Lab Assistant

Yesterday was my first duty as lab assistant, as part of my internship. I was under a very friendly and hearty supervisor – a technical support officer who is responsible for the microbiology labs.

My job is to assist in preparing lab sessions! Unlike sec schools, poly lab sessions last 3hrs long. And for a whole cohort of 5-6 classes, two classes per session, it means a 9hr long day for the staffs.

I like my job which is relaxing and I get to see so many chio bu! The food science course houses many many SYTs (sweet young things)!

So what I did was basically stock up on DI water, prepare and autoclave nutrient broth agar/liquid, stock up on ethanols, gram staining liquids, as well as other chemicals needed.

Oh yes, I even helped the culinary science department by delivering beef and pork to the lab! Yes, pork! Babi! At first I asked my supervisor how come pork is included as part of the ingredients when there’s muslim students? She couldn’t answer me. She too was speechless by this controversial question. All she can say is that its for study purposes, that pork is an essential part of asian cooking. (wow!, visions of bak kut teh, bak kwa, pork satay, kong bak pau, san zham bak are popping in my head! and of course, Billy Bombers pork ribs!) While exploring this issue with her, I brought up the idea of ethanol, which is of common usage in labs. That might as well the muslims can’t even use ethanol to do their lab work, since its alcoholic.

PAIN!

The really intolerable, insurmountable pain are those unseen, emotional and thought-wise ones.

It’s like a parasite hanging around your heart, leeching something out of you. Your heart feels heavier, difficulty breathing, and your temperature shoots up. Oh yes, you feel like opening your mouth as wide as possible, hoping to shout out this parasite. This pain isn’t sharp; there is no physical area where you can press to increase the pain. Rather, the pain spreads the entire body. Suddenly, your appetite may become gone and your stomach feels weird. Your legs and arms doesn’t feel like moving an inch. Your eyes starts to get restless, so as your mind. Countless thoughts rushed into your mind, as if overriding every neurontransmitter, inflicting it with pain-causing chemicals. The skull seems to be put onto a huge amount of stress to the verge of cracking. Soon your entire body is in the vibrational level of pain.

Have you ever heard of a greek mythology, somehow, I forgot who out of so many of Zeus’es enemy, had a mosquito in him. He’s in so much pain that he asked Thor to crack open his skull and out came that tiny insect of pain.

I had not experienced such intense pain for a long time, until today. It’s really “buay tahan” (singlish for Cannot Take It!) It causes tears to squeeze out from my small eyes.

I’d been arguing with reality. And that is sadistic actually, yet most of us takes that up as our second-nature.

Doctors don’t usually diagnose and treat themselves. That applies to counselling too. I need someone to talk to, probably a psychiatrist, or at least someone who knows what’s cognitive dissonance. Or someone who’s strong, resonating goldrush vibrations.

Plus point: this pain is forcing me out of my comfort zone, a place which I’m stuck in it for the past few months.

I will regain my strength.

Mac colleagues outings

Had been going out with Jia Jun, Li Rong and Yi Jie for quite some times these past few weeks. Bowling had became our “addiction”. But still, I prefer movie. We watched “Drag me to hell” which I’d consider to be quite comical, through its horror elements is still very much in place. It’s director directs Spiderman too. JJ was enlisted two weeks ago into CD (photos of the camp is above). When I went into the camp with him, the corporal asked me, “are you enlisting?” I’m like, “No way?!” The camp is very new (launched in 2006), its, wow! So much different from Nee Soon Camp and Bedok Camp! (the only army camps I went into)

JJ’s getting quiet lately, probably due to reality shock. Lii rong’s my “dating partner” who’s always happy go lucky, and Yi Jie’s always getting on my nerves!

House M.D. Quotes I

“Maybe you didn’t want to die, but you didn’t care if you live.”

– Doc. James Wilson (House’s Bestie)

House M.D Season 4 Episode 3 : 97 seconds

He said that when House nearly killed himself by poking the live powerpoint with a knife, when House saw a patient doing the same thing in front of him. The patient, who had a fatal car accident previously told him of his previous Near-Death-Experience (NDE), and his heart had stopped for 97 seconds and that was “the best 97 seconds of my life ever.” That’s why the patient tried to stop his heart again to reexperience it. And the miserable House, being miserable, found that 97 seconds, tempting.

Misery not only loves company, but doesn’t care about living too.

Major Project

I’m in my 3rd Year now. Its student intern time, where most of my coursemates are out in the various companies. Whereas for me, I’m in school as a project researcher. I don’t mind at all, seriously; except for that part which I don’t get paid a single dime, when some of my coursemates get more than $400/mnth at Exxonmobil.

I’m doing a project on nanotech and fuel cells, and submitting to NUS for science competition!

Sounds fun! I love to do my own experiments.

Time flies, Year 3 already.

Bad Decisions

Had made some bad decisions these few days. Well, I would say since the start of this year.

Our lives are defined by the decision we made.

I need to change.

Quotes from Obama

If you ever step into Borders, go to the politics section and you’ll see a book title something like, “100 events which changed the world”. It’ll show events such as D-Day, Kennedy Assasination, Collapse of the Berlin Wall and so on. The recent event that had Obama bridging the USA and the Muslim world towards a new beginning, is indeed a highly cosmoethical act which will benefits millions now and more in the future. Change indeed is happening and taking place. How about GM then?

“The interest we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drives us apart.” President Obama and President Kennedy

“For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk. When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations. When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean. And when innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. That is what it means to share this world in the 21st century. That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings.” – President Obama