Of rainbows and fancy lighting.

So... The gaming keyboard I bought from unsup... I picked it up yesterday when I went to unsup's place. Boy do I love the fancy rainbow colored lights of the keyboard. Yeah sure, it's an overkill until I can make myself not die from motion sickness when playing FPS games... But that colorful lighting is just so delightful to look at... Certainly makes me more inclined to write, or otherwise just typing something on the keyboard. Especially now that I've set the lighting mode to 'ripple', where basically a ripple will form from the key that I pressed. It doesn't light up otherwise. Yeah. That's the reason why I'm typing this entry. Lol. So that I can see the keyboard light up. And because of the keyboard, I'm actually touch typing now and now staring at my keys while typing. Never knew I could do that. Lol. I tend to stare at the keys (and well the screen too?) when typing. But cos of the keyboard, the whole lappy is moved far back... So yeah, I have to look up ahead. Plus it's gonna rain outside and the keyboard is dim when I'm not typing anything.

Also... This black widow chroma from razer has mechanical keys which makes a really audible click when pressed. There's something nice about banging away on a noisy keyboard... Something satisfactory about it... though well... You kind of alert the whole world to the fact that you're doing furious typing. Like. When I'm typing some blog entry at work. Those keyboard there are lousy. And noisy. I think it's even louder than this chroma. Lol. Yeah. The constant sound. Makes me want to just type something even though I have nothing to say. Like... There was this one app for writers that I've read about... That won't let you quit the app and do anything else until you've written a set amount of words. And you can even go hardcore mode and have the app start deleting (yes! deleting!) your previous writing, word by word, if you don't type something. Great for those who needs to be forced to write huh? Well... This keyboard is encouraging me to write. Hahaha.

Alrights.

I'll stop for now. Have to get ready soon. Meeting unsup and colleagues for dinner! Yay! Sushi! Then it's goodbye till fate brings us to meet again... Hahaha. Well. Not that we won't keep in touch. Cos for me... There's still unfinished experiments to do and results to send to her... Yeah. Hopefully by the time this gets wrapped up, I'd have found a new job too. Which reminds me... Yes, I've promised myself to restart the job search process tmr. And yeah I'll have to do it. At least I have a shiny rainbow keyboard to accompany me while writing cover letters...?

Need to figure out the placement for the keyboard too. Arms are kind aching because there's not enough room for my palms to rest on... Gah. There's not enough space on this table anymore! I know I know... My fault for buying a fancy keyboard that I don't actually really need... Oh wells. Makes me really happy though... :P

This is it

Back from dinner with unsup and co. So yup, this is it. We'll see her when we visit her hometown in Penang but that's it. Yup.

Feels... Idk hahaha.

Goodbyes are always sad yeah.

But there's a lot of things that I learnt from her... As well as the rest of my colleagues... Things, lessons that I definitely don't want to forget/lose.

Like... My ability to interact with people. Well at least, interact a little better.

It's always the case with me. If I don't interact with people much, I get more and more reclusive and become a social hermit. Because well... I'm just weird like that. My social interaction module doesn't function like most people does. Like... I've discovered even in secondary school that my mind thinks things differently from others. At a leadership camp, doing those high elements activities... When the people in front of me were doing poorly... I didn't seem really enthusiastic and all because I'm just not that sort of person... So the teacher switched me with someone else, something who was really roaring to go, so that she can complete well and boost the group morale. Me? I wasn't thinking of anything like that at all! I was pretty happy that the people in front of me weren't doing well because... It means that it's easy to outshine them. Lol. I guess I've always been the competitive type. Caring for people is something that... Doesn't come naturally to me. I had to learn it. And things like taking the initiative and helping people? I learnt it from my first mentor because he was always helping others. A lot of things are just... Not normal behaviour for me. Things that seem normal to others. Like a hug or a pat on the shoulder or... Any sort of body contact... Or gestures even. As a kid my parents always scold me and say things like, "Do you even know I'm sick? Why don't you even come and ask how I'm doing?" etc etc... Well. I know very well that they are sick. I can see it. So why do I have to ask? I know it as a fact already. Yup. Non-existent social module I know. Well I probably don't care as much as I should, and I don't know how to care either. I just well... Stay out from underfoot? Heck. Even now... What am I supposed to say? Sometimes I just remark to unsup that 'You're sick again'. How do normal people do it? I just state it as a matter of fact lol.

Conversely it's funny how my parents don't notice when I'm sick. Like I get a fever and I'd just buy my own panadol and stuff. Or flu and sore throat. Like I'd be asking a few days after first falling sick if there's some other sort of medicine that I can take at home and my parents would be really surprised. And then they'll scold me for not getting the meds earlier and stuff. Well I already took the meds... And I've raided through the medicine cabinet, it's just that I'm asking if there's anything else that they have and I don't know about...

(Still trying to find a way to place the keyboard so that I can type comfortably. Typing directly on the mac so that I can try and see what's so different about the keyboard placement that's making my arms ache so badly. Ok. I think I just need more palm resting space. Like a lot more... Hmm... How do I do this? Testing testing one two three... Yeah it's my shoulders that are aching badly....)

Oh sorry where was I?

Yeah social stuff...

Yeah I think I've learnt to be a little more human again after all the interactions I've had with my colleagues. Like not just at work, or during our lunch hour, but also outside of work. (Yeah unsup at work and unsup outside of work is really so different. Well, our speech got more casual towards the end too - like we'd speak in Hokkien and colloquial English and stuff... But yeah. It's really nice to have some friends to hang out with on weekends. Even if it's just once a month or every two months or something... Yeah it's good. Recently my jc batch of friends have been meeting up too so that's a good thing as well. Otherwise... Really, I don't get any real life social interaction at all. I just stay at home during the weekends unless my parents drag me out. Too much social interaction isn't good for me... But too little and basically all that I've learnt about how to be a seemingly normal, social human being goes down the drain. I'd like to think that these days I'm much better. Even just talking to some new people at work occasionally. By new people, I mean, people whom I've never talked to before. Not necessarily people who are new at the workplace. We may have passed each other by for years (literally) and never talked. Lol.

Still prefer being alone most of the time though. Heck well, I'm an introvert after all. I'm ok with people that I do know, and know well, like unsup and co... But the rest... Can be like meh sometimes. Heck, even at work these days I still prefer to dine alone. Just me and my kindle. It's good too because otherwise when I reach home I'm so tired and I don't get to read at all.

(Shoulders are still aching... Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy? Is it just... A leftover from earlier?)

What else have I learnt from unsup? Loads of little things. That I've learnt, and things that I should know by now, but still forgot. Like a control for my experiments. Gosh. This is just so ridiculous. Me and the new rf started a new experiment last Friday, and neither of us thought to put a control. LOLOLOL. How pathetic. Totally laughable. Speaking of which, I've gotten away with not running a control for my PCRs so many times. Lol. And unsup never once scolded me. Lol. Even when I'm in a good mood and put controls... I only do negative controls. No positive controls. LOLOLOL. Only on the rare occasion when she actually asks for it maybe? Otherwise I'd never remember to put a control myself. Well... I guess I'd actually remember now? Maybe. Or maybe I'll end up doing only negative controls again. Lololol. Funny how I've never been scolded for it. Like never. Maybe because my PCRs always works. And unsup is always hang up about how I get such good separation on my gels for my ladder. LOLOLOL.

At least I know that gels MUST come with ladders. LOLOLOLOL

All the little things...

Unsup does things pretty differently from me. Well for one, the attention she pays to details far exceeds mine. (And you'd think I'm detailed considering how long winded I get.) Well we pay attention to different things. And of course, she pays attention to all the right things lol.

Not that she doesn't make mistakes too but... Yeah.

(For one, I think we both suck at math. Her math is still much, much better than mine though.)

And the way she records stuff on her lab notebook? Very meticulous and organised. I don't record enough stuff, and not in enough details. That's definitely something that I need to sort out before I do my PhD. Record keeping. In a way that's detailed and understandable to myself. Doesn't help that I'd always been working till really late, and I don't have the habit of recording BEFORE doing experiments. Cos when you're doing it... At least when I'm doing it, I'm just focused on the doing part. Doing the current step well and efficiently, and then the next step, and the next... There's no time to record. And already I need to work fast because it's running late cos there's so many things to do... And by the time I finished it's maybe like... 7pm already and I just dump my lab notebook in my shelf, turn off the computer (which I turn on every morning just for show, because I don't have time to sit at my desk and use the computer at all.), and run to catch the shuttle bus. Or maybe it's after 7:30 already and there's no more shuttle bus.... So yeah. Record keeping. I've never been a meticulous sort of person when it comes to those stuff so yeah... There's a lot I could learn from unsup about that.

Like. She'd ask me about some stuff I did the week before... And gosh... On the last two weeks or so... It was just really bad. I'd flip open my notebook and realise... Opps. It's useless because I've not written anything in there for the whole week because I was just too rushed. Well.... There's still other loose sheets which unsup wrote the instructions for me... Cos I made her write it down since I won't remember everything she said. Cos... There's just too many instructions coming at once lol.

On the other hand. She can flip open HER notebook, and trace what happened. When I was the one who did the experiment. Lol. And she records down who did the experiment too. So yup. That's definitely something that I'm trying to be more meticulous about. How she uses different colours to add one additional observations and results later on too... Yeah. Very organised and very helpful. Definitely something that I'll like to implement. Already I've been trying to write in more about the results and observations.... A small improvement...

Funny how with all the details I'd go into for things on the web... I don't go into that much details when I'm 'scrapbooking' on my lab notebook. Lololol.

Another habit I've picked up from unsup... Small, but still something I'm gonna stick to from now on. Folding a little edge on the tape so that it's easier to tear off. Like we always use tape to mark our glass bottles and stuff... And previously I'd just tear off the tape, (yes tear, not even cut), stick it one, then struggle to write on the curved surface of the bottle. Not unsup. She cuts the tape, stick it on the table top by the side, folds up a corner, writes on the tape with her super neat handwriting, then transfers the tape to the bottle. Yeah. Like why didn't I think of that earlier right? Much easier and neater. (My handwriting is still like bleah though but yeah...) Much better when peeling the tape off too because you don't have to scrap the tape off the bottle - just pull on that folded edge - and you also don't get the tape sticking to your gloves.

Yeah... It's really all the small things that I've picked up... Like marking the dates on the autoclave tape so you take note of which box of tips or beaker of tubes has been autoclaved first... And maybe labelling which tube is in the beaker too... Particularly when you have round cap VS flat cap PCR tubes.

All these small things that makes you more... Efficient/organised in the lab, things that you won't get from textbooks and stuff. Just like how I learnt all my pipetting skills and cell culture techniques from my first mentor. It's all these small things that makes a difference to your overall lab/experimental capabilities. All the small things that affects whether you get a low standard deviation on your qPCR or some disastrous results.


Of course, unsup has been a great role model, given me so much inspiration and encouragement. And I'm still amazed/amused by how she encouraged me to do more writing. Yup. I'll definitely keep writing. Scientific or not. I do enjoy writing. Though it can get to become a chore sometimes as with NM. Still. I don't want to stop writing. Someday I'll write my own book(s). Someday I'll get there. And in the mean time I'll keep gathering ideas, and write other short proses... Yeah, stamina is still a problem for me. I can't write long stuff. Like my chaptered spy arashi fic... Someday I'd still want to finish that though. But I'll be taking my time, and in the meanwhile I'll keep writing. Other things. Blog entries here, facebook statuses... Entries on NM... I'll just keep writing. Long entries, short entries... Entries online, entries for my personal, offline diary, entries on my personal, paper diary... Yeah. I'll just keep practising.

Of course... Unsup spurred me on to my next stage. The stage that I've been putting off for years. Because of fear, lack of knowledge... And everything else. All the experiences she had and shared with me... These were probably the most valuable things that I've learnt from her IMO. Her lab experience... Her experience of living and doing a PhD in the US... Granted, I'll certainly do better than her in several aspects than she did when she first stepped foot there. There's so much invasion of the US culture here in SG. And for me, I read about so much US stuff... At least I understand the US accent better than she did. My English now is probably much better than her's at the start. Of course... My English level still leaves a lot to be desired. Just a quick look at the vocabs in the GRE study books tells me as much. And you don't have to tell me that my grammar sucks too... And yes, after all those years in the US, unsup has great English now too. I can't imagine how she struggled when she first went there.... For me, I don't pronounce many of the words as they should be pronounced unless I'm speaking with people who also pronounce well... But see, I know, I've learnt in sec school, the proper pronunciation of many words. Like, in Singish aka Singaporean English, we basically stress all the wrong syllables, and the 'th' isn't pronounced. But I do know the right way of saying things, and I can definitely understand most of the words when pronounced the proper way. I've not had any trouble understanding my lecturers so far... Whichever country they are from and which whatever accent... So I think I can still do ok in that aspect. Would probably take me a bit to get used to it, but I think I'm still pretty adaptable in that aspect. Other things like... The socialising? Would be more worrying for me. Unlike unsup who has no problem socialising. And she's like... You go there, get to know people, and ask profs for TA positions or research assistantships... And I'm like... Ok... So I have to erm... Talk to people huh?

Yeah. Better to keep that socialising module active and well... Because I cannot afford to be a social hermit there. Maybe the environment will make me more social there too, but of course things have to go both ways eh?

At least I think people talk to each other a lot more...

Moving forward...

Yeah... I've got too many things to do to feel sad about unsup leaving. I've already spent nights crying (like while writing on the card), and emoing so it's enough already. I don't have time to mourn anymore anyway. I've got too many things to do now. I'm still busy at work... And I promised myself that I'd slack on finding a job... But only till next week. So basically tmr I have to restart my job search. There's R programming that I want to learn, since I have the book for that. There's GRE and JLPT to study for. Arashi shows to watch, blog entries to write... Erasers to carve if I want to get creative... Heck, even games waiting for me to play (not played vainglory in months again). Too much things to do. Oh gotta pack my room and all too. And back on my keyboard... Think it's more comfortable now. We'll see how it goes tmr. I think my shoulders were also aching from carrying the bag. With yet another two books from unsup. Thanks unsup! I'll just have to erm... Find a place on my already very full shelves to house them... And then find time to read them. I think I need to put a priority list for my books to read. And honestly, I should focus on JLPT more than GRE because I still have time to study and take the GRE AFTER the JLPT is over. But I'm totally not studying for the JLPT and only focusing on the GRE now. Well, the GRE has larger implications after all so...

Still. I signed up for JLPT. N1 at that.

Yes. I'll go start practising in a bit. Starting from that erm... N2 book. Lol. Or was it N3? Idk. Lol. Oh it's for N2 and N3. And I'm only at the N3 part. Lololol. I'm too slow hahaha.

Oh at least I've been typing some random facebook statuses in Japanese though. I keep using the same few words though. Again, I need to expand my vocab. And also think of other things to discuss in Japanese.

Hmmm. I think none of my work mates have discovered this place. Now I'm kinda getting impatient lol. Yeah, recently I've discovered myself getting less and less patient. Having lower and lower tolerance for time wasting things. Like equipment training, when the trainer goes so slowly and the equipment is actually pretty darn easy to use... And I feel like after taking a look at the equipment, I can use the equipment better than the trainer. How about I conduct the training instead and the company pay me? Lol. I'm honestly not that smart but... Just why are there so many dumb people around me? I guess I'm just in the wrong place huh? Yeah. It's really time to look for somewhere else. And maybe that somewhere else means not in SG.

Well. I think ultimately I just want to experience life outside. Whether there is a great research group/institute to work at in SG or not.

To that end... I'm curious about the working culture in other countries. Anyone and everyone, I'd love it if you could share how is the working culture like in your place. The working hours, are you expected to work overtime... Things like how in Singapore... There's this unspoken rule that you cannot leave the workplace before your boss. Well the boss might even stroll along the corridor when it's time to go home and check on who's leaving on time (my dad's boss was like that.) It's really bad because... People might be done with work. And yet they are not allowed to go home till the boss leaves. And basically they are just wasting what could have been family time. Or rest time. And longer working hours certainly does not reflect on productivity....

Also, would love to take this opportunity to thank everyone who reads all my long winded blog entries. Especially all of you who take the time to leave a comment. Yeah I've been very bad at replying to comments lately (yes, there's like 100 messages in my LJ inbox, literally.), but I do read everyone of time (I get email notifications for comments on my personal LJ too), so thank you very much.

Yup. Ok. Maybe I should get to packing my room a little.

Till next time everyone!