lab withdrawal symptoms

sigh~ i miss the lab.

the whiny centrifuges... the perpetually dysfunctional heatblocks... the LUNCHES... the POST LUNCH pre-coffee gossip... the POST LUNCH POST COFFEE gossip... :D i miss my blood brothers and sisters. a lot.

what will july bring but a sepulchral gloom of solitude and silence? the metamorphosis of sweltering summer to the gusty monsoons of autumn brings in its wake a prenatural chill in the chambers of my heart.

huh. even my poetry sucks :P

okok july rabbit pls dun bonk my head. it's just unfortunate that the time of my graduation from lab attachment falls in the month you were given birth in. but such is Murphy's f***ed up law, isn't it :)

i guess i'm going to show u guys a bit more of the wonderful angels who have been sent into my life and given the (behemoth) task of educating and caring for me:



meet XG. he of the completely befuddling gene constructs and transgenes. he of the protein purification columns and embryo microinjections. he who magically appears at 8am every morning despite leaving at midnight the night before. he of the monumentally stunning (not to mention inappropriate) exclamations of "si bei" and "wah lau" :D






this has GOT to be the world's cutest doctorate student.
anyone who doesn't agree, please post me a picture of the phD student/postdoc whose adorable-ness supercedes this guy.
and if i agree that u win, i'll drink a bottle of loading dye (colour of your choice - blue, green or orange) haha :)








my boss. my immediate boss, that is.
HE IS THE WORLD'S BEST MENTOR. EVER.
and no submissions claiming otherwise is allowed! :D








sometimes inexplicable things happen to the lab members (me included), and things like this result. we bear no responsibility for any loss of dignity to any real snowmen and snowladies and snowbabies as a result of this creation from used icebox ice.
but i still chuckle at the ingenuity of the use of pipette tips and loading dye :D

heyo emm! yeeling! :D how have u been??? haven't heard from u in freaking ages. haha great to see ya popping by. u should've seen my face when i saw ur comment haha :D e ultimate "reunion" face haha.

quite a long time since i blogged. distinctly recall promising knw's mum a space here pertaining to her culinary disasters - one particularly memorable episode in which the following (imaginary) dialogue transpired:

(knw prepares a pot of HEALTHY aka no salt kimchi soup and presents it to mum)
knw: hey ma, try this kimchi soup. i made it!
(mum takes a sip of the soup)
mum: wah. plain water with red coloured vegetable bits floating inside. no taste one arh.
knw: no la, eat "qing dan" good for health ma.

Later... (unbeknownst to our budding chef)
mum: this soup too bland but throw away very wasted. i remember my ma telling me about the wonderful qualities of dark soy sauce...
(pours a liberal amount of thick dark soy sauce into the previously pale pink kimchi soup)
mum: wah, looks better already. at least got colour... *sips* and got taste also.
(knw wanders into the kitchen and peers into her soup pot)
knw: WAH MA! what happened to my soup?!
mum: i enhanced it lorh... come let me tell u about the wonderful qualities of this thing called dark soy sauce... :)

lol. i anticipate rising sales of the brilliant dark soy sauce in view of the massive propagation of its "wonderful qualities". not least to mention its ability to create a savoury, black broth out of thin pink vegetable soup haha :D

am ensconced in the office creating comparison files out of the sequences obtained. today's the laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast day :P


this is THE LAB OFFICE. i rmb asking wc to get me something to eat from outside once. something small that i can nibble surreptitiously in the lab.
his eyes BUGGED out.
"in the LAB! no NO NO NO! cannot!" he stuttered, shaking his head vehemently.
"huh, why...?" i was perplexed. (we eat ALL THE TIME in the office)
"got EB! contaminate the samples!!" yelled my mentor.


then i realised that poor mr organized has compartmentalized the LAB from the OFFICE. hence the huge objection to my small snacking :D hehe.

see why i say he's my dream husband??? ^_^


the lab proper. due to *AHEM* trade secrets, i can't tell you guys what the little green thing in the picture is. or the little blue things. or the little white things for that matter. or the little pink thing (though it's obvious that it's a chlorhex wash haha lol)

haha. the joys of IP protection.





miss RARA and miss NANA~ we rawk.

*cool handsign*








The Man Himself. At Work.

he refused to smile because it was against his personal principles to "smile when one is doing WORK". i guess "happy worker" doesn't really exist in his dictionary :D


but if u look closely u'll realise that he's already stifling a laugh haha :D so much for principles.

haha well. so that's about all from e lab... my 2nd home for the past half a year. extremely unhappy that i have to leave... it's what i call the "dammit, leaky eyeball+forced extradition from comfort zone" syndrome. *sniffle* and it's so strong that even the thoughts of me embarking on my future career of being an MBBS holder isn't enough to make me feel happier. yucks.

so this is true AFFECTION for my co-workers... colleagues... friends... mentors... kakis... sisters and brothers... Hungarian or otherwise :D i'll never forget XG's inopportune exclamations of "si bei" as and when he fancies haha!

a bit of flim~ yes, flim, not film.

why flim? what is flim? has Nana gone off the deep end? has she abandoned all outward display of normalcy in mental processes and proceeded on the trek on e path of lunacy? or incoherence?

fear not. the answers to those seemingly inanswerable questions are: cos it sounds like flimsy, and i feel a bit of flimsiness tonight (err which brings to mind - i may want to reconsider the lunacy plea haha), no, maybe, and yes. and if you're utterly, irretrievably lost in all this nishnash nonsense, ah, you're normal indeed. dun fret.

finally completed the presentation and given my talk today. i suspect that i took more than the 10minutes allocated to each student, by around 5minutes or so. however it was over in a blur for me. if you ask me, i'd say i was in some variant of traumatic-stress-induced-anmesia, babbling like a loony hare and jabbing my bamboo pointer (apparently the laser one's run amok) at the screen with rapid, spasmodic pokes of my wrist and retaining not a singular iota of memory of the entire performance. a national fencer would have been mighty proud of my excellent skills in lancing and parrying like a cracker on amphetamines at the poor inanimate screen.

am bushed.
am bushed on a cracker.
am bushed, on a cracker, with parsley sprinkles and bacon bits with a pretty please.

if i were any more exhausted from blinking my sore, parched eyeballs at the goshdarn screen for the past 5 days, i would have spontaneously degenerated my complex cellular structure into a massive slimy lump of green fluorescent cells.

oh, and i finally passed both my theory trial tests. on the dot. hahaha. talk about "unintentional accuracy". this phrase itself is oxymoronic on nature. like author like words, eh?? haha.

as i type this, my orange female guppy is unabashedly honking the blue male on his backside, whereas in nature this should be the other way around. could it be due to food? a change in diet leading to a surge in "initiative for procreation" in the female? or is she just plain sex-deprived (like a certain someone who's typing this) and needs someone, or even SOMETHING, to hump? this could be a massively good paper in Nature.

oh my goodness. i think i've evolved into a full fledged scientist. with the inquiring mind and all the works.

help...

babyish thoughts

spent a tiring, draining day at the bookstore today, serving the upper crust of Singaporean society and swallowing my pride. My pride seems to resent being swallowed at weekly intervals very much, because every time i do it again it just gets harder not to wail, give up, flop on the floor and bawl my eyes out in self-pity.

self-pity must be a SIN somewhere in God's Great Big Book on What Thou Shalt Not Do. it gives me a strange feeling of quiet solace, thinking of how God would peer down at me (i keep imagining God to wear a pair of grandfatherly spectacles - gosh sometimes i think i'm mixing Him up with the idealized version of a benign, protective grandpa, but on hindsight, isn't that exactly what He promises us, His children?) and give me a half-smile when i'm just on the brink of giving vent to the little squeal of frustration rising in my throat, and shake his head (almost inperceptibly) and wag His finger at me. so i force myself to smile and take a deep breath and to keep going. Plow through the sludge of rudeness, hoity-toity arrogance, wealthy apathy and condescension...

but sometimes the war is hard to fight. when i want to cry, i want to have someone to hold me and talk to me and soothe my frazzled nerves and tell me not to succumb to idiocy - those people aren't worth sobbing over. and since i wish not to be hauled into court for being "lured" into a homosexual act (arhem) i guess i won't be unloading my burden on any of my poor, innocent and definitely male-inclined female kakis. sigh.

the old chinese sage who said "ya ba chi huang lian, you ku shuo bu chu" has hit the nail on the head. why is it that all these proverbs come in so useful?? and so eerily accurate??? i must sit down and meditate away from the insidious allure of the TV someday and perhaps i might attain some sort of illumination/enlightenment (or as Denise puts it, an awareness of things i had never previously regarded as existent).

part of the reason why this is so hard on me (whilst others may simply shrug it off) is due, no doubt, to my inherently strong sense of self. or rather my NEED to be acknowledged. is it? no. i believe a more appropriate term is respect. i need people to recognize that i am useful when i have a solid accomplishment that is worth notice, and i want the respect that comes from it. this explains why i have been so stubborn (to all the kakis out there who're still scratching a nearly-bald spot on ur head trying to figure out why i'm so ornery) and why i would rather fight to the death than concede defeat in a situation where my reputation is at stake. my closest friends would know, seeing me hobble across hc campus in that weirdly funny gait that screams for the director of LOTR to hire me as a permanent extra hobbit. or the times when i attend school 2 days after an operation, only to find out that i expire much faster than i thought (and thus lend myself as material for many cripple jokes and fainting scares haha). i am a person who cannot afford to lose when i know that humiliation follows the defeat. in things that don't involve my reputation, i'm much more relaxed. cavalier, even. knw has exclaimed innumerous times about my need to rein in my bad habit of cussing at random in public. i'm a disgrace sometimes. it's not conscious, just a rather exaggerated form of release when i know i'm safe with the people who love me enough never to agree to insult me even when bribed. but for failures? sorry mate, i gotta do it my way. i gotta fight to the bitter end. as my mum told me: pa de yue gao jiu die de yue zhong. it hurts more to fall from grace when i'm high up. it's so true. i thought nursery songs were just crap, but i know better now. i'm learning it the hard way... but that's always better than not knowing at all. i'd rather crawl, grovelling and weeping in excruxiating pain, to school, than to see a failure on the exam cert.

i've lost count of how many people who love me and care for me who've tried to cajole, scold, scream, coax and sweettalk me into resting, taking things easy. i'm being irrational, i'm being plain stupid. i know this doesn't make me heal faster from the stab wounds all over me, but it's a primal instinct. i can't fight it. when it beckons, it's not a gentle, susurrous calling that draws me misty-eyed towards the goal slowly. it's a hardfisted b*****, shrieking at me to move it, do i want to fail, do i want to be insulted and humiliated, do i want to die in shame - if not, i'd better haul ass, and fast, or the whip's gonna come down hard where it hurts the most and break me, break me good, break me into a whimpering, useless mess that can't say my own name -

and i always shiver in fear. i work for fear. i can smell the danger in the air when someone responds not to an innate drive or passion, but fear. it's going to be nothing short of cataclysmically disastrous. the results will never be good. the person will never be happy at what he/she has accomplished - just slogging blindly, one day at a time, one chore at a time, one additional slavery noose around the neck at a time, until the neck swells and breaks under the collective strain of all the burden. it's blind rage driving competition, competition driving jealousy and hatred, animosity driving depravity and loss of self esteem, and finally the bitter self-mutilation/destruction that usually follows such regressions. i'm stuck at the jealousy part. i feel the ugly green monster creep up on me and sneer into my ears when a pretty, rich, smart and svelte lady passes me. it makes itself known unabashedly every morning when i stand before the mirror critically eying myself. it makes me see a scarred, obese, ugly, rude, selfish, poor and infernally stupid person masquerading as a normal one. i shake my head and turn away, but i'm just escaping truth.

i'm going to tell myself from today onwards:

1) i am made in the likeness of God. if i say i'm all that i said before, i'm saying that God is either really lousy at making people like me, or God is flawed. Since God is perfect, then the 2 statements are negated.

but that doesn't quell the ugly green monster. it flails its arms wildly and shrieks into my deep self-discontentment, fanning the embers of a smoldering firestock that could spell trouble if left to burn unchecked. so i will also tell myself daily:

2) i will not bring shame unto my parents, who have belaboured to create me from themselves, and nurture me, and give me food and shelter if nothing else, and to allow me room to grow to the being i am today. to proclaim myself worthless and bound for destruction is to spit on their faces, denounce all that they have done in my interests for the past 18 years, and to crush their bodies under Satan's jealous sulphur-lined boots. i must love myself, for my parents' sakes if nothing else. i will not let Satan have his way with my inner flaws.

i'm drained. this is a catharsis, an epiphany. i have dragged my screaming, protesting skeletons out of the closet and laid them bare before all who read this blog; i have nothing to hide. i feel like i've fought the fiercest war in the century; i'm oddly liberated yet mournful of the passing of my inner flaws.

from now on, i'll be who i am, and no more, and no less. you get the whole deal, or you get none. i will not covet riches, beauty, intelligence - all these are transient. i will not begrudge others their blessings.

i believe i will find the people who treasure my quirks, idiosyncrasies, and imperfections. and in return, i will love each of them and pray that the Lord bless each of them in turn, with all my heart.

pammie returns with tiramisu and sausages and tinned tomato puree on tuesday.

sitting placidly in front of the laptop on my desk, pecking the keys with as much precision as a woodpecker drunk on milk kahlua. in case anyone is wondering, milk kahlua is a feminine alcoholic beverage, prepared using kahlua, a sort of hard liquor, and a ton of milk. on the first taste, i was struck by its resemblance to chinese medicine. but after a while, it starts to taste like the chocolate milk Alex is strongly insisting on. i guess it's either an acquired taste or the fulfilment of the power of suggestion. if u press me for an answer, i'd say it's suggestion. especially since i have never recalled my chocolate milk (or cocoa-laced glyco-protein complex, if you like) to leave a burning aftertaste. or perhaps i've never had the misfortune to be afflicted with GERD. haha.

sprained my ankle at 23XXhours on saturday. i was conscientiously trying not to disturb the meticulously arranged chairs of the wedding banquet at my void deck, and forgot about the slight curb at the edge. it's so slight that i estimate it to be less than 5cm in height. no child could possibly trip over it, not even a toddler testing out its newly biped powers. but apparently i have overestimated my superiority over a fresh bipedal human. i tripped. and landed sideways, not fully comprehending what had just occurred besides the fact that i had successfully overturned 3 of the chairs which i had very recently strived not to overturn.

Then the pain kicked in, with all the gusto of a purple newborn infant wailing lustily to get its first breath. wow. never again will i scoff at anyone who has a sprained ankle. it hurts like **** reincarnated. i hauled myself into a kneeling, subservient position and decided it hurt too much to make any further moves. there i remained for all of 5 glorious minutes whilst everyone stared at me and my playdead antics. eventually i plucked up sufficient courage to sit in a chair (one of the merrily overturned ones) to examine the injured foot. it was amusing to watch the extremity balloon up and fill the shoe in a matter of minutes. insta-elephant-legs, you could call it. it looked just like papier mache dipped in a tub of water. i struggled not to cry and laugh maniacally at the same time. fortunately i succeeded in repressing the 2 conflicting emotions, or else they would've called an ambulance to ferry me to the Land of The Ha-has With People In White Jackets.

i limped home, shamed at my defeat by a 5cm curb which 1 year olds sneer at and hop up and down on when they play catch with their mates.

the next day, i woke up to the dreadful realization that someone had taken a hacksaw and spliced off my foot (not too gently, either) whilst i was asleep. i looked down, expecting to see my left leg to end in a bloody, congealed stump of flesh. but the foot was there.

magically magnified, to boot. it truly resembled the world's biggest pig's trotters. if my mum smeared black soy sauce on it, i would've received a Guinness certificate proving my possession of the abovementioned delicacy in a snap. the ice pack and compression applied haphazardly close to the witching hour the previous night had not been as effective as hoped. but i was fortunate in that no boogeyman with rusty hacksaws had visited me while i snored and drooled last night.

not the best image in which to present, not even to my potential homicide-r, you see. pretty, well-brought-up girls do not routinely show themselves scantily clad around the lower body with lines of snot and drool hanging about their faces. as some famous but forgettable (ah, the irony) celebrity once said, one must be beautiful, even in the face of death.

sometimes i envy my guppies. they parade themselves nude in public, putting their bodies up for public scrutiny, without a trace of shame. sometimes they even allow themselves to relieve themselves and trail a line of compressed crap behind their asses without bothering to find some kleenex.

ah, to live in a world without mirrors. in a civilised world without mirrors, the ugliest people needn't be self-conscious, for they know not the magnitude of their superficial anomalies, and the people around them would be too polite to say anything about the issue.

even those ugly enough to induce appetite loss in others would simply think that the offended party was just having a routine upset stomach from, oh, too much yoghurt or something.

you see, we need to live with a kind tongue and no mirrors. maybe this is a form of HR/etiquette heaven.

but my heaven would simply have NO beautiful people in them. period. hahaha.

decided to pop in for fun. not that i came with any specific agenda in the previous posts... well, not all of them, anyway.

pammie-san and christina-madamoiselle are happily ensconced in some rome-venice borderlands, trying to evade xenophobes who're probably refusing to sell them any strawberry-flavored brollies cos they have a brownish tint to their complexion. well... i suppose anemic-looking xenophobes need the brollies more. but honestly. Asians don't all engage in manic HIV inter-transmission and eat pig internal organs, you know. and come to think of it, pig organs probably taste much more substantial than the film-thin equanimity those people exhibit towards Asian visitors. at least pig organs don't taste sour and bitter and downright condescending.

ah, here i am, engaging in sensitive cross-racial debate. so sue me... but don't screw me. it'll be like screwing a bloody wine cask without e wine... just loads of sour vinegar. hahaha.

hehe been taking a long break from blogging. i guess the convenience of surfing blogs and chuckling at the muses of my kakis is proving too tempting for me to resist, hence the loooooooooong vacation from my usual vitriolic verbal diarrhoea. heh. my mouth (and brain) have taken a backseat and are happily munching on loperamide like M&Ms :) anyway. let's see what happened since i last came here...

1. jerlyn's birthday chalet. where: changi fountain view chalet. when: 25-28/5/06. what: 3 crazy gals crashing an unsuspecting 5 yr old girl's 5th birthday party :) haha no la. we went with invitations duly offered and accepted. it was just that we merrily disappeared at the crucial BBQ-fire-starting-and-food-preparing phase and went XIA-PING-ing at Tampines mall :D forgive me my shopaholicism, for i repent of the obscene amounts of money splurged on bags, useless accessories and... i forgot what else. hehe. anyway we adjourned our shopping spree to return to the melee at the chalet grounds (approximately 10 sweaty people crowding around the teenyweeny BBQ pit and trying to CPR it into producing a decent flame - not to mention a certain potbellied "hunk-wannabe" who excitedly pranced the length of the courtyard wielding a pair of hot tongs without a shred of clothing on his back, much to our merriment) and set up the Localised Entertainment Centre, aka the JIALAK-LAH, SO DAMNED LOUD sound system :) my 2 mates bawled jay chou ballads lustily at the top of their lungs whilst my relatives hastily crowded outside for some fresh air (and reprieve from the din) with their plates piled high with curry chicken, beehoon, chicken rice, BBQ meats and fish, vegetables and other really tasty knick-knack finger food delights. my mum commented that those 2 singapore idol wannabes sounded drunk BEFORE they even drank anything alcoholic :) oh, and talk of drunk! miss TLEH is officially declared as the Most Easily Inebriated Female haha :D it was hilarious. she ate too much, took a glass of sparkling juice, and collapsed on the bed pale and gasping whilst me and kn the 2 merlot addicts regarded her with bemusement over the tops of our wineglasses :) i mean, it was 2 perfectly sober people with 3 glasses of 13% alcohol each to their account versus one very KO-ed gal with just one glass of sparkling juice. gosh. oh, and for the record. hard liquor tastes like fresh acetone. it's overpowering! :P this girl is definitely sticking to cocktails and dessert wines :D

and we just acquainted ourselves with the term "a la ka" menu. hahaha. imagine 2 angmohs coming into the restaurant, asking for the advertised "a la ka" menu dishes, a la carte style :P

oh, and brisk walking at 5am in the morning, with absolutely zero clue as to where we're walking to, and singing jay chou's ballads screechily, is an ABSOLUTE blessing. thank you kn ahnteh... i'd never have realised the sunrise was so beautiful until you introduced me to the miraculously bracing morning air.