First week of holiday
Oct. 6th, 2018 09:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coolohohTime flies.
My first week of leave is gone.
Last weekend was the JB trip with my good friend JLF. The trip there was terrible. Massive jams... Super long queue. It took us over 6 hours to finally get to Malaysia...
The food was good though and more importantly, cheap. So all's well. Even JLF changed her mind on the second day about going to msia again. Hahaha. She was like "This is the first and last time I'm ever coming to msia" when we were queueing up too.... :P
Anyway... We talked about going Japan together and unfortunately I have to say that... I don't wanna go Japan with her. Lol. She's not adventurous or crazy like me. She doesn't eat A LOT of things. No raw food... All that sushi and sashimi... She's really scared of stuff... Erm... Just... Not gonna be a good travel companion for me. I mean... A trip to Japan is gonna be expensive and it feels like such a waste if I don't get to eat all the stuff I like. I think it's not gonna have a happy ending... :X
On the other hand... I could go with my family... I could go with J and Octavia...
Well in any case, I need to start saving up money before anything else. No money no travel. So there.
Spent like a couple of days binge watching this old China drama series 神探狄仁杰. It's freaking good I tell ya. Slow paced but with such a fantastic plot... I was completely hooked. Like $@@%& watching till 4am in the morning and only going to bed because I didn't want my parents to discover that I was up all night kind of hooked. The storyline is so amazing. How the scriptwriters juggle like 10 things at once and never letting a single ball fall to the ground. Or even tossing away some balls really high in the air, only to catch it at the very end of the story. That sort of magic. Gosh. So much that I learnt from watching that drama. You know there's so many dramas and stories where they write till things get so ridiculously huge, and they end up not being able to end things properly? So all you get is this shitty ending? (Heck even mangas... I'm looking at you Naruto.) Not with this drama. All the endings were well done. Logical, and pretty much answering every little doubt and suspicion you had. The cast is amazing too. Perfectly suited for the role they play. The evil guy looks like a sneaky, evil rat. The honest to goodness general looks righteous. The set is amazing too.
Finally got back on track the day before... With my calligraphy stuff and journaling. Stuff that I've been neglecting thanks to my drama addiction.
Started downloading the papers from my new PI yesterday... Gotta start some proper work eh?
Went to Orchard Central with my mum and sis yest for lunch and shopping. Crazy. We spent like quite a few hundred bucks at Dondon Donki yesterday. It's this supermart from Japan. Mum bought a ton of supplementary pills (I think the bulk of the money went there) and a few kilos of noodles. Sis got a bunch of snacks. Oh, liquor! We got a bunch of alcoholic drinks as well. Alcoholic calpis? (Yoghurt drink + alcohol) Strawberry milk with alcohol? Coffee liquor? Lol. Crazy. And I finally got a new umbrella to replace my heavy and broken one. Hurrah. This one is color changing too. A floral pattern will appear when it's wet. Erm... Ok. I don't care for the floral pattern but it's cool. And it's decently priced and really light too. Finally, a new umbrella. I probably won't need to use it much though. My new place has sheltered walkways all the way to the mrt. And I don't need to take the downtown line anymore so I don't have to walk an unsheltered route to take the bus. Hurrah. Everything back to normal. I'm glad. Glad that I kept to my promise of not staying in that place for long. Because it's too easy to get comfortable in routine. Well... This job was really unbearable though. Really, really unbearable. Like right from the start, I didn't buy any of the coffee shop add value cards thingy even though you get a discount if you do... Because I never intended to stay long. Glad I'm out of there now. Well... There's still next Friday to clear... But just that very last day. And geez. HR hasn't even sent me instruction for what to do on my last day. Talk about being slow. Oh wells.
Wanted to take part in Inktober. But I've not even started on anything yet. Lol. Shall try to get it done this weekend. Then I gotta pack my room a little... Change those bedsheets and clean up the fan. Then read those papers and at least get a grip on *WHAT* exactly my new group is working on. It's gonna be quite different from everything I've work on so far. Like... The projects I'm in... They are trying to discover something... As in... Discover something about the microbe. The biology. But here, they have this technique that they discovered, and are trying to improve. And apply that technique to new areas. So if I were to do cell culture, it's for the sake of getting cells to use in that experiment for that technique. Not to discover anything about the cells in particular. Does that make sense? It's like instead of trying to see how well amazing you dog can become, you are trying to see how well your animal training technique performs... And not just on dogs, but other animals as well. Hmm hope that analogy helps lol.
Either way... There's gonna be loads of challenges ahead and I'm both afraid and excited. After all expectations are high. I have a year to come up with my own project idea. Otherwise it's bye bye for me. My contract is only for a year. Sure I know what I'm worth. I shouldn't be worried about my contract renewal as long as money keeps flowing in. But I can't be complacent either. There's a lot of things I don't know, a lot of math, programming and formulas. There's gonna be a lot to learn... And in areas I suck at too... Plus coming up with a scientifically sound and viable project idea? That's gonna be hard. And it's something that I've never done before. I'm not a person without ideas. I've been making a conscientious effort to ensure that my brain doesn't atrophy. Hence the fic writing, the art making and what not. But to actually work hard and read scientific papers? And come up with proper scientific ideas? Let's just say that I've been a lazy person. Esp with the paper readings. Can't remember the last time I've read a paper properly. Lol. Ok yesterday I did try. To spend hours and hours at work reading papers so that I can learn the field and then get ideas? Idk how I'd survive. Lol. But I guess I'll have to find a way... So yeah... I better get started with those five papers next week. The rest... I need the damn access to papers to do more. Can't keep bugging my friend to help me fetch papers yeah? Those 5 were on my PI's profile so yeah. And indeed it seems like they are the most relevant ones with our current work. But well.... The way you get into a new field is by reading papers. Best is to see if there are any review papers. Then from there you check out the references, and read more references and so on and so forth. And for that, you need access to the papers so that you can download the papers and not just read the abstracts. There are more free full text available now. But far from enough... LIke two out of the 5 papers in the profile were locked.
Yeah. That's something that told me my current place isn't the right place to stay. You don't even have journal paper access. If you want the papers, you gotta email the library and ask for it. LOL. Ridiculous. In a single day's worth of research I can easily access and download a few dozen papers. Reading what's important and discarding the irrelevant. Just like how when I research something... Say for a fic... Or something else... I can easily open 10 tabs on a single topic. And then another 10 on something else. Which is why I always have easily over 30 tabs open in my chrome. Lol. And with the no internet access in hospitals now? You can't even do research, honest. Lol.
Alright. That's all for now I guess... I think I'll go buy that photo printer online that I've been craving for quite a while now... Maybe it'll arrive next week and I can play with it... Before I start work ya know? Till next time!
My first week of leave is gone.
Last weekend was the JB trip with my good friend JLF. The trip there was terrible. Massive jams... Super long queue. It took us over 6 hours to finally get to Malaysia...
The food was good though and more importantly, cheap. So all's well. Even JLF changed her mind on the second day about going to msia again. Hahaha. She was like "This is the first and last time I'm ever coming to msia" when we were queueing up too.... :P
Anyway... We talked about going Japan together and unfortunately I have to say that... I don't wanna go Japan with her. Lol. She's not adventurous or crazy like me. She doesn't eat A LOT of things. No raw food... All that sushi and sashimi... She's really scared of stuff... Erm... Just... Not gonna be a good travel companion for me. I mean... A trip to Japan is gonna be expensive and it feels like such a waste if I don't get to eat all the stuff I like. I think it's not gonna have a happy ending... :X
On the other hand... I could go with my family... I could go with J and Octavia...
Well in any case, I need to start saving up money before anything else. No money no travel. So there.
Spent like a couple of days binge watching this old China drama series 神探狄仁杰. It's freaking good I tell ya. Slow paced but with such a fantastic plot... I was completely hooked. Like $@@%& watching till 4am in the morning and only going to bed because I didn't want my parents to discover that I was up all night kind of hooked. The storyline is so amazing. How the scriptwriters juggle like 10 things at once and never letting a single ball fall to the ground. Or even tossing away some balls really high in the air, only to catch it at the very end of the story. That sort of magic. Gosh. So much that I learnt from watching that drama. You know there's so many dramas and stories where they write till things get so ridiculously huge, and they end up not being able to end things properly? So all you get is this shitty ending? (Heck even mangas... I'm looking at you Naruto.) Not with this drama. All the endings were well done. Logical, and pretty much answering every little doubt and suspicion you had. The cast is amazing too. Perfectly suited for the role they play. The evil guy looks like a sneaky, evil rat. The honest to goodness general looks righteous. The set is amazing too.
Finally got back on track the day before... With my calligraphy stuff and journaling. Stuff that I've been neglecting thanks to my drama addiction.
Started downloading the papers from my new PI yesterday... Gotta start some proper work eh?
Went to Orchard Central with my mum and sis yest for lunch and shopping. Crazy. We spent like quite a few hundred bucks at Dondon Donki yesterday. It's this supermart from Japan. Mum bought a ton of supplementary pills (I think the bulk of the money went there) and a few kilos of noodles. Sis got a bunch of snacks. Oh, liquor! We got a bunch of alcoholic drinks as well. Alcoholic calpis? (Yoghurt drink + alcohol) Strawberry milk with alcohol? Coffee liquor? Lol. Crazy. And I finally got a new umbrella to replace my heavy and broken one. Hurrah. This one is color changing too. A floral pattern will appear when it's wet. Erm... Ok. I don't care for the floral pattern but it's cool. And it's decently priced and really light too. Finally, a new umbrella. I probably won't need to use it much though. My new place has sheltered walkways all the way to the mrt. And I don't need to take the downtown line anymore so I don't have to walk an unsheltered route to take the bus. Hurrah. Everything back to normal. I'm glad. Glad that I kept to my promise of not staying in that place for long. Because it's too easy to get comfortable in routine. Well... This job was really unbearable though. Really, really unbearable. Like right from the start, I didn't buy any of the coffee shop add value cards thingy even though you get a discount if you do... Because I never intended to stay long. Glad I'm out of there now. Well... There's still next Friday to clear... But just that very last day. And geez. HR hasn't even sent me instruction for what to do on my last day. Talk about being slow. Oh wells.
Wanted to take part in Inktober. But I've not even started on anything yet. Lol. Shall try to get it done this weekend. Then I gotta pack my room a little... Change those bedsheets and clean up the fan. Then read those papers and at least get a grip on *WHAT* exactly my new group is working on. It's gonna be quite different from everything I've work on so far. Like... The projects I'm in... They are trying to discover something... As in... Discover something about the microbe. The biology. But here, they have this technique that they discovered, and are trying to improve. And apply that technique to new areas. So if I were to do cell culture, it's for the sake of getting cells to use in that experiment for that technique. Not to discover anything about the cells in particular. Does that make sense? It's like instead of trying to see how well amazing you dog can become, you are trying to see how well your animal training technique performs... And not just on dogs, but other animals as well. Hmm hope that analogy helps lol.
Either way... There's gonna be loads of challenges ahead and I'm both afraid and excited. After all expectations are high. I have a year to come up with my own project idea. Otherwise it's bye bye for me. My contract is only for a year. Sure I know what I'm worth. I shouldn't be worried about my contract renewal as long as money keeps flowing in. But I can't be complacent either. There's a lot of things I don't know, a lot of math, programming and formulas. There's gonna be a lot to learn... And in areas I suck at too... Plus coming up with a scientifically sound and viable project idea? That's gonna be hard. And it's something that I've never done before. I'm not a person without ideas. I've been making a conscientious effort to ensure that my brain doesn't atrophy. Hence the fic writing, the art making and what not. But to actually work hard and read scientific papers? And come up with proper scientific ideas? Let's just say that I've been a lazy person. Esp with the paper readings. Can't remember the last time I've read a paper properly. Lol. Ok yesterday I did try. To spend hours and hours at work reading papers so that I can learn the field and then get ideas? Idk how I'd survive. Lol. But I guess I'll have to find a way... So yeah... I better get started with those five papers next week. The rest... I need the damn access to papers to do more. Can't keep bugging my friend to help me fetch papers yeah? Those 5 were on my PI's profile so yeah. And indeed it seems like they are the most relevant ones with our current work. But well.... The way you get into a new field is by reading papers. Best is to see if there are any review papers. Then from there you check out the references, and read more references and so on and so forth. And for that, you need access to the papers so that you can download the papers and not just read the abstracts. There are more free full text available now. But far from enough... LIke two out of the 5 papers in the profile were locked.
Yeah. That's something that told me my current place isn't the right place to stay. You don't even have journal paper access. If you want the papers, you gotta email the library and ask for it. LOL. Ridiculous. In a single day's worth of research I can easily access and download a few dozen papers. Reading what's important and discarding the irrelevant. Just like how when I research something... Say for a fic... Or something else... I can easily open 10 tabs on a single topic. And then another 10 on something else. Which is why I always have easily over 30 tabs open in my chrome. Lol. And with the no internet access in hospitals now? You can't even do research, honest. Lol.
Alright. That's all for now I guess... I think I'll go buy that photo printer online that I've been craving for quite a while now... Maybe it'll arrive next week and I can play with it... Before I start work ya know? Till next time!
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-06 07:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-06 07:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-06 02:53 pm (UTC)I have been meaning to go to Dondon doki, but haven't done so due to iffy health flareups and whatnot.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-06 03:01 pm (UTC)Hope you'll be well enough to make a trip there soon! They are getting smarter about what to stock up - loads more drinks and snack choices this time. Even all the special kit kat flavors that I lugged home from Tokyo last time...
Still waiting for them to open one in Jurong. Maybe next year!
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-10 07:05 am (UTC)Jiayou and try your best!! I'm sure it will all turn out well!! (:
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-11 06:18 am (UTC)