'What's your greatest weakness?'

that's a question which i think is quite commonly used during job interviews. and according to the ES module which i took in year 2 (so long ago!), it's actually an opportunity to show off your strengths. common answers would go something like "i work too hard; you'll see me in the office on weekends, public holidays..." or "i don't know when to quit, i'll complete the project at all costs". personally, if i was the interviewer, i'd prefer an honest answer, because knowing someone's weaknesses (and strengths) will help in putting them in an area where the weaknesses will be covered. but that's not my main point. my weakness would be that i care too much. not sure if it's a side effect of the singaporean education system, or whether it's just my nature, but somehow, i find it difficult to hand up something which doesn't look as good as i'd imagined. that might have been the reason i didn't hand up so much homework growing up. or i might just have been lazy. but anyway. i think i'd better learn how to care less, because most of the people in lab aren't even bothered. even though i'm appointed as the safety lead, they basically ignore everything i tell them with regards to lab maintenance. and to make things worse, i get blamed whenever the safety people point these things out again. my professor kind of understands i think...he'll send emails to back me up, saying stuff like "please cooperate", but he never really enforces any punishment or anything. then again, that would be difficult too, since suspension or other forms of negative action slows productivity down, which means that papers take longer. and that's bad for the lab.

it's more sucky because in terms of time with the lab, i come in at like 5th place out of 18, thanks to UROPS and honours. i'm only behind my professor himself and a few senior grad students. i even outrank all 3 postdocs in that regard! and yet, some people are trying to play punk. the worst thing is, i can't even leave them to die like i'd originally wanted to. because if we don't clear this check, more and more rounds of checks will be scheduled in the future. and guess who suffers the most in the end? the damned safety lead, that's who. i really don't want to play the nationality card here, so i won't. but i will say this. it seems that the people in lab who have been through some sort of military training are generally more cooperative, and more willing to go out of their way to help. well, at least i don't have to deal with the moron grad student who left a couple months ago. not sure if he submitted his thesis and got his degree, but i sure hope he didn't. worst case scenario is i really lose it and something ugly happens. less worst case is i talk to my professor before that happens, and he does something about it.

driving is also getting on my nerves. you'd think that since i leave lab late at night/early in the morning, there wouldn't be moron drivers on the road, right? you'd be surprised (and wrong). it's the usual stuff, taxis stopping at the stupidest locations to pick passengers up or drop them off, people hogging the right lane, NOT SIGNALLING WHEN FILTERING, and various other examples of stupid behaviour. it really makes me wonder how they passed their driving test. you know, maybe the LTA should hire undercover taxi passengers whose job scope involves taking the taxi to some random location, and booking them for whatever traffic rules they break. if only that idea could be extended to private transport as well. also, as much as i try not to stereotype, i do find that women are, in general, worse drivers than men. having said that, i've met some good female drivers and some lousy male ones, but the general trend holds. i mean, stereotypes exist for a reason, right? i hope i never become the kind of driver i dislike as i get older.

since i have a mid-term tomorrow for drugs), i brought my notes home in the off chance that i might want to study. i actually was planning to, but compiling the lab's chemical list took WAY longer than i thought. i'd hoped for it to be a 3-hour job, maximum, but i spent like 9 hours over 2 days. but at least it's done. and to be honest, i don't really want to study all that bio stuff. think i'll have a quick look-through tomorrow during TA, or better yet, if TA finishes early. the only reason i'd even consider looking through my notes while on duty is because tomorrow's experiment is column chromatography. and it's very difficult to not separate the mixture successfully. then again...year 1s. genius knows no bounds. well, we'll see how things go. as a reminder to myself, i can probably be hit by a C and still be above the CAP requirement, so i shouldn't be too worried. should be ok as long as i don't fail too terribly.

as for lab work, the enolate reaction worked!! thank goodness for having knowledgeable seniors. only thing was that my column kind of sucked, so i don't know if i got the correct product or not. nevertheless, it's a step in the right direction! if all goes well, i'll have the molecule prepared, and a reaction tried by my birthday. keeping everything crossed on meeting that deadline.

-random thought of the day: Sleep early!-

Something's seriously wrong...the fact that i'm still in school notwithstanding. no, the problem i have is bigger than that. seems like i'm losing motivation again. could be a sign that i have to send my professor an update, since talking to him usually does the trick. but that aside, i remember a quote that goes something like "find a job you love, and you'll never work a day of your life". one of my friends seems to be a living example of that; he loves cars, and i think he's the editor of this one car magazine. not sure if there's another day job nor not, but based on how involved he is, the time commitment can't be all that small, which might make having another job difficult. incidentally, he's the same friend who introduced me to blogging when we were both in sec 3. not sure if he still has a personal blog or not, the last blog i knew he had was closed in sec 4 or J1. surprising, that i'm still at it after so long and he isn't.

and on a more personal front, i've got to get my body clock under control. these late days and late nights can't be too healthy. my sleep schedule is quite messed up. on average, i sleep at 2:30am and get up at 11:00am. and somehow when i get up, i really really don't feel like going to school. so after some internal struggle, the "go to school" side will usually win out, and it'll be about 2:00pm by the time i reach, which then means that i have to pull a late night to finish whatever i have to do, and the cycle repeats itself. so annoying. think i have to do something extreme to break out of it, like force myself to come to school early...which is the plan for tomorrow.

that aside, there's a big safety check soon. bugger. they seem to want to do a very through check, similar to last time. on one hand, i shouldn't feel upset, because it's their job, and it's good for us to be safe. but then, i get really annoyed when they start to nitpick, especially for super minor things like the neatness of our benchtops and fume hoods. i thought i left all that stand by area stuff back in army. well, with any luck, i hope we can clear this round smoothly, and get them off our backs. it's really not fun having this constant thing looming over you.

probably should get ready to close shop and head home. with any luck, my enolate reaction will work this time. though if it does, i'll still be kicking myself for mot trying this set of much milder/easier conditions first. i'll be kicking myself (for wasting time) if it doesn't work anyway, so i guess same difference?

-random thought of the day: Start studying for JLPT!-

Here i am in school again, running another night shift. no choice, since there's a lab check tomorrow. well, actually there was a choice, to settle everything in the daytime. but too many people to manoeuvre around, and too noisy for me to think out loud. so i'm doing it at night. i'm not complaining, exactly, since i chose the time. complaints (about other stuff) will come later.

for now, some regular blogging first. as you may have read from the last post, i signed up for the JLPT, at the N2 level. that's the second-highest, by the way. i know that i'm definitely not prepared for N1, so i figured let's aim a little lower first, get a feeling for what the test format is, the way questions are phrased and all that. signing up was quite straightforward, just had to make payment ($65), then fill up the online form. nothing too special. pro tip in case you're ever planning on signing up online for the JLPT - have the test guide open in another tab or window, preferably side-by-side with the registration form. you'll need the information there. i personally used my second monitor, which i found to be really convenient. the last thing i had to do was to send in the photo form (with 2 photos) by mail. took the chance to go down to the new-ish post office at bishan CC to buy some envelopes. was about to buy a pack of 20 when i saw that they sold the postage-paid envelopes at the counter. and thankfully, they sell them by the piece, so i just got 1 since it was all i needed. it had a rather cartoon-ish panda design, and cost 40 cents, by the way. if i remember correctly, a "first local" stamp costs 26 cents. which means that the envelope itself cost 14 cents? something like that. compared to the 20-pack of envelopes i was prepared to buy, which cost $2.40, meaning each envelope costs 12 cents. odd. i was quite sure that the first choice was more economical. i guess it was, in a sense, since the absolute amount of money i spent was lower.

Started writing that on thursday night/friday morning, but was too tired to actually finish it off. wouldn't have been so bad if the check went smoothly, but the person checking our lab was tied up with work. morning became afternoon, afternoon became tuesday (tomorrow). really cheated my feelings upside down. and as you may know from the second law of thermodynamics, the lab got messy over the weekend. and some people went to mess up my beautifully-arranged stuff. so, i've decided that i've had it. it's no point going so far out of my way for unappreciative people. from now on, i'll just remind them, and if they decide not to do anything, i'll just leave them to die. and even if the lab closes, my conscience is clear.

there have been so many things going on the the past week or so, i honestly don't know where to begin. so i think i'll try talking about friendship. a few sundays back, i went to send my friend/junior off at the airport. he was flying to china, where he's set to spend the next 2 years finishing his degree in TCM. we were still reasonably close back when i just started university and he was in army, so i thought it would be nice to see him before he went off. considering i haven't really seen him for about 2 years already, i guess it wouldn't have made much difference. if someone had come to send me off, i guess i would have made them feel welcome, and appreciated that they came down at 6:00+am on a sunday just to spend some time with me. that was everything i didn't feel, so i thought that it definitely wasn't worth it for me. but on the other hand, it's not really about the guest, is it? it's about the person who's flying. so maybe i'm looking at this wrongly. i don't know.

here's another thought that comes on and off to my mind...what separates a criminal from the average person on the street? it's rather open-ended, and there's probably no single correct answer. my answer, though, is self-control. in the past few days alone, how many times have you thought, 'i'll kill that bugger!' or 'you better not let me catch you alone, or you'll get it'. at least once, right? i know i variations of those thoughts have crossed my mind way more than once. and the thing that separates criminals from non-criminals is probably that criminals have a higher tendency to act on these impulses. and maybe luck plays a part too, like a policeman happens to walk by when a guy is acting on such an impulse. so that was just a random thought.

also this past week, i did something which i've been meaning to do for quite a while now, and that was to clean out the car's boot space. amazing how much rubbish naturally accumulates there after a while. got rid of 2 cardboard boxes, a lot of paper, and brought some items back to the house. not sure how much that will go towards improving my fuel economy, but i figure every little bit helps, right? next thing i have to go: get all my petrol receipts together and do a bit of accounting.

guess that's all i can remember right now. not blogging for too long causes older and less significant events to get lost in my head. well...i should probably call it a night too. have to try and fix my sleep schedule and be in lab earlier tomorrow to figure out my reaction and tank the safety check.

-random thought of the day: Getting old.-

It happens, on average, less than 3 times a year. "it" being me suffering from insomnia. it's really weird, because it just happens out of the blue, like last night. granted, i may have taken a half-hour power nap in the afternoon, but that shouldn't throw my sleep schedule off by 4 hours right!? as a result, i slept at about 5:30am, woke up at about 9:30am, and basically operated on 4 hours' sleep today, with TA and class to boot. not bad. ok, admittedly, i spaced out in class and may have nodded off very briefly a few times. think that'll justify me coming in a bit late(r) tomorrow.

that's it for this post, actually. just wanted to blog about my insomnia. oh. i'm signing up for JLPT N2. will probably talk about the whole process in the next post, as well as something that quite annoyed me this past weekend. by the way, i'm still in school. just have to make sure one reagent is completely added, and i'm off.

-random thought of the day: Too tired to continue.-