I can count, on one hand, the number of times in my life i have felt worried/stressed enough to manifest physical symptoms. you might have already guessed that today is one of those rare occasions. since afternoon or so, i've had this queasy feeling, which has not yet subsided. on the bright side, i know for once exactly why i'm feeling this way. it's due to a few reasons, actually, but they all have one common point: they're stressing me out.

as you may have heard, i'm taking the written QE tomorrow. although i feel sufficiently confident for organic, and to a lesser extent, inorganic, physical and analytical are somewhat worrying. i have the model answers to the practice papers, but they're of no(t much) use with the little knowledge/understanding that i have. so i guess i'm going to go in, and hope some of the easier questions come out. hopefully nothing too calculation- or memorization-intensive. with any luck at all, i'll manage to pass and can put this horrible ordeal behind me. while failing here isn't really the end of the world, i'd really rather pass this once and for all so that it doesn't come back to haunt me. besides, there's additional incentive to pass, since (1) my allowance goes up to $3000 for the next 2 years, and (2) future exams will be more difficult.

but that wasn't the thing that stressed me out the most. that distinct honour goes to a talk with my professor. i don't know what possessed me to ask him about missing group meeting once a month for national training. no wait. i do know. i promised the kata captain that i'd do it. perhaps i should have chosen a better time, because my professor was definitely not happy to hear it. i'll be honest here...the problem is largely mine. i've been having difficulty with a few (supposedly simple) reactions, and as a result, my progress has been slow, or in my professor's words, "comparable to an honours student". also, he says i'm not living and working like a grad student, in the sense that i have too many activities outside of the lab. while i do agree that my rate of work isn't satisfactory, i do not believe that my current activities take too much time away from the lab. currently, the only things i do outside lab are classes, japanese, and judo. can't help the first one, which leaves options 2 and 3. i knew that my professor was against (or at least not for) me taking japanese. i just didn't know he felt THIS strongly about it. so now i know that japanese 6 is out of the question. as for judo...being on the national team is nice and all, but between losing my national athlete status and possibly being made to stop my degree (maybe as soon as next semester), i think we all know which is the worse consequence. yes, apparently it is that bad. the exact analogy my professor gave is this: i'm cooking something, and he can smell the food burning. he's asking me to turn the fire off immediately, but i'm not too concerned about it. in fact, i'm telling him (indirectly) that it's ok, and it's no big deal if the food burns. it's not pleasant to hear, but at least i have the ugly truth.

he also said that if i really wanted to do something, i would find a way to do it. and if i didn't want to do something, there would be thousands of reasons why it couldn't be done. that kind of struck a chord, because i've been thinking about this for a while. not just towards the degree, but several other things in my life as well. but let's focus on the most pressing thing here. it comes down to a simple question: do i really want a phd? why/why not? having a phd is good in the sense that i'll start off at a higher level, and career advancement will probably be easier. but on the other hand, i don't really NEED a phd to land a good job, and there are countless examples of phd-less people doing well in life. well...at this point in time, the situation still seems salvageable, so i'll stick with it. in the event that it does come down to the worst-case scenario, i think i'd rather quit than be asked to leave. but let's hope that it doesn't come down to that.

so, what do i do now? catch up on lab work, obviously, and try to get those reactions working. as for the national training thing, i don't think it's going to happen. sure, i could go, but that would mean incurring my professor's wrath...more so than i already have. but the sucky thing is that if i do get dropped from the national team, my partner's carding status is in jeopardy as well. it sucks, to have your actions affect others in a great way. i feel that if i did drop from the team, i would let my partner (and the other kata people) down. and yet, by not dropping, i risk losing something which i worked fairly hard to achieve. on the other hand though, even if i do remove judo completely, i still feel weighed down by other things. classes (but that'll be gone after this sem), along with other lab responsibilities (SAFETY LEAD, chemical purchasing, other miscellaneous duties) make it difficult for me to not be distracted. but that's just the excuses again. if other grad students have juggled all this stuff before, there's no reason why i can't, right?

to help me put things in perspective, my professor asked me to imagine what would happen if i was asked to leave NUS after this semester. well, i'd have to find a job, for one thing. i'd also have to explain to potential employers why i didn't follow through all the way with my degree. telling them that i wasn't productive enough would definitely not make a good impression. not to mention that i can't exactly use the year that i spent in lab as work experience. all in all, leaving involuntarily would not be good for my future...hence i really have to go at it full force. kiind of reminds me... one of my seniors did tell me to leave after masters, and do a phd somewhere more...reputable? not that my professor or NUS is bad, but there ARE better places out there.

just when all this seemed bad enough, someone/something decided to kick me when i was down. of all the thoughts that could have struck me midway through revision and literature searching, it had to be, 'i think my previous step didn't work, that's why i'm not seeing a reaction now'. reflecting back on the NMR data, i realize that i may have integrated the peaks less-than-perfectly. and the fact that the chemical shift of my target peak was still a little too low failed to tip me off is really quite shocking. guess i was blinded by confirmation bias. while i can't remember the exact figures off-hand, i have a strong feeling that i'll have to work on the bromination again. sucks. i'm quite at my wits' end here already. if this next try still doesn't go smoothly, i think i may just resort to preparing carbon tetrachloride from what i have in the lab.

should be going off to sleep. have to go to school early tomorrow for a last desperate round of revision/cramming before the exam.

-random thought of the day: No statistics questions tomorrow please!-

Warning: the content of this post will mostly be unpleasant.

if you're still reading, thank you for bearing with me, and please don't complain that i dampened your spirits. so. i'd like to start out by talking about judo. previously, i'd said that someone in NUS emailed the national team manager to tell him i'd been removed from the team. after talking to the NUS president, i found out it was worse. they emailed the SJF management direct. and their reason for not contacting me? "we couldn't find your email or get a hold of you on facebook". to which, i'd like to say that that's a rubbish excuse. i've emailed them before, i'm facebook friends with the captain and president, the president has my number. if they had said that they forgot, or given some other more reasonable excuse, i might have taken it better. but that was utterly unacceptable.

what made it worse (yes, it's somehow possible) was the way the president reacted. slight digression. in my interactions with people, i've identified several common responses when someone is in the wrong, or has done something not entirely correct. (1) they try to justify their actions, eg "well yes, but you made me do it by *whatever reason*" depending on what the reason may be, this may be acceptable. (2) "yes, but do you remember the time when you did *something bad*?" i find this to be weak, especially if the previous thing had already been resolved. only rarely have i seen someone say "i'm sorry, how can i make it better?" can you guess what the NUS president did? hint: it's an even number. so he brought up something from several months ago, when in my haste to confirm membership with NUS, i sent a rather poorly-worded email to the national team manager. he had previously told me that there were no hard feelings about it, and that the issue was considered resolved. so my question is, why bring it up now? to make me look bad so he looks less bad? i don't know. but to be fair though, he did apologize. and on the bright side, this means i don't have to go for NUS training any more. of course, this probably also means that i won't be welcome at NUS training from now on, but from the way i see it, no big loss to me or to them.

also on judo, i'm mildly worried. grading is in a month and 2 days...and until now, i don't know the format. as if that wasn't bad enough, my partner messaged me a few days ago saying that we'd have to switch partners around. there's a master's competition in australia one day before the grading, and the minimum age to register is 30. of the 2 people in singapore's best pair, one is underage. and guess what? my partner satisfies the age requirement, so we're switching partners for the next month or so. to be honest, i definitely wasn't thrilled to receive the news. getting used to a new partner isn't easy, even less so when there's a time constraint. we actually just had our first training session together earlier tonight. it was...not good. rather, i was not good. it's a combination of being mentally tired from TA, worrying about the upcoming QE, and having to overcome the physical inertia of not training for a while. hopefully i'm able to remember all the tiny little details for our next training session. i feel so bad, though! my new temporary partner is helping me out with no gain on his part. in fact, i feel like i'm awfully inconveniencing him...not to mention i accidentally injured him (mildly...i hope) while we were training. i think regardless of pass or fail, i definitely owe him a dinner.

friction is bound to exist between people. it's just a matter of how much. i have generally good relations with most people in my lab, and if there's any reason for anyone to be unhappy, it's usually my fault. but there's this guy who's been getting on my nerves recently. he is actually nice, but the way he does certain things is just so irksome. *disclaimer: i'm not perfect either, but i do think through my options before acting*. example, my habit is to string the collected empty waste solvent bottles together with, well, string (sorry it's so obvious). since i had TA today, i left the string of bottles tied to the solvent trolley after collection, and went back to the year 1 lab. when i came back, the string was cut, and that made me quite angry. i use that string on a pretty regular basis, and to have it cut is annoying. sure, it can be replaced, but WHY didn't he think of trying to undo the knot first? i don't believe someone pursuing a phd degree isn't smart enough to figure out how untie a knot. it's not even that hard! just pull one end and the whole thing comes loose. my guess that he's used to doing what's convenient for him, even at the expense of others. and after cutting the string, he just left it there. at least have the decency to clear the mess you made! granted that i'm not the best person to be lecturing someone (well, anyone, really) else about cleanliness...but at least my mess is confined to my personal space, and not common areas. i don't want to play the country card here, because there are others from the same country with whom i get along with very well. maybe it's the culture shock of coming to singapore not too long ago. how 7 months = "not too long ago" i don't know, but maybe. i shouldn't be dealing with this! i'm swamped as it is. well, if this goes on, i'll just act in a similar way. newton's third law.

group meeting tomorrow, and i have to study for QE after that. hope things go smoothly for the next month (and 2 days) or so.

-random thought of the day: Am I difficult to live/work with?-

A few hundred posts ago, in J2, i wrote that valentine's day was alternatively known as singles' awareness day. took me 8 years to realize that singles' awareness day abbreviates to SAD. how slow of me. despite not having a valentine, i wasn't sad. actually, i was more angry than anything. i think the only 2 times i felt somewhat normal today were during japanese tutorial, and at SJC. it can't be because i woke up on the wrong side of the bed either. as i think i've shared previously, the wrong side faces a wall. but i'm going off-track.

the first bad thing that happened today was the drive to school. i was smart enough to schedule a 9:00am class, thinking that it would give me a bit more time to prepare for TA. no doubt that it does, but the morning traffic is crazy! the most irritating thing is that the right lane, which is meant for fast travel (ie. at or slightly above the speed limit) moves so slowly! i'd understand if there was a turn-off point leading somewhere else, but there isn't...or at least, it's not in operation at that time. somehow, i think that the reason why traffic moves so slowly is because drivers are afraid of brushing the barrier when taking the various bends in the road. if that is indeed the case, why don't they just move to the bleeding centre of the road, and let other drivers drive faster in the right lane? or maybe i should save myself the hassle and move to the centre myself. we'll see how things go the next time i have to be in school early.

parking proved to be a problem twice this week. you see, the annual (i think) NUS career fair was held tuesday and today, at the MPSH. and - you guessed it - i couldn't find parking there, and had to use the satellite place. you know, up till now, i still wonder why i can't get season parking at science. main problem is too many cars, too little lots. maybe my 1-in-2 chance of getting a lot was too optimistic. of course, how they conduct the balloting matters too. do they split the lots between staff and students, or throw everyone in a common pool? well, if i don't get a lot for the third semester running, i may just have to ask these questions.

biggest thing that went wrong today...TA. for starters, there were a few people in my group who were exceptionally blur today. maybe it's because extraction/organic separation and work-up is new to them. to think that's it's just a routine task in research...something no more difficult than washing test tubes. how far i've come since being a blur undergrad. but anyway. there were a few mess-ups in my group, most common mistakes being not removing the stopper before separating the layers in the separatory funnel, getting confused about the identities of the 4 compounds, following the lab manual blindly, etc. admittedly, the last point isn't exactly their fault. the lab manual told them to dry their organic extracts with sodium sulphate, and leave it to stand for 25-30 minutes before filtering. am i the only one who thinks that by that time, their product would have been completely adsorbed and lost? my guess is that the person who wrote the lab manual meant to write "seconds" instead of "minutes", but oh well. the damage is done. surprisingly, despite that, some kids got not bad yields.

another TA's student reminded me that life is all a matter of perspective. you see, he had separated out his 4 compounds nicely...and then proceeded to throw 3 of them away. my face was quite literally O.O when i heard about it. compared to that, all the little mistakes my students made all shrank down to practically nothing. the worst thing any of my students did was probably spill some of their compounds, which is still something that can be recovered from. so, yes. perspective.

within the category of TA also is the incident that made me really flare up. disclaimer: the morons involved are not in the group of students of whom i'm in charge, and i am insanely thankful for that. so here's what happened. the instrument room is separated from the lab by a sliding glass door, which is opened by pushing a white button/switch thing. unfortunately, the switch itself is rather inconspicuous, and the much more eye-catching big orange/black lever to activate the safety shower just happens to be located next to the door button/switch. i think you can see where this is going...but in case you can't, someone who wanted to go into the instrument room pulled the shower lever instead of pressing the door button/switch. thankfully, i was close by, and shut the shower off quickly. the fact that this happened despite the large shower pictogram is already amazing in itself. what made it ridiculous is that the person who pulled the lever finished her business in the instrument room, came out, and thought it would be a good idea to ask her friend to take a photo of her next to the lever which she pulled. to take it to the next level (ie. beyond belief), the friend agreed. bear in mind, while they were having their fun, the nice lab staff (ladies, some middle-aged) were sweeping/mopping/pushing the water around so that the floor would dry. needless to say, i yelled at those 2 morons. very loudly. didn't manage to make them cry, which was a pity. i mean, come on! how stupid, insensitive, spoiled, thoughtless, low EQ, etc. do you have to be to do something like that!? they already caught a break as they weren't made to clean the water up. but to rub it in like that was just too much. i asked the teaching staff in charge whether a penalty of some sort could be applied. sadly (and yet predictably), she said no. if i were the lab in-charge, i probably would have suspended them from lab until the floor was dry. can't finish in time, too bad. wish i had suggested that instead. i am seriously hoping that they change major after this semester (or better yet, immediately). being from the same major as them, i really got no face to see people, let alone say that i have juniors of this calibre.

on the judo front, things aren't looking up as well. the kata team captain (i don't think he likes being called that, but for lack of a better title...) whatsapped me to tell me that the national team manager received an email saying that i was no longer a member of NUS judo. i won't lie, i was kind of expecting this for a while. but what i didn't expect was that the NUS people (ie. whoever sent that email) didn't have the courtesy to CC me a copy, or otherwise inform me of it. i mean, if you want to drop someone, the least you can do is tell him, right? i'd call that basic professional courtesy. what scares me more is that i know most of the exco, and until this, i thought i was on decent terms with them. we had some differences, but i'd thought that they'd been ironed out already. sure, we're nothing like best friends, but i believed that we were at least at a high-enough level of closeness where we could comfortably joke with each other. based on this, 2 possibilities come to mind: (1) they were forced to do what they did. (2) i don't know them as well as i thought i did. don't want to know which (if any at all) is true. for all i know, it could have just been an oversight...nah. i very much doubt that. if i were to be petty and suspicious, i'd say that they wanted to catch me off-guard and spring a surprise on me. but well...that's unlikely to work out now, let's leave it at that. i'm thankful for my foresight sometimes.

judo itself is a whole other can of worms, which i don't want to open any further than i already have right now. so, i'll save all other things judo-related for another post. for now, here's stuff i have to do:
organic QE
get answers for other topics' QEs
japanese homework
lab work tomorrow

-random thought of the day: Wonder if there's a correlation between Valentine's Day and my mood?-

Funny how things creep up on you when you let your guard down. seems like various deadlines were set while i wasn't really paying attention, and now i'm facing quite a huge workload. have to come up with some sort of list to see when everything is due, so i can tackle them according to importance. i'll do that right after i blog about the past week and a bit.

biggest thing that happened in the last 10 days or so is CNY. despite that, i didn't really feel that festive. in fact, i stayed in lab until about 10:00pm on new year's eve. no big deal...it was just another day i think. new year itself was not that remarkable either. just went for the usual routine visiting, talked to some of the cousins, got some red packets (still unopened)...standard stuff. fell sick during day 1 (blocked nose, cough), but that cleared up by the next day, which i am super thankful for. i find that as the years go by, there's not much reason to be festive. after all, i'm only close to one family of cousins, whom i've been hanging around with for pretty much most of my life. the relationship with the others is more like "hi-bye". add in the quite-significant age gap, and the fact that we don't share much in common shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

although i have the distinct memory of sharing the following story before, a quick search into my archives didn't turn up anything, so i thought i'd share it again. my 2 most lasting memories of CNY centre around my paternal grandparents. they lived with us up till when i was in secondary school, so for the first 10+ years of my life, all the relatives would come over on CNY day 1. that's the first memory, of the house being crowded and lively...and me actually liking it. how things have changed since then. the second memory happened when i was around 10 years old i think. i remember waking up in the middle of the night (ok, actually more like early morning, 5:00+am or so), and seeing the kitchen light on. turns out my grandmother wanted to get a headstart on cooking. impressive, considering she was in her mid-70s then. don't quote me on this, but i seem to remember that she was frying chicken as i walked in. i remember sitting down to watch her, and falling asleep. think i was still asleep when the first guests came, but that's when my memory gets fuzzy. anyway, the reason i brought up those 2 memories is to highlight the contrast between then and now. if i could, i think i'd skip the visiting altogether. anyway, that was CNY. also during CNY, i realize that i really have issues with certain people. i don't want to do the whole dirty laundry thing, but suffice to say that i'm looking forward to moving out and living alone. i can only hope for now.

school-wise, research is rather problematic. having difficulty with a radical bromination reaction. if all goes well, i'll have about 2g of the desired product after recrystallization. if not, i am not going to be happy. also in school, i decided to sign up for the upcoming written QE with the other chem kids. the original plan was to take the next one in june, but word is that it'll get harder. plus, as the other grad student in my lab said, this time, there are more people taking the exam, so the bell curve should be kinder. i'm kind of worried about the physical and analytical sections. less so for the inorganic. at the very least, the organic should be manageable. well, there are still like 2 weeks until the exam, so this can go on backburner for a while.

mornings. that's my reminder from the previous post. the thing i wanted to say is that mornings go by so fast! for example, let's say i wake up at 8:00am one fine day. i then think to myself, 'hmm it's still early.' so i laze in bed, go back to sleep, mess around on my phone, whatever odd things i do to kill time. then, it becomes 9:00am, then 10:00am. still not too bad. but then, there's this magic transition between 10:30am and 11:00am when suddenly, it becomes late morning and i'm thinking, 'why didn't i get out of the house earlier?' it's difficult to explain. guess my moral of the story is "it's better to be way too early than just a little bit late". bearing that in mind, i have to leave the house based on the actual time it takes me to get where i want to go (with some allowance for traffic etc), instead of allowing procrastination to kick in.

while i'm on this non-procrastination wave, i should do the list now. this list is not chronological, just in the order which things come to my head. i think i can sort it later.
- japanese project essay, due on 20 feb
- graduate seminar research proposal presentation, due the coming monday (condition: upload slides the day before)
- asymmetric catalysis presentation topic choice, no fixed deadline (but sooner the better before popular topics get taken)
- grad student progress report, due on 18 feb
- usual japanese homework, due every tuesday and wednesday
- some national athlete matters, most likely already overdue

from this, i guess it's quite apparent that i have to settle my graduate seminar slides first. then, the research progress report, which is basically a short write-up of what you did the previous semester. the rest can be shuffled around a little, so no major worries. but in order to give myself time to prepare for the asymmetric presentation, i think i should choose my topic within the next 2 weeks. and speaking of japanese, earlier in japanese lecture, i was talking to a classmate about japanese 5. along the way, i remember saying that compared to previous japanese modules, i'm barely putting in any effort this time. example: i usually studied for vocabulary quizzes as early as 3 days in advance. this semester, i've more or less been glancing through the vocabulary list briefly the day before, or even on the day itself! still managing to pass somehow, which is good. my slacking can probably be attributed to 2 factors: (1) i don't need to pull my CAP any more, and (2) i already decided to S/U the module. somehow, i really don't see myself getting a U...but let's not jinx it.

i think i'll blog about the national athlete thing (and judo) in another post. this post is already getting long as it is. now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

today (or tonight, rather) kicked off 3 days of good eating. first up, i met the usual cat high old boys gang for dinner at novena square. i was late since i had class. when i got there, they had chosen to eat at gyu-kaku. the kanji translates to "cow horn", so i guess it's no surprise that they're a grilled meat place. if i were to describe it really simply, it's actually an atas seoul garden. there's a grill in the middle of the table for you to grill raw meat, so that's the similarity. the difference, however, is that they actually use charcoal as the heat source, not gas! so what happens is there is a hole in the middle of the table. someone comes along and sets a bucket of smouldering charcoal into the hole, then adds a wire rack-type thing on top. there's a fan built into the table, and that controls the air flow to the charcoal, which in turn controls the heat. i quite like the idea. the thing that impressed me the most was that the rim of the charcoal bucket was lined with holes, and somehow, the fan performs the dual role of sucking in the smoke generated from the cooking. sort of a mini-fume hood exhaust system, if you will. i could actually see the smoke being sucked in! it did a really good job too; my clothes totally didn't smell smoky after the dinner. and i LOVE their coconut ice cream! it was super dense...makes me think they froze coconut milk to make it. only downside was that the price was a bit high...we ordered 2 X 3-person sets and a few a la carte items to be shared among 7 people. total damage was around $300, or $40+ per person, and personally i didn't really feel full. then again, that might have been from having a late dinner after a light lunch.

tomorrow, i have TA with the year 1's (calorimetry. oh my goodness!), followed by a wine buffet at rochester, which i hear is near buona vista, but i have no idea how to get there. on saturday, i'm going down to the shelter, then having dinner with the other volunteers at some hotel whose name escapes me right now. brief sidetrack. last sunday, i was asked to help transport a dog to the vet for a checkup and sterilization on tuesday. the clinic's located in clementi, and as i later found out, really close to NUS! but i'm getting ahead of myself. i said yes, because it seems nobody else was available, and i also figured that it was a small favour. but as i went home and thought about it more, the more i felt like backing out. reason being i didn't know this particular dog, and i was afraid that he'd have some "accidents" in the car. but i stuck with it in the end, and i'm grateful that i did. as a precaution, i put a seat protector on the back seats (the shelter's founder passed it to me), and layered newspaper on top of that for good measure. thankfully, the dog was cooperative and there was a more experienced volunteer to keep him in check. even though i was quite determined to drive slowly in case the dog got motion-sick, i still found myself going up to 90km/h with no adverse reaction from him. *disclaimer*: may not apply to other dogs. also, here's a pro tip: drive with the air-con off and windows down. that's what i did, and the car doesn't smell like dog. of course, how clean your dog is beforehand does matter as well. the only mildly bad thing i noticed was that dog hair somehow got onto my dashboard, despite the dog being in the back seat. but well. it's not big deal at all. in fact, it's barely a deal.

last dog-related story before i go. i think dogs are smarter than i gave them credit for. the dog i was driving seemed to know not to do any business in a car. i am under the impression that he held it in for the duration of the drive, because he immediately found a tree and did his stuff after getting off. also, another dog (one of my favourites) in the shelter was behaving oddly for a bit last sunday. he kept moving to the front of his enclosure. so, i went to where he was. he immediately went to the back (where i had been) and peed. it could be that he was uncomfortable with me being there while he did his business, or he was trying to tell me to move away. either way, that's pretty smart for an animal which can't talk.

right. that's it. other than TA tomorrow, i have a 9:00am class as well. should probably be going to sleep now. it's japanese, so i definitely don't want to be late, or worse, miss it.

-random thought of the day: I want to write a book. Also, talk more about dogs and adoption.-