body warmth....I'm SOOOOOOOOOOO glad I've got my jacket with me....and maybe I'll move our beds apart just that little bit more....

In other news, Young Lee and Tiffany were in town last week! It's really Visit Singapore season (as I mentioned before)...haha good to see the two jokers again... Young Lee came from KL, as did Tiffany...she was visiting Malaysia with family, from the Philippines...

Visitor number 2 to my place! Standard position, cos I always balance the camera on our TV...Note the 3 little squares in the background on the wall....the shiny centres are mirrors...those are what we used for mirrors for 2 weeks before I went to get us a proper one....

Brought them to Marche and NYDC....hmm I seem to bring everyone who visits Singapore to these two places...cos I think the atmosphere in Marche and the desserts in NYDC are not found as frequently in other countries (i.e. Malaysia mostly)....anyone with suggestions on where else to bring people?

Anyways there's us in Marche....flanked by Tiffany and her sister....it seems like between the two of them, Tiffany got all the masculinity, and her sister all the feminineness (read: pink! pink!)....haha an interesting juxtaposition, for them to be sisters....

And before I forget...Happy belated new year to everyone!!

AN INTERVIEW OFFER!!!!!!

2006-01-06T22:34:00.000-05:00

MAN I just got an interviw offer from UCSF!! (University of California - San Francisco)....leaving aside the facts that they're not currently on the 'approved' list of ASTAR unis, and also that they're prob interested in me cos ASTAR is paying full tuition fees.....it's still a good sign right?! Haha ok that made my weekend.....now just wondering if I want to do a telephone interview, or fly over....they said they'd pay for my flight if another West Coast uni interviews me, and they can then share the cost....Stanford dun let me down plsssssssssssssssssssss..........

Farewell 2005.

2005-12-30T13:36:00.000-05:00

There're less than 24 hours to 2005.

I've never felt like this on new year's eve...but 2005 was really meaningful to me, especially in terms of leaving Cambridge, and entering 2006 seems to me like finally severing the last link I had with Cambridge, moving it and all the memories I had from the present, firmly into my past....I've spent the last 3 years there, getting to know the beautiful place and making some wonderful friends....and I believe it's shaped a huge part of this person's life....and all my actions into the future will always bear the subtle hint of the Cambridge experience guiding my hand....

It was great....and words fail me now, but I felt that I should deliver a eulogy before it truly passes on....

4am

2005-12-21T16:41:00.000-05:00

Today I came into the lab at 4am. I've got to do a 5 min experiment every 2 hours, but I can't sleep cos they switch off the air-conditioning in the workstations (office) from about 8pm till 7am. Air-conditioning is on in the lab though, but there are only stools in the lab. Thinking of pushing an office chair into the lab to sleep. Not thinking very clearly, especially since I left at 12.30am on Monday and Tuesday, and came in at 5.30am on Wednesday. Need sleep.

Oh and also I finished submitting all my uni applications. Will sound more excited when I've had enough rest.

Family visit, and a surprising revelation

2005-12-09T08:08:00.000-05:00

My family came down to Singapore 2 weeks ago, and I brought them around Singapore, including my workplace and the zoo....since they come down so much I always have a problem deciding where to bring them that they've not been before...hmm I guess that's the problem with being in Singapore as opposed to the UK, where it's easy to find somewhere new to go, either within the country or to Europe.....ah well......took pics but I've been too lazy to upload the pics onto my comp till now...haha...

The entrance to Biopolis, my workplace! that's my mum in the photo...my building is the furthest one in the photo, all the way down the road....and each building is shaped like one of the blocks of that funny colourful man-shaped thing...my building 'Proteos' is the purple shaped block...

Mum, bro, sis and baby sis....this is the central garden of Biopolis, which I think they're trying to make into a cool chill out area....in actual fact not too many ppl sit around the tree during the day, since it's so freaking hot....

And yup my baby sis is YOUNG....9 years old...considering i'm 24, it IS a huge gap...haha....and since she's the baby she's spoiled by everyone...on top of that consider the fact that her favourite cartoon is Crayon Shin Chan....but apparently her grades are excellent, so my mum forgives her...haha....

Here's a close up of the little monster...haha my mum says she looks exactly like I did when I was her age....

Yeah I know some of you are saying 'Oh no"....fff...

Brought them to the zoo, which I haven't been to in 5 years!! Too bad Sarah wasn't there, else was hoping we could get back stage passes to the exhibits...haha....and scare my sis with the snakes....

Here's a disgusting exhibit...the zoo apparently thought it a good idea to have a cage of cockroaches....haha every single tourist who passed by cringed....it scared more ppl than I think the lions, scorpions and snakes....

And as I was playing with my sister, I noticed one thing....before this she always wrote with her left hand, but this time round she was writing with her right....I thought this was weird and asked my mum, and apparently my mum has been trying to correct her, by lightly smacking her hand when my sis writes using her left hand....

Out-dated beliefs huh? Guess what....apparently she did the same with me! I was a leftie!! Kinda weird to find out that out....haha a little unsettling....kept thinking of Joel's "Famous lefties and me!" T-shirt....

And today I was reading this article in Scientific American, which talked about lefties who were forced to convert, ie my sister and I:

"Some psychologists think that when a left-handedchild is forced to do everything with the right hand, the brain’s balance of power can become confused. The dominant right hemisphere is relegated to a more subservient role, while the left hemisphere becomes overburdened. As a result, communication between the two halves also suffers; information transfer through the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres, breaks down. The same psychologists claim that this situation canpotentially compromise memory and concentration, not to mention disturb the language function. Some studies indicate that children who have been forced to switch are more likely to experience speech or reading and writing disorders. They also run the risk of suffering from inferiority complexes."

Hmmm I don't think I have a reading or writing disorder, though I sometimes think I could speak better...and do I have an inferiority complex? Haha I've asked some ppl and met with emphatic NOs, but just wondering if my ego would be bigger if I was left-handed right now....

11.20pm

2005-12-01T10:19:00.000-05:00

it's 11.20pm....the morning seems like a different day...all alone for several hours now....but then supervisor came in and tried to creep up on me....crazy bugger....good thing got training from cambridge days when crazy guys try to ambush you all the time....40 more mins to last time point....been running on little sleep....slightly drunk now....

First really loooooooooong day

2005-12-01T08:23:00.000-05:00

Wah today got to work at 7am, leaving at 12.30am....cos got time course experiment, every 2 hours from 8am till 12am must harvest cells....it's 9.30pm and i'm all alone in the lab...wondering what to do....got tv but no shows to watch, and somehow it's getting warm in the office...dun tell me they turn off the air con!?!?!

Sitting on the fence

2005-11-24T08:51:00.000-05:00

Have been tweaking my personal statement for the past week...it's almost but not quite done, and everytime I look at it i feel sick, and don't feel like doing it nor anything else cos I'm supposed to be working on the statement....

Will finish it soon, I promise myself. Then again I promised to finish it before October.

Anyways, today I've got my Singapore permanent resident identity card. Thought it was a date worth noting. Short term means I can borrow library books, and have to contribute 20% of my salary to CPF (central provident fund) now....mid-term, maybe I can buy a HDB flat?

Mum and bro and sisses coming this weekend, a weekend's break! Maybe I'll stay awake tonight until I finish the statements, so I can truly relax then....

Ppl wish me all the best...

Back in Singapore / USA photolog

2005-11-12T09:58:00.000-05:00

I'm back in Singapore....whew after 2 weeks of travelling....and an 18 hour flight....much as USA was fun, it's good to be back home, will take the day off to properly rest (ie slack)

Hmm 2 weeks to cover, hadn't been able to update much during the trip...I guess photos are the best way to go eh?

We went to Los Angeles after San Francisco (Stanford)...popped by Caltech, but it's not really a pretty campus....so we went to Hollywood! If you zoom you can see the famous white "HOLLYWOOD" sign in the background...

Of course, there's the Hollywood walk of fame...the streets are paved with hundreds of stars, but most of us will be familiar with only half of them, as many are before our generation...wonder if our children will recognize "Tom Cruise" etc....well a few more famous ones: Tom Cruise, Marilyn Monroe, and someone (something?) kinda unexpected...

And one more for a friend who's a big fan of Julie Andrews...

There's also another place Hollywood stars get eternalized...that's by casting their handprints in concrete in front of Grumman's Chinese Theatre:

Frank Sinatra, and Julie Andrews again..............

On the right, some less expected footprints?

Ok then enough of Hollywood...we went to Beverly Hills too, VERY posh shopping area:

Chic chick?

Onwards to Boston, home of the two great unis: Harvard and MIT! Stayed with Leah for almost a week...very gracious host, though we hardly could talk to her, she being stressed out as usual, haha....I did meet up with two professors, several graduate students, and lots of old friends!

Ok first off, a panorama of Harvard Yard (click to enlarge, looks better bigger)...reminds me a little of the courtyards of Cambridge, except Harvard has maybe like 2 courtyards, and the buildings consist of dorms, a library, a church, various departments etc...

The gang....old Cambridge (the original in UK!) ppl Leah and Kenneth, and Wee Lee (Singapore Police Force scholar) at the extreme left....

The city of Cambridge (the USA one, which Harvard and MIT reside in) also has this beautiful river running through it....left is the Charles River during sunset, right during the day...

Harvard also has the world's only collection of glass flowers, which a professor of botany once comissioned a father-son team of glass blowers to make....these are INCREDIBLY DETAILED LAH!!! You wouldn't believe these are PURE glass! From flowers to leaves to the roots....zoom in to see the detail...there are like hundreds of specimens like these...

And of course, the unexpected event that drew most of the Malaysian and Singaporean population in the area to the John F. Kennedy School of Government in Harvard one Monday night:

Anwar Ibrahim in the flesh! His speech as I said wasn't impressive, more filled with politicians' catchphrases...but it was something to see him in person....apparently he's doing the lecture circuit now, being a fellow in Oxford, teaching in the University of Illinois, and now giving a speech in Harvard.

Ok I guess enough of Harvard....MIT has ugly buildings though, so not many nice photos, but one cool one here....the MIT nuclear reactor....man we should get ourselves one of those....

Hmm with regards to the actual purpose of the trip, I did meet some professors and lab members, and they were really nice and helpful in describing their research interests, but I still dunno how much help this will be for my applications...ah well....rest of this month have to chiong...must finish long-long-overdue personal statement soon else I'll be going nowhere.....

Ibrahim!!

2005-11-07T22:33:00.000-05:00

Lotsa places to write about, but I'll have to skip them all for one big thing that just happened...

There was a talk at the Kennedy School of Government this evening, and it was by no other than Anwar Ibrahim! The topic was "Islam and democracy", and lotsa Malaysians and Singaporeans went, including me. It was incredible to see this guy who's been missing from the Malaysian scene for years, up front.

He gave an ok talk, I felt strong on style but less on substance, but I guess most politicians talk like that. It was still amazing to have seen him though...will write more about it when I'm back in Singapore...

Destination USA: San Francisco

2005-10-30T23:00:00.000-05:00

I've arrived in the USA!! Safe and sound, probably to the disappointment of some of you, haha. Man it's feels gooooooooooood to wear a jacket in the cold autumn weather again!

Staying with Juliana's friend Ram in the graduate housing area; we've not actually seen the university....arrived on Sat night and on Sunday Jul and I went to San Francisco instead, which is a BEAUTIFUL city. Btw now I understand the concept of 'blocks', as in somewhere is 4 blocks straight and 2 blocks right...the cities here are built in a grid system, which makes navigation so much easier....compare that to KL, or some of the old European cities, where people just added streets whenever they felt like it...

Cable cars..no engines, rather they're dragged by moving cables underground. We rode on one, which goes uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill STEEPLY....great fun!

Downhill to the bay!

San Francisco bay...lotsa sun and sea....sun is sooooooo nice when it's not hot...

Hundreds of sealions sunbathing on Fisherman's Wharf....apparently a recent phenomenon, after the 1989 earthquake here....lots of them barking, rolling, some fighting, but most just doing what we do best, slacking.....

San Francisco is hilly! Notice the steepness of the hill...we came down that slope on a cable car....

Jet lag then hit...both of us suddenly became zombified....

The Golden Gate bridge...notice zoned out look...fake smile...
Guidebook says that the bridge has enough wire holding it up to circle the equator 3 times.

Right today (Monday) we're supposed to go tour the university proper...but it's noon and Jul's still sleeping...ah well...oh and it's Halloween today, so we might hit the town and see what's up, as it's supposed to be the biggest party day of the USA...

Past and future times

2005-10-28T04:57:00.000-05:00

Past:

Can you believe it? There was a Christ's College alumni gathering in Singapore yesterday! Didn't think they'd bother holding one halfway across the globe, but yeah!

It was organised by Neo Ying Hung, former Port of Singapore Authority chairman, at the pool terrace of Orchard Parade Hotel (high class!) And Dr Navaratnam and Dr Alan Monroe flew down to Singapore to attend, as well as conduct interviews for Singaporean applicants to Cambridge. As well as hold that entrance exam. Man, that was soooooo long ago for me, and Dr Navaratnam was my interviewer no less.

Poolside reception, waiters approaching anyone without a drink to offer some, and a GREAT spread of food...and lo and behold who do we meet? Prabin, Gail Aw, Dominic Soon...ppl I haven't seen in ages! To tell the truth I've even forgotten that some of them were from Christ's...haha...many others were there, like Daniel, Gareth, Juliana....seemed like a normal Christ's gathering again....no matter what, Christ's will always RULE!!!

And a few other alumni who graduated much earlier, including quite a few who did so before we were born....some interesting characters, like a half-English half-Arab guy who's staying in Ampang and lecturing in the International Islamic University, one person working in Apex Healthcare and his subordinate (who was constantly complaining about his company's stock price)....but most of all it was the old friends that made the evening....and the nice swedish meatballs as well....

Just before we left, the sky saw fit to rain pure hell onto the earth...it was one of the stronger rains I've experienced yet these few months, and the only one so far which I was caught outside in...Found out that whenever it rains heavily the main road outside my flat turns into a river....I think the water was half a tire deep....had to jump across from Gareth's car to the kerb (and felt somewhat like Indiana Jones....dun laugh) and dash across the waterlogged field leading to my place....

While drying at home my housemate Ming Jenn came back, bringing with him one of our long lost ACS hallmates....Ching Siang....aka Michael Wong....man...haven't seen HIM in almost 5 years now....apparently also an investment banker, but even worse off than Ming Jenn...usual off hours are 1am....ok...ppl.....dun go into investment banking not knowing what it entails....was good to see him again, despite the fact that he was a zombie....still the same guy, think we dun really change much after the teenage years...

Future:

Tomorrow Juliana and I are off to the US of A!!! For those not yet updated it's ASTAR's idea to send scholars to the USA to visit universities and labs, talk to professors and thus choose a university/lab to work in. I'm deciding between stem cells, and RNA interference/micro RNA work, so will be visiting professors that work on these. Btw while browsing through the faculty lists, I noticed that most faculty in the USA are called professors, whereas the Biochem dept in Cambridge for example has 4 professors out of 30-40. USA students always call their profs 'profs', but I've always wondered what I should call the guy whose lab I'm working in.

Ok here's the game plan:

29th Oct till 1st Nov --> San Francisco. Visiting Stanford, maybe University of California San Francisco. P.S. UCSF has become one of the top choices for me, since it's got a Stem Cell centre with tons of people working on stem cells. Furthermore California's getting lots of state funds to support stem cell research.

2nd Nov till 4th Nov --> Los Angeles. Caltech, UCLA and Hollywood! Mostly Hollywood. Haven't drawn up any plans to go stargazing, would rather pop over to Yosemite, but hear that's some way away, and you need a day at least to appreciate it fully. Hmmm.

We're then flying to Boston, and...

5th Nov till 6th Nov --> New York! The Big Apple. The David Letterman Show calls it the greatest city on Earth. Bridget Jones had a scene where the sleazy guy comments "New York. Where Sex in the City isn't a TV show, it's a promise". Trump Tower (for this The Apprentice fan). Wall Street. The Statue of Liberty. Man! Purely pleasure, no business. My prof did ask me to pop by Rockefeller Institute though. Visiting Natalie here.

7th Nov till 9th Nov --> Boston, where the BIG TWO are. Harvard and MIT. Man. Getting into one of these would be....many dreams come true. =\ we'll see how things go. Visiting Leah here.

10th Nov flying back to San Francisco, 11th back to Singapore. And hope that some of the profs liked me.

Present:

Not yet packed. eeek. And tomorrow before I fly I've got to go back to the lab (in Singapore) to harvest RNA from my cell culture. 2 hours I think, better get it done FAST.

Fantasy

2005-10-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

I changed my MSN pic about a week ago, and quite a few friends mentioned it....haha didn't realise THAT was something people actually noticed.... so I decided to just showcase some of the types of pictures that I like....

Some of you might know that I really like scenic pics, more so than say art or pics of buildings....thus my MSN or desktop wallpaper often has scenic pics...places that I think would be

My old MSN pic: Punch Bowl Falls in Oregan, USA (from webshots.com). Imagine how cool it would be to be on a boat on the river paddling up to the waterfall.....

I changed my MSN pic to this:

This pic is called 'Infinity', part of a series by Kagaya, who is a Japanese artist specialising in fantasy artwork. Sometimes I really yearn to be the guy in the pic, watching the Northern lights like that....would be nice to have that girl standing behind as well =P

More at
www.kagaya.com, but here a few more that I love

'Back into the palace' and 'Madonna Blue'

The clouds in 'Madonna Blue' especially appeal to me...lying in a field like that, looking up into the night sky........And imagine punting into a water palace like that...a change from the college backs huh.....

Scenic pics transport you to wherever they depict, and with some imagination you can take a short trip into somewhere magical for a while....that's why I love them.....

Met the PM!

2005-10-18T09:31:00.000-05:00

I met Lee Hsien Long today!

Big event at Biopolis. The Prime Minister (PM) Lee Hsien Long was scheduled to visit Biopolis, to tour the labs and meet some of the ppl here. Which included some scholars. Which included me!

Haha first thing we could think of: Good food! =P It was also my first ever time wearing formal office clothes to work....and everyone in the lab asked about it....since normal lab attire consists of T-shirts and sport shoes....bermudas too in the case of my supervisor...

And everyone in IMCB (my workplace) was talking about the visit, mainly cos the building was due to be sealed off while the PM is around....so from 4.30 till 6pm no one gets in or out, so the poor buggers can't go home early...haha.....and there were police all around....not the normal security guards we have, but actual policemen all over the place....

But we were arranged to meet the PM at one of the restaurants at Biopolis, and walking there at 4pm we...was it....yeap.....yeah it was....an airport-style metal detector! Security man!

The PM came around 5.30pm....he looked looked like a kindly old grandfather....albeit much taller......and much more powerful.....so everyone in the group, we being timid ASTAR scholars, as opposed to them PSC ppl, kinda formed a semicircle around him, like there was a forcefield surrounding him, and gave mild answers as a group whenever the PM asked us something....everyone taking care not to be too loud in case the PM's attention fell on you, kinda like a herd of harmless cows....he asked fairly general questions, about our attachments, our universities and our PhD plans.....

Then I noticed 2 or 3 well built, serious looking men hanging around us....then I saw the earpieces they were wearing, those you see in the movies when the USA president appears......Secret Service-type bodyguards! Sans the cool shades though....but true to the movies they never smiled, and their eyes were always shifting, looking out for potential threats (think that's why the USA Secret Service wear shades, to conceal the fact that they're looking at you, if you're a potential threat).....one of the scholars thought one of them was cute....hmm a thought, these ppl would take a SERIOUS interest in you if any in the group were to walk up to the PM......

Well we only chatted for a few mins, then the PM left.... haha then the topic of conversation amongst the scholars turned towards the food, or lack thereof....it sat on a table between us and the PM and assorted VIPs....and no one was willing to cross over to get it....but the waiters brought some over, and everytime a plate was laid on one on the tables all the scholars swarmed over....REALLY like a flock of pigoens, when you throw bread at them.....fried banana puff pastries, BBQ chicken nibblets on lemongrass sticks, fried mushroom with mashed potato (served on spoons?), and salmon on toast.....haha.....

Then the ASTAR chairman (Philip Yeo) came over! Right everyone back at attention....though it was a fairly casual conversation....and now apparently Juliana is on track to replace him as chairman someday =P

Oh on that topic she's just curled her hair...and I imagine she'd be pleased if everyone goes and takes a look and praises it....muahahahahaha.......

Pause

2005-10-10T10:16:00.000-05:00

I've realized one important thing....Choosing a graduate school should be done by choosing a lab which is studying a field you're interested in, unlike in undergrad where you choose the school mostly based on its prestige...some of the prestigious universities I'm applying to have few (or no!) labs I'm interested in T_T...spent 2 hours browsing their biology departments....taking a break to complain about it...haha....

I've gotten ONE response from a professor I've emailed....hopefully the others will reply soon else it'll be a wasted trip to the USA....and my personal statement is effectively in stasis right now.....

And I've started dabbling in investing....specifically mutual funds, don't dare to wade into stocks yet...it's interesting, now I find myself reading the money/finance section of the newspapers, and by tracking the prices of my investments I saw a small dip in the market last week....helps that my housemate is an investment banker, who comments on the economy every day...haha.....

Man it's 11.30pm....urgh got to go back to searching for labs.....the clock is ticking....

I am SOOOOOOOOOOOO STUPID

2005-10-08T04:53:00.000-05:00

ARGH!!!!!!

Decided to stay indoors on a Saturday to email professors in the USA about visiting their labs and possible PhD projects.

Wrote up this generic email to send to them. 1st one went well.

Then I copied and pasted, and sent the same email to another professor, with the 1st prof's name on it.

SHxT!!!! Couldn't believe what I did. Sent another email apologizing, saying I still want to visit them, would he forgive me please??

Then after a few more emails, sent a Harvard prof an email, but mentioning in the email that I was interested in applying to the University of California.

FxCK!!!! What the hell?!?!?!?! AGAIN!?!?!?!?!?!? This is almost like a B-grade, cliched, lame comedy plot device.

I need to get out and clear my head.

2nd month anniversary!

2005-10-01T08:38:00.000-05:00

Of working! Haha....else what? =P Though today is Saturday, so no work....but I know my supervisor is at the lab.....he's there every single day, weekends and public holidays included....devotion man!

Realised this week that I had stopped getting the "Oh man today is Monday" blues...cos somehow in a blink of an eye it's Friday again....time is passing SOOOOO fast right now, faster than even in university.....it's feels like my life is sand draining through my fingers.......scary when you stop to think about it, though on the plus side I no longer mind Mondays....=)

Have made headway into my personal statement....written 140 words worth of bullet points....out of a 1000 word essay....and still no Ingredient X to make it stand out yet....On the other hand, I've sent out all my recommendation requests to my professors and supervisors....slowly but surely things are firming up.

Wind

2005-09-24T11:59:00.000-05:00

I was frustrated most of today...tried to get started on my personal statement, but couldn't really think of anyway to start....then tried playing this movie on my laptop, installing various media players which all didn't work, in the end I tried reformatting my computer, but I left the factory restore CD at home in Malaysia...feeling almost sick to the stomach...

Then a wind just blew....the harbinger of a thunderstorm, and it magically blows away my frustration instantly.....I've always loved thunderstorms and heavy rain, when sheltered in a building, especially home, where you can feel safe while observing the terrific energies being unleashed outside.....and right now as I write this sentence three forks of lightning have flashed and the rain has just started falling....=) It's a moment to be savoured....and just felt like writing about the rain.......

Ah well, will get started on my personal statement again tomorrow....hmm hmm various guides have been saying that you should find some way to make yourself stand out, write about what makes you special....can't think of anything right now, any advice?

Have to compare against a control right....so randomly selecting another person's photo...

Maybe I'm not so special after all....=P

Results

2005-09-17T03:56:00.000-05:00

Not like the results could have been anything else =P

Received a card from Kai Er! All the way from the UK! =) So sweet, she got my address off my blog....at least someone remembers me *sniff*....Thanks a lot, and hope you enjoy your final year in Cambridge!

Chea Lu came over from Brunei, transiting here on the way to the UK....I think I've been to the Esplanade/Boat Quay/Clarke Quay countless times now, since everytime a friend comes to SIngapore I bring them there....and with this apprently being Visit Singapore Season....ppl who've been down are Lawrence, Adrian, Tsing Ling, Lay Ping, Tse Jian, Chea Lu and soon to be in November, Young Lee!

Anyways I've got my first visitor to my place! Who as you can tell from the expression on her face in obviously in shock over the mess in the apartment. Boh pian, 3 guys living together.

Starting uni applications this weekened finally....=( have to write personal statements, 700-1000 words worth of shameless self-promotion....sighs feeling LOADS of inertia to starting.....

And got my 1st mini-assignment in the lab! spent 2-3 hours on the computer doing some bioinfo work (designing siRNAs to FGFR1,2,3). I finished just before my supervisor and I went to a presentation by this biotech company, where they introduced this website which had all the info we wanted (pre-designed siRNAs to half the human genes, tested and guaranteed!)....that's 2-3 hours of effort wasted....but not like I'd be doing anything more productive anyways haha....

*PS realised the photos don't show...dunno why...will try to post them again, maybe blogspot is not working today*

Blood

2005-09-09T10:46:00.000-05:00

I just went for a HIV test.

It was because of something I did 3 years ago, and I never thought that the consequences would catch up so quickly.

Results are out next week.

Yeap to those friends of mine who know me for the pure innocent guy I am, it's a requirement for the application for Singapore permanent residentship.

To those who thought otherwise: Waaaah so that's the type of guy you think I am issit? Well I'm sure NO ONE thought otherwise anyways. But I've been going around telling my friends I had a HIV test, just to see what their reactions were. Most automatically assumed it was something to do with the job (bio lab what), or the PR application....but one I think was more shocked....didn't know what to say.......muahahahahaha......

Yup so I went down to the medical centre for the test, registered myself, and the receptionist starts giving me instructions about 'a certain blood test, like 'ok take this tube and when the nurse takes out blood for a certain blood test, she'll put in it the tube and bring it back to us', please pay for your certain blood test at the cashier'......i was wondering why he didn't just say 'HIV test', so I asked him...apparently some people don't like to hear the words HIV, so it was just an euphemism....hmm i guess probably they also wouldn't want the other patients to know that they're potentially infected.

Results out next week, and I can tell you now they're going to be NEGATIVE. Been good boy, not touched anything or anyone I wasn't supposed to.

In other news I might finally get my project next week! Granted it's more a mini project, more a side thing that complements my supervisor's work....for the bio-savvy ones it's using RNA interference to knockdown (or decrease the level of) FGFR2 in adult bone stem cells....hope all goes well! Been making lots of silly mistakes in the lab lately, supervisor has been punching me in the face and guts (mock punching though), better buck up....haha.....

Identity

2005-08-31T08:29:00.000-05:00

Just got a call from my scholarship board today.

Apparently they want me to apply to be a Singapore permanent resident by this week, and for citizenship before I leave for my PhD next year.

I felt somewhat shocked, expecting all this only after I had graduated with my PhD. It's disconcerting, being someone your whole life, then changing suddenly to someone else. I imagine most of my friends in Singapore will always see me as a Malaysian (Juliana has remarked so, and most Singaporeans have commented on my Malaysian accent when speaking chinese); imagine how weird my own perception of myself will be...

(Just to state that I'm not making judgements on being Malaysian or Singaporean; rather, it's the change from one to the other that's unsettling.)

When I go to the US next year, what should I introduce myself as? If someone asks me what my nationality is, what will leap to my mouth? Today's Malaysia's national day, ironic huh?

Anyways had a great weekend, went to a bar with my lab, and there was the CUMSA chalet...was going to talk about these, but the call today just seemed to overshadow everything...some other time then...

People weekend

2005-08-21T10:56:00.000-05:00

What a weekend!

Firstly on Friday I met Han Liang, a good friend I hadn't seen or talked to in 6 years...We parted after secondary school in ACS(I), when he left for the USA for high school, came back for national service, and left again for Yale. It was great to see him again, and even greater to find that even with the 6 year gap between us we could still talk and insult each other (more me insulting him) like we just parted yesterday. The theme of our conversation, apart from finding out what happened to each of us, was how with some friends, you can not see for years and still get on exactly as how you did in the past, with no awkwardness or wondering-what-to-say. These friends are rare treasures that you know you'll never be afraid to contact, who will never drift away despite great distances of space and time, and given my nomadic life I'll always be grateful for. You lousy Cambridge people better keep in contact hor.

Saturday was the Cumsa Fresher tea gathering! Spent most of my time talking to friends, less to the freshers...haha it's the juniors' (non-freshers) turns to answer the freshers' questions about rice cookers, flights etc. Rice cookers somehow always seem to pop up as a concern, every year. Also had dinner with Tsing Ling who came down to Singapore, went to this chocolate place with chocolate souffles, chocolate drinks and chocolate chips dipped in melted chocolate. Chocolate overload.

Then got a call from Daniel at night, apparently Joel and him had just come back to Singapore! Met with them for lunch on Sunday, as well as a bunch of other Cambridge people. And it's a small world! Hard to believe that Joel knows my housemate! (who is currently pestering me to comment here how hunky he is). So Joel came over for dinner, and we just talked till late.

And tomorrow is Monday. I remarked how as a working class denizen you feel a trepidation about Mondays, and an exhilaration on Fridays, and my housemate agreed. Also how you don't get any extended holidays like in school, and when you start work you'll be working till you retire. Scary. (will be glad for the 5 years of PhD then!!)

Also, I just finished reading Ringworld. It's the best science fiction book (with the possible exception of Dune) I've ever read! I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in science fiction!!! Man the book was written in 1977, and somehow all the sci-fi authors since have never reached that standard. Want to borrow thw sequel, but the only 3 libraries in Singapore which have them are at Ang Mo Kio, Woodlands and Marine Parade! T_T (these are like the furthest places away from my place in Commonwealth) Any friends there who go to the library often? =P

Roller bled

2005-08-14T09:55:00.000-05:00

Just roller bladed for the first time in my life, and it was a terrifying experience...

Sunday afternoon and my housemates decide to head to East Coast Park to learn to roller blade cos they're so bored, and they drag me along. It's a hot day, the sky looks overcast, and it's an hour's travel away. I moan, but my roommate threatens to rape me.

It's been years since I've been in ECP, and the sea is actually a refreshing change from all the buildings and concrete. People cycling, walking around, barbequeing, and of cos, what we've come for, rollerblading!! It looks cool when others do it, just gliding along the park, cool and aloof to the people looking to you...inspired, we went to rent roller blades for ourselves.

Wearing the blades, we immediately realise that we couldn't stand up. Each movement with your feet threatened to send you propelling forward out of control...it's like learning to walk all over again...each step is a fight to not fall backwards on your butt with a resounding thud...which I lost quite a few times....

The first half and hour I was just trying to stay vertical, walking like a duck, keens bent, butt out, hands forward in case I fell....defintely NOT impressing all the girls....lots of other beginner skaters around too....doing the typical beginner moves, like the cheerleader wave (swinging your hands wildly when you lose your forward-backward balance) and the Rockette Kick (kicking your leg out when you lose your sideways balance).

Fell a lot, always to the back though, so after a while I was putting my hands out to the front to shift my weight rather than to break a fall....1st lesson learnt. Still walking like a duck though, and with my eyes down on the road, but once in a while a real blader will whiz past as if I was merely a lamppost...true considering our relative speeds. And the speedbumps!! Speedbumps on a roller blading path??? The cyclists are unfazed, the real bladers don't even notice them, but each bump is a mountain to me, and always promises a fall...such that in the end I was going around them by walking on the grass....

An hour and a half after roller blading we stopped...I've not learned how to really cruise, but I've mastered the duckwalk, and can stand without falling...maybe 3-4 more sessions? My feet hurt, and knees are shaky, but I've survived! Never thought 4cm would give me claustrophobia though.

1st weekend! Only 51 more weeks to go...

2005-08-08T09:45:00.000-05:00

Just had my first weekend since starting work; work makes you so appreciate the days off! Especially the privilege of waking up late....T_T been walking around the lab like a zombie cos I feel sleepy everyday...I used to wake up at noon during the holidays, now it's 8am, and no naps!

Lawrence and Adrian came over for the weekend though! =D Spent whole day with them; brought them to Marche for lunch, showed them Suntec City and we did the 'go-around-little-fountain-3-times-with-hand-outstretched' ritual for luck....suspect it's more of a gimmick to draw tourists smack to the middle of Suntec, thus passing by the multitude of shops and increasing revenue....like it didn't really bring luck to the innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire when we started splashing each other....

Met up with Eka after and went to his friend's place for a dinner party...man that house is what country clubs aspire to be!! It's not only huge, but also very well designed, with open rooms and tall ceilings, looking more like a Roman courtyard, with a pool by the side and lots of drinks and food placed for guests.....we were standing in awe, as the more regular guests just acted as if everything was normal....haha we like suaku kampung people.....

Then stayed over at Eka's place...plan was to play the night away, watching anime, or chatting...in the end we were all so tired we just collapsed....but we managed to watch the Russel Peters show where he made fun of all the different races....seen it once but it's still hilarious....see had fun even if He-who-shall-not-be-named *cough-Matt-the-DLB-cough* was too busy in Japan with Minor infractions with the schoolgirls....

Came back home (still not used to calling this place home) on Sunday morning, to rest and do some reading for tomorrow....stayed indoors till I felt sick....feel that way everytime I spend the whole day indoors at home, think I need to go out at least once a day, or see friends...ah well was researching investing also, thinking of trying my hand at unit trusts, cos the fixed deposit rates here are crap (3%; whereas the savings rates in the UK alone are 5%!).... might also dabble a little in individual stocks....all my investment banker friends, any tips?? Apparently my housemate (who's from Credit Suiss) says it's illegal, insider trading and all that...so just email me anonymously haha....but if the tip is for any company with "Adult" and/or "Entertainment" in the title I'll know it's you Han/Matthew/Allan/Richard....ok maybe less likely to be Richard....

Somehow many of the Cambridge people are overseas, on holiday, working or teaching...I expect a phone call when you guys get back...or I'll draw all over your photos and post the pictures online...

It's a Monday night, start of the week is usually depressing, but tomorrow's a public holiday courtesy of Singapore's National Day! Man we didn't even get a single day off for public holidays in Cambridge EVER. Get to sleep in again =D There seem to be lotsa events happening around the Esplanade area though, not to mention fireworks, but might be crowded and most people seem uninterested in going....sighs watch on tv then....

Anyways here's a pic of my workplace from my apartment, my lab's labelled with a green arrow....you can't hear the din of cymbals and drums they're playing downstairs for the Hungry Ghost Festival....loud and been playing for 2 hours now....

1st week of work

2005-08-03T09:07:00.000-05:00

So I've had 3 days of work now....

Well actually not really....I've had no real lab work to do....like today I went around the building looking for nice quiet places to sleep...found a nice lounge where no one goes to....cos my supervisor doesn't really have a project for me to do, so I'm just hanging around and watching him do stuff, but he says that he'll try to give me a mini-project next week....

Hmm my job as far as I can tell will be to characterise the best conditions under which certain cells can grow....which is prob one of the less interesting jobs, as it means I'll just be changing chemicals, temperatures under which the cells are growing to see which ones they like...=\ hopefully things become more interesting....

The space in my lab is worrying too.....cos my lab's got around 18ppl but only 12 workstations, and labspace-wise 3 students and I have to share 2 lab work areas...sighs there's no one space for my own to sit and do my own stuff, instead I have to go to the nearby pantry to read, and I don't even have my own computer.....if anything this in itself has dampened my 1 year work experience already.....

Ah well it's not even been a week, I think I'll try to keep an open mind and hope things take a turn for the better!

Work's tiring (even just walking around and trying to look as if you're busy reading papers)....and by the end of the day you just want to stay in and rest....went out for dinner with friends on Monday and Tuesday though, so today's the first day I'm just lying on my couch watching tv with my housemates, and it feels good =D

And Lawrence is coming to Singapore this weekend! But Matthew who was supposed to come too has decided to go to Japan instead, because cute Japanese chicks are more important to him than his friends, the lousy dirt'ee lil' bastard that he is....a warning to all japanese girls: keep away from this guy:

My preciousess...

2005-07-29T03:26:00.000-05:00

Got 3 important things today!

1) Employment pass. Now I can start work next week without fear of being deported! Got up at 7am to be one of the first in queue, only to be told that I lacked one form. Thus had to travel all the way back to my workplace, get one, and back to the Ministry of Manpower. Wasted time: 2 hours. =
2) Phone line! Finally connected to people. Feel very lost and isolated without a phone line.

3) My bed! Arrived a few minutes ago, it's a simple wooden one with a spring mattress. A bed's important to me, for crawling into when you want to escape from the stress of the outside world (I get sleepy when stressed). It's the one with the floral bedsheet (forced upon me by mum). The other bed next to mine belongs to a GUY; will ensure sufficient space between our beds.

Tried walking to workplace from home as well, an easy 25 mins walk. It's the heat that's bothering me; don't want to arrive at work everyday all hot and sweaty. Would walk for sure in the cool Cambridge air... will try it out for a day or two at first here.

I'm in Singapore!!

2005-07-28T10:57:00.000-05:00

Just arrived this evening...I can see my workplace (Biopolis) from the apartment! Thinking of walking to work...

My apartment's on the 16th floor, sharing it with 2 other friends (guys!)... a lot to do to settle in, went to order a bed just now! Still looking around for a mattress though, and tomorrow I've got to go get my work permit and a phone line, amongst other things....

But I wanna see all my friends in Singapore! Staying in Commonwealth, haha no number yet, but give me yours!

Transplants

2005-07-28T06:21:00.000-05:00

Busy busy busy...

Just got back from Redang yesterday, beautiful place! Never saw waters that clear, and the fishes that swim around you, the coral forests that cover the floor, not to mention the friends!

Going to Singapore tomorrow, finally starting on my 1 year attachment, another milestone....hmmm wonder what lies ahead...

Still packing now, a lot of things to bring to create a mini-home or Sanctuary for oneself (ala A Series of Unfortunate Events), need more than just clothes and documents; photos, mementos etc that you can run back to during wistful moments, that remind you of the path you've walked, to provide a grounding for the journey to come ...will write more when I've settled down in Singapore!

Images of days past

2005-07-21T06:31:00.000-05:00

Just had Dim Sum for breakfast... =( no Dim Sum girls, only Dim Sum aunties...(Dunno what I'm talking about? Listen to "Dim Sum Girl" by The Notorious MSG)

Anyways was just looking through some photos of Cambridge...

Garden party at Selwyn College. All the happy post-exam faces =)
Young Lee's attention seems to be focused elsewhere though...

Graduation at Senate House. Finally earned my wings! (think the white hood looks like angel wings from the front)

Post-graduation travelling. The Louvre, Paris. From left: Mum, brother, some couple we met there*. The statue behind is called the Winged Victory (ironic for a decapitated statue).

Another Norway picture! The town of Flam at the start of the longest fjord in Norway, Sognefjord. My current desktop background. I
need to go back to Norway again someday.

And finally, my home for the past 3 years. Christ's College, Cambridge. Where the adventure happened.

*otherwise known as Teresa and Ryan =P

While I was stoning...

2005-07-18T15:59:00.000-05:00

Random stuff I've done the past week:

Went to KL to see some friends...Ming Yeong before she left for Cambridge, supposedly Adrian as well but he was busy at a hotel (hmmm)....later met up with old ACS friends, went overnight computer gaming (midnight till 8am, Warcraft III DoTA map), haha 23 and I still haven't grown out of it....

Discovering more and more shows on TV. Picked up on all three CSI shows (CSI, CSI: New York and CSI: Miami), Worst Case Scenario, Amazing Race (dunno which season), and started Desperate Housewives! Intriguing show, now I see what all the hype was about. Teri Hatcher is quite good! From a power woman in Lois in Clark to a softer-type of character, no wonder she won an Emmy.

Reading The Chronicles of Narnia, halfway through it right now. Trying to finish the book before the movie comes out. Kind of disappointing, finding it more boring than most of the other fantasy books I've read, probably as it was written for kids. Then again so was Harry Potter; bookstore in front of my house is sold out for the 6th book, sighs...

Confirmed my attachment at the stem cell lab...they gave me 4 papers to read T_T wasn't too long before the papers start coming again was it....Pubmed here I come again....

My apartment in Singapore has broadband! =D Hooray! (staying with 2 other friends in a rented apartment in Singapore during my attachment, in Commonwealth)

Songs I'm looking out for on MTV these days: "Best of You" by Foo Fighters, "Helena" by My Chemical Romance....wow the music I've been missing out on while in Cambridge...

Just found out that the full song name for 'Time of your life' by Green Day is Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)"....kind of a less poetic name for a blog now isn't it?

Countdown: 6 more days till Redang, 10 more days till Singapore.

I am stone

2005-07-09T07:51:00.000-05:00

4th day back. Been doing nothing but sleeping, eating and playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II. Why go out when you can be saving the universe as a Jedi swinging your big retractable stick around? All without breaking a sweat.

Yeah, between the MTV playing in the background, the mindless violence on my computer and the hot weather, I can feel my brain melting and running out through my nose. Wait... nope actually that's my hayfever.

Man I've been watching more TV in this half a day than I have in my entire 9 months in Cambridge. Actually only the MTV channel, and to my comfort I still like at least half the music on it, so I've not gotten THAT old yet. Was doing fine till Akon's "Lonely" music video came on, then I suddenly thought of Norway and the Norway bunch...man miss you guys! And also transported myself for a moment back to Flam (a town at the start of a Norwegian fjord)....

Out of nowhere strangers pop out to ruin my photo =P Can't believe that I was there just a month ago. Surreally beautiful.

Have also been getting emails from biologists in IMCB (Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore), telling me about their labs and asking if I'd like to join them. Apparently A*STAR (my scholarship board) emailed some of the investigators there, asking if they'd like a student (read: free labour) for a year. Still, it feels good to have all these Dr so-and-sos inviting you to join their team....almost strokes the ego, except that you remember that all the other scholars have probably snapped up the more in-demand labs already. Deciding between developmental biology with Drosophila, a structural biology group (eeek!! most of us have phobias about structural biology, but I thought it might provide good training), and tissue engineering with stem cells. Am leaning towards the tissue engineering lab actually, but will decide for sure by this weekend. Starting my attachment in early August, and I've gotten my work permit already, so won't be working as an 'illegal immigrant' like I was doing last year anymore....

Some of you might know that this was my biggest worry in the summer of 2004:

Now that leaves 3 weeks of holiday left. Will head to KL (one hour's journey) to meet friends next week; such a difference from in Cambridge, where friends were just a few metres away. Redang for snorkelling from the 24-26th! Yay crystal clear waters and tropical beaches!

Endings and interludes

2005-07-06T23:25:00.000-05:00

It's 5am and bloody hot. I'm back in Malaysia.

Arrived this afternoon, and while walking around in the airport I heard a shopkeeper speak to someone in Cantonese. Somehow that really struck me, and reminded me that I won't be hearing many British accents for a while. No "you're alright" or "cheers". No more Boots or Sainbury's (though there's a Tesco in Klang, but it sells local stuff).

No more cool weather; I'm going to be sweating, which means walking around will not be as enjoyable. No more 10pm sunshine; night descends fully by 8pm here. This especially jarring as I just went to Norway, where it never really became dark.

No more Cambridge, Christ's College and Staircase 4. No more barging into someone's room to chill; most of my friends in Malaysia live at least an hour away. And the great friends I've made in university are halfway around the globe. No more them.

Sitting in my living room I feel somehow detached from the fact that I will never be sitting in my room in Staircase 4 ever again, as if it hasn't really fully hit me yet. The 3 years in Cambridge were one of the best and most magical times in my life, and I can't believe that I will never relive them again.

A significant chapter of my life has ended. People keep reminding me that there will be other adventures in the future, other wonderful experiences, and I realise the absurdity of a guy in his early twenties dwelling upon endings, when his life is really only beginnning.

But nostalgia is my poison, and Cambridge has produced an exceptional vintage. So let me indulge.