"Muggy" comes to mind as the perfect adjective to describe today's weather. it's the horrible kind of hot and humid (not that there's a non-horrible kind of hot and humid) that leaves you sweating from just lying in bed and doing nothing. and when you take a shower, there'll be this thin layer of water that remains on your skin no matter how much you towel off. to escape the weather, and also because i had some washing up to do, i'm back in lab. not complaining about it, since it's my choice, and also since it's nice and cool in here.

so...it's been almost 2 weeks since the last post. i'd love to say that the long delay was because i was too busy churning out data in anticipation of publishing a paper, but that couldn't be further away from the truth. my stupid substrate synthesis isn't even complete yet, so there went my deadline. at present, i've got 4 most viable synthesis routes (after my first 5 routes failed), and if none of those work out...well, i don't want to think about it. but i have high hopes for the top 2 most likely to succeed, so i'm keeping my fingers crossed.

my birthday this year passed with almost no fanfare. just some messages on whatsapp and facebook. once again, i'm not complaining that it was too low key or anything like that. after all, i'm not the party type. there was drinking with them chem kids the next day, so i guess that kind of worked out. i was doing ok with wine and sake, but downing one-third of a plastic cup of whiskey killed me to the point that i had to trouble my friend to drive me back. note for future reference: no more ta-ing straight alcohol, regardless what others say.

a couple of things greatly annoyed me this past week. first of all, someone opened my mail. you may have heard about how much i dislike people going through my stuff. opening my mail is like that, but X10. after all, i don't touch anyone else's mail, and i expect that same courtesy to be extended back to me. i don't care if the contents are good or bad, or who the letter is from, or whether it's urgent or not. just stay the hell away. i'll bear any consequences from me not opening it in time. it's not the first time either. i know that about 2 years ago, my dad opened my bank statement to get my account number so that he could transfer money to my account. unfortunately for him, i noticed the account imbalance (get it? it should be account balance!) and solved it. the thing that really pissed me off was that i happened to walk past as he was opening it, and he told me that he accidentally opened my letter. although my friends say that i'm gullible, i'm not retarded.

the second thing, believe it or not, is worse. background information: remember i have an aunt and uncle living in new zealand? they have an unoccupied HDB flat in tampines, which my brother temporarily moved into since it's closer to his school or something like that. so that means the room which we shared is sort of "mine" now. i wonder if you can imagine the cycle of feeling when i came back one day to find my sister in there, studying at the now-vacated computer table. it's not like there's nowhere else to study; she has a room to herself, and there are common areas like the living room. i'm actually half-tempted to dismantle the computer table and move it elsewhere. before you think i'm making a mountain out of a molehill, i'm the kind of person who, upon reaching home, just wants to be alone for a while to shake off the stresses of the day. and having someone else in close proximity isn't the best way to be alone. whatever the case is, it's making "home" feel even less like home. and that's kind of the secondary reason i keep late hours and even come back to lab when it's not required. once again, i'm not exactly complaining, since i chose to remove myself from the equation. and in fact, as soon as it becomes financially and logistically feasible, i'm moving out. no second thoughts. almost makes we wish i spent the money that was spent on the car on renting a room somewhere in buona vista, or even on a graduate residence on-campus. thankfully, the car won out, and still wins out, everything considered.

due to this, and some other stuff, i just haven't been feeling very happy recently. it's probably not depression or anything serious...i'm probably just stuck in a rut. and not having anyone that i'd want to talk to probably magnifies the bad stuff in my head. almost makes me think counselling might work. ALMOST. luckily for me, i have this! guess i'll just sick to blogging until i feel worse, like suicidal or something. but until then, blogging will suffice.

on a very slightly related tangent, have you ever fallen in like with someone because of their smile? weird and superficial as it sounds, i kind of did. i think this person's smile ranks among the top 2 nicest smiles i've seen all my life. and although we barely know each other, i really want to see that smile on a daily basis, and maybe if i should be so lucky, be the reason that that person's smiling. but realistically, there is literally a negative chance of anything developing. trust me, i know. in the end, i guess it's just something to inject some brightness into my day.

guess that's enough moping for one post. i should probably get back in the lab to finish my washing up, do a few NMRs, and depending on those results, maybe start a reaction in time for work-up tomorrow.

-random thought of the day: Drunk girls are scary.-

Every researcher is sure to have had at least one bad lab day in their lives. today was one such rough day for me. after spilling 80% of my 10g of compound, i decided that i wasn't going to try anything more complicated than some minor housekeeping. in the grand scheme of things, it's probably not that big of a deal. it's only the product of the first step of the synthesis, and we still have quite a bit of starting material left. only thing it's a bit inconvenient and time-wasting, since i have to synthesize more to scale-up again. or maybe it's someone's way of telling me that this route might not work out, and that my other route stands a better chance? i can hope, i guess.

on the bright side, i feel quite accomplished for solving the alt+F4 issue my keyboard was having. brief recap: after i'd entered my password and logged on to windows, the alt+F4 key combination would be pressed non-stop even when i wasn't doing anything. that made the computer impossible to use, since any windows opened would be quite quickly closed. it happened once earlier this year, and started again last week. normally i'd initially suspect that it was due to some virus, but after a norton scan came up clean, my thoughts turned to hardware. even after i made sure both the alt and F4 keys weren't jammed, the problem still persisted. at that point, i'd pretty much guessed that it was a keyboard issue, since unplugging it solved the problem, though it was at the cost of being unable to type quickly. somehow, i had a brief stroke of genius just now, and figured out that it was one of my bindable keys that was jammed instead. you see, my keyboard was marketed as a gaming keyboard. though i don't fancy myself as much of a gamer, i bought it because of the cool orange backlighting and typing on it felt good. actually, showing a picture might give a better idea:

of course, having had mine for...6-ish years, it looks much older. like all the shiny metallic-finished buttons and switches have oxidized, and i bet that there's all sorts of grime and dirt under and in-between the keys. so what actually happened was that i bound alt+F4 to G6 (most bottom-left key), for ease of closing applications, and it was that key that got stuck instead. i tried removing the key to poke around underneath, but that didn't solve it. so i had to use some ninja skill and rebind G6 to something else, then delete the binding altogether. all this was done in a few seconds between "presses", by the way, which makes me feel kind of proud of myself. cheap thrills, but i figured after such a sucky day, i'd take anything that was even the slightest bit positive.

met my friend for dinner today at ion, which was another positive thing. we ate at monster curry, which he'd wanted to try for some time now, and which i was also mildly curious about. service-wise, the staff were polite, but something still felt weird, like they were being too brisk. as for the food, the serving size was quite big...as was the price. tasted pretty good though. note to self: try level 3 or 4 spiciness next time. we were talking over dinner, and i told him all about my sucky lab day today. he, in turn, shared some of his girlfriend issues and other work stuff. somehow, it seems that as time goes by, we have less and less in common. he's out there working, while i'm still in the relative safety of NUS. he's got a girlfriend, i'm still happily(?) single. he's planning for married life, and i'm just sitting here m...blogging. i was just telling him earlier, although his relationship isn't always smooth-sailing, he seems to be happier overall, so that's working out ok for him i guess. as for the arguments and whatnot, i remember a proverb i learnt in japanese 2 which goes "the ground that has endured rains is firmer". something like that.

while driving home, i realized that right now, there are exactly zero people i would choose to confide in. that can't be healthy, right? but well, the people whom i'd thought that i could confide in somehow became distant. or maybe i pushed them away? don't think so, but who knows. also, everyone's got their problems, and i don't think they'd like additional burden from me. that's why blogging is still the best. anyone who wants to read it has full access, and if they don't like it, they can just leave the page...or send a threat of legal action (yes, i'm not letting up on that one so easily). and perhaps, in some way, it is kind of confiding in someone, because i usually feel much better after publishing a post.

last sucky thing for this post, i promise. just started flipping through the JLPT books which i'd bought yesterday. as in, i started flipping yesterday. i'd bought them quite a while back. it seems to me that my standard is nowhere good enough for N2. there are lots of kanji i can recognize and whose meaning i can roughly guess based on chinese, but i have no idea about their japanese pronunciation. it's not that important, seeing as the test is MCQ, but the thing is that these words might appear in the listening section, which means that i may not know what i'm listening to. well, seeing as i have about 8 weeks to the test, and 3 books to go through, that works out to roughly 2 weeks per book. not impossible, but definitely will be challenging. definitely should have started earlier. but well...make do with what we have now. to put it in perspective, this is one of those things that i wouldn't mind failing. not that i WANT to fail, but the cost of failing is $65, 2 photos (about $8?), one postage-paid envelope, and a sunday afternoon. nothing i can't really afford to lose. of course i'd rather pass well the first time, but just saying. in the event i fail, it's not the end of the world.

have to get up early tomorrow. i've been trying to reset my body clock, with some success last week, not so much this week. might have been the stress from having to get enough data to present at group meeting. hope things look up from here on.

-random thought of the day: It's been 10 years since graduation from secondary school.-

Let's begin today's post with a story.

The Egg
By: Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.
“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”
“Yup,” I said.
“I… I died?”
“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.
You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me.
“What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Are you god?” You asked.
“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”
“My kids… my wife,” you said.
“What about them?”
“Will they be all right?”
“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”
“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”
“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”
“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”
“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”
You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”
“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had. You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”
“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”
“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”
“Where you come from?” You said.
“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”
“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”
“So what’s the point of it all?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”
“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”
“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”
“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”
“Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”
“Wait. I’m everyone!?”
“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.
“I’m every human being who ever lived?”
“Or who will ever live, yes.”
“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.
“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.
“And you’re the millions he killed.”
“I’m Jesus?”
“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”
“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”
“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”
“No. Not yet. You’re a foetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”
“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”
“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

---------------

of all the interpretations of god/the afterlife i've heard so far in my life, i think i might like this one the most. it quite nicely unifies a few of the things i believe in (karma being one of the more significant things). though i'll probably never know for sure, i kind of wish that this was true. sounds tough though...living every single life from the beginning of time to its end. admittedly, some lives are shorter than others, but still.

considering we don't even know when time will end, it could be a few million years in the future. then again, becoming a god can't be that easy, right? i wonder if a mole of people would have lived and died by the time we (i) matured. and more interestingly, what happens after the egg hatches? what do gods do for fun? is there more growing/maturing to do? or do we get to have a child of our own, and put him through the same process?

to me, the take-away message is to be nicer to people. instead of "what goes around comes around", this is more like "you hurt yourself by hurting others". wish other people (or other incarnations of me) could discover this story and maybe change their mindsets a bit.

that aside, it's hari raya haji. or it was, yesterday. and you know the whole monday off if sunday is a holiday thing. but i'm still in school. in fact, i've been uncharacteristically hardworking, coming to school on saturday, yesterday, and today. so much for long weekend. not like i have much choice, though...i'm due to present for group meeting in 4 days and a bit...not forgetting my drugs powerpoint, which i have barely started on. definitely going to have to kick it into high gear this week. thankfully, i seem to be ok-ish for research...i'm 3 steps away from the finished substrate, and if all goes well, i can probably finish it by thursday and try a reaction on friday, which i can then report as "in progress". sounds like a plan. as far as possible, i'm trying to avoid overnighting in school, so i definitely have to utilize my waking hours more efficiently.

JLPT is in almost exactly 2 months, and i haven't started studying at all. i did bring the books to school (since i'll be in school more often than not) and i also bought a(nother) nice blank notebook to avoid writing in the textbooks themselves. so...it's a start, i guess. the plan now is to spend an hour or two on japanese every day from tomorrow onwards. and speaking of plans, i'm also aiming to keep better hours. like from 10:00am to 10:00pm, instead of 1:00pm to 1:00am. the latter can't be healthy in the long run.

the past week was quite horrible. there was a big safety check, which i had to handle. thankfully i have an assistant overseeing the S5 lab, so that really reduced my workload. he's good for a year 1 student...but still a little bit unpolished in handling the safety people. no worries; he'll get it as he learns on the job. as for the check, the report's not out yet, but i think we'll make it and there won't be a (re-)re-inspection. better not jinx it, though. it would suck quite badly if things went south. on a slightly related note, i'm not in charge of chemical orders any more! good thing, too. we have more than enough people in the lab to handle the various jobs, actually. still have no idea why i had to handle two portfolios. but oh well. i just hope my professor doesn't compare my progress to the other grad student who has NOTHING outside of waste disposal, which is rotated among the grad students anyway. fingers crossed.

as a result of the stress these past few weeks, i've been a bit too trigger-happy with the blackcurrant hacks. even though it's supposed to be good for the throat and whatnot, there's no escaping the fact that the main ingredient is sugar. so, i've decided to go without sweets for the next 2 weeks, ending this self-imposed ban on my birthday. what nice timing.

even though i said that i've been back to school every day of this long weekend, i've had my fair share of socializing/fun as well, with drinks at beer market yesterday, and lunch at mookata today. the beer market gimmick is like it's a stock exchange for beer. the price of popular beers go up, while less popular beers become cheaper and eventually bottom out. the reason i refer to this as a gimmick is because even though the price can fluctuate, there is a floor price, which is definitely still above cost. so no matter what, the place makes money. just a matter of how much. then again, i don't suppose any sensible business owner would put himself in a situation where he might lose money, right?

mookata (although it means pork grill in thai, it still sounds like a bovine martial arts demonstration to me) at katong was pretty good too! the excellent service made up for the slightly too hot environment and the portion sizes. funny; i read reviews that said their service sucked. could be that the review was referring to a different branch, or it might have been the timing (we went around 1:00pm, where there were like only 4 other tables occupied, maximum). the story may have been different if we went during the dinner rush. anyway, the food was above average, just that the portion sizes were a bit too small. then again, i was hungry. as we were walking around katong i12 after lunch, we saw that there was another branch inside the mall itself (we had went to the one across the road). the branch in the mall offered an 80-minute all-you-can-eat buffet, for about the same price as what we spent ordering a la carte. plus there would have been air-con! would have eaten there instead if we had known. bugger.

oh. one kind of odd thing happened this past week. i got a few blisters on my left hand. well...they're not exactly blisters, because new skin had already grown underneath. i only discovered it when i accidentally splashed THF on my hand, and it hurt worse than usual. normally, it's just a stinging sensation that goes away quickly when rinsed with water. my hand felt like it was burning that time. not fun. don't know what caused it, either. it's happened before, so i guess it's not such a big deal. the last time was about 3 years ago or so...before i started work in this lab, at any rate. it's probably nothing major, but it was a little shocking at first.

don't think i missed out any major stuff. think i'd better write an email (DNC registry complaint), go for NMR, then go home. have to sleep earlier, after all.

-random thought of the day: Don't forget house keys again!-