Life @ 19/10/09

In 87 minutes’ time, I will be collecting my final results.

Have been feeling awful these few days. All friends in the group have finished their tests except me. Stress arises when they are already preparing presentations, analysis, and what. When I see them, I feel STRESS.

I hope the stressful feeling will be alleviated tonight. Missing Aidilfitri has less effect on me (except missing a week’s holiday; nobody invited me to any meals). But I cannot afford to miss Deepavali because along with that I miss at least three great meals T_T In deep sadness now. Anyway, happy belated Deepavali to everyone.

Today is also the second day of the ninth Chinese lunar month, where Taoists will observe nine days of vegetarianism as part of the nine-day Nine Heavenly Emperors festival. Vegetarianism observed during these nine days are supposed to be very strict, i.e. only plain and simple vegetables, but the twisted business minds of the Chinese sure have changed a lot of things. Nowadays people just take vegetarian ‘char siew’, chicken, pork, anything which was in meat form originally. Some temples even invite artists to perform in sexy dresses. It is no wonder why Zahid Hamidi said  such dances are part of the Chinese culture. Because these dances appear in even the holiest religious festivals of all! Relevant bodies may want to look into such insults on the festivals. Not Zahid Hamidi’s insult; I mean, that’s ignorance. They might want to look into why temple committees allow such performances in temples.

After all these tests, I will be looking forward to go back very soon. I’m so sick of the IMU building now, the mere sight of it induces emesis.

Sigh.

Life @ 12/10/09

Today my research work had a good start.

Apparently the cells are now growing very well. I have subcultured the cells and hopefully they will be enough on Wednesday for the ultimate test.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m going to do my third positive control test. The first one failed because of big variation, and second one failed because of…bad reagent? Don’t know.

This week must proceed without any errors, mistakes, bad lucks, and bad incidences. I hope so. I sincerely hope so.

I don’t want to be the last person to remain in the lab.

Life @ 10/10/09

Happy anniversary day to what is left of the Republic of China now.

Finally my cells are showing signs of growing. I hope they can grow so well that I can finish all my tests next week.

I have also got my laptop back yesterday. The service personnel at Asus told me that the LCD screen holder caused the crack. The holder, apparently, caused too much stress on the plastic casing while the LCD screen is opened and closed, thus the crack. Now the entire bottom casing is new (even the touchpad buttons! Wow! Thanks 'cos my left touchpad button was slightly damaged before).

However, the laptop was crawling so much so slowly compared to my desktop that I had just done a reinstallation yesterday night. It didn't seem better today, anyway, so I gave up hope. Afterall, Vista is Vista. No service packs will be able to save it from its self-pitted downfall.

I have also gone to the Discovery Week organised by Epicenter Pavillion. The unibody Macbook Pros are looking as great as ever, especially after my experience with Vista and this crack out of nowhere. It is a pity that money spoke to me, and I had to leave that place in a sorry mood.

I have also taken a look (finally) at a demo iPhone 3GS. Suddenly I realised that I had lost interest in it. LOL. Maybe I had only loved iPod Touch all the while. Macbook and OS X makes more sense for me. At least for now.

I hope nothing will happen to my laptop again for at least another year before it finally take its last breath. Who knows what my evil heart might be plotting against the laptop in order to find a replacement...

IT & I

I could not remember when did they begin to associate IT so tightly with me.

It probably began when I offered to help setup projectors and school's awful PCs.

When I offered the first help, I wasn't even aware of what many of the buttons on the projector remote control were supposed to do. The help offered was on a goodwill, and desire to hasten lectures so that they wont go beyond their time limits, which may in turn deprive me of my toilet breaks. Of course, skills come with experience. Projector setup did not become a problem soon enough.

School PCs are another story. They were awful and they still are awful. It took me an hour to print just 4 pages last week, having to go through 5 PCs, 4 printers and 3ELLs.

Somehow, I was said to be extremely good in IT and people came after me with many questions and problems. I didn't mind. Helping is good. And I get to learn a few things on the side. Soon enough, I even started looking for viruses in people's computers because the real expert has become sort of unavailable, both time and person.

Whatever it is, I wasn't an IT expert. I am still not an IT expert.

I profess an interest in gadgets. I admit my fancies for Apple products. I may have helped many people in their computer-related problems.

But I am not an IT expert.

When I was supposed to take pictures as a 'silent potato' (as they call in Malay), its OK. I am silent most of the time, especially in front of people that I am not well acquainted, people that I dislike so much, people that I secretly admire :-$, and during meetings which I don't have additional opinions to make. It is also true that most of those in the silent potatoes group don't make noise in the public (as evident in the last meeting). Taking photos in lab coats is less fine, but still acceptable for me. Asking me to pose like an IT expert is too much.

I feel like I'm becoming a geek in no time. Now have I realised that I am the computer geek in most people's eyes.

The association of IT and I had also nearly changed my research project for this semester.

Apparently, someone (which I have yet to identify) mentioned me as an IT expert in a certain e-PBL, causing the e-PBL facilitator, who happens to be my current research supervisor, to ask me if I had wanted to do 3D QSAR work instead of plant extraction. The supervisor for the 3D QSAR project had also came to meet me to see because he thought I had a genuine interest in it.

Sorry, I said. I am more interested in trying plant extraction.

You can still ask me about computer-related problems. I will try my best to help.

But please do not call me an IT expert. I don't know C, Java, and so many things. I can't even do a proper flash movie.

Don't embarrass me in front of the real experts. Please.

My Next Semester's Posting: Hospital Melaka

It was confirmed in the e-mail today: I got posted to Hospital Melaka.

I have never expected myself to be posted to Melaka for my junior clerkship. All the while Melaka was reserved for students of Melaka & southern origins.

I went crazy for some time and realised that it is not going to have any effects. It is destined. Just accept it.

I hope my clerkship in Melaka will be a fruitful and memorable one.

New Theme

I hope the new theme looks good. Credit to its creator and porter.

As an update to my research project, it seems after analysing the data with all possible methods, I have got positive results for all extracts.

Now, many people would have been excited. I am not. Afterall, I'm the only one in the group getting all positive result, and with the positive result being unconvincing, I doubt if anything useful would surface in the cell death differentiation ELISA test later. So I have three choices now: MTT, repeat XTT, or accept it.

On the other hand, my positive control test result had gone all haywire. It could be caused by the unhealthy cells, or improperly dissolved drug causing variations in concentrations, or my poor skills. This is really, really unfortunate compared to my all-positive XTT result.

I hope my meeting with supervisor later can provide a good future direction.

28/09/09: My Lappie back in factory

My Asus laptop is now taking a break from the hectic lifestyle.

It has succumbed to the infamous Asus hinge crack. I'd strongly suggest any Asus laptop users who are not aware of it to Google, read up, and be pray that it happens within the 24 months warranty period.

Fortunately mine is still under warranty. So no extra cost incurred for now, except for possible loss of productivity for the next two weeks.

It was a pity I did not take a picture (Even if I did, it wouldn't have reached this computer anyway, not without bluetooth), but all Asus users should be aware of the hinge crack.

I remembered once a salesperson told me why Apple laptops are the choice. He said, "Acer quality simply sucks. Dell covered its quality issues with good service, but build quality still sucks. Vaio is overpriced and simply not worth the extra bucks. Asus, well, good quality overall, except for the hinges that will break sooner or later."

Of course, that was a year ago. Things might have changed. Macbook Air has hinge problems too anyway. Potential Apple buyer can forget about Macbook Air. Just consider the unibody Macbook Pros.

I guess I'll have to stick nearer to this desktop and iPod Touch for now. Apple probably marketed it correctly this time, at least for me: