Monday, June 30, 2008

free today!

wahaha, i'm so free today that i can even blog at work. only have to take photos and change medium today. and then helped my mentor out with stuff like changing water bath water, labeling the chemical waste, changing the oil for the vacum pump etc. really quite slack arh? but still that took the whole morn and half the afternoon. so maybe its not that slack after all... lol. anyways, kor kor is in a gd mood today so all's well. no awarkward slience can le. haha

Saturday, June 28, 2008

one less student in the student room

haha, someone was in a GOOOOOD mood yesterday. a nice change from his moodiness in the start of the week. his good mood not only lasted from the dinner since wedn night, but he was even happier than one thurs. only that we didnt have any expt to do so i barely saw him the whole day, else things would have been grand. out of all the days at ibn... i can only count a handful of days when he's so happy.

and we got a treat for lunch too. by the mentor of the student who is leaving. at crystal jade in holland village. pretty good lah... to thank us for all being their slaves and doing stuff like passaging 32 flasks of cells and filling pipette tips etc etc. tsk tsk... that's smthing my mentor can learn from her............ LOL. wah damn good sia, she gave her student kino vouchers lah! dunnoe how much... but still... ahem somebody didnt do anything of that sort when i left last time... *ahem* she gave her mentor a mug too... haha cos she saw that her mug damn dirty liao... got all the brown coffee stains that cant be washed off. hmm i think wind's mug still damn clean. cos he swore off drinking coffee liao and only drinks it like once a month... mostly only drink milo with his mug. eh... cant think of wat to get him yet... harder to get stuff for guys sia? as in, hard to get stuff that's practical for guys, even made for someone like my mentor. hmm. lol the teddy bear n weiqi set i gave him last time still sitting in the office. the weiqi set stored somewhere in the cupboard. the teddy bear part of the happy bear house his colleges made with cardboxes. LOL. both QUITE useless loh. QUITE only lah. gotta see if i can find a book teaching the basics of weiqi. since he DOESNT know how to play weiqi. eh... nid to follow up on my previous gift lah. lol.

being HIS student, i'm gald i'm still (in my opinion) pretty good at reading emotions. now i gotta get better at reading ppl's minds too. lol. quite gd leh, both of us. we each can guess wat the other is talking abt b4 we speak finish many a times liao. like i'd be wanting to ask a qn and he goes yes yes b4 i even ask the qn. of cos it wasnt completely out of the context lah. but his mind wanders and jumps abt and smtimes after talking abt smthing completely unrelated he jumps back to talk abt work and stuff like dat... and i have to be quick to know what the heck his talking abt. helps that i kinda know his train of thought/way of thinking, so most of the time i can catch him:D haha. it'll be sad when i have to leave. and it'll come soon. even sadder when he leaves sg. after that i wonder if we'll even meet again. hmm... maybe when i'm doing my own phd? lol. gotta clear the degree step 1st. oh wells..... hard to find someone you get close enough to confine in. i realise a lot of ppl confine in me? maybe cos i aint the gossipy type and i'm a quiet person and i can just sit and listen to ppl talk. and maybe that's why me and my mentor click together so well. if he get a student like joanna i think he will die. well not die lah... since he did survive with a similar student like ashley. lol. but nah they aint gonna click at all. LOL. always arguing in fact. very funny to hear them argue. haha.

ok enough of that. lol.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

dinner

went out for dinner with two fellow students today. our mentors get to go for the ibn 5th anniversay dinner, so its fitting that we too shd go out for dinner :P this week is one of the student's last week too, so thought we shd go out together b4 she leaves. haha loads of fun and laughter today, and loads of discussing abt our mentors too. talked abt how some mentors have particular pet phrases and stuff like that... lol... saying that my mentor is the most introverted person they've eer met... lol i said that thks to their presence, he has reverted back into being more introverted and much less talkative... sighz... my weeks of effort getting him to warm up a bit wasted. its v obvious. whenever other ppl are ard in the lab he becomes.... v quiet and like v uneasy. haiz. zhen shi de.

BUT when its jus the two of us, most of the time he's more relaxed and more talkative. i noticed that now he talks more in chinese. but ways lah. i talk to him more in chinese too. haha i like it when he speaks chinese... like that accent haha, only that my chinese has gone v rusty from lack of use and my chinese std was never as gd as his to began wif. hmm. getting to know him soooo well... i wonder if any other student knows him as well. in fact i think even his colleges dont know him as well as i do... maybe...

haha the other student was commenting that she realized my mentor lets me tag along a lot. yeah. absolutely. if i dont tag along/help him out, then i'll be doing NOTHING in ibn. cos i dont have my own project like they do. and with simple stuff yeah he'll leave me to do it myself, but with the experiments i'm not familiar with, or current experiments, he'll do it with me unless he's not ard or he's ultra busy... but basically we do the expts 2gether. so if i dont tag along, er that wat am i supposed to do? for the rest its diff, they do their own project/follow protocols given by their mentors. he asks me to plan experiments smtimes, but many a times he does the planning and i'm his assitant when he does the experiment. so i'm either playing a support role, or where possible, i'll do a part and he does another. either way with two person doing one thing we get things done faster and hopefully more efficiently. and of cos when it comes to menial tasks like shaking the cells every 20 mins, its my duty and he can happily do his stuff in the office...

but yeah. wat i like abt it in ibn is that i feel a sense of self worth. i know that the results from the experiments i carry out will be put to actual use, not like a project made up to entertain me or smthing like that. the data i got in my last attachment they use in a paper... makes me proud really... of cos i was 99% merely taking and carrying out orders. but it means that my results are reliable. my mentor taught me and trained me and made sure that my experimental skills are good, as good as he does it himself, and i really learn a lot in the process. unlike this student who came for only 2 weeks... its weird... his mentor didnt bother/supervise him much, but he spends an awful lot of time in the hood.... like the whole day... doing smthing that could be finished in much much lesser time... he prepared some culture medium but apperantly there are chunks in it, and now that he's left, his mentor asked the other student to prepare new medium, saying she doesnt dare to use the one prepared by him.
its strange... if i were her i would have at least watched him once to make sure he knows wat he is doing... dunnoe but that is completely diff from what my mentor does. really really the best mentor you can ever have. not becos he knows the most, but becos he willingly and wholehearted imparts information and knowledge to you. he told me abt his thinking process when he designed protocols the other day... i dont think anyother researcher in my grp taught their students that. yeah he has his mood swings and periods of time when he doesnt want to talk, but i can understand that... he's a quiet person by nature, somewhat like how i was last time, and still am. only that we are slightly diff. but when he's in a happier mood things can go real great and i'd be having a grand time. really enjoyable times, and thoes days would be more than sufficient to make spending my holidays at ibn worth the while. haha not to mention all that he has taught me. academic, experience, and many many other things, advice... no i'm not going to say them here. never will. haha. too bad for you reader. those lessons are mine to learn and keep :D

i'm considered a rather senior member in the lab lol. i really hope that this experience will help me greatly in the future. uni labwork shd be a breeze now. seriously hope so. haha. watch out guys, i'm gonna pawn u all!

my friend once called me a rock in the ocean, clam and unfazed by watever comes. i think my mentor beats me to it. ok maybe not always but i feel that generally he is clamer, cooler, and boy does he think a hell lot more, and way way (most of the time at least) ahead of me. yeah. he's good. not denying that. the best mentor you can ever half.

Monday, June 23, 2008

hmm ibn rocks

being there as a student at least...

haha wind maker in a good mood today:D

pretty busy today eh... tmr will be even worst! gotta wake up early tmr... and thurs too. no fair lah. got ibn 5th aniversay dinner but i'm 99.99% sure that students are completely forgotten n left out... my friend's last day this fri... after coming for 6 weeks... 6 weeks only... lol would have been a looooong time for me last year or even in jc1... but now it seems like its soooo short! haha. been in ibn too long as a student is like dat one. i'm the big senior there lol. even tho by age i'm the youngest. haha some stuff even the staff would ask me lol. got new lab officer in my lab. a star scholar serving one yr bond b4 doing phd. he was here last time as a student with me too... haha, when i went in june in jc one :P. now he lab officer liao. wah time flies! yeah, and there's this research scientist in my lab lah. with a student(the one who is leaving this fri). she never teach her student one lah. everything she will tell her student: anything ask wanyi. and : wanyi knows everything. wah?!?!?! i'm honored but still...? and fan also getting v smart. the last time my attachment i keep using this pheology machine. now got a lot of ppl want to use also... and ask fan to teach them how to use... and fan ask me to teach them how to use. wah... i shd get more pay!!!!!!!! and then on mon got ibn open hse... just nice during that time the staff got grp meeting wif prof ying... so they say: send a student to present! and who else knows the speech better than me who have listened to my mentor present for XXX times? wah....

and when the handy man in the lab went on leave wat happens? ask the student of Mr fix it + know it all + handyman! wah.... once again i'm honored, but then i was hoping i could slack during the few days my mentor wasnt ard! in the end i was even more busy than when he's ard! wah lao eh.... someone still owns me lunch for helping her present man.......... gotta remind her soon b4 she forgets.... tsk tsk.

haha... but its nice getting to know my mentor. i feel privileged many a times. he went on leave and no one else but me (and i'm sure he'll have to tell our grp ldr) knows. like ppl were asking me, where's Mr handyman? he not here today? when is he coming back? no one else knows where he disappeared to. haha. i'm truely honored. (and no drawbacks or buts to this one lol) yeah. i really want to get to know him better. want to know how he thinks. how he comes up with all that ideas. and most importantly. he's self disappline motivates me. to do better, to be at least on par with him. many you can say that i take him as my competitor. as a role model. i gotta be as good as him, no less. that sorta thing. but i like it. finding back my motivation to study n suceed. well i hope i suceed, but we can but try. that guy's one h3ll lot of a daring and hardworking guy. he may not be the extremely smart, but he's more than willing to work hard for it. not following the crowd, following his heart, his ideas his own. nothing else. lame as can be, but like i said, he's funny enuff to make make laugh, just like hhx was. i'm liking him just like i liked hhx. and like how hhx lasted me through sec sch, i hope this will last me through uni and beyond.

gotta wake up earlier tmr. gotta reach ibn earlier to start experiment. lalala. work's gd. i love it. work's fun, lets hope it'll remind so even when i start work proper, and not as an attachment student.

wahahaha

hmm firefox is cool! this particular add on called snap links had better be upgraded to be compatible with the latest firefox SOON though, life suxs w/o it...

anyways i hope work would be ok tmr... in order words i hope the wind maker is out of his unapproachable, dont wanna talk to anybody mood... yeah. hope so.....

Saturday, June 21, 2008

update at last!

hi all, been a long long long time since i last blogged yeah?

so i decided to go see if there are any firefox add ons that lets you blog easily... and bingo, i found scribefire.... haha

so maybe i'll be blogging more often from now on???

maybe.


anyways some updates

1. i'm still at ibn, just extended my attachment to 1 aug, heck abt orientation and wat not, ibn is fun, that's all that matters

2. ibn rocks. my mentor wasnt ard from mon to thurs and like... i've become the replacement lab officer.... man i get 4 days of salary!!!

3. i got into and chose ntu biological science. i like it much better than nus. really. i think nus have a great name but in reality aint as good as it sounds. too bad for all the nus followers out there.... i just dont agree with u guys.

so i went malaysia with my parents for a day trip on sun... follow tour grp again.... erm... meet an rgs teacher who taught me and my sis.... horrors of horrors man. yeah. a teacher who cant teach. (why is she still called a teacher man?) yeah. some really old teacher who knows nothing abt science (but somehow is teaching that subject) 'nuff said.

hmmmmmmmmm i think quite a lot of things happened since i last blog? now i've moved into a new room, rearranged the furniture too so now i got my table in this room and i'm no longer sleeping wif my sis.... hmmmmmm

wat else shd i talk abt?

work today was..... erm ok....... mentor went into the non-responsive, refuse to talk to you mood again. haiz. hope he'll switch back into the more talkative mood on mon, else my day would be quite miserable....

haiz. so much of how my day would go is dependent on his mood... gah.

BUT i must say that overall he is one very very nice boy... if only he had a younger sis, she would be the luckiest person on planet earth! lol, you can say that this kind of man is either extinct or married (or gay?!?!) lol.... watever.

i realise... this guy is pretty lame at times, when he is talkative that is... but despite his lameness, he makes me laugh, and makes me interested in science/research, and gives me, in a sense, a purpose and a goal in life. just like wat hhx/water gave me. wind and water. they go together... how apt n nice. yeah. of cos wind is his own unique person, but in many a ways (like how his lameness makes me laugh, how he forces you to think instead of just giving out the answer) he is just like water. wind and water goes together.... man, i'll miss him loads when my attachment ends. just like i still miss my water. yeah. he's really taught me a lot a lot during my attachments. both academic and otherwise. and now that he's taught me so so much, and given me a goal and the motivation to work/study hard once more, i want to keep at it and blast my way through uni. i dont want my uni days to be like i was in jc. i want it to be like it was in sec sch, where i had fun, read a lot, learnt watever i wanted to, and did well. i was almongst the top in class for sci, i was always known as the kid who was crazy abt sci, ppl acknowlegde that i was a sci pro, and in terms of results, i showed them i was good. esp in lower sec. in jc, nah it was diff, i lacked the motivation to study, didnt do a single thing right... no i dont want that to happen again. i want to go crazy all over again, go estatic over bio... that one thing that i love, and there's org chem too, yet another thing that i adore... i want to get on highs when reading my textbook, and i want to develop ways to remember stuff w/o having to memorize. i hate memorization. granted some stuff are pure memorization, but i want to keep it at minimum. want others memorize, i will remember. and i will do it, i will succeed.