I think i'm back to the days where my curiosity is what 'dragging' me to my next day.
was still on holiday mood yday, but now i hv that little feeling of "can't wait to find out tmr the results of my experiment i did today!"

A senior postdoc said to me before... wat makes her enjoy staying in science is the happiness and satisfaction of discovering and learning new things through doing experiments or reading journal papers, and helping her students. But she doesn't like writing grants and all the paperwork.
so yea... that's basically the major part of the work as a researcher in science.

not thinking too long yet... just want to finish my phd asap for now and not suffer too much :P

It's Melbourne again...

I'm back in Melbourne.... aih....

on thurs morning...
we actually touched down on time but were stuck on the plane for an hour becoz a Qantas was still in our bay for some reason. and there were no other suitable bay available at that time.

thurs nite...
new flatmate moved in.
was quite looking fwd to it but hope we get along well.
at least she's not a total stranger to me. our mums knew each other since high school.

fri morning...
went back to work for the first day.
already have cells to harvest at 10am! thought i won't need to see them when i come back, but too bad that they are super-slow-growers, they still need me to take care of them.

sat morning...
it's valentine's day! but nothing exciting for me.
woke up, went market, catch up with all the kangxi i've missed since i went back, well not every single one i watched lar... skipped one or 2 which doesn't seem interesting to me... learned that a person can actually watch kangxi until feel sick de :P had instant noodles for dinner... the 2nd packet of inst noodles since i came back :S

sunday...
did nothing.
woke up, had lunch, chatted with my flatmate for quite a while... luckily she's a 'talk-able' person coz i dont really talk much. :$
long time didn't have ppl to talk to at home d (except when my family was here lar).
dinner time... we cooked tgt and ate in front of the tv.
long time didn't hv ppl to eat with at home d (except when my family was here lar).

and now... it's midnite already, and then it's monday again :S
still on holiday mood. but somehow look fwd to doin my experiments tomorrow.
but not look fwd to writing up my progress report etc for my confirmation which is on 19th march :(

should be sleeping now...
nite...

How much can you trust a stranger?
i'm always paranoid, don't easily trust ppl, strangers especially.

How long does it take to know you can trust that person?
whether it is to trust him/her for once or for the rest of your life?

all depends on the feeling and the interpretation?

My bday weekend

Oh nooooo!!! it's almost over!!!! :(
it = my birthday weekend.
while JayChow is celebrating his bday somewhere in the northern hemisphere, i'm celebrating mine here in Melbourne

started on Friday...

On Fri lunch time, our lab had a joint bday party in a kid's party style.
coz our lab usually hv cake for everyone's bday, as in the next bday person buys cake for today's bday person and so on. and there are 4 of us whose bday is just back to back: 17 18 19 20 jan. So instead of hving 4 cakes in a row, we had a joint bday lunch
we prepared all sorts of sugar-overloaded food which usually appears in a party for Aussie kids:






































well except that soy bean lar :P A colleague from Japan brought that.
and there's soft drinks like Creaming soda, rasberry and solo. and the creaming soda (a pink/brown fizzy drink which tastes like the A&W root beer) is their childhood favourite.

then friday dinner...
Peking duck at Old Kingdom











The dinner is also for Marius' bday.

then sat lunch...
Crepes at Fraus with Canny (who used to do PhD in my lab, now my fren :) ) and Joy












then to a colleague's new house for her bday/housewarming/bump party
[no photo for this one]

then dinner at YingThai on Lygon
























then went to their place for mahjong... until the 'surprise' at midnite from 2 diffr groups of friends (CTG and biomed), where one from each group so happen to be high school friends.

























Sam baked the cake on the left. and my biomed frens bought the one on the right :)
stayed till 2 something am? before i went home. then dunno to sleep or not. haha... coz going for yumcha the morning 11am session. and i hv few 'new toys' to play with if i really dont want to 'waste' my bday on sleeping :P
but after shower, played with the digital photo frame from my CTG frens for awhile, uploaded some photos on fb, then went to sleep at i also dunno wat time is that. haha!

on Sunday, the real day...
woke up before my alarm which is suppose to go off at 9am.
online for a bit, installed iTunes for the nano from my biomed frens, had some of my bday cake (i woke up with a hungry tummy :P), then shower, then cut up some of the cake for Jess, then wrap Marius' other present (we already gave him one yday nite), then went yumcha at Templestowe.












then went Doncaster Westfield.
a newly renovated/extended shopping mall. the best in Melbourne so far.
then watched 7 pounds.... a really sad movie. didn't expect it to be this sad. but it's really touching.
then shopping at Coles
then Sam let me drive back to city :D hope my driving wasn't too bad. well, minus the tram 'ding-ing' at me outside europa, and the very close right turn into queensberry st, and the hump i missed, still ok ba hor... Sam and Kelv? :P

then after leaving the groceries at home, went out for dinner with YeeFei at OldTown @ Chinatown...















then home....
shower....
replying fb walls...
now blogging...
and it's 11.58pm now!!!! :S
i think this is the longest time i spent on typing up a blog entry, and with the most photos posted :)

conclusion:
had a great great bday weekend.
even better than my 18th and 21st bday!!!
thanks guys!! :)

This is my first 'proper' bday with my CTG friends,
my 2nd bday with my biomed frens,
my first one with Canny, and
my first one with YF in Melb.

and i just had my first proper xmas in melb and the first new year countdown in melb.

liang jing ru's new EP brought me to this tw drama series

and just found out that it's also the soundtrack for another chinese movie!



eh and this song is also from that same movie



then sam told me he sang that first song too

was browsing through a stranger's class photos on facebook coz a few of my friends were tagged in there. and then think think....
hmm.... i didn't seem to have a proper class photo since after primary 3 (dont remember seeing my own class photo from P4-6. i was in a diffr school). the only 'class photo' i can think of was one we took at the end of the sports day in form 5, but everyone was in our 'class t-shirt'.
then i went to look through my photo album, i have one single photo album with me here, printed hard copies of photos from trinity and some before trinity with my high school mates and a few were taken during my holiday in msia after trinity before first year uni.
and i found out there're a few 'class photos' there from high school but none were the 'formal' sitting/standing properly ones which were taken by a photographer. the class photos i hv were like from the effort initiated by our own classmates, taking in school with everyone 'gathered' around our 2 teachers, some squatting, some sitting on the fence. one other was taken at a teacher's farewell. nothing formal or proper and tend to miss out parts of somebody's face.
so erm... i dont think i remember all of my teacher's face, not to say their names lar.

只有家人可以理所当然

Happy New Year!!!!

spent my first 'new year day' in melbourne today.
for the past, i would be in msia at this time of the year. usually sleeping when then rest of the world is doing the countdown. i never been to any countdown celebration, whether it's for the new year or xmas or national day. well, the only 'countdown' i've done was for chinese new year lor. haha. will be at penang, waiting for the clock to strike, then all the fireworks that i can watch from grandma's place.
eventhough i spent my new year eve with my fren, we didn't hv the countdown bit. i think i was singing (we went karaoke) when i put up my hp to my frens which says 00:00 and that's it... "welcome 2009"!! no fireworks, no countdown. but all the wishes to each other.
hmm.... will it be too early to say it now that i want to countdown to 2010 in sydney? :D they have one of the best fireworks at the syd harbour bridge every year. and fireworks hv been my all-time fav.

still remember wat i wrote as my new year's resolution 2008.
dont think i've met all of them last year (yea.. 08' is 'last year' already) but ppl usually dont finish up wat they aim for right? :P
hvn't been thinking abt my new resolution for 2009.
dont think i want to have any of those since everyting is unpredictable.
i guess the only thing i want for 2009 is to learn to put up with things.. unpredictable ones especially.
nothing is perfect. anything is possible. so should learn to live with any changes in our lives. sometimes it's good if we can 'correct' those imperfections but if it already happened, mayb i should try to 'get used' to it? nothing is for ever.

Happy 2009 everyone!!
and i do appreciate the time u spent here. :)
*hugs*

1/4 life crisis

not sure whether this is wat i call 'quarter life crisis', or it's just another time of 'lost' in life

wasn't thinking abt anything when mum is here in melb, only think of where to bring them to eat and stuff.
then suddenly, 3 'bad things' happen in a row (well 1 is expected and 1 sort of unexpected) in 4 days.
now i'm thinking wat do i actually want.

went to a friend's phd graduation today then dinner. then catch up with some old friends after dinner.
and now i'm thinking wat am i doing in my life. wat do i really want to achieve.
during undergrad, nothing much to worry coz i keep pushing it back until i graduate.
so wat actually do i want??!! after phd, then???
and before getting my phd, in that 2, 3 years to come, does that mean my life will be the same like now until then?! i dont want!!!!!
life is short! seriously!! and unpredictable!!!
after seeing what happened recently to some ppl around me.
:( i'm so lost ):

Hate December 08'

Mum and grandma left for home late last nite.
Hate sending ppl off at the airport, coz usually I’ll cry. Including sending my bro to syd last time for the first time. And if I’m the one who’s leaving, I’ll also cry, except if I’m going elsewhere for holiday coz I’ll come back again quite soon.
Last nite, saw mum’s eyes were wet. That was the 2nd time I saw her like that at airport. The other time was beginning this year, when bro leaving to come back to aus from his holiday in msia. Does that means she’s been like that everytime I left kl to come back to aus?? or it's just for my bro

Hving my family here… is good but frustrating.
Good coz they’re my family wat.
And I hv company, bring them around, bring them eat nice food, buy them stuff that they want from here.
Frustrating coz I’m not used to how they deal with certain things like household chores.
And when I finally get myself adjusted, they’re leaving. Which means it takes weeks for me to adjust ?!?!?!?! :S
feels really stupid abt that myself coz those are things that I shouldn’t really care of and should just let them do watever since I can just revert everything back once they leave. But it took me awhile to ‘learn’ to tahan and shut my eyes and don’t care.

There’s another thing that I’m ‘遗憾' abt is not playing Rolie for my mum eventhough she asked me a few times already. Even at home, I tend to play/practice my piano when noone else is at home. Dunno why … I just feel uncomfortable to play when my family is around whereas I’m totally fine if my frens are around. :S and also I don’t hv the good mood to play Rolie with all these frustration around me.
____________________

My 2nd supervisor was just diagnosed for pancreatic cancer
Heard that it’s usually terminal. A fren’s grandfather had it and passed away 5 months after that.
______________________

Grace is still leaving. But might come back in few months? years? time.

tell me tell me.... Am I a control freak????!!!!

1) I dont like ppl sitting on my bed unless they're wearing clothes which have 'no contacts' with the 'outside world' eg clean/fresh ones from the washing. i dont wear my pyjamas to sit on my own dining chair and i only recently 'allow' myself to wear my pyjamas on my own couch sometimes.
2) I have a cloth (pillow case) on my computer chair for 'clean bums' and i'll remove the cloth if anyone else wants to sit on that chair. i myself dont sit on the chair at all if i still hv my pants from outside
3) I dont step on my toilet mats if i'm wearing my bedroom slippers.
4) I'm very anal abt ppl drying their hands with the cloth for drying cleaned dishes.

5) I dont like to share filtered pipette tips with other ppl unless i see them close the lid once they take the tip from the box.
6) I don't 100% trust most other ppl's experiment results especially when those results matter to my experiment/project.

7) I'm annoyed when ppl don't leave things back like how they find it. whether it's a glue/scissors in the office, or like turning off my printer after using. i'm perfectly fine with ppl using those things but just put them back pleeeease!!
8) I'm annoyed when mum put anything other than teaspoons (or any cutlery of that size) in the middle partition of my cutlery drainer which is meant for smaller sized cutlery.

9) I dont like last minute change of plans unless i'm expecting it to happen.
10) I also dont like having last minute plans unless i'm bored or have no other things to do. even plans that doesn't involve me but only ppl around me.
eg1 last minute saying dropping my grandma at my place and then when she is here only i was told that they coming to pick her up at 11pm. Not that i dont like hving grandma over, it's just... hullo... my place is not a 24hr on-call baby sitter place... at least let me know earlier can?!
eg2 already plan with mum and aunt to bring them to the vic mart nite market then when i happily reached home from lab at 5.15 (very rare nowadays for me to reach home before 6pm ok!!), found that aunt and xxyy are still out in the city dunno wat time they coming back, they dont hv hp for me to contact with and dunno wat time is zz coming to pick up xxyy and grandma. then ended up my grandma doesn't want to go (well, also it's not very convenient for her to go coz will get too crowded and we hv to walk there from my place, i can't drive) so someone has to stay at home with her. and coz i'm already annoyed with all those 'unexpected circumstances', i chose to stay home and have instant noodles for dinner.

11)... can't think of one at the moment

actually, I sound like a clean-freak too
but hey, if u come to my place, u'll know i'm not as clean/tidy as a clean-freak. so... mayb i'm more of a control freak?! :S

We can choose who to be our friends
but too bad we can't choose our relatives

yeay!! Grace is staying after she graduate. well to be exact, she's coming back again next year :)

gosh! i'm damn bored here!! arrghhhhh
dont like the feeling of going home from lab to my lonely apartment then hv to think of wat to eat for me and myself.
dont like the feeling of wanting to go out but noone to go out with and dunno where to go and what to do. especially on a nice sunny saturday when i 难得 not going to the lab (coz going tmr instead :S)!
some weekends, bro comes back, but i dont like to hang out with him, well rather, i dont like him!!! i dont like talking to him nowadays. coz i'm really annoyed and not happy with him as my brother. all those annoyance (is there such a word?) building up gradually for months.
really not looking forward to him moving back to melb permanently and live with me in the same apartment unit! dont know how long i can stand him for.
and if things are still like this after i graduate, i seriously need to consider moving to somewhere else, different country mayb. just like how i told my dad, i'm still single, can move anywhere easily.
s'pore is still on my list, but i still not sure abt the job opportunity there.
m'sia is definitely out of my list, not only short-term wise. not that i hate msia so much, but just that i can't see myself hving a job that i like over there.
other than that, UK mayb? or US?
well all in all, meaning that i need to build my network gradually during my phd. ppl usually do that through their collaborators overseas, or during conferences. but then, i'm not good in socialising, with the angmos especially :S
or apply for fellowships to go overseas to work for few years after graduate.
yea i know i'm only in my first year, but i really dunno wat to do with my degree or my life (and forget abt the degree?) after i graduate.

a girl from my lab, got her phd few months ago, got engaged also few months ago, hv been in our lab for the past 5 or 6 years since her undergrad (as a 'lab experience student program'), she's decided to leave the lab at the end of this yr, for a change ba? she doesnt' know where to work yet, but will definitely be in melb.
another girl in my lab, started doing her phd 1 month before me, just got offered a bonded place in the graduate med school in melb uni. she's still considering to take it or not. but i think it's very likely tht she'll take the offer.
those 2 ppl are the only ones whom i like hving lunch or tea breaks with. and now they're leaving!!!! *sob sob* moving onto the next stage of their life. of course that's good for them.
but i'll be left there with 2 less friends :(

and Grace is leaving in mid dec!!! going back to msia for good!!!! :( :( :(
so there, another close friend leaving. well, actually she's my first close friend who's leaving melb for good :(

...i really need more (new) friends...

called waipo and home just now,
didn't call them for weekssssss already.

with waipo, i hv the mood to talk to her anytime. but with my parents... especially to my mum, sometimes i'm inpatient :(
just now after talking to my waipo, decided to call home coz feel like talking to them. this is bad, shouldn't be like this, they are my parents wei!!! my big bro calls home far more often than i do. usually when my mum starts asking me how's the weather here, i'll be frowning already :( :( :(
and today, the first thing she asked me was how's the economy in australia. well i seriously dunno how to answer that, other than 'grocery price has gone up'. i dont know wat's the employment/unemployment rate etc but yea i wasn't annoyed or anything lar.
i finally ask dad where do they want to go for holiday next yr. he sounded really happy but at the end he said i should save up my money. then i insisted that should spend a bit while saving up. actually is that i really dunno wat will happen to me/them the next second, so should at least enjoy a bit while we can. sounds very pessimistic hor... but that's the truth!!
waipo also said i should save my money, well i din tell her tht i want to bring my parents for holiday lar. she started by asking whether my scholarship is enough for my living, then she went on saying hv to save, for future like buy house over here, she expects me to stay in melb (long-term wise) and she thinks i'm a person who spends a lot of money :(

nov will be a busy month for me, with my cousin's wedding, waipo and all the uncles and aunts are coming, and just now heard that there will be a 'proper' dinner for waipo's bday. she's turning 87 in nov, the day after my cousin's wedding. hopefully my cells (for some of u, that's my 'pets' at work) behave

I think i'm very stressed now.

previously, uni exam time, honours thesis writing time were all stressful but i can see when are they going to end.
but now, overloaded by lab work, 5-days a week is not enough anymore coz my big experiment worked! not knowing when's the endpoint coz it's a long expmt that goes for months depending how well the cells grow, that's more stressful. i can see cells once i close my eyes, well at least they look healthy
been hving weird and stressful dreams for 3 consecutive days already.

just woke up from one where i was in a puzzle hunting+solving 'game', like a treasure hunt where u hv to go all around to find answers to the questions given. funny thing is, my teammate was Jean (yea... sam's fren). funny coz i wasn't close to her and wat is she doing in my dream?! :P
so the whole answer hunting game was set in a jungle, like in Narnia. with some wooden huts and little rooms scattered around for us to get in and find answers. at first we really suck and dont see any other teams around us. like we're lost, dunno where to go. suddenly some weird 'lady' (human-like but can swim/fly really fast) came after us so we ran coz thought she's evil. but turned out she gave us an answer to one of the questions :S
i also met my senior (JoonWin >.<) who is another participant(?) in a 'stop' where there were a few rooms next to each other, he told us to go into each of them and there's an answer in each room.
also met Erin, who is a nice lady in my lab. always there to help me when i have problems with tissue culture (my 'pets' lar), and also good in baking yummy stuff for us. so she helped us with another question, i dont think she's another participant.
then went across this slope on the hill, where there's a blind-folded horse running up and down by itself on the other side of the fence, a guy was at the side guarding. next thing i saw is the question sheet in my hands, saying something like 'why is the fake horse running aimlessly?' so i looked at the horse again and went 'oh... it's actually a fake one' and answer i gave was 'coz it's blind-folded' :S
opposite to that fake horse hill, is another slope (we were standing between those two slopes), not as steep as the previous one, with 2 (huge) dinasours there running around. my question was something abt fossil. there're some wooden huts at the lower end of the slope. i ran towards those huts, passing through the dinasour area, one dinasour was running towards me, last thing i saw was its feet (which is way bigger than my body) over my head and i heard someone (presumable is Jean?) screaming (duno wat she screamed also) ...... then i woke up

oh and before the puzzle hunting part, i was indoor received a call from someone from the C&T department in CTG! i asked wat is C&T and she told me the full name which i've forgotten now but basically is related to lighting operation. she told me she's stressed abt the show tonite. i remember that it's a phone call but somehow i can see her face :S is not someone i knew. i remember telling her not to be scared, just be 醒目 (alert) during the show and react accordingly coz you wont know wat 'emergency' will happen, i went on abt how many productions i've done, all diffr, even same production every show could be different.
then somehow i see myself in that puzzle game liao.


day before yday in my dream, i screwed Stacey (a research assitant in my lab who juz took 1.5 days leave for thurs and fri)'s PCR. i saw myself in a lab, near the PCR machines, holding her 2 pcr tubes, 1 of them is 'crunched', kept apologizing to her, her face seriously frowning and angry. it went on for quite awhile (dunno how long lar, hard to estimate in a dream), she said she needs to insert them into a BAC (basically is a technique/experiment that she's not doing in our lab)
i said i'll repeat the pcr for her, and then her face turned better.


can't remember wat exactly is in my dream yesterday, only remember that i woke up feeling so relieved that it's not true

feeling summery

yesterday really reminds me of the days i had end of last yr, when i was writing my hons thesis, anticipating my holiday.
coz of the weather, the summery weather :)
yday was really like summer

then today, when i was tramming back from work, can feel the air-conditioning in the tram, just like how i can feel it during summer time.
not bcoz i'm wearing shorts, but i think i can also feel it on my face :P
_______________________

few days ago (or last week?) was talking to a friend abt how old i'll become when i finish phd.
i should be 27 at max.
hopefully i can get it done before turning 27

really want to finish it quick,
so that wai po can come to my graduation. she's turning 84 this yr, and she always wants to see me graduate, wants to come to my graduation. she didn't come for my last 2 (yes i had TWO already!) for some sort-of-valid reasons. so i really want to finish quick so that she can come.

and also want to finish quick so taht i can start earning some decent money! :P well yea, science wont make big money. but that's wat i can see myself in, i mean in research, at least for now. and strange (yes i'll call it strange) enough that more and more i can see myself working in s'pore! was a bit reluctant to work in s'pore all the while, but dunno why, recently.
so yea... earn more money so that i can sort of enjoy life, well of course have to keep working also lar. the stipend i'm getting now is enough for me to live on, but i dont want to spend my life just living life, i want to enjoy life, i want to travel. the world is so big out there! can't be spending my whole life on this small corner of the world.

and who knows how long i'll be alive for?
*choy choy choy*

Next holiday?

I've been thinking and planning carefully for my next precious holiday.
bro has been asking me when am i going back coz he (and his gf?) wants to 'follow me' over for holiday.
CNY next year is 26 jan. so either i go back in jan for my bday (not the main point lar) + cny, then come back to do my confirmation.
[dunno if i mentioned before... confirmation is a hurdle requirement for all phd students, well at least for science lar, by the end of the first year. it includes a 20 mins or so seminar in front of a panel of 5? and a few thousand? words introduction of ur project. heard that a phd student before the confirmation is called phd candidate, after confirmation only formally become a phd student, well noone cares abt those terms of course... too troublesome :P]
or i'll go back after the confirmation, which is the option that i'm leaning towards all the while,
but i dont want to just go back to msia for like 2 weeks then come back again. i want to travel to somewhere else, with my parents. yea... i want to be the one paying for the airfare and accomodation. too ambitious huh :$

i'm considering bringing them to hk, or tw. i wont have enough money to go to europe. then the States leh.... accomodation can be easily solved coz can stay at uncle's place, but i think it'll take too long to get the visa approved, too troublesome.
s'pore... too near... only need to drive down and then knock on my aunt's door :S
mayb china is also a good choice.... i've never been, dont think my parents been also.
if not going as a tour (meaning with tourguides and have all the fuss taken care of), it has to be somewhere that i've been to (eg HK) or at least somewhere i'm confident that i can bring them around.
tw leh.... i have a few classmates still studying there, but then i dont want to end up not hving time (to play) with my friends or neglecting my parents.

wat abt SE asia... Thailand? Vietnam? hmm.... those places usually go by our own right, as in without tourguide, or need to go there and find local guide... sounds mafan. that was my experience from my Cambodia trip, which is worth going, no doubt, but need to know ppl (who have been there) so that can arrange good local guides. i dont want to put too much effort on planning the every details of the trip and also Viet trip is really tiring (according to my aunt, she been there before).

if that's really happening, should be around april-june next year.

then after the trip, i will be totally broke and have to start saving money all over again.
i actually dont have my own savings (in aus) at all before i start getting money from my phd scholarship.

today i wish 婆婆 happy bday
she asked me if i'm back for cny next yr

:(