Sending a couple of my friends home earlier reminded me of this extremely weird pet peeve I have. Not sure if other drivers have it too, or if it's just me. I know at least one friend who thinks this way too, and it's probably where I inherited this thing. Sidetrack: proper capitalization means I'm blogging from my phone. Since I was planning to be in school early tomorrow (like 6:30am kind of early), and considering I got home about 15 minutes ago, it's probably not a good idea for me to fire up the computer. I'd probably end up not sleeping at all. Not sleeping before covering class is not a good idea under normal circumstances already. It's an even worse idea when there's grading syllabus to be taught. 

Ok. Massive sidetrack over. The weird pet peeve goes like this: I really dislike it when the back seat of a car is occupied before the front seat. Logistics-wise, it probably doesn't make any difference. But there's just something...wrong about it. The impression I get is like I'm a chauffeur. At least if there's someone in the front seat, it feels more...equal, I guess. Of course, there are exceptions, like when someone is somehow incapacitated and requires the back seat, or if there are people/things/animals in the back seat that need constant looking-after.

The reason I'm writing about this is because something of that nature happened today, by the way. One of my friends didn't want to move up when another friend alighted. Didn't push the issue, considering he was recovering from drinking. Just wonder what would have gone down if he was sober/fully functional. But well. Still felt sufficiently annoyed to turn the radio up and not say anything to him throughout the journey. 

Feels a bit better now that that's out of my system. Really need to sleep soon. I'll be lucky if I get 4 hours' sleep tonight. 

Better settle those blogging prompts before they get pushed back yet another post. starting from the one that's further back, it goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". my interpretation of that is, the more good you're trying to do, the worse you make the situation. i actually wrote this as it described the situation between my friend (the one with the relationship problems) and i quite well. i don't know exactly why, but i get the feeling that i may have said (or typed) the wrong things a few times, and thus, i may have made him feel worse. it sounds decent enough in my head, but somehow between exiting by thoughts and reaching his ears (or eyes, when we're chatting online), something changes and it sounds stupid at best, hurtful/nonchalant at worst. i just hopes that he knows me well enough to recognize that i do mean well, and am not trying to put him down in any way.

next (and last!) prompt is regarding going to japan. my junior (an honours student) asked me to go. since i'm typing this from home while he's in japan now, you can probably guess that i didn't go. if i had went, my professor would kill me right after i landed back in singapore. so, it's a summer of research for me. feeling mildly upset about it, but well, there'll be other chances. hopefully one of those chances will come by in december.

ok. my typo rate has been too high for the last paragraph. waking up early for lab and subsequently covering SJI/CJC coaching duties really took a lot out of me...more so than i'd thought. i'll update again after a good night's sleep, when i feel capable of deeper thought.

-random thought of the day: Car needs servicing again, I think.-

Knew i forgot something in the last post! Looks like post length doesn't have much of an effect on the probability of me forgetting to write about any given thing. the thing i forgot to write about was what my partner and i did after kata practice. we went to turf city! he was meeting someone else there for lunch, and i thought i'd take a nice, relaxing drive, so i ended up sending him there. i've seen the huge changes already, so i wasn't that surprised. what caught me off-guard was this place called pasarbella. my linguistics skills are rusty, but i know that "pasar" means market in dialect. if whatever little italian i've picked up from youtube is correct, "bella" means beauty/beautiful. so, beautiful market. nice name.

i had always thought that it was just a (very expensive) restaurant/bar, so i never saw the need to go in. upon my partner's urging, i went in for a quick look, and found out that it's more like a flea market, but for food. maybe calling it a bazaar would be more accurate? whatever the case, the quick look turned into about 30 to 40 minutes of exploration. the entire place is actually made up of many small shops, selling things from organic produce, to wine, cheese, seafood, meat, coffee, and tea, to name the ones i remember. there were also many restaurants. among the cuisines i saw were german, spanish, japanese, italian, and quite a few which i have difficulty assigning to a particular country or region. so fascinating! i was telling my partner, give me like $1000 to spend in there, and i'd be SO happy. then again, $1000 may not be enough, since the prices look kind of steep. quite tempted to go down every now and then to try something different until i've tried everything that's there.

today was a day of ups and downs. the first up was that i got a significant amount of lab work done today. reset the asymmetric reaction, and am looking forward to better/correct results this time round. after consultation with my postdoc, it seems that the peak at around 7 minutes is a solvent peak. maybe i didn't vacuum dry the samples for long enough. another bugger about this reaction is that it takes 40 hours, which is like 1.5 days. so, starting the current reaction too late would mean that i would have to come back on saturday. and since this week is one of those rare times where group meeting is cancelled, i'm really not too inclined towards going back. so, i started the reaction at 5:00am earlier today, which means it'll go until 9:00pm tomorrow. despite being awake for about 26 of the last 30 hours, i feel decent enough. think those power naps in the student room helped. still tired though...to the point i drove slower than usual on the way home.

sidetrack: you know, i've actually started considering moving into the lab. what i mean by that is bringing a bag of clothes, shower supplies, a safari bed, and basically staying there full-time. kind of like army, but less regimented. or kind of like hall, but less people. it actually makes sense on multiple levels, which is scary. like i'll save on travelling time, petrol, utilities, internet, and i won't even have to pay rent! possible downside is not having sufficient alone time, because some of my seniors do stay quite late, and even come back on weekends. maybe this is something i can explore if my ballot for science season parking doesn't go through.

another up was having dinner at vivocity with some of the chem kids. we ate at this hong kong cafe. both the ambience and food were quite nice. i had baked rice, which trashes the swensen's version almost upside down. the sauce was better, portion size was slightly bigger (based on my estimate), and it was cheaper. the price of baked rice alone at swensen's got us baked rice, soup, and a drink, with some change to spare. i really liked their borscht soup. it wasn't authentic, but tasted pleasantly sour. would definitely go back.

on the downs side, i spent 1 very frustrating hour in total on the phone with MOE, then CPF, then NUS financial services. a while back, i received a letter telling me that i had close to $2000 in my post-secondary education account. i had wanted to use that to start payment of the CPF education loan, but somehow, that wasn't possible. it turns out that i should have used it to pay for my undergrad school fees. now that i'm a grad student, my fees are covered by scholarship, so i don't really have that option open any more. both the MOE and CPF people said pretty much the same thing, so i don't think there's any way i can fight that. my next thought was to use it to pay for my miscellaneous school fees, which comes up to about $200 a semester, and is currently being automatically deducted from my scholarship allowance. the NUS financial office guy said that that plan might not work out, since i was on scholarship. but he did ask me to try to apply, so that's what i'll do when/slightly before next sem starts. otherwise, the money gets put into my CPF account when i turn 30. have i mentioned i don't really like this whole CPF idea? forced savings is a bit too dictatorial, i think. and with the ever-changing rules that make it increasingly harder to withdraw YOUR saved money, i think it's only natural that some people suspect that things are not all as they seem. well, maybe i'll end up getting citizenship elsewhere, then they'd ave to give me all the money. at present, it's probably under $5000, so not much to shout about. but still...

the thing that REALLY annoyed me was that i couldn't use the money to offset the CPF education loan. it's called a post-secondary education account, which means the money inside is supposed to be used for education-related purposes. the CPF loan WAS used for my education; i have the shiny bachelor's degree as proof. so, why can't it be used to pay back the CPF loan, which itself was used to pay for my school fees!? it's like an indirect link. but indirect as it may be, the link is still present. of course, i know that i can't blame the people i spoke to, it's the higher-ups who decide these kind of things and make the policies. well...my current plan is to drain that account as much as possible. just have to find ways and means to do it.

got a parking ticket today. just really was not my lucky day. i've written in to contest it, hopefully it works. a complete waiver would be nice, but in the event that's not possible, i just pray for no demerits.

stupid thing about asymmetric reactions is that they have to be kept very very cold, using dry ice. and fresh dry ice has to be added at about 12-hour intervals, 15 hours maximum. meaning that i have to get up early again tomorrow. time to sleep. i realize that i haven't blogged about the prompt yet. that'll happen when my head doesn't feel like it's stuffed with cotton wool.

-random thought of the day: Also blog about (not) going to Japan.-

Vesak day is one of only two days in a year i get to use "V" to start a post somewhat normally. the other occasion is - and this goes without saying - vanadium day, where chemists celebrate the discovery of that element and its subsequent use in the contact process for manufacturing sulphuric acid. no, of course i'm kidding. the other day is also known as SAD. i've written about it a while back, in february. you should know what day it is just based on the time reference, if not just the letter V.

research is going relatively smoothly. now that i'm not preoccupied by classes, i'm getting more lab work done. catalyst synthesis is coming along smoothly. NMR showed that i got pure intermediates for both variations of the catalyst, so i'm thankful there. since that looks good, why did i use "relatively"? well, the asymmetric reaction isn't going too well. i'm trying my hand at repeating an already-published reaction, so whatever i write here probably won't be any secret information. the reaction is supposed to give about 98% yield and 90% ee (it's a JACS paper, so it's definitely reliable...even my professor uses that as the benchmark reaction for our group). the first time i did it, i didn't calculate the yield, but got basically racemic product. the second time, my yield sucked. not only that, i didn't get any product at all! the HPLC didn't have peaks at the correct retention times. on the flipside, if i set the HPLC wrongly, my enantioselectivity will be really good because there was only one very significant peak. the weird thing is that the peaks for both runs came out at around 7 minutes. so chances are that they are the same thing. could be that the substrate didn't react. i noticed that my isolated solid didn't really dissolve well in hexane/IPA. but the Rf value is right! unless the substrate has a similar Rf value...which should not be the case, since there's an acid group.

eliminating that possibility, there are still far too many variables. the more significant ones i think are contamination, and poor experimental technique. for contamination, the substrate may contain trace acid due to its synthesis scheme. i've heard that acid messes things up. not only that, my professor had also previously warned me about unclean glassware, spatulas, and other apparatus. i think this is less likely to be the reason, since i cleaned everything before use. only possible source of contamination might be the vacuum lines. if you ask me, i think the most likely issue is with my experimental technique. there are a lot of experimental steps for this one reaction, and mistakes could happen in almost any of them. the more significant ones are probably not maintaining the temperature at -78°C, and not adding the NBS directly into the solution. what really annoys me is that i don't know what exactly went wrong! if my temperature control was poor, the ee should be low. but to not have the correct product based on HPLC...i don't know. should probably run an NMR to see if my product is the correct one, and confirm that my HPLC parameters were set correctly.

wow that was a lot to say for just one experiment. i had initially considered going back today to do some lab work, but hearing that the 300MHz NMR broke down made me decide against that eventually. ok, i'll be the first to admit that that isn't a good enough reason. in fact, it's barely a reason. the NMR breaking down has almost zero effect on my experiments. and even if there was significant effect, i still have access to the 500MHz NMR. it's just a convenient thing that happened at the right time, so i'm using that as a shield. in all honesty though, i wasn't too inclined to go back today, even before knowing about the NMR. there are currently no reactions i can finish within today, and nothing i can set up and leave overnight (too dangerous or bad timing, like i'll have to go in extra-early tomorrow). besides, a day probably doesn't count for much in the grand scheme of things.

as i was closing up the lab and preparing to head home last night/this morning (yes, i stayed late again. damned HPLC), i was doing some thinking. surprisingly in coming-to 11 years of blogging, i don't think i've mentioned this particular bit of trivia about myself yet. for as long as i can remember (after being able to think coherently, of course), my brain has engaged in thought-hopping while it's idle. i suppose that that's a fairly common thing for most people...or at least, it's not unheard of. what makes it unique for me (i think) is that i tend to stray quite far from the original thought. but still, there's some logical connection, so you can see how this leads to that. let's use last night's sequence as an example.

one of my facebook friends shared a post titled, "The pictures Kim Jong-un DID NOT want you to see: Haunting images from inside North Korea". check it out for yourself, the link's right there. so i started thinking about north korea. *disclaimer: all views here are my own, and may not be reflective of the true situation due to my limited understanding of global politics and most other things in life*. i guess the biggest question is, why doesn't north korea just open up to the world? well, there could be any number of reasons. #1 (and most unlikely): they really think that democracy and the "western" way of life is bad. but if that's the case, how come most western nations are doing better than them economically? and why do people in those same western nations enjoy a higher standard of living, and arguably, quality of life? i mean, you don't see kids in the US, UK, or even in singapore being forced to do hard labour. power disruptions are almost nonexistent here (our last blackout was years ago), education consists of facts, not propaganda that will get you laughed at in any other country, and people have a life outside work, music, games, consumer goods, etc. on the other hand, i guess life is kind of simpler in north korea. do whatever the government tells you, and that's it. not my cup of tea, but i guess it's ok if the people like it. based on the number of defectors and attempted escapes...i doubt that. the other thing i don't get is why north korea wants to put on a show, like having all sorts of good-looking (but useless) buildings near the border. in today's age of satellites and technology, do they seriously think that the world at large can't call their bluff? or maybe the leaders are really that unaware of technological developments.

#2: the leaders are greedy/power-hungry. north korea is basically a family-run country, and has been for the last 50-odd years. asking the leaders to give up power would not go down well, i think. they'd have to learn to live like normal people. and when the people go overseas and see how far behind they've been, that'll lead to a whole other set of issues. i think it's kind of unfair, to deprive generations of people of the chance to fully maximize their potential. tangent thought: humans are basically self-serving, i think. like, if the choice came down to harming either yourself or someone else, most people would harm someone else. call it selfishness, survival instinct, whatever. end result is the same. of course, there ARE people who will sacrifice themselves, but these people are few and far between.

my friend told me about a particular thought experiment some time ago: there's a magic ATM card (or credit card, whichever works). you can use it to pay for whatever expense, no matter how big, but each time you make a transaction, someone in the world (other than yourself, you're immune) dies. it's totally random, so it could be your best friend, or some sick child in africa, basically any one of the 7+ billion people in the world, except you. after the transaction was complete, you'd know who died. would you use the card? if it were me, i'd actually say yes! let's say i know 1000 people by name or by face. out of these 1000 people, let's say that there are 500 of whom i care about and want alive. for each transaction i make, there is a 1 in 14 million chance someone i care about dies (all figures were rounded). those are actually insanely good odds! in the interest of reducing the chance of killing someone i know and like, i think what' i'd do is to make one super huge purchase, like an entire condo development, then rent it out to generate substantial passive income. if i really was suay enough to kill someone i know, then...i don't know. it's a calculated risk i guess, like most things are in life. the counter-argument would naturally be why even take that risk in the first place? because the payout is ridiculously good. that, along with the high odds of non-failure, mean taking the risk is worth it. but then, the person who dies may be someone powerful, or may have family. or the person may be on death row already. the fundamental question here, i guess, is how much lives are worth, and what gives anyone the authority to take others' lives. more on that later.

why doesn't someone do something about the north korea situation? like, the UN could force north korea to open up, via economic or military action. of course, there would probably be a war, and there'd be casualties all around, so maybe that's not a good idea. i really wonder how the north korean leaders can maintain a clear conscience about messing up so many peoples' lives. it's stupid, i think. at the same time, i can't deny that people MAY want to live under those conditions. so how about this: those who want to leave, leave. those who want to stay, stay. something tells me that only the leaders will be left. and when there's nobody to rule over, there's going to be some reshuffling. but back to the point on forcing. who or what gives any country the right to interfere in another country's administration? the only thing i can think of is if the majority of the people are actively asking for help. scale that down for a bit, and the next question is, what gives a person the right to rule over others? like, what allows a judge to decide how many years' jail a criminal gets, or if the criminal should be hanged? the law, i guess. but who writes the law? how can trafficking over 1g of heroin lead to a loss of life? is there an exchange rate table somewhere? i don't think so. i guess it's how much harm a person does, or could have done. killing someone...sure. a life for a life sounds fair. but what about killing in self-defence, or killing a person who didn't have much longer to live anyway (think harry potter book 6)? so confusing. i'm infinitely grateful that i'm not majoring in law.

a related thought is on leadership. similarly, what gives someone the right to lead others? i guess that would be others choosing to follow that person. i've heard the words "leadership qualities" thrown about all over the place. somehow, it's kind of like an invisible thing. just by observing someone, you'll be able to tell if they'd make a good leader. can we actually define what leadership qualities are? i guess i would define it as how much people are willing to take instructions from you, and how good you are at giving these instructions such that things are done most efficiently. can leadership qualities be taught? well...i think it's both a nature and nurture thing. some people are just born with the charisma, so it's natural for them. of course, it can be learnt, even faked, but natural will have the advantage, i think. as for learning how to effectively use your resources, that's more learnt than inbuilt. some people learn faster than others, though.

ok...maybe this isn't the best example to showcase how my thoughts can lead to unrelated topics. i think that this train of thought was still reasonably easy to follow. then again, i obviously would think so, because it's my train of thought. i'd think that the link between orange juice and a nitrogen gas tank was obvious if i'd made it. guess this is also a look into my thought processes/personal views/decision-making processes. hope you enjoyed it. i usually don't blog this in-depth about my thoughts.

back to stuff that has happened, kata practice, both this past sunday and today. since grading is over, i've gone back to my usual partner. we're preparing for 2 upcoming competitions, the local SJF kata championships on 1 june, and the JUA asian kata championships, held in bangkok in late june. since the SJF decided to only focus on nage no kata and ju no kata for the local competition, we're planning to compete in ju no kata. it's mainly to see how we fare...i don't think my partner is expecting a gold. i sure as hell am not. for the JUA event, we should be doing our usual katame no kata. that is, if the management allows us to go in the first place. even if they give the green light, the fact that they don't support our kata means that my partner and i have to pay for everything, from airfare to accommodation, competition fees, and other miscellaneous expenditure. allowing space for safety buffer, total cost is projected to be about $500. nothing i can't afford, but still painful. makes me wonder why we even bother when we don't receive help from up top. there are a few sides to this. if we do well, the federation will capitalize on it for publicity, which i think is kind of unfair since they're trying to profit off something that they didn't want to support in the first place. but having said that, they may decide to give us some help in the future since we have proven ourselves, so it may not be all that bad. if we don't do well, ultimately we suffer, because the federation now has a reason to not support us. on a side, note, i think that there are a few reasons why the other 3 kata are not supported. logistics (more kata = more medals and time required. easier to focus on fewer kata), lack of participants (as far as i know, each of the 3 kata has only one pair each in singapore who can perform the respective kata somewhat decently), and to say something not-so-nice (but true!), singapore lacks qualified judges for some of the kata. but coming back to our training progress, we have to coordinate the spacing and timing a bit better for katame no kata. the last 2 sets generally look ok, just the first set (holds) are a bit...sloppy? as much as i dislike that word, it seems to be the best adjective to use here. for ju no kata, we have the basic form mostly down, but only VERY rough ideas about spacing and absolute positioning. have to seek guidance from the experts when our training dates coincide. nearly forgot to mention how crazy my partner is. he wants to compete in nage no kata for the local event as well. since i am somewhat unable to put up a good performance (not to mention a tiny bit unwilling to do the kata), he found another partner for it. then again, he has kata judge ambitions, so i guess he's working according to plan. i'm just floating along, trying to improve.

man, that was a long post! longest so far this year i think. wonder if i forgot anything. despite the length, there probably a couple of things i left out. but well. i'm sure they can wait until future posts. partially because of kata practice, and partially because i woke up at 7:30am for aforementioned practice, i'm feeling tired. then shouldn't it be wholly due to kata practice? whatever. hope i can sleep a little earlier tonight, then i'll go to school early tomorrow to start my LAH reduction and try to find out whether it's a problem with the compound or the HPLC setting.

-random thought of the day: Blogging prompt. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.-

Mid-way through studying for materials yesterday, i realized how much i messed the second CA up. admittedly, i didn't study VERY hard for it, so i guess that i can accept it. didn't know that it was worth 30% though...i'd thought 20% instead. well, it's over. just hope that that doesn't pull my grade down too much.

speaking of things that are over, finals ended yesterday. got killed by the asymmetric paper (as mentioned previously). materials was a bit more doable, and as expected, was a serious copy-paste session. summarizing the notes seemed to have helped. probably muscle memory and short-term retention from the writing. got mildly trolled by the second lecturer, who repeated a question on mesoporous silicates. on the whole, most things were doable, except that i had to resort to some serious smoking for a question involving ferrocene (the related concept was in the one and only set of notes i just skimmed over). all in all, my instinct says B+, though i have been known to be wrong. pretty sure that it'll look better than asymmetric though. on the bright side, thanks to my sem 1 results giving me some decent buffer, it'll take 2 Cs to drag my CAP down to 3.5, which is the minimum needed to maintain for the scholarship through my period of study. what are the odds of that happening? as for japanese, i'm pretty (like 98%) sure i'll get the S. the japanese lecturer just emailed us saying we can view our final tests. i'm a little hesitant to do that, because i'm pretty sure i didn't do as well as i'd have liked. would be demoralizing, i think. yet, my curiosity will probably win out in the end.

now that exams are over, i no longer have to worry about academics until next semester. incidentally, one more module and i'm done with the academic portion! will probably be taking organic synthesis, but depending on who's teaching it, and if it's even available in the first place. otherwise, i guess i'll have to find a substitute. no more materials modules though. any more of those and i might as well change supervisors. but it's way too early to worry about module selection. the most immediate worry now is research. previously, i had some problems reproducing literature yields and ee's (from my own group's paper, no less!). i think that that was because the catalyst i used was old, and maybe less effective. not to mention there was so little of it left that i had to cut the scale of the (already small-scale) reaction further in half. so, any errors made are magnified double (or more). to solve that problem, i synthesized a fresh lot of catalyst, so there's plenty to go around now. the NMR spectrum looks messy, but i hear that's normal for this type of natural product-derived compounds. have to test the reaction out tomorrow and see if i can finally get it working.

i've been contemplating this next point for a while, actually. how can a person improve his/her lab skills? given that it's a physical skill, i'd say practice would help. then, i guess the next question is, is there something like a lab skills coach? for organic synthesis, at least, there are so many different types of reactions that i think mastering the basic procedures, plus a third of all the named reactions would make you one of the top 2 synthetic chemists in the world, and definitely the most versatile one. but back to the original question...i guess the closest things to lab skills coaches are TAs and lab mentors. and depending on what kind of TAs (and mentors, if you do undergrad research) you get, you may not learn very much, if anything, at all. i've had fairly good TAs (including 2 excellent ones), and yet, i don't feel that my lab skills are anything to shout about. then again, considering that i've only been doing research for 2 years and a bit (or 1 year and a bit of "serious" research), i wonder if that's expected. or maybe the secret is that there is no secret, and you have to keep trying (and failing) until you get it. somehow that actually sounds believable...which is scary.

also, i covered class for SJI today. only had sec 1s, and a small group of sec 1s at that. had to stretch out the time a bit, so we went through breakfalls and had many many games. i realize that even sec 1 kids are partial to games. granted that they just graduated from primary school...could also be because they're still new to judo. have to keep things fun and varied. must find some new game ideas in case i have to cover class again anytime soon. this bunch of sec 1s are decent enough, i guess. their form/posture could use some polishing, and their thoughts need to mature a little bit, but that will come in time. incidentally, they were born in 2001, which was when i was in sec 1 myself. how's that for making someone feel old!?

guess that's enough blogging for now. i'm feeling nice and cool, thanks to the weather (it rained like hell in the afternoon, and there was a brief shower a while ago). it's a welcome relief after the past few hot nights. half-serious about bringing a safari bed into lab and just sleeping in the air-con. i'd save on transport and utilities, too. we'll see if it gets any worse.

-random thought of the day: Should start writing again.-

Happy star wars day! i posted the same greeting in 2010 as a random thought, but never really got around to explaining it. well, in case you don't know the reason, today is 4 may, or may the fourth...as in, "may the fourth be with you". hope you can draw the link from there.

good news! my alt + F4 problem stopped. it went away by itself, which was kind of weird. i'm not complaining, though. hope it doesn't come back. and incidentally, i realize that my photo cropping skills were quite fail, as a few of the pictures in the previous post had their last lines cut off. if you've been reading my blog for a decent length of time, you should be able to guess what i wrote. give it a try!

the past few days have been mainly devoted to watching materials' webcasts. while the content isn't particularly difficult, there is really really a lot of it. point of reference: the lecture notes are at least twice as thick as those for asymmetric. in fact, there are 741 slides total, and printing my usual layout of 2 slides per side (minus a few for optimization) means that i must have used up close to 200 sheets of paper. amazing. my initial estimate was around 500 slides, and the only reason i actually went to count was because i thought the number might be too high. granted that not every single slide will feature in the exam, but still, i think this module set the new record for longest lecture notes.

my second experience with "real" judo coaching was yesterday morning (first being at the nationals a month or so back). what do i mean by "real"? well, previously when i went back to SJI/CJC, there was always a more senior coach taking the class, so all i did was help out. yesterday, the senior coaches were around, but not actively leading the class (one just had an operation, the other came from a medical appointment). so, i was the one conducting most of the class for a change. of course, i still looked to the senior coaches when i was unsure, so it's not like i'm suddenly trying to take over or anything. the experience was nice, but i can definitely improve. there are 2 things that kind of bug me...that i don't know the training plan, and that i'm not sure if i'm teaching the correct thing. for the first thing, i haven't been going back to CJC/SJI training for a long time due to research and group meeting. so, i'm out of touch with their training programme, as well as the training plan. i can get briefed about the training plan fairly easily, so that's not the main issue. the main issue is that i don't know what they've learnt, so my expectations may be off. the second thing is a little more serious. you see, the current coach wasn't my coach back when i was in JC. so, i've had to pick up his coaching style, techniques, and all that from pure observation. it's not as hard as it looks, but without trying out his techniques for myself, it can be a little disorienting when i have to think through the form and work out how to best answer a question that the kids have. nothing i can't adapt to eventually, though. just have to try and work SJI/CJC into the schedule while not sacrificing research time.

stayed out late twice this past week. not smart considering it's exam period, but with 8 days' downtime between my only 2 finals, i suppose it's ok. the first time was on tuesday, when we met up for dinner at holland v's breko cafe, then met up with a friend who just came back from overseas ("just" as in we met him about an hour after he landed). hung out at siglap centre's mcdonalds to catch up, and that was it. couldn't do anything crazy, since it was a weeknight. yesterday, however, wasn't a weeknight, so we went for late-night karaoke at katong shopping centre. despite spending about 20 years' worth of school holidays in the area, i realize that i don't really know the katong/marine parade/siglap/telok kurau area that well. probably because i wasn't really the adventurous/exploring type as a kid, so i didn't really get out of the house a lot.

but anyway, karaoke. you know, i never thought i'd be comfortable to let others hear me mess songs up. probably the only times i sing out loud are: when i'm alone, when i'm in lab at night, and karaoke with this particular group of friends. i think that that says something in itself. there are people i've known for longer, but around whom i'm not as comfortable as, and trust less than most of these friends. besides, it kind of helps that none of us are professional singers or anything like that (though admittedly, i do mess up more than they do). it's good to spend time with them, even though some have moved on to the working world. hopefully there'll be similar events way into the future.

one of my friends is going through a rough time right now. since i'm not identifying him by name, or posting anything inflammatory (at least i think i'm not), there shouldn't be a problem. but even if there was, i'm sure he would tell me directly, instead of using an intermediary to threaten me with legal action (yes, this is a stab at the people who did that). coming back to topic, it seems that he's been under stress from various aspects of his life, most significantly in the relationship bit. never having been in a relationship myself, i really don't know how bad a breakup can be. but if what he's going through is considered normal, i'm thinking that getting into a relationship might not be that worth it after all. anyway, i don't really know how else i can help. i've listened to whatever he's willing to tell me, shared some of my thoughts with him, gave a few suggestions. don't know how helpful i'm being, though. more importantly, i don't know whether i've made the situation worse. hopefully not.

it so happens that this particular friend is the kind of person that doesn't mince his words, and will give you his honest opinion very directly. since he's capable of being on the receiving end as well, i can't really fault him or anything. but the reason i brought that up isn't related to his relationship issues, but rather because i read a quote somewhere, and somehow it popped up in my head as i was writing about him. the quote goes, "it's better to be kind than right". i'm not necessarily saying that he's unkind or anything; the quote just came up as a thought association. anyway, my interpretation of the quote is that you don't always have to make others agree with you, no matter how flawed their perspective seems to you. another related thought is that there are many ways of getting your message across. personally, i tend to avoid the blunt approach, unless it's my last resort and i feel that the situation warrants it (sometimes, people do need to hear the ugly truth). here i should probably state that there is a difference between tact and dishonesty. dishonesty sends a false/different message, tact sends the original message across in a different (nicer) way. at the same time, tact shouldn't be mistaken for weakness.

not quite sure where i'm going with that train of thought, so i guess i'll end off here. as you know, next major arrow is exam on tuesday. have to cover SJI/CJC class on wednesday afternoon, which means i must plan my experiments well in the morning, and go early to get them done. i'll manage.

-random thought of the day: You should regret what you have done, rather than what you have not done.-