ever had one of those days when everyting fails?
was supposed to go to a 2 day department retreat at some castle. went to the train station on time. but the snowfall the past two days and the cold made the trains malfunction. can you imagine, a country that experiences -30C temperatures buying a train that cant work in the cold? so i waited 30 minutes for the train instead of 5. and when the train came it was packed like sardines. and the 20 minute trip now took 55 minutes. so i was late to the bus terminal and missed the charted bus the department provided. That would have pissed off my boss i guess.
on the way to the station in the train i realized my phone battery died. so i couldnt call anybody to tell them i will be coming late. i dont know if they waited for me, i dont want to ask. when i got there, just walked over to the other platform and waited for the return train. it took the train 40 minutes to get back to where i started.
did some labwork and ran the results. i had two plates, and one totally failed. and this is a patient sample which is difficult to get, and its cells cultured for already a week, and the assay took me 5 hours to do.
then i found out that my abstract submission deadline just passed a day ago and i didnt submit it in. i dont know why i keep thinking it was in 2 days time. my boss sent me an email and for the first time, his email had exclamation marks! not one or two but !!!! four marks. he must be jumpin mad.
someone called up and asked me to go for lunch tomorrow, then a doctor called up and said there will be one patient coming in who is critically sick. so i had to cancel my lunch. and then the bloodbank server went nuts and didnt register my order. and i dont know if the order went in or not and if it didnt went in, i wont get working material tomorrow but if it went in and i reordered, i will have wastage of material.
ggggrrrrhhhhhh
sometimes life is so busy, i wish i had time to relax
sometimes i wish life would be busier so i dont need to think of some things.
words pop in now and then
i want to pen them down but then
there woudl be so much criticism i would be condemned.
people say live life with no regrets
i regret alot.
little things, big things.
things i did not so much
things i didnt do, more.
innuendoes.
its like i cant say it straight.
too many people, too many feelings
even this.
i want to be here
i want to be there.
maybe a little bit of here and there: thats paradise.
wounds heal, but the cold cracks new ones.
whats the point of healing then?
look at the mirror,
i dont like what i see
thats what happens
when you are cheap
and go for ikea.
there's a reason why
the road less traveled
is less traveled
the air is cold
so are my feet
so is my heart.
i climb up a high mountain
and think im at the top of the world
until i look up
and see another mount
throw a ball
it bounces and comes back
thats fun
thow a ball
it disappears
you walk away.
I realise that this blog only has pictures, and thats because I've gotten to busy/lazy to think about things to write as its very time and energy consuming. But I guess a true blog is one that involves some thought and have thus decided to try to write, erm, type again, though infrequent.
Stumbled upon this site,
http://www.ideapaint.com/site/gallery_work.html
Its this amazing paint that you just apply on the wall and then can use regular whiteboard markers to write and rub off using a duster. When I get my own house, I'm going to paint one wall like this. So cool!
got a few new stuff in my room to keep me company, since my gf left for holland till her next visit in november.
i've been wanting to grow this purple chili plant for a long time, finally got a pot. Will do it next week. need to find some earth first.
shoe rack thats not really supposed to be a shoe rack, but the shoe racks are super ex, cheaper to buy a normal shelf and use it for shoes. 99sek, vs a 59sek two layer shoe rack thats made of cheap plastic
bathroom deco, to make it more enjoyable to defecate in
close up of the bubbling fish
lastly, free shelves from some nearby shop that threw them out one day, so I hauled them back and give it a quick clean, few dents and holes here and there, but still very useable. free things, dont complaint.
Since shifting into this new place, I did not have internet in my room for almost a month. So my blogging and online presence went down, but today at last my modem came after 2 long weeks of waiting and complaining to the company. So I'm back!
Got myself a 24Mbs package for 299SEK a month. It seems fast but when I'm surfing, its actually feels quite slow, and BT is crawling at best at times. Looks like the company is throttling alot of the traffic. Oh well, got to remind myself this place is not as developed as Singapore, ironically.
Hello world!
So, the guy goes missing for a long long time with not a squeak and we have given up all hope that he's still breathing when he pops by like nothing was amiss.
Since the last post, a month has passed. A very quick month, IMHO. It was 3 weeks of eating, sleeping, and sauna-ing in the hot humid tropical heat. Followed by one week of trying to sleep in north north Stockholm when the sun sets only at 2130 and rises at 0230.
But life, and my internal body temperature, is back to normal and I can thus resume my consumption of timewasting tid bits like blogging.
One thing I have realized is the importance of being able to cook. Food is a vital necessity. Forgive the superfluous use of words but out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, and I'm pretty full.
Made a whole potful of chicken stew last night. Didn't turn out exactly as I wanted but still the taste was there.
Half clove of garlic smashed
2 large white onions ringed
stir fry till aromatic
add in cleaned parts of a whole chicken
brown for a few minutes
add in many handfuls of cubed potatoes
2 diced tomatoes
shitake mushrooms pre-soaked and cleaned
the water from the soaked mushrooms
bring to boil
add in 2 generous tablespoons of rice wine
put into an oven preheated to 175C for 30 minutes.
serve piping hot!
Was coming home from church last sunday when suddenly the whole road was filled with green people, no not aliens. green people.
Like, what the heck was going on?
'
my guess is the finals of either an ice hockey or football match at Globen, which is this large globe like structure that you can see as a little white dome to the right of the round blue clock in the picture below.
they were singing, shouting slogans, drinking beer, waving flags, and ignoring traffic. There were even a few police officers around to make sure the cars stopped. I think its a terrible feeling to be in one of those cars stuck in the middle of the crossing when this happened. everybody passing by would stare into the car like watching fish in an aquarium.
I was spellbound by the troop of walkers that i stood there watching for 15 minutes. actually they stopped traffic for 15 minutes so the bus on the other side of the junction couldnt cross over, and I didnt want to walk back. thus i waited.
Can you imagine a troop of people, walking down the road of 4 lanes, taking a good 15 minutes to cross one junction? Thats ALOT of people.
Was running Windows update when this popped up, Internet Explorer, which belongs to Microsoft asks me if I trusted content from Microsoft's website. Wanted to say no for the fun of it.
for those of you who think i am dead and thus the absence of posts here, i'm sorry to disappoint you.
this is what i was at for the past two weeks, alot of work in the lab, tons of blood samples to process, got to entertain a pretty lady who came to visit, and DEADlines.
one mac to run the special scientific software, the desktop for number crunching (the lousy mac is only 12", already getting blind trying tosquint at it.), and the other laptop for facebook and msn.
now, thats what i call multitasking!
Dear fair and grateful readers
Thank you for your support for this site. As you might be aware, with the current economic downturn and harsh winter, things are not going easy. Blogging takes alot of time, effort, and passion. I hope to continue doing this for a long time, as long as there is someone out there who is reading and find it amusing/entertaining/informative/addictive.
To show me that you really care for my well being as a provider of this important media that you find so amusing/entertaining/informative/addictive, all I ask is a few seconds of your time EVERYDAY to click on the Google ads link to the right of this page. I will probably earn less than 10 US cents per click but at least its something. Google will send me a cheque when the clicks add up to $100. With this $100 I will be able to afford 100 cups of tea, or 50 loaves of bread, or 25 chocolate bars. All will do me wonders.
So let me wish you happy clicking, and enjoy my blog. Please hurl me an electronic telegram should you have any suggestions, questions, or grievances.
THANK YOU FOR MAKING ME $100.00 RICHER ! (in approx. 5 years time)
I was in Holland a month ago at my girlfriends place. And there were many times when we were out visiting places and had to rush back in the evening to prepare food at home. It would be in precisely this order:
1. oh no, we are late
2. rush home
3. rush cook
4. rush eat
Once the food is in the stomach, the world moved at normal speed again. Calmness was restored and one could think rationally. And so it made me think. Why do we need to eat? If it wasn't for eating, I could be doing so many other things, erm, like… watching tv, playing mindless Facebook games, listening to the Mr Brown Show, you know, interesting other things besides eating.
What a waste of time (eating, that is).
But upon further inner musings, a 15W Philips eco-friendly light bulb flashed above my head. A revelation descended and I realized eating was not just about chewing and swallowing.
Tingling the senses. What is this life if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare, smell, touch, and taste. Being human means I am obliged to enjoy myself through my wonderful five senses. That's why if you don't have one of them, you're considered handicapped – not fully human.
Communion. Eating is a selfish thing. You want to fill your stomach, the intaking of nourishment and energy, to meet your own life's demand. If the other guy gets the food, I will go hungry. But when you are at a table with others, you are supposed to share your meal. That makes you vulnerable, you are putting others on a higher level than yourself by feeding them your food – the same food that you are eating. When people eat together, they develop a bond. Like the Arabs; after two sides, friendly or otherwise, have made an agreement, they would all sit down for a meal. Then both parties will depart and as long as the food you ate together at that table is in you (the Arabs say 3 days), you cannot harm the other person. That gives both sides enough time to get away from each other in a hostile environment. To break that covenant is evil and a sin against man and God. Like the Nykoping feast. Some insecure Swedish king held a feast for the rulers of the surrounding lands. After the guest retired to their rooms in the castle (located in Nykoping), the king's guards broke into the rooms and shoved the guests into the dungeon, leaving them to starve to death there.
Sharing and caring. Again, the table is not just a place to fulfill your selfish bodily needs but to enquire of the other parties. The host asks the guests if they have had enough, or would they like more of this or that dish. At the last supper, Jesus broke the bread and passed it on; the table is a place where people come to receive and to give. So many TV dramas portray a family unit by showing them at a table having a meal. And when someone leaves the table, or if another person disrupts the meal, the family unit is perceived to be in jeopardy.
So when you set the table next time, remember, its more than meets the eye. You got to set it to invite everyone to come, set it so everyone will be satisfied with the food, and set it so that people partaking the food will not only be filled physically but when they walk away, will realize the human bond has strengthened.
after two months of struggling with the bank, at last i get my functional bank card. at last i can buy train tickets online. at last i can book my holiday to the arctic circle. yes!!!
was looking at the coins i have and realized that the image of the king on the coins were different at different years, although the king's name was the same. so i guess the picture must be of the king at that time, and as he ages, so does the relief picture. there's one image for the 80's, 90's and now the 00's?
oh yeah, by the way, you call the years between 1990 and 1999 the nineties, the years between 1980 and 1989 the eighties, and so what do you call the years between 2000 and 2009? i digress.
reminded of the time Jesus asked for a coin and asked, whose image is it. if it were today, you would say King Gustaf. one moral behind that episode is that the world's riches are controlled by men, who fashion things in their image. but when we look at nature, and when we look at ourselves, realize that we are fashioned after God himself.
Give me a mirror.
Whose image do you see?
Mine?
No, God's.
Give unto God what belongs to God.
This post aims to inform/educate my dear readers as to what exactly I am doing in Karolinska Institute for my PhD project.
Yes, I am doing my PhD, which means after 4 years of toiling under fluorescent 24 hour lights, I get Permanent Head Damage and would somewhat increase my payscale from peanuts to Pay Him Donuts. But I’m sure I’ll get through alright since I’m a Pretty Honest Dude.
‘nuf crap.
I am on a doctorate program by research at the Center for Infectious Medicine at KI (Q: you mean medicine is infectious? A: don’t ask me, I didn’t come up with that name). Research basically means to do experiments day and night for years until you find enough excuses to publish 2 journal articles. I have a few modules to take but its all mostly pass/fail grade and its of the FYI kind of course. At the end of the day, it’s the research that really matters.
I am working on NK cells, i.e. natural killer cells. This is a subset of white blood cells in the blood that can recognize and kill off tumor cells, virus infected cells, some bacteria and parasites. What the lab has found out so far is that some infants that lack these NK cells come down with repeated infections and many die from these infections that normally would only cause a healthy infant to fall sick for a few days. So my job is to find out if these infants have no NK cells or nonfunctional NK cells. Then, if there are NK cells, why are they not working. I will attempt to do this by two methods, firstly, by collecting and analyzing blood samples from sick infants from Europe and around the world. Using various methods, the blood will be tested for level of NK cells, and its activity. If NK population is low, the DNA will be checked for problems. If NK cell level is normal, the next step is to find out whats defective in the cell causing it to not function. So far I have had blood from Sweden, Spain, Italy, Qatar, Australia, and some small countries that I cant remember.
The second method is to study the different ligand receptors on NK cells. On these cell surface, there are many tiny things sticking out that are used to communicate from outside to inside of the cell or vice versa. Think of the cell surface as a huge control panel with thousands of switches. So we want to study which little protruding twig is responsible for what. Its like finding a needle in a haystack and then finding the thread that goes with that needle to make it functional. The first part has been done by previous students, who quite smartly, used a magnet. My part is the needle – thread joining part, which will take some nifty acrobatics.
So that is my project outline that I had tried to summarise in as layman term as possible. Of course I could go into detail but that would only benefit a tiny percentage of my readers.
The part I like best of this project is that it is clinical in that the results that I get is analysed and reported to the doctors. They can then make more informed choices in treating these infants. There was one recent case in which the lab tested the infant's blood some months back and recently the child went through bone marrow transplant. We got a second batch of blood to test and now it shows very normal response. Because of its direct relevance to the patients, I find my toil justifiable and rewarding.
read a friend's post and came up with this
http://thezoomroom.blogspot.com/2008/10/rule-of-relativity.html
I realize that being different makes people happy. I am number 1 and you are not, I am thus better than you and am happy. I published a journal article and you did not, I am happy because I am different from you. I got a big car, which is different from your tiny one, hah! I am happy.
But as I look back (you got to be pretty old if you can say ‘remember the good old days?’), the happiest moments of my life were not when I was different but when I was same.
There’s a Singlish saying, ‘same same’, which basically means the two points raised earlier were identical or would lead to the same outcome. But my previous labmate Ed in Singapore added on to that, as soon as some one said ‘same same’, he would interject ‘but different different’. This meant that yes, it looks the same but the original motive or the journey to getting there is far from identical and the two cannot be thought of as being convergent.
When I was accepted as a friend and a colleague in the Flavilab in NUS, I was really happy. I was one of them, in the same fraternity, same same. Right now, I am lonely in this new lab: I work alone, eat lunch alone, troubleshoot problems alone, go home alone. Even though friends back in Singapore may envy my position now in this prestigious institute, and think that I am happy to be counted as an elite, its different different.
In my church (Singapore), being part of the cell group, and especially in the Sound ministry, I was part of the team, toiling late nights (and more often than not followed by early mornings), suppers, scoldings, meetings, trainings, and training others, the knowing that you have to work as a team to make the service a successful one really brings you down to earth and makes me strive together to make it happen, same same. I just visited 4 different churches every Sunday and in 3 of them, I gave my contacts and told them (these are pastors mind you), please connect me to an English speaking cell group or cell group leader as I want to be part of this congregation. Only one replied. They treat me differently. I want to same same with them, but they reply different different.
When there is no one else to go to, there is always God. The sad thing about me is when I am at my lowest, most depressed, most stressed state, God is the closest to me. Because my God’s name is Emmanuel, which means God with me. And even though I become different different, I know He is always same same.
I’ve been in this alien land for more than a month now and settled in I guess I had. Life is slowly getting to be a routine again, wake up, stare at clock in disbelief, clean up, go lab, work, work, work, boss comes in at 5pm when everybody’s leaving and starts talking, leave late, get back, cook dinner and lunch for the next day, eat, meet a few floormates, complain about the weather, bathe, read some devotion and bible, find something interesting and cant stop reading, sleep past bedtime.
Life goes on wherever you are. Life is about progressing, about learning hard lessons and absorbing other’s experiences. Life is something you have to go through for yourself. I’m about almost feeling complacent now. Like this will cruise on for a long time.
Waking up to reality, I find myself in a land of opportunity, in a place that is a higher level than my previous position. And I ask myself why do I sink into this boh-chap-ness so easily.
Just found out that the unit I am studying at is a special program with special funding (read: rich), for special people (erm, let me rephrase that). I am in an elite community of researchers who are really there for science. Some of the best minds in their field, top scholars from different countries. My direct boss is the grandson of someone famous, whom I shall not reveal in public. Famous for her pioneering in primate study. By supervisor is one of the 50 persons who vote for the Nobel prize winner in medicine and physiology. Imagine that level. I’m up there with the big boys, the top dogs, the fat cats, the big fish. Erm, enough of this.
I just found out that every year there are more than 100 applications to this unit and hardly anyone gets in. That there are collaborations with universities and hospitals around the world, that the publication strength of this unit rivals some big departments. My supervisor is stressed, and stressed because he has too much data to write up to publish. Which one do I do first?
And I ponder over where I am now over lunch (rice with fried leeks and mushroom with roasted chicken with potatoes, onions and carrots).
How the heck did I get in here. The odds are against me, I shouldn’t be here. I’m not a top scholar from where I come from, I don’t have influential links, and my masters work was at best crappy. Where’s my isolated corner for me to rot for the rest of my life?
But God is able to do far above what you can ask or imagine
His grace is sufficient, His strength perfect in my weakness
Some labmates I have talked to call me lucky.
‘do you know how hard and long I tried to get into this university?’
‘you mean you just apply directly to your boss and got the scholarship? Can meh?’
‘how did you get in?’
I have found out the secret of getting ‘luck’. Everytime I go one step closer to God, luck happens, like my job in singapore. After finishing my pledge to my church, I got that job. And now, after I became more active in the church, helping out in various things, luck happened again.
And now I’m stressed, because I cant find a good ‘luck’ source here. God I need a church.
I hate Swedish banks
It is like impossible to open a bank account here. First time I went to the bank, they said I needed a personnal number, which the tax office issues to every foreigner. So I go to the tax office to ask for a number; one form and two weeks later they come back saying I don’t have a letter saying I am a student/ working in this country. So I wait for my boss to return from his trip to get him to sign a letter. Another week later, I get my personnal number. Then I go to the bank with my number and they say they need also a letter saying I am a student in such a university doing what course for how long.
Okkkkkkkk…..
Back to my boss, who is again away on another trip. So when he got back I get my letter. Great, everthing I need is here now, got my passport and visa, the personnal number, and my letter saying I’m a student. Third time’s a charm, right?
Wrong
The bank looks at my passport then looks at the tax office letter and says why my name is different,
Huh?
Apparently the tax office are run by a bunch of idiots who think people’s last names are really at the last end bit of their names, so my Chinese name becomes my family name for the tax office. But when I look at my visa, its in the correct order, with my correct family name.
I’m sorry
The bank refuses for the third time to allow me to open an account. The lady at the counter was ‘really’ helpful. She kindly advices me to ‘try another bank’. These people don’t even care to make new ready customers. What the heck. It’s a good thing Chinese are not in the banking sector here, everybody else will go bust.
So the tax office is visited. ‘we need official documentation’. But its my own name! who would want to fake their names by saying their first name is last and their last is first? Is this whole country run by idiots? Shouldn’t I know my name more than anyone else?
I am so very pissed off.
after 7 years on red dot, the time has come.
leaving is never an easy thing to do
but a wise man once said that change is the only constant in life
and another wise man said that for one to improve, he has to go from his present base to a higher base.
i leave behind acquaintances, friends, family.
my church which has fed me and trained me, encouraged and taught me well.
my lab who has been the people i see more hours in a day then my own pillow. we have been through raining bird parks, smelly spray paint tee shirts, midnight cell cultures, and numerous fun-filled weeks.
my friends who have supported me morally although some of them have questionable morals, brought me out for meals, encouraged me, and kept me company through valleys, and shared my joy on the mountaintop.
i shall not bid them goodbye
i shall say see you soon.
burned a hole in my pocket when i bought my soon-to-be-ex-boss a box of ex chocs. would never buy such ex things for myself, and the disturbing thing was next morning she said, 'i think should share with the lab during the next lab meeting'. i freaked out and said no.
