Although my calendar shows that it's 31 december, and that tomorrow will be the start of a new year, it really feels more like a weekend than anything else. nevertheless, i have to accept that the year is ending, and write my usual end-of-year post.

to start off, the theme for this year came to me more easily than last year's. to me, 2013 represents "growing up". transitioning into "work" (well, pseudo-work, since i'm technically still considered a student), and doing various more "grown up" things. by that, i mean things like maintaining my own car, going overseas without family, and just generally being more independent, i guess. of course, i'm not deluded enough to imagine that i know it all already; there's always room to grow and improve. so perhaps the theme should be "growing up - the beginning"? whatever works i guess.

looking back, quite a lot of things happened this year! the biggest accomplishment for me would have to be graduating with second-upper honours. as i'm sure you would have heard before, it took 3 semesters to pull a CAP 3.74 back to above-4 levels. that's something i'm actually quite proud about, and something that i could not have accomplished if i had continued to be the loner that i was in year 1. in between pulling my CAP, i decided to take japanese, and not only did that help in CAP-pulling, i got somewhat good at it, to the point where i can do basic translations between singaporeans and japanese. that's another thing i'm quite happy about, and it's motivated me to continue. but well, there's a bit of difficulty now, so we'll see how that works out.

judo-wise, i'm not sure whether i've made progress. kata-wise, there's definitely been an improvement. not only was there improvement on what i already knew, i learnt new things as well. ok, granted that i started the year not knowing much, so improving now is still easy. i'm happy that my partner and i have learnt the form for ju no kata, and i've learnt the last 2 sets of nage no kata. representing singapore at the asian kata championships (and subsequently joining the national team) was a good experience, too. at least i've been exposed to competition, so the experience will come in useful, whenever the the next competition is. and getting first aid and NCAP certification was nice too; nearly forgot to mention that. but at the same time, my breakfalls are deproving, almost to the point where i'm losing confidence in my breakfalling. the way i see it, there could be 2 possible reasons. (1) my skill really deteriorated, and/or (2) the standard for breakfalls got pushed higher for kata, and my current skills are no longer adequate. unfortunately, there seems to be no other way to improve than by regular breakfalling practice, which is painful. but success can't come easy all the time, right?

at east coast, i thought about what were the most memorable events (both good and bad) of this year. the good was obvious - grad trip(s). somehow, it was quite astonishing (at least for me) to see the architecture in different countries, and experience weather that is not the singapore default of hot and humid. if possible, i think that i would like to do a lot more travelling in future. thankfully for my wallet, i'm not (yet?) like some of my travel-holic friends, who want to set foot on every single country on earth before they die. i think for me, japan will be good enough, with occasional trips to australia, the surrounding south-east asian countries, and maybe the US or UK. somehow, i don't foresee myself going to more exotic places like south america or africa. anyway, travel plans start with a kodokan training visit next year. everything's tentative for now, but i really hope something materializes.

the most memorable bad thing this year is something i'm still having difficulty understanding. i really don't know how a 180° change in attitude can happen in just a month and a bit. the worst bit is that we were getting along so well before! it almost makes me wonder if there were external influences, or if the niceness was fake. well, it's a learning experience, albeit a painful one. my lesson is not to invest too much into an interpersonal relationship. it's hard, because i think that's how i'm programmed. but that being the case, that's an area i have to work on.

money-wise, i'm in decent shape. had a huge dent put into my savings by the grad trips, and i'm grateful that the dent is almost patched by now. i think now that i'm earning more money than from giving tuition, i've been a bit too liberal in spending. but well, i guess to a certain extent, money is earned to be spent. i think the main point of savings is to guard against rainy-day scenarios. my rainy day scenario would be my scholarship getting terminated. if that were to happen, i'd probably have enough to last...half a year or so? that's after the lifestyle changes to save money (eg. less or no driving). so i guess i'm covered. still, it never hurt to save a little more. think i'll set a higher target next year.

as for relationships, both romantic and interpersonal, this year has been pretty average. no development on the romantic end, which is...not unexpected, yet strangely disappointing. there has been a failed friendship and a failed more-than-a-friendship, so i'm not entirely happy/satisfied with that. i think this (has been, and still) is my most significant area for improvement. at the same time, i've become better friends with people in the lab, the national team (and the judo community in general), and mended a broken friendship, so that's good. i'm also grateful for the multiple opportunities to interact with japanese people, be they judo instructors, people at the hostels, the random pharmacist lady, and not forgetting the japanese teachers in NUS.

wrapping things up, i think that despite some regrets, 2013 has to be the best year i've had in recent memory. looking back at my new year's resolutions, there are still some things which i've not been able to do, so that's a slight bummer. nevertheless, i'd give myself a performance rating of about 8/10 for how things went this year. not too bad, if i do say so myself. with about half an hour of 2013 left, i think i'll go play some marvel online. as always, i'll see you all tomorrow for the new year's post.

-random thought of the day: Hopefully 2014 will be good for me as well-

Did a lot of stuff in the past 6 days, plus a few other things happened. so, there's quite a bit to catch you up on. the last post was this past monday, so let's start with the day after that, aka. this past tuesday, aka. christmas eve, aka. results day. to be honest, i kind of forgot it was results day until i was woken up by the SMS. my results for this semester are as follows:

CM5268: B+
not too bad...considering that my minimum requirement is a B average, i can live with this. and i think i got a fair bit of the final wrong too, especially the synthesis section (the shame!) and predicting the liquid crystal phases of some compounds. nevertheless, i'm pretty happy with this result.

CM5211: A
so my seniors were right. organometallics is a must-take, especially if you're a singaporean student. not that the lecturer is biased or anything...i guess we click better since he's singaporean too. as i mentioned before, i enjoyed the final (weird as that sounds), so getting an A is quite satisfying.

semester CAP: 4.50
overall CAP: 4.50

what i wouldn't give to trade my undergrad CAP for this semester's. it's actually a win-win situation. my current CAP would get me first-class honours, and my undergrad CAP would still place me well above the CAP 3.5 requirement. if only it was that easy. well, at least i started off kind of well...and given that there are only 4 more compulsory modules to go (only 3 of which are graded), i think i'm reasonably safe. after all, i can't possibly drop THAT far, right? don't answer that; let's not jinx it.

speaking of compulsory modules, or modules in general, i emailed my professor about taking japanese. the only reason i didn't speak with him face-to-face is because he went back to hong kong for christmas, and he's only due back this coming thursday. anyway, reading his reply made me feel a little annoyed, even though i have no right to be. you see, my professor has mastered the art of telling you no without actually saying "no". weird, right? his reply was along the line of "since your research progress is extremely far behind schedule, i recommend that you minimize taking any modules outside the minimum requirement". of course, he still left it somewhat open by saying that the choice was mine. it's...tricky, to say the least. anyone with even a tiny bit of EQ would read between the lines and drop the whole idea. but being the stubborn earth dragon that i am, i am tempted to just try. of course, as what he's fond of saying, i am ultimately responsible for my own actions. don't know if my judgement's a little clouded, but i really want to just go for it.

at the same time, i know that if i do go for it, something somewhere else has got to give. first thing that comes to mind: my laziness. i think i really have to remind myself more often that i'm getting paid for what i do in the lab. so, my professor expecting results from me is not only perfectly reasonable, but justified. so please, future me when you read this, work harder! the next thing that could possibly go is judo. considering that i don't plan to go back to SJI/CJC regularly any more, and that national training clashes with group meeting while NUS training overlaps with some classes i may take, i think it may just be a matter of time. but even if i become not part of the national team, that doesn't mean i still can't train on my own, right? although the incentive to train will be significantly reduced. well, i think we'll see where the fates take me regarding this.

my partner and i trained on christmas eve too! no better way to spend a holiday, right? SJC training was cancelled, so we had the whole dojo to ourselves. the peace and quiet made it easier to focus, and as a result, i think we were more productive. we did all 3 kata, even alternating roles for 2 of them. at present, i feel more comfortable in the tori role for nage no kata and in the uke role for the other 2. of course the eventual goal is to be comfortable in both roles for all 3 kata, which is difficult, but achievable. also, it seems that my partner went to analyze the video of our asian kata championships performance, and he somehow managed to figure out what we lost points for. we tried out the textbook version, and it felt odd, yet good. i guess the odd bit comes from our lack of practice with this version. in time, i think we can make it look good. the bugger is that there are quite a lot of details to remember, and goodness knows if i've forgotten some of them already. have to check my retention during our next training session. in addition, we did uchikomi sets too. 20 sets of 10, 10 sets of 20, and 10 sets of 10, totalling 500 in 20 minutes for both of us. that's 500 in 10 minutes for each of us, or 50 per minute, or almost 1 per second. not bad, considering i even took small breathers in between. i think my partner is good for me...i really need someone to push me to do such crazy stuff, because i sure as hell won't do it on my own.

we finished up, and then went to upper thomson for a late dinner...partially because i was hungry, and also because i wanted to use the petrol vouchers i got from the SPC which is now undergoing renovation. my partner was nice enough to buy me dinner...maybe because it was christmas eve? actually no. he does buy me meals now and then. maybe it's my good karma coming back to me. i guess he was feeling nice, plus the meal wasn't too expensive. i figured that the least i could do was to buy drinks. one ok-ish bowl of bak chor mee later, he went home, and i went to the SPC. turns out i misread the voucher. it's actually $2 off for every $50 spent, so i didn't get to spam vouchers like i'd thought i could. one other thing worth mentioning here is that i met this really nice pump attendant. he was the one who corrected my misconception, and even suggested that i just pump $50 worth of petrol to maximize my savings. it was really nice talking to him, and it just goes to show that good service isn't necessarily confined to atas places. in fact, receiving such good service at SPC, not an atas place at all, impressed me even more. should go back there to use up the remaining vouchers. incidentally, i wonder if these vouchers are a plot to make more money while improving customer relations? that's just the cynic in me talking. i can't really be bothered to do the calculations to figure it out.

after that, i headed home, showered, and was in bed when my friend SMSed me, asking me to go over to his place for a drinking session. seems that his other plans were wrecked, so there were a few of them at his place. so i went down. it WAS christmas eve, after all. he asked me to get some mixers and (more) alcohol. i tried both the 24-hour giant and 7-11, but both places had this funny rule: no alcohol sales past midnight. did you know that rule existed? i sure didn't. so i bought some mixers and went over. the only alcohol available was whiskey, so i just went for it. got nice and buzzed while watching austin powers, and eventually fell asleep at around 5:00am. woke up 6 hours later, not hung over. go me. since we didn't have plans for christmas, we decided to have lunch at J8, then go home to rest or whatever, then meet back again for dinner at itacho sushi at ion orchard. suffice to say that going to a popular mall on a public holiday wasn't our smartest choice. we ended up waiting for about 45 minutes for a seat. in fact, i think we spent about the same time waiting as we did eating. still, it was good. i liked their sushi, though it's hell of an expensive! nevertheless, you can clearly see that it's been handmade. thankfully, i didn't have sushi in japan (sacrilege, i know), so i didn't have the gold standard to compare it against. in a way, i guess that's good, because i think that if i had had sushi in japan, the meal would have left me ranging from disappointed to upset. and when i do have sushi in japan next year (plans are to go for the annual kata seminar sometime in the middle of the year), the experience will be so much better.

thursday ad friday were normal-ish...back in the la for more synthesis. there's some progress...i have to do one more column before going on to the next step, while another reaction is happily (i hope) refluxing away as i'm typing this. it would suck to go back and find out all the solvent escaped or something. once again, let's not jinx it. friday evening was a departure from normal routine though. i left lab early to meet one of the CJC kids who's now in NUS. we had fun catching up while walking around nex, where i discovered a beard papa. i am SO going back at least once a week from now on. unfortunately, i couldn't get my christmas pie from don's...they were all sold out. looks like i'll make it a new year pie then.

nothing much happened yesterday, except that i got some faulty iphone cables exchanged. i bought them off ebay, and the seller is located in singapore. we were supposed to meet on friday, but he was sick, so we pushed it to saturday. he even brought one of those portable power packs so we could test the cables! after the exchange, i now have 3 more working cables. the plan is 1 for the student room, 1 for the car, and 1 for beside my bed. the original cable is going to be used to connect the phone to the computer. yes...think that'll work out nicely. today was a bit more active...went to the dog shelter, then to east coast park. correct me if i'm wrong, but i think the coastline receded. you know those masses of rock that you can sit on? i distinctly remember the sand going right up to the sitting surface back in 2011. and the progression used to be grass, fine white sand, wet sand, sea. now it's just grass, wet sand, sea. maybe they took the sand for land reclamation? anyway, this year's east coast walk wasn't really helpful, because i have already thought at great length about most of the questions i was asking myself. oh. by the way, the macdonalds there is a rip-off. unless there has been a price revamp in the last 3 weeks or so, their prices are inflated! maybe it's because east coast park is a popular destination, and that makes the rental higher. who knows?

in the coming week, things look to be pretty slack. it IS new year week, after all, and the nice NUS president declared tuesday a university holiday. i still have to go back tomorrow to check on my reaction and do the separation, and maybe set another reaction for the new year break. lunch with the chem kids is scheduled on tuesday...which reminds me. i have to change my rehab date. not sure if there'll be any more drinking on tuesday night/wednesday morning. correction. not sure if there'll be drinking with my friends. i do intend on opening the nice bottle of sake which i bought from japan earlier this year. if all goes well, i may be able to take thursday off, before everything goes back to normal on friday. as usual, look out for the year-end and new year posts; that's one tradition i have managed to successfully uphold so far.

-random thought of the day: TA-ing for year 1s on Fridays next semester!-

Traditionally, i'm the most emo in december, probably because of the weather and/or the festive spirit. this year is no different, though since i'm busier with lab work, i've got less time to be emo. it's both good and bad, good because i'm not emo as much, bad because i'm not slacking. but well, at least the work is something productive. i'm actually quite happy that one of my compounds matched the literature NMR! FINALLY. hope that the synthesis which i will repeat (for the third time, but with some modifications to the procedure) tomorrow will go smoothly.

the weekend was nice and slack, which i really appreciated. group meeting and a small dinner get-together aside, the rest of it was purely me-time. somehow, the late nights in lab this past week messed up my sleep cycle, and it's not completely fixed yet despite the copious rest i got. no worries though, the coming 2 weeks are supposed to be slack, so i guess i'll have time to slowly adjust it back.

despite it being christmas in less than 48 hours, i still don't feel very festive. part of it is because i've been occupied with work, the other part is because growing up, i didn't really celebrate christmas, and i still don't really celebrate it now. just not a habit, i guess. like last year, i'm not sending out christmas cards this year. i figured that it's better to meet up with people instead. makes it more personal, i guess. besides, even if i magically write all my cards and send them by tomorrow, they'll only reach after christmas...so not much point.

i realized that planning my physio today was kind of not-smart, because it made me quite reluctant to go to school to set up reactions. so, i took an unplanned day off, and will be setting up the reactions tomorrow. wonder if it'll be ok leaving one reaction over christmas? i might end up going back to top up solvent or something. or maybe i'll just start with like 250 or 500mL of solvent; that should last the almost-2 days that i'll be out of lab. jumping back to my physio, other than the ACL being a little loose, the nice physiotherapist couldn't find anything wrong with my knee. so, after a few other tests and observations, she determined that my hips were the problem. there's this thing called the lower kinetic chain, where force is transferred from the hips to the knees and finally to the feet. so it seems that my knee problems originate at the hip. i find that to be a bit...weird/ironic, because my favourite techniques are hip throws. anyways, the nice rehab guy taught me some stretches and exercises which i have to do faithfully. as a reminder to myself, they include hip flexor stretches, hamstring stretches, glute stretches, squats, one-legged squats, balance exercises, and lunges. after the stretches, the therapist asked me to walk around and see if i felt any different. i felt that i could exert more power with my legs after the stretch, which he rephrased as my muscles feeling freer. quite accurate! still, i have to keep up the stretches and exercises on my own, otherwise any progress today will be wasted.

just as my rehab session was ending, the whole of my right shoe detached from the sole. that necessitated an urgent trip to queensway to get replacements, at the same time destroying my plans to go back to school after physio. actually, that's not entirely true. my plans to go back to school were destroyed when i found out that i had forgotten to bring my transponder, which were still in my jeans pocket. genius me strikes again. after shopping around, i finally settled on a pair of asics (yes, again) shoes. my previous ones were light grey with light orange highlights. this new pair is darker grey with really bright reddish-orange. best part is, they're 4E! when i bought my last pair of sports shoes, the salesperson told me that 2E was for wide feet. today, i found out that there's 4E for even wider feet. that's the maximum you can go, no 6E or 8E. still, these new shoes fit slightly better. only problem is that the laces appear to be too short. think i'll have to shop around for longer laces. wonder where i can go for that? while i was at queensway, i checked the other shop to see if my work shoes had come in or not. unfortunately, they hadn't, and i have to wait another 3 weeks or so. considering that this and next weeks are christmas and new year weeks respectively, i think time will pass a little faster.

think i'll end off here. will probably schedule an east coast trip sometime over the next few days (or even the weekend), and meet with friends in the spaces between. other than that, i don't think that there's anything major scheduled for the rest of the year. things should go relatively smoothly for the last 8 or so days of 2013.

-random thought of the day: The charging cables I bought online don't work!-

Got out of lab early for the first time this week today. by "early", i mean "while the sun's up"...what little of the sun there was through the rain, at any rate. figured i deserved a break after staying past 12:00am for the past 2 days. knowing that the AYE would be jammed, i took buona vista road home. to my surprise, it was jammed as well. the first thing i saw up ahead was a column of smoke, which is not normal. apparently, a taxi caught fire on the left lane. of all the luck! and thinking that braddell road would be jammed, i took bishan road instead. based on what i saw as i turned off, the road leading to braddell and upper thomson roads was clear. damn it. still, i got home in decent time, so i guess i shouldn't complain.

this past week has been kind of stressful. there was the SCDF check, which turned out ok. turns out that the check was more for the corridors than the labs. it's good though...less trouble for us. was also busy in lab with the synthesis of 2 catalysts. and it was my week for solvent disposal duty. speaking of which, of all the luck, solvent disposal got postponed from yesterday to today. that threw off plans for my physio appointment at the sports council, since i had to come in early to label the waste. so that's rescheduled for next monday afternoon. no big deal.

since i got off early today, i went to run a few errands. there were 3 things i wanted to do: get a case for my phone, go to the library, and do some grocery shopping. managed only 2 of those, but 2 out of 3 isn't bad, right? in order to find a suitable case, i walked all over j8. started at the apple shop, then went to this phone accessories shop, followed by popular, some more random shops, mini-challenger, best denki, and finally the shop where i found what i wanted. i was actually looking for something that covered the ring/silent switch and volume buttons. in the end, a nice staff at best denki told me that there was a new shop which just opened at level 2, and that it was an authorized otterbox dealer. so i went there, and got an otterbox preserver. it was a nice surprise to find it in singapore so quickly, since it was just released in the US sometime last week. admittedly, it isn't cheap, but i think it's worth it. besides, it's an added incentive for me not to change phones so quickly. i just installed it, and it feels pretty good. although it's supposed to be waterproof up to 2m for 30 minutes, i don't think i'll be testing out that feature very frequently (or even at all).

grocery shopping was less eventful...just got some stuff to cook and sweets/snacks to bring to lab. also saw this bazaar thing at level 2. as tempted as i am to head there, i think my wallet might protest. at any rate, i think that i won't be doing much more shopping for the rest of the year.

since it's getting late, and i have group meeting tomorrow morning, i'll just leave some blogging prompts. actually, i think i won't, mainly because nothing comes to mind right now. the blogging mood seems to have vanished. well...i think i'll blog again tomorrow, since it's my first free saturday in...2 months? either that or sunday. we'll see.

-random thought of the day: Christmas is coming.-

'Boys never grow up. they just get older, and their toys get more expensive". although it's somewhat paraphrased from what i remember reading somewhere some time ago, i do think it's accurate. my biggest toy currently is the car, and i my newest toy is a shiny iphone 5S. i think that'll be my christmas present to myself. despite saying that i would be ok with no christmas presents for 5 years after getting the car, i'm still free to give myself presents, right?

thankfully, my precision planning went off smoothly yesterday. got to the sports council early (mental note: park at macdonalds next time; the first hour's free), and the consultation with the doctor was rather short, too. she had me do a few movements, and then moved my legs about to check for problems in the knee. she didn't find anything odd, which is a huge relief. problem is that that actually raises more questions. if there's nothing amiss, why does my knee pop now and then when it shouldn't be doing that at all? very weird. anyways, the doctor said that some muscles were tight, and based on her observation when asking me to squat, others were weak. so i'm scheduled for a few sessions of physiotherapy and rehab, and we'll have another review after that. i think she's reluctant to send me for an MRI right away, as they're expensive. well, not like i'm in urgent need of one right now.

when going to the sports council, i took the usual route that i would take to the SJF (they're within 1km of each other). as i was coming off the CTE and going onto PIE (changi), i got charged $4 for ERP. is it just me, or is that a bit the very ridiculous!? consider this: it was already past 8:45am, so i'd expect the morning traffic to be dying down. in fact, the road was pretty empty (then again, it's also probably due to the ERP), and remained empty even after i merged onto the main PIE. what's more, i was headed towards the east! normally, traffic is heavy in that direction only in the evenings. west-bound traffic is usually worse in the mornings. really don't understand. think i should reschedule my appointment to a later time, or better yet, find an alternate way with no ERP. let's see...assuming i get 10km per litre of petrol, and every litre costs $2, any detour shorter than 20km means i save money.

since i got off early from the sports council, i parked the car at home and took a train down to nex instead. the total train fare came up to about $1.70, which is about 30 cents less than what i'd pay for the 2 hours of parking i would have used. plus the petrol costs, i actually saved money! i got there at 10:30am or so, and there were already like 4 people in queue. by the time the shop opened, the queue was up to...about 35 people? anyway, i got through the queue pretty fast, but ended up waiting for about 50 minutes before my number was called. you'd think that for a place with 20 counters, they'd process customers more quickly, right? for some odd reason though, despite the masses of people waiting, only about 6 counters were operational. not efficient at all. and what's worse is that even after your number is called, they take SO LONG to process your request! i must have spent another 45 minutes waiting while the nice lady inspected my phone, filled in the trade-in paperwork, erased my phone, got the new phone, filled in the recontracting paperwork, and finally got everything in order.

i ended up getting a 32gb space grey iphone 5s. so far, it's fun to mess with, and transferring my data over via itunes was relatively painless...except that i did something wrongly and lost all my previous whatsapp conversations, amounting to some 74 000+ messages. it's a pity, but as my partner said when he found out, "it's not bad to clear out your whatsapp by accident; there are 90% redundant messages that you won't miss". i don't know, though...i think that most of my whatsapp messages have good memories attached to them. but well, my friends are still around, so i can always make new good memories and attach them to future conversations. the one thing that's throwing me off, however, is that everyone's name appears in a different colour in my group chats! i've been so used to seeing certain friends' names in certain colours that i sometimes recognize the sender of the messages by colour before name. now i have to double check to make sure i'm not saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. well, nothing some adaptation won't fix. and that extends to the new iOS and general layout of the phone, too. also, i have to get a case for the phone, plus a few accessories, like extra charging cables.

lab work is picking up, too. now that i got admonished for slacking off, i have to put in more effort. got one synthesis done (pending product NMR), and another is underway. both are looking good right now, though i don't have any solid proof that they've worked. if all goes well, i can move to step 2 for one reaction, and characterize the other product. i guess this is what the seniors meant when they said "2 reactions a day". it's actually not hard...just have to plan well. also, i'm starting to occupy more space in the fume hood as my senior moves out. i'd say that it's about 80:20 now, with me having less space. it should reach 0:100 in about 3 weeks if all goes according to plan.

SCDF check is the next-biggest arrow. somehow, i get the feeling that i'll be in lab until late tomorrow, either doing experiments or preparing for the check. probably both. just hope that everything goes smoothly. i know one thing that isn't going smoothly...more pieces of rubber are detaching from the soles of my sports shoes. and as for the shoes themselves, wearing them for long hours every day is causing them to smell. how come i didn't encounter this problem with my work shoes? anyway, it looks like i'll have to get some charcoal for them, and for the car as well. been meaning to do that for a while now, actually, but haven't found the time. well, sometime in the coming week, probably.

-random thought of the day: Why am I sleeping late again?-

Things don't always go your (my) way, and today's a timely reminder of that. i'd thought that i'd planned it quite well...go to the dog shelter in the afternoon, meet my friend for dinner, and get the new phone after that. the first 2 things went smoothly, but the starhub shop was out of stock. i didn't really foresee this, because i went to the bishan shop yesterday evening, and some models were still available. but as my friend pointed out, that could be because the bishan branch doesn't do trade-ins, whereas nex does. the nice guy at nex told me that new stock would be coming in tomorrow, and that the queue started around 10:30am, half an hour before the shop opened. i wanted to go down around 10:45am to wait (considering it's a weekday and the expected crowd should be less). thing is, blind me forgot that i'm scheduled for a medical at the sports council tomorrow, at 9:30am. i have no idea what the medical entails, except that some tests are going to be done. this means i can't judge the time well enough to plan my sequence of activities tomorrow, which kind of sucks.

right now, there are 3 main activities tomorrow. the medical, getting the phone, and going to school. no matter how i look at it, the medical has to come first due to the timing. the phone should be next, because stocks are limited and may run out before i can get my hands on one. next variable is where? i could go back to nex, which would take more time. vivocity is a viable option, but i'm unfamiliar with the route (and the parking is expensive). right now, i'm thinking of reaching the sports council at 9:00am. with some luck, they might have a slot open. assuming everything there takes an hour, i should be able to make it to nex by 10:30am, 10:45am latest. by the time i get the phone (assuming they haven't sold out) and ironed out the contract details and stuff, it should be...11:30am? then i can get to school by 12:15pm or so and prepare to work late. sounds good on paper, but i'm anticipating several wrenches in the works...one of them being morning traffic.

actually, a more elegant solution would be to just leave getting the phone until tuesday. but there's kind of a male pride issue here. you know the joke where a guy will only make one trip to carry his groceries from his car to his house, no matter how much stuff he bought? it's similar here, but with errands to run instead. my mindset on this is "why do over 2 days what i can do in 1?" if only i applied it to my lab work too, i wouldn't have gotten told off during group meeting for having too little content in my presentation. but i digress. think i'll give it a go, and see if i can pull off another precision planning sequence.

about group meeting, there isn't really much else to say; that bit in the above paragraph speaks for itself. i guess that if i was really looking for excuses, i could blame the exams or the various lab inspections. while those things did slow my research down somewhat, the main problem is that i'm not utilizing my time well enough. i mean, i spend pretty long hours in the lab, but don't have much stuff to show for it. and that sucks. part of it probably has also been due to me going for judo training, whether it's SJI/CJC, NUS, or national. at this point in time, i think i might have to stay away from SJI/CJC for a while, both to catch up on my research, and because of some interpersonal issues that developed a while ago. as usual, they'll survive without me.

getting scolded by my professor must have affected me somewhat, because my partner noticed some differences during training. even though we trained on friday as well, he said that i felt heavier on saturday. can't be that i gained significant weight in a day, right? don't answer that. on my part, i did notice that i was less patient (very bad for kata), and more prone to feelings of frustration (again, very bad). it's not a big issue though...i think that this will clear up naturally once i've redeemed myself for research. and since there's no national training until next year, i really have to spend more time in the lab.

the last thing i'd like to think out loud about for today is the new phone. why am i even getting a new phone in the first place? ...because i can, i guess. there's no real reason for me to; my 4S still works well (except for the odd app or two crashing now and then). a part of it is probably also due to the novelty factor (fingerprint sensor) and better hardware. probably the most significant reason is because i should be free to decide how to spend the money that i've earned. but anyway, assuming that the purchase is (however weakly) justified, i'm still hung up about which model to get. colour-wise, i'm pretty fixed on black (or space grey, as they call it)...the issue is the memory. my 4S is 16gb, and i've used about 8gb out of the 13 usable gb after formatting, OS and whatnot. so it seems that i have excess space already. but i have the feeling that i may use more apps with the 5S. besides, more space never hurt, right? unless you're my wallet, that is. well...i think i'll leave this to fate. i'll just get whatever's in stock. if both are in stock, i'll get the 32gb one. let's see how it goes.

-random thought of the day: Must go to Aljuined another day for one more minor errand.-

My experiments are done for today, but i'm staying in school for a bit longer to avoid the horrible evening traffic. and since i'm sort of free, i figured that i'd blog now and free up some time for later. maybe i might even sleep earlier tonight!

got my glasses problem solved yesterday. i found online that the optician that i wanted to visit opens at 12:00pm. i got there at 12:05pm, but found that the place was still closed. waited for about 10 minutes before i decided that it wasn't worth risking being late for the PFM check, so i went to another place to get it done. the nice lady there told me that they couldn't just replace the arm, and i had to get an entire new frame. although the lenses aren't a perfect fit, i actually like the new frame better! it's black and plastic as well, but looks a bit more...sporty, i guess, like sunglasses but with slightly downward-curving arms. not bad for $70 (she gave me a $10 discount...i'm not entirely sure why, but i'm not complaining).

as an added benefit, i got to see how the lenses are installed into half-rim frames. it's actually quite easy. you just need a flexible, thin strip of something to get the supporting string in and out of the groove in the lens. the lady used ribbon, i used a strip of the wrapping from my dayplus bread when i took the lenses out to clean the edges. i'm still getting used to the new frames. the thing is, the design is such that the arms cause a triangle to appear at the corner of each eye, and the triangles keep registering in my peripheral vision. think they'll fade into the background after a while, like the circles of refracted/reflected light in my lenses did. in fact, i can't even see them now, no matter how i try.

i was really quite puzzled as to why the regular shop didn't open. maybe the owner's habit is to have lunch, then open the shop. but in that case, why list the opening time as 12:00pm? it's frustrating when you need to see him urgently. and it's not like i don't want to give him business...he just wasn't around to take it. on the other hand, maybe it's the culture there. i noticed that a fair few shops still weren't open even just before i left.

the best part of this whole thing is that i was on a tight schedule for the lab inspection, and then when i got to school, they told me my lab didn't need to be inspected. so basically, it was a rush for nothing. i'm more relieved than annoyed actually. no inspection means that the people won't find fault with my lab. and even though it was quite a rush, i still got everything that i needed to do done, so it's ok, more or less.

while at bukit timah plaza, i was contemplating making a spare pair of glasses. not right then, because i was rushing, but sometime in the future. but now that i got my glasses fixed, a spare seems so...unnecessary. i guess it's one of those things that you never really know how much you need until you need it, if that makes any sense. i guess i'll go down sometime when i'm free.

just when i was starting to think that uncle murphy had forgotten me, he sent me a very timely reminder that i'm still in his thoughts. remember how i have to wait for A MONTH (yes, i'm still unhappy) until my new shoes arrive, and how i'm using my sports shoes temporarily? well, my sports shoes are starting to fall apart. it's nothing serious yet, just the bits of rubber on the sole coming unstuck and falling off. i've lost 2 pieces already, and another 2 pieces are loose. looks like i'm going to have to spend even more money at queensway. i guess it's about time, too. i bought these shoes in 2008 or so, when a hole developed in my previous pair. getting 5 years of use (more like 4, because i was in work shoes more often than not though honours year) is not bad already.

these next few days are shaping up to be quite rushed. all of a sudden, i found out that i'm scheduled to present for group meeting this saturday, so i'm trying to push out a few more results so i don't look like a complete slacker. there are 2 more sessions of national training before we break for the SEA games and year-end period, and i want to get my shiny iphone 5S. oddly, starhub has stopped displaying the stock availability on their website, so i think i'll go down to nex and try my luck this weekend. have to fit a haircut in there sometime too.things should work out in the end.

-random thought of the day: Buy hacks!-

A mix of good and bad things have happened today, so much so that i'm confused about how to feel overall. if you ask me now, it's more negative, but that could also be because the bad things happened later in the day (ie. closer to now), so i'm feeling their effects more strongly. to help myself make a fairer judgement, i'll list the good and bad stuff in separate lists, then evaluate my day based on that.

let's start with the good:
woke up early despite mis-setting my alarm (minor miracle).
had generally good traffic everywhere i went today.
managed to talk to 2 juniors i quite like.
passed the lab commissioning with only minor issues.
made it to national training on time despite a detour.
tried out the tori role of ju no kata.
despite my glasses' arm breaking, they can somehow remain on my face.

now for the bad:
PFM check was postponed.
season parking most likely won't go through.
went to queensway for nothing.
got a minor abrasion on my finger.
my glasses' left arm broke off.

seems to me like although there's more good stuff, the magnitude of the bad stuff is larger, thus resulting in net negative feelings. since i'm pretty happy with the good stuff, i see no need to vent about them. hence, i'll be talking mainly about the bad stuff, and more importantly, why they're so bad.

the S5 lab was actually scheduled for 2 checks today, PFM and commissioning. out of the two, PFM is more major. i would rather have got that over with first. actually, i feel less upset that it was postponed, and more because we were only told on the day itself, after the scheduled time. i was in school at 8:50am just to prepare for it! and if you know anything about me, you'd know how rare of an occurrence that is. ok, to be fair, i'd have to be in school early today for commissioning anyway, but i just think those OSHE people have too little regard for our time and effort. that in turn can be interpreted as them having too little respect for us. but well...as long as they don't delay again, i won't make more noise about it.

about staff season parking...we originally had a sort-of plan, but something came along and messed it up. depending on how things go, i may end up having to ballot for season parking for all 8 semesters of graduate studies. the silver lining here is that i can use the science season carpark during holidays. besides, what are the odds that i don't get season parking for ALL 8 semesters? let's not jinx it; i don't want to tempt fate. the thing that upset me here was the horrible attitude of the staff. for one, they didn't get my name right. given that my name is tricky, i didn't blame them initially. but when they got it wrong even after i'd introduced myself, that was too much for me. next, when something went wrong, they seemed to assume that it was my fault. for instance, one of the staff was surprised that i was brought to speak with her. her first reaction - "you don't have an appointment, right?" in actual fact, i had called the previous day to set it up. so my impression of the staff is that they are are good at tai chi, but cannot provide any solutions. as tempted as i am to say that they're worthless, i have to admit from previous experience that they handle their routine work well, and since this situation is a little extraordinary, they may not know how to react. but at least the issue was explained to me satisfactorily...we'll see how the situation develops.

i am actually most angry about the queensway thing. remember the soles of my work shoes split some time ago? i brought them to get replaced before exams, and the shop owner didn't have stock then. he told me that he would order a new shipment, with improved soles, and said that it would arrive in mid-december, which is around now. earlier today, i called him to check on the shipment, and he told me that it had arrived. so, i went down to queensway before national training to pick the shoes up. i was extremely angry when the boss told me that they only had shoes in another design, and not the one i specifically requested for. do you know why i was (am, actually) so angry? (1) because i called in advance, and received (false) confirmation. if i had shown up unannounced, i'd only blame myself if the shoes weren't in. (2) because i'm suffering for someone else's mistake. not having the new shoes means i have to wear my sports shoes for another month. although they provide excellent support, they're not something i want to wear every single day. not to mention sports shoes make me drop a notch on the formalness scale. i hope my professor doesn't ask me to pick up any of his guests, or attend any fairly formal occasions. worse, i have to go down YET AGAIN in january, and waste even more money on parking and petrol. (3) the boss offered me weak alternatives, and wasn't apologetic at all. the alternatives he gave me were: get a new pair of the old design (which would most likely split again), get another design (nothing else caught my eye), or wait another month until mid-january. ANOTHER MONTH!! i understand that running your own business isn't easy, but surely your customers' requests are too important for you to mess up, right? i do empathize with him...he told me that this replacement pair would cost more due to the different sole. initially, if i had managed to get the (correct) replacement today, i was planning on topping up the difference, just to reduce his loss in replacing the shoes for me. but now, no. one month of having to make do with second-best costs more to me than the extra $10 i was willing to fork out. and not once did he say "sorry". the closest he came was "there's nothing i can do", which is not an acceptable alternative to me.

funny story how my glasses broke actually, i remember putting them right on top of my clothes before training. when i finished training and went to change, i found them rolled in my clothes. this makes me think that someone broke it (hopefully by accident and not on purpose), and tried to make the evidence less obvious. well, since i didn't see it happen, i can't be sure. as much as i hate to suspect any of the national athletes and SJC members, i am sure that my glasses wouldn't spontaneously break like that. well, at least the lenses are intact, so i can still see (and drive). that's definitely something to be thankful for. the plan now is to go to bukit timah plaza tomorrow to get the arm replaced. hopefully there's some stock. if not, both arms can be replaced at a go; i don't mind paying slightly extra if there's really no choice. if really necessary, the whole frame may have to be changed...i'm ok with that as long as it can be done quickly. worst-case scenario would be having to grind the lenses to fit in a new frame, or get a new pair of glasses altogether. the shop opens at around 12:00pm and as luck would have it, guess when the PFM check was postponed to? tomorrow afternoon, 2pm. i just hope that whatever fix is applied, it can be applied fast. makes me think that i should get a spare pair of glasses made, too.

you know what? i think i should go sleep this off. maybe the fatigue makes me feel bad stuff more strongly. the one good thing about the check being in the afternoon is that i don't have to reach school early like i did today. just hope that my lucky stars align, and everything goes smoothly.

-random thought of the day: Must catch up on lab work.-

For most university students, holidays start when exams end. sadly, that is not the case for graduate research students. for us, the phrase "what holiday?" best describes the situation. my last exam (organometallics) was yesterday, and i already stayed in lab until 10:00pm today. no choice though...stupid safety checks. as for organometallics, i think the exam went pretty well! everything was doable (i'd go as far as to say enjoyable), though i got stuck at one part. thankfully, another of those rare brilliant brainwaves hit me, and i recognized that the question was asking us to compare grubb's and schrock's metathesis catalysts. and i finished with about 10 minutes to spare. thought i made excellent time until i flipped to the last page and saw a question which i'd forgotten to answer. managed to finish it in those 10 minutes, so that's something else to be grateful about. as much as i don't really like to predict high grades in case of disappointment, i'm thinking that an A-something is possible. hopefully it comes true. i think i might need it to balance out the damage from organic materials.

as scientists, we test our hypotheses with experiments, then adjust our conclusions accordingly. this extends to situations outside the lab as well. i tested the nitrogen tyre thing by checking my tyre pressure. surprisingly, they were still almost-full after about 2 weeks! maybe there is something else to the nitrogen that i'm not getting. either that or the new tyres keep the gas in better. whatever the case, my tyres remained inflated. the odd thing though, is that my fuel consumption still sucks. can't remember the figures offhand, but i think i'll be lucky to hit 400km on this tank. so that's bugging me a little. why is my consumption sucking on full tyres? my guess is that it's something to do with the just-after-servicing engine performance. hopefully things go back to normal after the next refuelling.

i just checked, and my phone contract is up. that means i can change to a new phone! still having a small internal debate between iphone 5s and samsung S4. after the horrible omnia experience with samsung, i think i'm more inclined to the iphone. i was just looking at iphone prices, too. the 16gb one is going for $540 or so, while the 32gb one is going for %670. trading in my phone gives me a $200 discount, which means i'll be paying about $340 and $470 respectively. that also means that the 32gb phone after discount will be cheaper than the 16gb phone before discount. the question then is, since it seems like such a good deal, should i go for the 32gb phone? or should i just save more money and go for the 16gb? i think it would be more practical to go for more savings. well...i think i'll go down to wherever still has stock either this weekend or sometime next week.

now that my exams are over, i really have to focus on research. that, and intensive judo training. it's actually more for the SEA games athletes, but we have to support them as well. think i should be pretty occupied these few days at least, if not weeks.

-random thought of the day: Being responsible for lab safety sucks.-

Nothing of significant interest happened over the past 4 days, except maybe for national training. could have been due to the weather, but i felt really lethargic and i tired out much faster than normal. hopefully it's a one-off thing, and everything goes back to normal this coming saturday.

today, though, was quite annoying. i tried to go down to the carpark people's office to get staff season parking done, but due to some complications, i now have to talk to the OED people. not that big of an issue...just quite inconvenient. i won't complain too much if i get the parking though. just hope everything goes smoothly on thursday. the more annoying thing is that while leaving the carpark, i decided to take a shortcut, and ended up bua-ing the kerb. as a result, there's now ANOTHER BIG SCRATCH MARK on the left-hand side of the front bumper, quite close to the first scratch mark. i could have screamed, but my friend was in the car at that time, so i kept the scream mental. this scratch mark is a little worse than the previous one i think, because it's deeper (i think it may be a scratch-dent hybrid). just by feel and sight, i can actually tell that the top 2 layers got taken off, and i'm looking at at least the third layer of paint/rustproofing. and if that wasn't bad enough, the same panel popped out again. so, it's off to ubi i go tomorrow to get it stuck back into place. hopefully they can squeeze me in sometime in the late morning, or early afternoon at worst. mental note: wake up early to make appointment.

while monitoring my fuel consumption, i was just thinking about one of the value-added services i got from the servicing. they filled my tyres with nitrogen, and claimed that it would deflate at a slower rate as compared to air. i didn't think too much about this initially, until i saw that my fuel gauge dropped 3 pixels after only 50km or so. given that i used the same fuel and drive like how i normally do, i don't see how this can be attributed to anything other than tyre pressure. upon further thought, i realized that pure nitrogen would make the tyre deflate faster than if air was used. you see, nitrogen has a molecular mass of 28. air is slightly heavier (about 29) due the the inclusion of oxygen. diffusion rate is about proportional to molecular mass (or the square root of...my physical chem sucks) so, pure nitrogen would diffuse out of the tyre faster than air, which has oxygen (molecular mass = 32). if they'd wanted to make tyres stay inflated longer, they should use a heavier gas...argon comes to mind, as does carbon dioxide as a less expensive alternative. maybe that's a way to recycle exhaust emissions! the other possibility i can think of was that nitrogen does keep tyres inflated for longer, but they underinflated my tyres. less likely, since i trust their professionalism. well, i'll go get my tyres pumped tomorrow, before heading to the ubi service centre.

since i've had a bit more free time than normal recently, i've been doing some thinking about my modules for next semester. call me stupid, but i'm thinking of doing something quite risky...which is taking 4 modules on top of research work. let me explain first though. the 4 modules i have in mind are asymmetric catalysis, one other chem module, graduate seminar, and japanese 5. the last 2 modules are (or should be, at least) S/U-able. i know graduate seminar is, not sure about japanese 5. i've sent an email to the lecturer to ask. asymmetric catalysis is being taught by a nice japanese professor, so i think it should be fun. besides, my lab group specializes in asymmetric synthesis, so that module should come in useful. as for the last module, i'm debating between bioanalytical, analytical techniques, or contemporary materials. although bioanalytical is the combination of 2 of my nightmares, there's no final exam. i'm disadvantaged for analytical techniques (and bioanalytical too, actually) since i didn't take any level 4 analytical modules. contemporary materials is scary, since i've taken organic materials this semester and didn't really take to it well. looks like i'm screwed whichever way i turn. will, i guess i'll see what modules my friends are taking. maybe that'll help my decision process.

i called the shoe shop, and the boss told me that the new shipment would probably arrive next week. that's kind of not-good news, because that means i'll have to use my sports shoes for this thursday and friday at least. main reason i don't like wearing them to lab is because they squeak on my lab floor. and i've been wearing slippers to school recently, just to avoid that. in my defence, it IS exam period, and i should be studying.

as usual, there's some stuff which i want to blog about, but can't recall right now. mildly frustrating, but well, it shouldn't be that important if i can't remember it. the forecast for the near future (at least until wednesday) is study, study, study. i realized that (1) there's actually quite a lot of content for organometallics, and (2) i'm not as on top of all of the content as i'd like to believe. so, i'm going to have to work a little harder for organometallics as compared to materials. nothing i can't handle, i think.

-random thought of the day: Wow.-

Got a few major arrows out of the way recently, so i'm feeling pretty good...except for some slight physical discomfort, which i'll come to later.

the first major arrow was refereeing on saturday. we started around 4:30pm, and ended at around 11:00pm. all for no pay, too. but well, the learning process is the most valuable takeaway. i asked the new referee director about my refereeing, and he seems satisfied enough. his exact feedback was that my judgement is usually accurate, but that i need to hold my gestures for longer, and keep my annoyance in check when the competitors don't follow instructions. taking into account some feedback i received a while ago, i tried to be more decisive in giving scores. hope that it was noticed by people who brought that to my attention. there were only 7 referees spread over 2 contest areas for most of that time, so it was quite draining. i don't think i got more than 10 minutes' total break time. definitely a good experience, but not one i'm keen on repeating anytime soon.

the other aspect of this refereeing session was that we tested out the newest revisions to the IJF rules. i'm not too supportive of the changes, but i'm in no position to make or incite any radical objections. the reason i don't really like the new rules is because it seems to me that there'll be a lot more shido (penalties) being given, leading to more frustration from players and coaches. ultimately, the referees suffer the most. but on the other hand, the referees are more protected in a way, since scores awarded will be more accurate. i guess we'll find out how things work at the next competition, which is likely to be national schools.

fast forward through a couple of days of (rather half-hearted) studying, and we come to today. the organic materials exam is over, and i thought it was decently manageable. most of the first half was applying concepts, but the second half was literally copying from notes. i know my answers aren't perfect (especially for the synthesis section; the irony), but i think i'll do decently enough...B to B+, optimistically A-? so now i'm left with organometallics, which is exactly a week later. still not too worried at the moment, because i think that i'm more or less on top of most of the content. just have to read through the notes and clarify a few uncertain points...like electron counting.

also earlier today, i went to TTSH to get medical clearance for the national athlete carding program. the entire process wasn't too different from the NUS pre-admission checkup, so that was good. saw the doctor and told him about my knee issues. as a result, i'm scheduled for a scan (MRI i think) at sports council. bugger is i don't know when, but i'm sure i can fit my schedule around it. before scheduling the scan, the doctor also did a few tests, which i think were for checking if my ligaments were in working condition. my test results seem normal, so this supports the theory that it might be a meniscus injury. that, and my ligaments may be a little loose...i don't know. guess we'll see what the MRI reveals. the one difference between this checkup and the NUS one is that here, they drew my blood. don't know if you know, but i am really not good with syringes and needles. i mean, using them for transferring reagents and solvents is fine and all, but not when a needle is going to go into me. still cant believe i donated blood in J1, and again in army. anyway, the wound still hurts a little. should be fine after a good night's sleep. another thing i noticed was that my head began to hurt after the checkup. it feels like somebody is pulling at my brain, near the lower back of my head. it happens most frequently when i look down, and is accompanied the a very very slight bit of nausea. thankfully i drove home without incident. not sure whether it's due to the blood-drawing (unlikely, they only took 3mL), or might it be the X-rays? or maybe i'm tired from waking up so early. well, as with the needle wound, i think it should clear up after some sleep.

looking forward, i see 2 major arrows over the horizon. annoying thing is, both deal with lab safety. the more immediate issue is the S5 lab commissioning. i really had no idea new labs (even those we took over from another professor) had to be commissioned. the subsequent thing is the SCDF check. this one is bigger because violations can be penalized by fines and/or court charges. have to make sure everything is in good shape. but i'll worry about all that after exam period. for now, i think i'll try to sleep off the pain in both my arm and my head. still contemplating whether to take tomorrow off or not. maybe i'll just go top up petrol, settle season parking and call it a day after that. see how.

-random thought of the day: I want my shoes!-

Of all the skills i've picked up so far in my life, hiding my surprise came in the most useful when collecting the car yesterday. i was prepared to pay $640 since i knew that the tyres had to be changed. earlier, the servicing guy had called me to tell me that my battery was at around 30% charge. so, i decided to change that too, since i wasn't sure if it could last until my next servicing, and i didn't want to make another trip specially just to change the battery. so that came up to another $140 or so, bringing the projected total up to $780. my poker face skill came into play when i saw the total bill for $943. that's more expensive than one month's instalment! the additional $200 or so arose because they charged me for the consumables (engine oil, engine cleaner) used in the process, and also because they replaced the worn-out rubber on my windshield wipers. there was also a servicing charge or GST of some sort. well, at least i know that i should be paying much less next time (everything else constant), since i don't expect my tyres to wear out for at least another 2 years, or better yet, if they could last me until the end of the car's COE. thank goodness my parents didn't give in and agree to get another car when i was an undergrad. i don't think there would have been any way for me to keep up with loan and maintenance payments on my limited (not to mention unpredictable) tuition income. i'd had to have worked so much harder, and my results would probably have suffered as a result.

besides that, the servicing people also notified me of another problem. it seems that my front dampener/shock absorber (i'm not good with car technical terms) was worn out, and air somehow got into the hydraulics when they hoisted the car up or something to that effect. so the service guy told me that i might experience increased bumpiness while driving for the next few weeks. i felt it a little while driving home, but that might have been my imagination after learning about it. i actually don't think that the drive home was anything out of the ordinary. somehow, no good analogy comes to mind at the moment to describe the feeling of feeling something that might be imagined. i guess i'll ask the friends who have sat in the car before for a comparison the next time we go out together.

in general, it was a very good servicing experience. convenient, excellent customer service, and staff who gave intelligent, well-thought out advice and suggestions. the only thing i was - not unhappy, more of irritated - about was that the staff adjusted my mirrors. i guess they had to, since they needed the visibility while driving the car around...and i understand that perfectly, so i'm fine with that. the irritating bit to me was that they didn't adjust the mirrors back. it took me some messing around to set the mirrors back to something that sort of worked for me, though i still don't really feel entirely comfortable with the current set-up. think i'll do some more tweaking as i drive over the next few days.

reading week is over, and my first exam is in 5 days from now. went through the materials notes today, and tried the practice questions. seem to me that the toughest part will be the synthesis section (if there is one). the rest can more or less be explained according to the notes. don't think the lecturers will test anything outside of the notes. so, i just have to know where in the notes the relevant explanations are...and that's something which i regrettably don't know that well at the moment. this means i'll just hole up in the library on sunday to get better acquainted with my notes. since it's an open-book exam, i think i may do up some summary sheets...2 or 3 per day sounds manageable actually. i may even shoot for 4 and get it done by monday. with all the studying i have to do, looks like i can't go down to the dog shelter this sunday.

over the years, i've watched several TVB dramas about various occupations, like firemen, policemen, and teachers to name a few. in particular, 2 of them left an impression on me, and they were about pilots and doctors. i guess it's because deep down, i secretly would like to be one of those. maybe not doctor, since i know how tough my friends in medicine have it. that's not saying pilots have it easy...i guess the glamour of being a pilot makes it attractive. not to mention the frequent travel opportunities. but i know that it's just a dream. a very nice dream which i sometimes wish i could live out, but a dream nonetheless. i think it's a bit too late to start that career path at 25.

tomorrow should be a pretty busy day. my ideal schedule would be to go for CJC/SJI training, shower there, then go to the SJF for the referee seminar and practical. not sure if things will work out exactly like that (most likely the difference will be whether or not i go for training). well, we'll see i guess. other than that, in the near future, i may want to see the materials professor for clarification on the synthesis, and i have a medical checkup on the morning of exam day. thank goodness my paper is in the evening. 7:00pm, to be precise. haven't had a late paper in a while. in fact, i don't think i've had a late paper in 1 to 2 years...not that i remember, anyway. also have to go down to ventus with my friend to apply for the staff season parking personally, as he had problems logging into the system. not forgetting a pretty big safety check, plus commissioning of the S5 lab. but those can wait until after exams.

-random thought of the day: Nights are becoming warmer again.-

Don't know about the rest of you, but every so often, i do things that make me question my intelligence. things like sending the car in for servicing and forgetting to take my house keys back with me, to quote a recent example. and this was after i reminded myself about it on the way to the servicing place, mind you. genius knows no bounds.

before national training yesterday, i went to queensway to get my shoes replaced. unfortunately, there wasn't much to choose from in terms of design. the boss only had high-cut designs, or more of the ones that i bought previously. i didn't want to get yet another pair of the same thing, since odds are that they'd split soon too. the next shipment of shoes (with a different sole) would be coming in around early december, which is in a couple of weeks from now. so, i decided that the best thing for me to do would be to wait. in the meantime, i'll be using my sports shoes for lab, and formal shoes for other occasions such as refereeing this saturday. thankfully, it's exam period, so i'm not expected to be in lab that much...at least i think i'm not. incidentally, the parking at queensway is ridiculous! $1.50 for the first hour or part thereof. should have stayed longer than the 20 minutes or so it took to get the stuff done, so that my parking would have been worthwhile. well, at least now i know for my next trip there.

national training went better than on saturday. my partner wanted to go down early, since he knew that the place would be crowded later on in the training session. good thing we did, too! managed to run through the form for all 3 kata in relative peace and quiet. we even switched tori and uke roles for 2 of the kata! i found that the quiet helped me tremendously in focusing. being fresh helped me to better reflect upon my performance, and to notice the little mistakes. still have a long way to go. SJC training was immediately after national training, so i hung around for a bit to watch. as a bonus, i got to help teach some new members. good for improving my coaching skills. sometimes i think it's good to go back to basics; remember what it's like for a beginner who may be afraid of falling, or someone who is still figuring out the body positioning for a basic technique. i think that helps me remain grounded and not set my expectations too high, even towards the more experienced kids. need more coaching experience, i think. yesterday showed me that i'm still not explaining some things well enough, and my technical knowledge needs a bit of updating.

as you may have gathered from the whole house key story, i sent the car for servicing today. the service centre was quite posh! anyway, since i made an appointment, there was barely any waiting time. in fact, i had just sat down in one of the pretty comfortable chairs when the guy approached me. it was quite simple, really...he just checked my mileage, tyres, and asked me if i wanted to highlight any issues. i told him about the various scratches and the oil seepage which the test report showed. even though this servicing is technically free, i'm still paying about $640, because my tyres are worn out. the nice service staff there told me that new tyres have a tread depth of 8mm. my tyres were at 1.6mm, or 20%, or just at the legal limit. so i figured might as well change them. assuming that the previous owners never changed tyres over the 125 000km or so for which they had the car, this will probably be my first and last tyre change while the car is in my possession. oddly, i'm experiencing some mild separation anxiety. i've parked the car overnight in school before, so i don't know why this is happening. well, good news is that they said it'd probably be ready before lunchtime tomorrow, so i can get it back in time for running all over the place this weekend.

the last 2 things i did today was to go to the bishan MRT ticket office, and borrow yet more books from the library. at the ticket office, i found out that unlike previously when my army EZ-link card expired, i could not do a direct transfer of the value in the expired card and put it into my new card. instead, i had to file a claim, wait for 10 working days or so, then the money would be refunded to me. apparently it's because of a new system. maybe the new system has other benefits at the staff end, but from my perspective, the old system is better. i also found out that there was $9 left in the card, so i decided to save the trouble and keep my old card. $9 isn't much, and i think i can forgo it. worst case is i'll go file a claim if i desperately need the money...though i hope i'll never reach the stage where getting $9 out of my old EZ-link card is of utmost importance.

for the next few days, i have to study. planning on trying the organic materials questions (with reference to the notes of course; it's an open-book exam) and watching the webcast for the organometallics lecture which i missed. not forgetting to annotate my materials notes, of course. that should keep me plenty busy until the weekend, i think, where judo will take over for a little. actually, the biggest problem isn't the modules' content. if i know me well enough (and i think i should), the biggest problem will be getting started.

-random thought of the day: Must sleep earlier.-

Where do i begin? so many things have happened, it's hard to decide which one to talk about first. i think the safest bet is to do it in semi-chronological order depending on the events, and i'll be starting with dinner and drinks with the chem kids on thursday.

i had thought that more people would be going from school as a group, but it turned out only a friend and i left together. the others either went directly from other places, or went home from school first before going down. at kent ridge MRT, i found out that my school EZ-link card had expired. my friend tells me our cards expired on 30 october, which shows how rarely i take public transport now. so i bought a new EZ-link card. they gave me a black one, which is think is nicer than the previous blue or red/orange/yellow ones. so now, what's left for me to do is register it online, and transfer the balance from my deactivated school card to the new card. i wonder if they'll allow me to forfeit the deposit and keep the old card?

so i wanted to transfer the value from my old card to the new card. to do that, i had to go to a ticket office, which not all stations have. fortunately for me, bishan MRT does have a ticket office, so i went down earlier tonight. i had assumed that they would open until 9:30pm or 10:00pm, so i left lab at 8:45pm and took a nice leisurely drive down, reaching at 9:45pm. it wouldn't have made a difference anyway, since they closed at 7:30pm. i'm just a little surprised at the early closing time. to make it even more ridiculous, they only open at 12:00pm, and have a 1-hour lunch break sometime in between. so that's like...6 hours and 30 minutes of work per day. i guess they chose those work hours based on the projected human traffic flow and all that. so, the plan is to go down tomorrow and see what i can do.

our meet-up was at the clarke quay/robertson quay area, where we had ippudo ramen for dinner. there were actual japanese staff there! and i saw more japanese people there in one evening than i've seen in other parts of singapore over the last 25 years combined (NUS and the japanese school excluded). makes me think that i should hang around there more to brush up on my japanese listening skills. the ramen itself was good, if a little overpriced. $22 or so for mixed-soup ramen (pork and fish) and a few garnishes. i'd expect to pay about 1200 to 1500 yen in japan. but well, considering it relative to other ramen places in singapore, i guess i can't complain too much. the ramen egg continues to surprise/fascinate me. even though i've read and tried a few recipes off the internet, i can't get the perfect combination of solid white and barely-set yolk. mine tend to be undercooked. guess the tricky thing is that there's no indicator to tell you when the egg is done, so everything is by feel (not literally; you'll get burned).

drinks afterwards was at wine connection. 1 bottle of red wine, 3 or 4 bottles of white wine (i lost count), and a cheese platter were split between the 9 of us. the wine was quite nice, and that i got to let loose a little in the presence of good company made it even better. after this wine trip, i think i can say with conviction that i generally prefer red wine to white. white wines tend to be a little too sharp/acidic for my liking. we then had supper at this prata place, before i caught a lift home. oh. i should mention that the reason i took the train down was so that i wouldn't have to drive while not-perfectly-sober. i left the car in school, and only drove it back the next day. wise decision on my part, i think.

since i only got home around 2:00am, and was mildly drunk, i ended up sleeping in and not going to lab on friday. thankfully there were no hangovers or stuff like that...i just felt really tired. the effects of drinking and the time taken for them to wear off seem to get worse and longer respectively as i get older. well, at least i know i don't have much potential to be a party animal. saturday was normal...group meeting followed by national training. the drive from school to SJF was quite frustrating due to a massive jam on the AYE. it was due to an accident, and the road was practically clear after the accident location. damned kaypoh drivers, holding up traffic. i wonder if they realize what big idiots they are. that, along with yet another jam outside the SJF (this time for some event or another...one lane was occupied by illegally-parked vehicles) caused me to misjudge a u-turn and mount the kerb. i've taken that u-turn at least 100 times, so i really think it was my mental state that caused the misjudgement. thankfully there was no major damage. if i was walking, i think i'd scratch a line across those parked cars as i walked. inconsiderate people. halfway through national training, i did a breakfall, and felt pain shoot upwards from my sole, at the outer edge of my right foot close to the heel. i've experienced this before, but from the middle of my foot as i got out of bed. for some reason, that area feels kind of tender now, and it hurts when i try to apply weight on it. walking with shoes isn't that bad though. well, we'll see how i feel at training tomorrow. worst case we can focus on other kata that don't involve me hitting my foot against the ground.

i suppose i should expand a bit more on national training. although we do kata, we still participate the warm-up and physical training. the coach plans training so that we do warm up, uchikomi and nagekomi before breaking off to practise kata. recently, the coach has started to do speed uchikomi, which leaves me tired out even before starting kata practice. it's tired to the point where i'm bent over, trying to regain my breath. and my partner tries to get me to continue, even though my arms feel weighted down and i'm practically drenched in sweat. i know that his intentions are good, and he wants me to improve, but for some reason, it frustrated me more than anything this past saturday. as much as i want to push myself beyond my comfort zone, i do know my absolute limits. and practising kata while exhausted does more harm than good, i think. so, i suggested that we take it easy, and shift the high-intensity training to other days. see if that works better tomorrow.

went down to the dog shelter to volunteer on sunday. my favourite dog was at the vet, so i missed seeing him. still, it was one of the more productive days. i left feeling quite accomplished/satisfied. and it seems that i'm starting to feel more at ease around the other volunteers. hope that it's mutual. by some weird coincidence, my friend's girlfriend (who is now my friend as well) started volunteering there a short time after i did. she read about it on the internet, it seems. and she just adopted a dog yesterday! i really wish i could adopt one, but i know it's not feasible until i get my own place, and have lots more free time every day. well, i can dream for now.

my first-ever reading week as a grad student just started today. considering i only have 2 well-spaced-out finals (next wednesday and the wednesday after), i'm not too worried yet. still have to watch the webcast of an organometallics lecture which i missed. and even though it's reading week, i have a fair few activities lined up. going to queensway tomorrow to get my shoes replaced again. backstory: the soles of the shoes i bought sometime in july split sometime in september. i got a replacement about a month ago, and those soles split too. makes me think there was a problem with the whole batch, or the design sucks. so, i'm going to ask for an alternative. i don't mind topping up the price difference, as long as i don't face this problem again. on wednesday, i plan to go for SJI/CJC training before sending the car in for servicing. which reminds me. i need to remove some valuables from the car. hopefully i don't need to come up with any additional expense. and more importantly, i hope there's no need for major repair, so i can get the car back soon. in between all that, i have to study for organic materials first, then organometallics. and group meeting is cancelled for the next 2 weeks, which makes me happy.

last thing. remember how half of my dual-screen set-up died some time back? i tried most things, like sending the monitor for repair/testing, reconnecting the cables, redownloading the drivers...all to no avail. i just downloaded the driver from windows update, and it started working again. really makes me wonder what the hell was going on. it worked fine with the old driver, so why did it suddenly die? well, i guess the important thing is that it's fixed. life is too short to wonder about every single anomaly.

-random thought of the day: Mildly worried regarding a recent development.-

Facing a bit of a crisis dilemma at the moment. for the record, yes, i know it's after 12:00am, and yes, it's still tuesday night as far as i'm concerned. so, about the dilemma. it's actually a simple question: should i go for CJC training tomorrow? here's the background information: training has shifted to 10:00am, which actually works better for me. it lasts for 3 hours, meaning that i'll get to school around 2:00pm, which is awkward, i guess. of course, there's the option of taking an off-day, so that's not a major issue. there's a seminar tomorrow from 11:00am to 12:00pm, which i'll miss out on if i go for training. but that's also not much of an issue, since my professor isn't hosting, nor is it directly related to our work.

by this line of logic, i should just go for training, right? and yet, i still have my reservations. now we're getting to the deeper part, i think. the main reason i'm disinclined to go for training is because i somehow feel like i'm not getting anything back. after all, nobody does things that don't benefit them in some way, right? in my case, i spend long hours in lab working towards my degree, which will set me up with better job opportunities, and hopefully, more money in future. going for national training helps me get in my exercise time, and prepares me for the kata component of grading, so my eventual payoff is fitness, and higher odds of promotion. volunteering at the dog shelter doesn't pay in terms of material/tangible gains, but i enjoy spending time with the dogs, and somehow, i think it's therapeutic to some extent.

previously, i looked forward to going back for training because i felt that there was somebody there who could benefit at least a little from my coaching experience, not to mention hanging out with the kids was quite fun. but recently, there's been some...friction (real or perceived), and that makes me wonder (again) if going back is worth it. at this point, i should clarify that nobody is forcing me to go back, and i do so willingly. so i can't really blame anyone. is there even blame to be assigned in the first place? oddly enough, right now, the touch-my-heart answer is yes, i would actually still want to go back tomorrow. maybe i'm still hoping for a change. i still can't figure it out. not that i'm spending too much time thinking about it; lab work keeps me plenty busy. but some stray thoughts will sneak in when i'm taking a break and spacing out. while i think the best course of action is to settle it, i don't see how that can be done without wrecking the friendship...whatever's left of it, anyway.

you know what? i think i'll just go to sleep, and see what time i wake up tomorrow. i'll make a decision from there. for all i know, i might not go anywhere tomorrow, and just spend the day with myself. who knows?

-random thought of the day: Need to put a towel and umbrella in the car.-

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*Short update on Thursday 14 November 2013, 12:26am*

so i woke up at 8:50am, which was plenty early to make either of the events. in the end, i went to school to listen to the seminar and subsequently spent the whole day in lab. my head tells me it was the right thing to do, but i still feel quite...odd. it's not guilt. the best description that comes to mind is a very weak version of regret. i don't know why, either. going by what i wrote yesterday, this is the correct course of action no matter how you look at it. so why do i not feel 100% good about my decision? on the bright side though, i did get a fair bit of lab work done, which will ultimately be good for me.

it was definitely not my day for driving. think i may have gotten busted for speeding slightly along farrer/adam roads (86 km/h in a 70km/h zone). sneaky traffic police person was hiding at one end of the overhead bridge. by the way, i don't speed for fun or to show off my engine (1.6L is nothing to show off anyway). i just drive according to the speed of the other cars on the road. just so happens that the other cars were going fast. but well, i'm thinking that if i'm suay enough to get caught, the penalty should be a fine of around $150 (probably less), and 3 demerits. though i can afford it, i'd really prefer not to waste unnecessary money. guess we'll see if anything pops up in the mail by this week.

the second driving-related bad thing was i got booked for parking in a reserved lot at the SRC carpark. to be fair, this was a bit of my fault, since there was a nice "reserved" signpost. in my defence though, it was the only lot available at that time. funny how though i'm a season holder, there are no reserved season parking lots for students. well, my season parking expires at the end of the month, and i plan to ask my friend (who's a staff member) to help me apply for staff season parking. that should save me a lot of trouble in the future.

have a dinner appointment with the chem kids tomorrow, so that's something to look forward to. other than that, things seem set to be pretty routine. even finals don't seem like such a big deal any more. still have to study though...i'd like to maintain (or even improve on) my undergrad CAP during grad studies.

-random thought of the day: Damned DNS server died again. Why did we switch to singtel again!?-

This post is being written from my student room, where i'm about to finish up another sunday in lab...just have to run a TLC and i'm going home. actually, "another sunday" is quite misleading...i only got to lab around 4:20pm, and didn't really do much work. just spent some time arranging stuff at my new space. about that...one of the phd students is leaving soon, and i'm set to take over his place when he goes. so, i arranged with him for me to move in a little earlier. by right, we're sharing the space now, but since his thesis has already been submitted, he's not doing that many experiments now. so it's effectively mine. feels good to have a permanent space in the lab again, and not having to run around looking for a spare stirrer or place to run a column. thing is, it's on the other side of the lab from my UROPS/honours workspace, so i have to get reoriented somewhat. don't foresee a major problem there, thankfully. there are a few major changes i'd like to make for my comfort, but they'll have to wait. it somehow doesn't seem right to move his things too much while he's still considered a member of our research group.

would you believe that this coming week is week 13? i feel like i barely learned anything this semester. that's not a good sign. have to read up for both of my modules. despite its content being heavier, i'm less worried for organic materials since it's open-book. organometallics seems easy enough, but i definitely have to brush up on electron-counting for transition metal complexes.

last saturday, i saw that starbucks was starting to sell christmas-themed drinks already. in particular, the peppermint frappuccino (with candy cane bits) caught my eye. so, i asked the nice manager lady (she was manning the register) to make one of those, but with dark mocha. i got my drink (which tasted great), enjoyed some pleasant small talk, and generally had a very positive service experience. yesterday, i decided to get another one of those things, so i went by the same starbucks. nice manager lady wasn't there, but i still placed my order anyway. i think the barista was new, because i got what tasted like a regular dark mocha frappuccino instead. no candy cane bits either! i asked her, and she said that was specially for the peppermint frappuccino, which i thought was odd, since i got candy cane bits last week.

actually, i didn't even notice the lack of peppermint flavour until i was halfway through the drink. not smart, i know. so, i just asked for my 90 cents back (that's how much the extra peppermint cost), and there wasn't much resistance. somehow that makes me think that she forgot the peppermint, and took the least troublesome way out. anyway, the whole point of this story is to illustrate that the service standard can vary greatly, even if the same place is patronized on different dates. i think i'll drop by starbucks once a week (after group meetings on saturday) for a peppermint DMF. just hope i see nice manager lady around more. incidentally, don't tell a chemist that you drink DMF, or at least don't do it without explaining the abbreviation. s/he will seriously worry for your safety and sanity otherwise.

things are looking up slightly for kata. my tori role for nage no kata has improved a bit. not quite leaps and bounds yet...maybe a small hop at best. still, any improvement at all is good news. figured out better escape attempts for 2 techniques in katame no kata, so i'd count that as minor improvement as well. most interestingly, i've more or less got the ju no kata sequence down too! it's only the uke role at the moment, but considering i was having trouble remembering the varios twists and turns as recently as 2 months ago, i think that this is a pretty big accomplishment already. once again, my target for the near future isn't to win competitions. i just want to become proficient in kata so i can handle whatever the examiners decide to test us on, whether it's 3 or 5 sets of nage no kata, or even if an additional kata is required.

i remember that when i was in secondary school, i'd go for "retail therapy" sessions every friday after school. i believe i've blogged about it more than once, too. despite how it sounds, i didn't really spend a lot...like $20 maximum each time? and most of the things i bought were essentials anyway, like stationery, though there was the odd completely useless purchase. and the money i used was from the allowance i'd saved up over the course of the week anyway, so it wasn't like i was emptying my bank account. but anyway, i seem to remember that those sessions were quite destressing. so, i went shopping for lab stuff yesterday. i wouldn't call it a "spree" exactly, but i did buy lots of stuff. it actually was quite relaxing! what's more, this is stuff that the lab needs, and that we'll all have use for, so it's like 2 birds with 1 stone. even better, since i was shopping for equipment used in the lab, i get to claim all expenses from my professor. major win. think i should do this more often.

ok. think i've procrastinated long enough. time to get that TLC done and head for home.

-random thought of the day: Need more quiet days in lab.-

Survived today on just 4 hours' sleep, which i think is quite a feat, considering we had to go pick up all the lab equipment. don't know why i couldn't sleep last night either. nothing in particular was on my mind, but i just had trouble falling asleep. felt rather annoying, actually. but i made it through the day just fine, and the only noticeable side-effect is i'm feeling pretty tired now. so this will probably be a short post before i crash.

actually, nothing much out of the ordinary has happened since the last post. i do find myself becoming more susceptible to emo nowadays, which isn't good for my health. have to do something about it. first thing that comes to mind is that i have to update my playlist. throw more happy songs in.

i've also been feeling (physically) out of alignment since national training on saturday. think i might need to see a chiropractor to get everything cracked back into place. i've always wanted to see a chiropractor, actually. just haven't found the time to go down. maybe this week, if time permits.

-random thought of the day: Tough day tomorrow.-

"Pick your battles wisely". that quote occurred to me earlier on the drive home, and i think it's quite relevant to a certain aspect in my life. before that though, i have an update on the favourite SJI boy situation.

so i talked to him. he says that he's perfectly fine, and that i haven't done anything to annoy him or anything like that. based on this, everything should be fine, right? in theory, yes. but based on his tone and choice of words, something is wrong. the biggest hint came from his reply, which went something like, "i'm ok, if you think there's something wrong, i'm fine with it" (i can't remember the exact phrasing). in normal english, that actually sounds not-that-harmful. but add a singlish twist, and the meaning becomes more like, "if you have a problem with me, there's nothing i can do about it". that worries me, because it shows how far the distance has become, and it makes me feel that he doesn't trust me like before. as much as i hate to think this way, i think he may have been externally influenced, or my character judgement was way far off. what he wants to believe is out of my control, so just have to hope that he has as much sense/intelligence as i think he does. well, i'll respond to this in my newton's third law way...as much as it sucks having to do so. funny how some people that you (i) care about don't seem to reciprocate that much. but well, i figure it's karma. after all, i'm guilty of doing that too. well, i guess we'll see how things go for the next few weeks/months. if he suddenly reverts to his old self close to nationals, that should be the biggest danger sign for me.

now for the battles thing. you should be familiar with the old saying right? "know yourself, know your enemy, and you'll be undefeated for hundreds of battles." something like that. so here's the thing. remember the thing i wanted to do on my birthday, but ended up not doing due to being unable to muster up the courage? i'm thinking of it as a battle now. conditions for victory and defeat are quite clear to me, but i won't post them here (yet). my blog isn't ready for it. so, what happens now is that i'm picking battles with people which i have greater chances of winning over. then when my confidence gets the boost it needs, i may try the tougher battles. for now, i've already won about 8 battles, and have about 10 more to go. all in good time.

i wonder if being upset weakens your immune system. somehow, i remember reading that your mental and physical well-beings are linked, and each exerts influence on each other. guess that's true, because my nose suddenly became blocked after the talk. maybe if i convince myself that there's nothing i can do, my nose will unblock itself.

-random thought of the day: Damned emotions.-

Have i been busy enough to not blog for 10 days? actually, i don't really recall what i've been busy with. i haven't really made THAT significant progress in lab work, and the modules are more or less manageable. good news is that i finished my materials presentation yesterday, so i'm just left with a written report and 2 final exams on the module end. interesting story about the report, which is for organometallics. i remember the lecturer saying 4 pages, so i went ahead and wrote a 4-page report as normal. after checking his written instructions for confirmation about the deadline, i noticed that the report was supposed to be 4 pages, double spaced. so i suddenly had twice as many pages as i needed. finally managed to get it to 4 pages after a lot of backspacing, deleting, rephrasing, the occasional frustrated scream, and a small cheat (moving my references to the cover page). figure i'll let it rot for a while before the deadline, then do final editing before submission.

lab work-wise, i've synthesized another 2 catalysts...and that's about it. the downside of my compounds is that they contain sulphur (still used to the british spelling), which makes them smell horrible. but if this work gets me a paper, i won't complain (too much). thankfully, the syntheses are easy; taking 3 steps at most for now. if all goes well, i'll be able to test my 2 catalysts tomorrow. incidentally, i'm just wondering. which do you think is better - to make a few catalysts, test them, make a few more, test again, or make like 10 catalysts and test them in one shot? i'm more inclined to the first method, because more checking means finding a hit sooner...like say, if catalyst #3 gave ridiculously good results, i'd know sooner from method 1 than method 2. the flipside is that you'll only know for sure which one is the "jackpot" catalyst after synthesizing and testing every single catalyst. i guess it's more of a personal preference thing.

other interesting happenings include my friend's wedding, and receiving a professor. the wedding was nice. actually, i don't think "nice" does it justice. it was well-planned, well-executed, and not too extravagant/flashy, which i think was quite sensible and appropriate for the couple's current stage in life (my friend hasn't been working for that long, while his wife is a new-ish teacher). nevertheless, it wasn't a cheap affair, and still had that sense of occasion which is befitting for (arguably) the most important day of one's life. unlike my cousin's wedding, i didn't feel any tears coming at all, which convinces me that it was the music last time. food-wise, it was standard wedding dinner stuff, so there isn't much to say. the one improvement i'd suggest is to do away with the rapidly-moving strobe lights while the first course was being served. made my eyes hurt more than anything, and didn't allow me to watch/appreciate the serving routine.

did drink a bit (2 glasses of wine), and as a result, had to wait until the alcohol was back to undetectable levels before driving back. the waiting was done over dessert at macdonalds. i must say, the matcha mcflurry is pretty good. one unfortunate side-effect of attending the wedding is that it somewhat reminded me that i don't have someone like that. not that i want to get married, but i would kind of like someone to care for and to be cared for by in return...someone who knows me well enough to read my mind, and whose mind i can read easily too. but that's just my emo showing. it'll pass soon, i think.

receiving a professor was interesting. my professor had lab class yesterday, so he asked me to go to the airport to pick his guest up. it's a little intimidating, actually, to be there alone and knowing that you're scheduled to be alone with a foreign professor whom you've never met before, at least for the time it takes to drive back to school (about half an hour at a reasonable speed). thankfully, this professor was really nice, which put me at ease somewhat. things went mostly smoothly, though i did panic when he didn't show up even after 20 minutes from his flight arrival time. the worst-case scenario i pictured was that he had come out of immigration, but didn't see me, assumed i wasn't coming, and took a taxi to NUS himself. thankfully, he was just a little held up at customs, and everything was fine from there. on the way back to NUS, he was telling me how in taiwan (where he's from), having graduate students pick up visiting professors is the norm, whereas it's the exception here. but having said that, i really would not mind if my professor asked me to do something similar again in the future. at least it gave me a reason to take a nice long drive, with the petrol fully paid for.

seems like i will miss all saturday CJC/SJI training sessions due to group meeting. training is from 10:00am to 1:00pm, but usually ends a little early. group meeting starts at 10:30am. the presenter speaks for about 20 to 30 minutes, followed by another 30 to 40 minutes of questions and discussion (it's usually longer). that means group meeting will finish at 11:20am earliest. by the time i drive down to CJC, it's 12:00pm or later. getting changed for less than an hour of training isn't worth it to me. well, at least i can (usually) make wednesday training sessions. the main reason i still go down for saturday training is because of the lunch plans afterwards...though recently, the number of people going have been decreasing, and the senior-to-junior ratio is skewed. wonder why.

also this past week, favourite SJI boy is still kind of...hostile? not really hostile...the best analogy i can think of on the spur of the moment is that he's behaving like an irritated cat. and guess who's not a cat person? seriously though, i'm still trying to justify his sudden change. since he has approached me with significant problems/issues in the past, i would like to think that there is a certain level of trust between us, which theoretically means that he shouldn't be lying to me, which in turn means that there is really nothing wrong with any aspect of his life. it's SOMEWHAT believable, because he interacts normally with his friends. that's the bugger that makes rationalizing this sudden mood swing a whole lot more difficult, actually. considering that it persisted after the first training session, i don't think it's to do with his rustiness. i saw him train this past saturday, and his form is more or less there again. that also makes me wonder if he did ever lose his form in the first place, but that's not important now.

what is important is that i find the underlying cause for this sudden change. after a lot of thought, i've narrowed it down to these few possibilities (in no particular order): puberty/teenage hormones, he wants to create distance, there is an issue sufficiently secret/serious that he can't tell me about it. if it was the first and/or third reasons, i'd be ok with it, and give him the space he needs, no questions asked. but in the off chance that reason #2 is right, i would really like to find out why. has he been hearing stuff about me? have i done/am i doing something he doesn't approve of/agree with? because the way i see it, you don't just wake up one morning and decide to stay away from someone without a good reason. i don't know, but i really hope there isn't any misunderstanding. of course, the last reason i can possibly think of is that he thinks i've outlived my usefulness, and thus, wants to move on with his life. of all the reasons i've listed, i think this is that one with the lowest probability. on a personal note, i'm also hoping and praying that whatever the reason is, it won't be this one...because if he does think that way, then my character judgement skills (which i quite pride myself on, by the way,) have failed me big-time. i've decided to have a little chat with him tomorrow after training. despite his reassurance that everything is ok, and no matter how much i want to believe him, some alarm bells are still going off in my head. and being an INFP, i do trust my instincts. well, we'll see what our talk turns up.

i saw a notice at my lift which says that my carpark will be converted from coupon-based to EPS-based, which means there'll soon be a barrier that deducts money from your cashcard as you leave. the reasons they gave was that it would help ease congestion and motorists would only pay for the time they parked. i admit that the latter point is valid, since coupons go by half-hour or one-hour blocks, and you can't save your remaining time for another parking session. but as for the first point, it's currently 2:04am. i think that by this time, all the cars that park in this carpark would have parked for the night already. wow that was a pretty confusing sentence. anyway, the carpark is only 80% full at best, even at this late/early hour. so the congestion thing doesn't really hold water here. actually, they omitted what i feel is the most important reason, which is that they wanted to prevent people from parking without a coupon! although the carpark uncles and aunties are fairly diligent, some people do get away with coupon-less parking. with this automated system, no such luck any more. at least i have season, so i'm not affected at all. it may even work in my favour if temporary visitors go elsewhere to find (by-left) free parking. i may get a lot that is close to the lift more consistently!

guess that's it for now. other than talking to favourite SJI boy, i also have to NMR my 2 catalysts. with any luck, everything will go smoothly, and i can move on to the next stage in both aspects.

-random thought of the day: Murphy's law of carwashing states that it will probably rain within 24 hours of you washing your car.-