Day 43.

It has been 43 days since i first arrived in Adelaide.

Today i was having one of my emo moods again in the morning.

No this isnt a love story, ill leave that topic for now. Its about my decisions for the future. I have been thinking alot lately about what im going to do after next year. I have always wanted to do medicine and would be my ultimate dream to be accepted into a graduate programme.

But the thing is, I dont feel i have enough brain juice to do it. I have always doubted myself in this aspect. Im struggling for this final year in biomed doing double majors. And i suppose it will only get harder in med school, that is if i can get in.

Then theres the issue about the amount of time i spend, graduating only at the age of 25/26. Ill be 3 years behind my friends. Then theres the expenses etc etc.

Most importantly, theres the admittance process, in which i need a degree of good quality(second upper or better), high GAMSAT scores, interviews etc, and a very illustrious cv of which my greatest achievement was probably......oh wait , i have NONE.

So as i was thinking about all of this on my morning bus ride to uni with my characteristic blank stare into nothing.(besides checking out the cute girl a few seats infront of me ocassionaly. She super jual mahal and smokes . What a turn off. )

ok back to the story...

As the bus approached one of its popular stops on the north terrace, near the convention centre and casino, an elderly man came abroad.

Instinctively i asked him wheather he wanted my seat. He politely said no, and told me that he wasnt going far. So i remained seated and continued staring out the window. Suddenly he asked me " So are you off to Uni?"

I said yes. He then asked me what i was studying and i told him biomedicine. He couldnt hear me that well and assumed i was studying medicine.

This were his following words

" Medicine eh? Thats a very good field to go into. Ive been volunteering in the hospital myself for about 13 years. I help out in the food kiosk every wednesday." he told me proudly.

Holy shit, this frail 70plus year old man is a hospital volunteer?? I thought he was going there to be treated, not to serve others!

So i left the bus and the old man feeling not so emo anymore. Its inexplicable, im not sure why. But somehow i was kinda smilling to myself after that short conversation with a random elderly man.

A few minutes later i clocked in for my lab placement in the molecular life science building. Wasnt expecting a good day at all.

Dr Ben left me mostly on my own today, trying to use some of his troubleshooting procedures to save the cDNA batch which i worked 2 weeks to produce, but seemed to not want to replicate in the PCR machine.

So i carried out the procedure, using another template, diffrent buffer, different enzyme yada yada. Let the gel run for a few minutes and processed it in the big computer-UV light thingy next door.

I really was expecting nothing to come up on the screen. Coz everytime im left alone to do stuff i always screw up one way or another.

Lo and behold. An image like Jesus's face on the shroud of turin came up on the screen. And indeed, it was nothing short of a miracle.



To some of you, this would mean absolutely nothing. But to me, those pathethic smudges proved that i have successfully cloned FMR1, FXR1 as well as the FXR2 genes.

You guys may not sense the wow factor in this. So to put this in perspective, we anticipated troubleshooting this part for at least a few weeks, when we nailed it in 2 days.

Hearing the heaps of praises from Ben as well as his marked increase in optimism for this mini project was all that i needed at that point.

Todays experience really lifted me. It started with the random encounter with the old man, and ended with the successful wetwork in the lab. How does this tie to my future?

It just showed me that things dont always go badly. With a little optimism dilligence, a dash of luck ..good things are bound to happen.

So ill just keep my head up, and stride on. Hey, the impossible does happen.

Thanks for reading this meaningless post, till next time, see ya.

Another saturday.

Another week is over, week 4 of the academic calendar is about to start.

Week 3 was kinda hectic with me getting sick on wednesday, missing 2 lectures in the process (thank god for audio recordings.)

hectic because i had to pass up my lab day-book, which seemed rather empty a few days before the due date..there was supposed to be 2 weeks worth of experimental data inside..some things never change :)

Speaking about week 4, i have a big paper on Hepatitis B viral treatment to write -due on week 8, not a single word has been written.

And i have another literature review about my mini project due around then as well.

AND my project is going to Kick off this monday. Havent read the protocols which my supervisor sent me.

SO,

with a whole pile of shit facing me what do i do?

Buy lotto.(Similar to 6D)


My ticket out of hell.

Why buy lotto?? Because if i win 4 million aussie dollars i wont have to pass up all those stuff i just mentioned.

Unfortunately, I didnt win.( well DUH!)

And i got a very stupid haircut, thats why im covering my face. Shit. Im not going to that chinatown barber again.

Me: Dont cut so much on the top ok.

Ah beng barber: Ok ok, I don't SCISSORS here.

I knew something was wrong when he cut my hair literally millimeter by millimeter..performing all kinds of funny scissors work and technique...@@

AH, nevermind. Cut already, paid 18 dollars for his lousy work.

Spent the rest of the day watching How I Met Your Mother and day dreaming about what i could do with 4 million dollars.

So heres a list of what i would do with 4 million aussie dollars IF I HAD WON today.


1. Immediately buy a first class ticket back to miri to tell my parents, meet up with friends. Fly back to Adelaide before monday.

2. Go to the motorbike shop behind my apartment and purchase my dream bike- Honda CBR 1000 rr

3. Ride my baby to the driving school, and pay the auntie 10,000 dollars to make me a license without sitting for the test.

4. Move out of the hostel, and buy a swanky apartment on North Terrace, just opposite of rundle mall. And like, 2 minutes walk away from school :)

5. Wait for the next weekend, fly back to malaysia. Pick up Phil from sandakan, connecting flight to taiwan first class. Party in taipei for the weekend.

yes brother, if i win lottery we will make our taiwan party dream a reality haha.

6. After partying and throwing money at pretty taiwanese leng luis in exclusive clubs, fly back to miri..make an annonymous donation of 1 million ringgit to St.Columba parish.

That way ill save myself from hell. Ok enough day dreaming. I want to do something more productive....like watching shutters for the 6th time.

Bye!

Confessions of a Camwhore King.

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Am i sexy? Tell me i am.

Ok bye!

Tuesday Blues.

I should really be reading up on todays Genetics lectures. But it just cant go in..

SO lets blog! :)

week 2 of the academic calendar, and things are already heating up.

Let me share my sorrow with you.

here's some of the things i have to read tonight and the whole of tomorrow.



The first journal related to my lab placement. ONE of many to come. I think eventually i would have to cite a minimum of 20-30 journals for my project summary T.T



The title of this paper is " Contribution of mGluR and Fmr1 functional pathways to neurite mophogenesis, cranofacial development and fragile x syndrome"

I can fall asleep by just reading the title ZZZZ..and if you take a good look, you can see that its written by my supervisors Dr Ben Tucker and Professor Rob Richards as well as Professor Lidelli (i dont report to this dude.)

But the thing is, scientists love to make fancy names for things.

I summarize the title for you in Joshua's English.

BRAIN GROWTH IS AFFECTED BY TWO THINGIES CALLED mGluR AND FMR1

see? much easier to understand..



Its 11 pages of scientific terms and confusing pictures. Out of respect to my supervisors, i wont call it crap. Because they took years of effort to publish this paper.

But honestly, it gave me a very bad headache. Since i have to know the research subject quite well in order to participate, i had to digest every SINGLE word and picture. Wikipedia is SOO useful when it comes to scientific terms.

I have other stuff to read as well.



" Difference in Receptor Usage between Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Coronavirus and SARS-Like Coronavirus of Bat Origin"

The only part of that sentence that made sense to me is "of Bat Origin."

It has something to do with bats! Yuhoo!

This paper is for my Infection and Immunity tutorial.

And then i have WHOLE STACKS of journals to read for Genetics..



ZOMG! SWT!WTF! KNS!KNNCCB!ORZ!

ok enough.

But i thank God that i finally found my soulmate to comfort me, to support me, to cheer me up when im down and to make me happy.

We understand each other so well, that its magical. That unexplainable feeling I get when our lips touch.

She makes me warm when im cold, and she brings me hope when theres none. I took me thousands of miles to find you, but it worth it :)

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Oh my Carlton, I love you soo much.

Ok enough rubbish la. I have to read all that stuff i just showed you. Fark.

bye.