So...full...
just got back from research group dinner at raffles city shopping centre's buffet town. the reason we had this dinner is because 3 of the phd students are leaving the group soon, and they decided to band together to buy everyone dinner. even though the cost was split 3 ways, it's still not cheap. but for me, the food was worth the price. i just hope i ate my (their) money's worth. even though there was quite a wide variety of food, i mainly stuck to the sashimi and other seafood. the oysters were nice! too bad i only got 2 rounds in before the queue became too long. really pity the guy on oyster duty...the oysters are freshly opened, so i think he doesn't really get to take a break. worse is if someone comes along and takes half a dozen oysters or so, depleting the stock. then the guy has to work double-time to keep the queue moving. i kind of suspect oyster duty is a punishment, but i'll never know for sure unless i work there, which is unlikely. i think this is a potential place for future meetings with friends and whatnot. there's no time limit, so we can eat our fill at a nice and relaxed pace. definitely worth considering.
going home, i took the train with the scariest phd student in the lab. he's actually a nice guy...just that i feel he's stern to juniors. i think he's the only one in the lab, who if i angered, i would be truly afraid. that's not to say that i don't respect my professor and/or the other students, and/or hold them in less regard. it's just that this guy is exceptionally scary. but in the train, he kind of gave me advice about research, and possible paths after university. oddly enough, he knows about my desire to move to japan too. i haven't really been very vocal about it...at least i think i haven't. but if my professor and seniors know about it, i clearly have been speaking about it to some extent. anyway, i felt kind of touched that he would do that, since we're not exactly that close. just before i got off the train (his stop was further than mine), he told me, "good luck, and work hard". don't know why i'm writing specially about that. as a reminder, i guess.
not everything went according to plan this week...for instance, the chem kids dinner was cancelled, and will be rescheduled sometime in the near future. no big deal; there are still many opportunities for us to meet. yesterday, my professor was hosting this japanese professor, who came to give a seminar on total synthesis of guanidine-containing natural products (more on that later). to my great surprise, he asked me to join them for lunch! seems like my intention of going to japan has left an impression on him. i got to speak japanese a little bit, but we stuck to english for the most part because i think the guest didn't want to exclude my professor, who doesn't understand japanese. the seminar was interesting, but incredibly chim. the thing that left the most lasting impression on me was that the professor's group took 69 steps to synthesize an enantiomerically-pure sample of pufferfish toxin. of those 69 steps, 29 steps are for protection and deprotection. incredibly tough, i think. while i had some difficulty believing it previously, i can now appreciate how an asymmetric synthesis of a natural product is good enough for a phd thesis.
lab wise, i think i've successfully synthesized an existing catalyst. now all i have to do is complete the last step, which is adding our modification. seems easy enough, but the yield isn't that good. i started with 1g, and got about 0.5g of product after the first step. used 0.25g for the second step, and i got around 0.2g of product. and there's still one more step!! looks like i have to synthesize more stuff, but it's hard when i only have 3g of starting material left. can't wait for when my 500g bottle comes in. seems like i'll have some stuff to write about in my small progress update. the master's student is a little clueless, but then i understand she has no prior research experience. not that i have a lot of it myself, so i hope it doesn't end up as the blind leading the blind. for now, things still seem ok.
look up 2 paragraphs, and you'll notice i came home by train today. this is despite the fact that i drove to school in the morning. the logical conclusion would be that i left the car in school overnight, and you'd be right to think that. you see, i have the first-aid course tomorrow, and it lasts the whole day. so, my initial plan was to park in school, leave it overnight, go to the first aid course by train, then go to school after the course, and drive home. that would have worked, except for one tiny detail - i left my slippers in the car! that means i'll have to make an extra trip to school tomorrow to pick them up, and that means getting up even earlier than planned. no big deal, i guess...just have to force myself awake. some quick planning...the course starts at 9:00am. we were told to be there 10 minutes early, plus the venue's about a 5-minute walk from outram park MRT. that means i have to be at outram park by 8:45am. that, in turn, means i have to collect my slippers and leave kent ridge by 8:20am. assuming that collecting my slippers takes 30 minutes all-in, i have to be at kent ridge at 7:50am, which means being at bishan MRT at 7:30am, which means leaving the house at 7:15am, which means waking up at 6:30am. i can't even remember when was the last time i woke up at 6:30am!! to think that i could have saved myself half an hour if i'd remembered my damned slippers. well...i'll survive somehow. just hope that i won't be too tired to pay attention.
this week was my fourth time topping up petrol since getting the civic, and being concerned about how my money is spent, i'm doing some monitoring. seems that each tank (i use about 4/5 of the 50L tank before refilling) lasts me a week and a half on average. i get about 400+km on that amount of fuel, working to about 10km/L. seems average, maybe even a bit on the low side. but i noticed something funny on the last tank, and it seems to be happening with this current tank too. like my speedometer, my fuel indicator is digital, with 20 (large) pixels representing 50L. so that's 2.5L per pixel. i'm not sure whether the pixel turns dark as soon as you start using from "its" 2.5L, or if it only deluminates after "its" 2.5L is completely used up. for a more conservative estimate, i'm using the former. so, for the previous tank and this tank, i can get up to 110km on 3 fuel bars. that's 7.5L, making my fuel economy about 14km/L. somehow, when i stop monitoring it so carefully, the economy drops until i'm at around 10km/L again as i'm about to refuel. makes we wonder if my fuel sensor is malfunctioning. then again, i suppose it's due to ferrying 4-5 kids on average to lunch after saturday training sessions. maybe my economy will improve this month, since there's no training. have to keep up the gas cap trick, too. seems to be working to some degree.
the iphone 5S and 5C were announced yesterday. i'm in no big rush to get a new phone, since my iphone 4S still works reasonably well after having the power button replaced. also, i figure that waiting for a while gives me more information on which to base my decision. like for instance, i can find out if there are any issues with the software or hardware, wait for them to be resolved, see if prices drop a little (hopefully), and ensure that there the phone i want will be in stock after the crazy buying frenzy has abated. personally, i'd get the 5S over the 5C. part of it has to do with the 5C being perceived as a "budget" iphone i guess. the other part is that the fingerprint sensor looks pretty cool, and (unlike siri,) has the potential to feature heavily in routine phone usage. plus, i can trade my current phone in for a $250 rebate off a new phone. there's no pricing information yet, but after the trade-in, i'm expecting to pay around $500 for a 16gB model. if i feel rich enough, i may even go for the 32gB. see how. i think i'll wait for my contract to expire, so that'll be this december at the earliest. still quite a long way to go.
guess that's it for now. better go sleep. have to be up bright (well, dark) and early tomorrow.
just got back from research group dinner at raffles city shopping centre's buffet town. the reason we had this dinner is because 3 of the phd students are leaving the group soon, and they decided to band together to buy everyone dinner. even though the cost was split 3 ways, it's still not cheap. but for me, the food was worth the price. i just hope i ate my (their) money's worth. even though there was quite a wide variety of food, i mainly stuck to the sashimi and other seafood. the oysters were nice! too bad i only got 2 rounds in before the queue became too long. really pity the guy on oyster duty...the oysters are freshly opened, so i think he doesn't really get to take a break. worse is if someone comes along and takes half a dozen oysters or so, depleting the stock. then the guy has to work double-time to keep the queue moving. i kind of suspect oyster duty is a punishment, but i'll never know for sure unless i work there, which is unlikely. i think this is a potential place for future meetings with friends and whatnot. there's no time limit, so we can eat our fill at a nice and relaxed pace. definitely worth considering.
going home, i took the train with the scariest phd student in the lab. he's actually a nice guy...just that i feel he's stern to juniors. i think he's the only one in the lab, who if i angered, i would be truly afraid. that's not to say that i don't respect my professor and/or the other students, and/or hold them in less regard. it's just that this guy is exceptionally scary. but in the train, he kind of gave me advice about research, and possible paths after university. oddly enough, he knows about my desire to move to japan too. i haven't really been very vocal about it...at least i think i haven't. but if my professor and seniors know about it, i clearly have been speaking about it to some extent. anyway, i felt kind of touched that he would do that, since we're not exactly that close. just before i got off the train (his stop was further than mine), he told me, "good luck, and work hard". don't know why i'm writing specially about that. as a reminder, i guess.
not everything went according to plan this week...for instance, the chem kids dinner was cancelled, and will be rescheduled sometime in the near future. no big deal; there are still many opportunities for us to meet. yesterday, my professor was hosting this japanese professor, who came to give a seminar on total synthesis of guanidine-containing natural products (more on that later). to my great surprise, he asked me to join them for lunch! seems like my intention of going to japan has left an impression on him. i got to speak japanese a little bit, but we stuck to english for the most part because i think the guest didn't want to exclude my professor, who doesn't understand japanese. the seminar was interesting, but incredibly chim. the thing that left the most lasting impression on me was that the professor's group took 69 steps to synthesize an enantiomerically-pure sample of pufferfish toxin. of those 69 steps, 29 steps are for protection and deprotection. incredibly tough, i think. while i had some difficulty believing it previously, i can now appreciate how an asymmetric synthesis of a natural product is good enough for a phd thesis.
lab wise, i think i've successfully synthesized an existing catalyst. now all i have to do is complete the last step, which is adding our modification. seems easy enough, but the yield isn't that good. i started with 1g, and got about 0.5g of product after the first step. used 0.25g for the second step, and i got around 0.2g of product. and there's still one more step!! looks like i have to synthesize more stuff, but it's hard when i only have 3g of starting material left. can't wait for when my 500g bottle comes in. seems like i'll have some stuff to write about in my small progress update. the master's student is a little clueless, but then i understand she has no prior research experience. not that i have a lot of it myself, so i hope it doesn't end up as the blind leading the blind. for now, things still seem ok.
look up 2 paragraphs, and you'll notice i came home by train today. this is despite the fact that i drove to school in the morning. the logical conclusion would be that i left the car in school overnight, and you'd be right to think that. you see, i have the first-aid course tomorrow, and it lasts the whole day. so, my initial plan was to park in school, leave it overnight, go to the first aid course by train, then go to school after the course, and drive home. that would have worked, except for one tiny detail - i left my slippers in the car! that means i'll have to make an extra trip to school tomorrow to pick them up, and that means getting up even earlier than planned. no big deal, i guess...just have to force myself awake. some quick planning...the course starts at 9:00am. we were told to be there 10 minutes early, plus the venue's about a 5-minute walk from outram park MRT. that means i have to be at outram park by 8:45am. that, in turn, means i have to collect my slippers and leave kent ridge by 8:20am. assuming that collecting my slippers takes 30 minutes all-in, i have to be at kent ridge at 7:50am, which means being at bishan MRT at 7:30am, which means leaving the house at 7:15am, which means waking up at 6:30am. i can't even remember when was the last time i woke up at 6:30am!! to think that i could have saved myself half an hour if i'd remembered my damned slippers. well...i'll survive somehow. just hope that i won't be too tired to pay attention.
this week was my fourth time topping up petrol since getting the civic, and being concerned about how my money is spent, i'm doing some monitoring. seems that each tank (i use about 4/5 of the 50L tank before refilling) lasts me a week and a half on average. i get about 400+km on that amount of fuel, working to about 10km/L. seems average, maybe even a bit on the low side. but i noticed something funny on the last tank, and it seems to be happening with this current tank too. like my speedometer, my fuel indicator is digital, with 20 (large) pixels representing 50L. so that's 2.5L per pixel. i'm not sure whether the pixel turns dark as soon as you start using from "its" 2.5L, or if it only deluminates after "its" 2.5L is completely used up. for a more conservative estimate, i'm using the former. so, for the previous tank and this tank, i can get up to 110km on 3 fuel bars. that's 7.5L, making my fuel economy about 14km/L. somehow, when i stop monitoring it so carefully, the economy drops until i'm at around 10km/L again as i'm about to refuel. makes we wonder if my fuel sensor is malfunctioning. then again, i suppose it's due to ferrying 4-5 kids on average to lunch after saturday training sessions. maybe my economy will improve this month, since there's no training. have to keep up the gas cap trick, too. seems to be working to some degree.
the iphone 5S and 5C were announced yesterday. i'm in no big rush to get a new phone, since my iphone 4S still works reasonably well after having the power button replaced. also, i figure that waiting for a while gives me more information on which to base my decision. like for instance, i can find out if there are any issues with the software or hardware, wait for them to be resolved, see if prices drop a little (hopefully), and ensure that there the phone i want will be in stock after the crazy buying frenzy has abated. personally, i'd get the 5S over the 5C. part of it has to do with the 5C being perceived as a "budget" iphone i guess. the other part is that the fingerprint sensor looks pretty cool, and (unlike siri,) has the potential to feature heavily in routine phone usage. plus, i can trade my current phone in for a $250 rebate off a new phone. there's no pricing information yet, but after the trade-in, i'm expecting to pay around $500 for a 16gB model. if i feel rich enough, i may even go for the 32gB. see how. i think i'll wait for my contract to expire, so that'll be this december at the earliest. still quite a long way to go.
guess that's it for now. better go sleep. have to be up bright (well, dark) and early tomorrow.
-random thought of the day: Must chase for my NCAP technical.-
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