Going to save the heavy stuff for another time, and just blog about one thought today. you know sometimes when you're eating at a hawker centre or food court (or more rarely, at a fast food place), there will be a middle-aged to elderly person who approaches you, trying to sell you tissue paper at a really jacked-up price? i wonder about arguments for and against entertaining them. on one hand, i think it's illegal to approach people like that without a license or permit. not to mention that like i mentioned before, most people (myself included) don't really appreciate being approached by strangers when they're minding their own business.

but then, i find myself feeling kind of sympathetic for them. i can't imagine that it's easy to go around asking others for money. and although i'm not like super rich, i'm not going to miss a dollar here or there that much, which puts me in a position to help them. so i should, right? while my instinct tells me yes, a little part of me still wants to be suspicious. different people value face differently, after all. while i might not be willing to ask strangers for money, that doesn't mean others will be as reserved. it is a way to get money with relatively little effort and a high profit margin, after all. but that could also be because i have never been driven to their level of desperation.

one thing does kind of make me uncomfortable, though, and that is that these people tend to be so persistent! like, they'll come up and ask once. while i'm thinking about it, they'll just keep going on and on, stuff like "it's only a dollar...please help..." it really puts me off. of course, i understand why they do it...to make themselves look more in need of help, and thus improve their odds of getting a sale. i don't know. i still don't like the idea of giving cash. maybe what i can do next time is buy them a drink or something.

should probably go back to bed for a quick nap/rest while i can. after missing lab today, i should go in really early tomorrow (like 5:00am kind of early) to make up. still have to run 2 columns and check a few reactions. with any luck, i'll have the compound by this week, if not next.

-random thought of the day: Is it hard to open up to people?-

This has been the most relaxing weekend i've had all semester. since it's exam period (reading week just ended, and exams officially started yesterday), my professor cancelled group meeting for 3 weeks. yesterday was the first of the 3 cancelled meetings, so i've got 2 more free saturdays. should enjoy it while i can, since this happens only like once every semester. was supposed to go to school today for a bit, just to wash my NMR tubes and check on my reactions. but somehow, sleeping at 2:30am last night kind of ruined that plan. hopefully my reflux hasn't dried and died yet. should be ok, since i have a running-water condenser. then again, the solvent is ether, which boils at like 30°C. but i have it under nitrogen, used excess solvent, and didn't set the temperature too high...hard to say. it'll probably make it. as long as the system doesn't explode.

call me crazy, but i didn't take advantage of this past free saturday to sleep in. instead, i went to BPS on the coach's invitation, to hang around for their training/open house. it was fun; i'm always impressed with the spirit at their training sessions. it seems that i'm getting even closer to BPS. guess it's because they've been really welcoming. and also because i've been overseas with some of them. overseas trips tend to really help with bonding. anyway, the open house was somewhat less crowded than i was expecting. that's probably why there were only 3 sec 1 classes this year. well...not really my business. just an observation. another observation i'd like to make is that i've become somewhat distant with SJI/CJC, but that's because i haven't been to their training in so long, what with my lab work and their exams...the schedule just hasn't fallen into place that nicely. nobody's fault, really, but it does suck on some level, feeling that you're closer to another school vs your alma mater.

previously, i'd always thought that a person's feelings for someone else couldn't change spontaneously. and i still stand by that. the thing is, i now know first-hand that feelings can change...when the other person does something that goes against your (my) beliefs/values/morals. suddenly, whatever good feelings you (i) used to have just evaporated. it's liberating, in a sense, but it also makes me wonder how well i knew that person, and did i ever think that they'd be capable of what they did. but i guess that that's pointless to think about. after all, whatever friendship or relationship that we shared is dead as far as i'm concerned now, so i really should not waste brain space on it. if only my brain was obedient enough to stick with that reasoning. well...whatever. i think i can handle it, obedient brain or not.

why do you tell someone a secret? i was having a little debate on this topic with some of the other dog shelter volunteers over dinner yesterday. they lean more towards the view that telling someone a secret (eg. something personal) should be done because you value the person you're telling and want to be honest with them. on the other hand, i'm favouring the view that people tell other people stuff because sometimes, having a secret can be too much to bear, and by telling someone, you kind of share the burden? something like that. i'm starting to realize that that's kind of selfish, like you're confiding in someone else just to make yourself feel better, paradoxical as it sounds. and in a way, you impose the burden of knowledge onto the other person. guess the key is being even more selective, and only confiding in someone for the right reason. kind of like you shouldn't do something simply for the sake of doing it.

oh. there's a judo competition going on today and tomorrow. carded athletes who aren't fighting are supposed to help out in some way (referee or technical official) as a condition for their continued carding next year. i tried to sign up as a referee, i really did. but well, according to the referee director, i'm still under suspension, so i don't have to participate. that freed up my weekend, so i'm not complaining. i am complaining about how long this investigation is taking, though. it's been slightly more than 4 months since i've came back from macau, and i'm told that investigations are still ongoing. even if the issue was only brought up once a month during management committee meetings, you'd think 4 meetings would be enough to settle it! apparently not. maybe there are things i don't know, but from my perspective, the SJF management is starting to look incompetent. to me, it seems that if they really felt so strongly about it, they should have written to macau immediately to get the facts, then present their findings at the next meeting. then summon me to hear my side of the story, maybe take another meeting to decide on a suitable penalty, inform me of the penalty and let me decide whether to contest it, and if i do contest it, get a neutral party to arbitrate, and declare the issue solved. that would have taken like 3 months, tops. being informed of a penalty and serving it (if it was reasonable) would be so much more preferable than being hung in limbo. but well...there could be factors that are beyond their control, or stuff that i'm not aware of, so i can't vouch for the accuracy/feasibility of my assessment. it's just what i think should have been done. perhaps making the entire investigation more transparent (as in giving regular updates) would be beneficial for everyone.

although i don't think there's much chance of this happening, i would be extremely upset if the management were to use this suspension as an excuse to declare me inactive as a referee, or if they were to use my non-participation in the competition as a reason to revoke my carding. granted, there is sufficient grounds to revoke my carding even without using the competition as a reason, but i'm not going to let them tack that extra unjustified charge on, even if the end result is the same. it's the principle of the thing, you know? but let's not worry about that now, there'll be plenty of time for worrying later, like when they reach a conclusion about the referee thing and the club thing at the AGM, which i'm told is to be held next month. fingers crossed that everything works out fine.

-random thought of the day: You cannot love the life you live until you live the life you love.-

Without making light of the issue of mental illness or the people who are genuinely unwell, today was the closest i think i've come to a panic/anxiety attack. it's like, my reactions are not going well, i'm severely behind schedule, and the stupid TG hexane is contaminated, so i've had to throw some precursors away. scheduled an appointment with my professor tomorrow, though i'm not sure if he's free. hopefully talking to him will help.

there are 2 things which i wanted to mention in the last post. one of them is that people are doing their jobs too. context: on sunday, as i was waiting for scary at J8, this woman from the HPB came up to me and started talking about visceral fat, health screenings and all that. naturally, i was irritated and gave short answers at first, because i had just been minding my own business and didn't appreciate being approached like that. but then, i got to thinking. it was a sunday, and sunday night to boot. i'm sure no sane person wants to spend their sunday night approaching strangers and getting them to do some stupid health screening. had the roles been reversed, i would want people who at least pretended to be interested, so i could convince myself that i was doing my job, i guess. with that thought in mind, i tried to be more accommodating. hope that made her sunday less sucky. so i guess my takeaway here is to think more of/for other people. trivia - turns out that lady's an NUS chem graduate too...but like 18 years ago? something like that. her FYP professor is still around, though.

right outside my lab, there is a male toilet. that means i'm lucky as i don't have to go one floor up/down, unlike the girls. but that's a sidetrack. thing is, my neighbouring block in having construction works done, and the workers sometimes use the toilet, and that's the second thing. there's been a notice put up saying that the toilet was "staff only", and asking workers not to use it. from a human perspective, it's discrimination. why can't workers use the same toilet as us? is it because they're not employed by or affiliated to the university? actually, i think the concern is more practical. you see, due to the nature of their work, the workers tend to track lots of mud/sand/dust into the toilet, which gives the cleaning staff a harder job. as a student, i'm not affected, so of course it's ok if the workers use the same toilet as me. but if i was in charge of cleaning the toilet, i would definitely not be happy.

going to end off here for now. should be going home soon. i realized that i made a very stupid mistake for the drugs test, so i don't know how that will affect anything. keeping my fingers crossed that i won't fall below a B-.

-random thought of the day: Demoralized.-

Reconnecting with old friends has been a major theme of this past week. i had appointments with friends whom i haven't seen in periods ranging from a year to 8 years. before that, though, i think we'll do things in chronological order, meaning that i have to talk about the drugs test on monday.

by "drugs test", i of course don't mean a literal "pee into a cup" thing. it was the final exam of the drugs module, only that it has to be called a test and not an exam because it was before reading week. admittedly, i didn't really study that much, so i'm not setting my expectations too high. most likely i won't fail, but i'm hoping for a B- at worst, just to keep my C-less streak throughout undergrad and graduate life. it would kind of suck to get my first C on the very last module of my university life. well...i'll only know in about a month, so no point worrying about it now.

on tuesday, i met up with a friend whom i've written about a few months back. he's the one with hereditary spastic paraplegia (once again, i swear i'm not making that name up). went to his place at bukit panjang for dinner and just to hang out. now, i haven't been to bukit panjang since i stopped tutoring an SJI boy who lives there, so like for...about 3 years? it hasn't really changed, still lots of construction and road works going on. the roads were a little less straight and smooth, and so required a bit more skill. nothing the car couldn't handle, though. this particular friend of mine stays at ten mile junction, which apparently has a condo-type development above the shops. think it would be a nice place to live in in the future, once all the construction's done. so we caught up over dinner at paradise inn (i think). since the condition makes it difficult to be a naval diver, he left the SAF and is now working as a designer/facebook page manager. it suits him, since he's always been artistically-inclined. don't think i mentioned it to him that night, but i really liked his signature (which i saw when he was signing for the bill). very nice and flowy.

anyway. after dinner, we went back to his place, where he did a few tarot readings for me. he picked it up somewhere sometime somehow, and i thought it'd be interesting. although i'm sure other forces exist, i can't really be bothered to worry about whatever supernatural stuff. but i figure that as long as i keep to the terms of our agreement and don't try anything funny, everything should be ok. i asked 5 questions, with surprisingly accurate answers. but i suppose i should qualify that statement. i don't know for sure about the exact mechanisms of how tarot cards work, so i'm just going to look at it from a scientific/mathematical/statistical point of view. there are 72 (or 78? let's go with 72 until told otherwise) cards in a deck. for each reading, 3 cards are drawn, which means that the odds of drawing any given card in a reading ranges from 1 in 72 to 1 in 70. those are already quite small odds. yet, there were 2 cards that came up twice, and this was with shuffling between questions. the first card was the ace of swords, also known as the tyrant, which is associated with logic/facts and the idea of manipulation. oddly, that card came up when i asked about my love life, which then links to the idea of a marriage of convenience. that scares me more than it should. the second time it came up was linked to a question i asked about someone important to me, and that really made me review all our past interactions. more on that later. the second card that came up twice was the hermit, first when i was asking about my grad studies journey. the odd thing is that the hermit is equipped for the journey, but doesn't use his tools effectively, and is more focused on the ground before him than the journey ahead. that kind of resonates with me, since i may not pursue chemistry in the future despite having a shiny degree (if all goes well). i also told him about possibly failing either the QE or oral defence. that led to my friend saying that at my level, perhaps the only reason someone fails is because they want to fail. i wonder.

not going to go into details about the other questions, but all in all, the readings were pretty accurate. then again, i suppose that was due to 2 factors: (1) the readings themselves were kind of ambiguous, and (2) we were looking for meaning in the readings. like most stuff of this nature, tarot is very open to interpretation. for example, the statement "there is someone in your life with whom you feel a special connection" probably applies to the vast majority of people in the world. so would stuff like "the person you're asking about is burdened by some problem". but admittedly, i personally feel that the cards i got for my readings were a little too coincidental to be pure chance. the second thing is that somehow, we were trying to find the link, which introduces a factor of bias into the equation. there were a few far-fetched connections, and playing with the different definitions/meanings of the words was sometimes necessary. but still, i think ultimately, there is as much meaning in it as we choose to derive. definitely not going to live my life by the cards or anything, but it does help to discover new perspectives and challenge your previous thoughts.

wednesday's dinner was judo-related, and that's probably all i can say about it. actually, the photos are all on facebook already, so what the hell. we met up with someone who's quite unpopular with the current federation management. then again, everyone who was at that table is unpopular with the current federation management, so that's not really saying much. i received some advice regarding my refereeing future, which is to wait until at least 30 years old to take the continental exam. it seems that failing due to (being under)age is a very real possibility. and besides, even with the macau experience, i don't think i'm good enough to take the exam yet. still have to improve on my gestures (more grace needed), my score awarding (more accuracy needed), and my knowledge of the rules (more needed, period). given my current indefinite suspension, and the SEA games next year (no national referees allowed) though, i wonder how i'm going to get the practice in. will have to find a way.

going to skip thursday and friday because nothing really interesting happened. that brings us to yesterday, where i didn't catch up with old friends, but made new ones over coffee. that was also the day that i found out that 2 starbucks drinks within 7 hours is a bit too much for my body to handle. to put that into perspective, i only drink coffee like less than 5 times a year. those 5 times are usually concentrated in the november/december period, when starbucks has the holiday drink thing going on. incidentally, i realize that out of the 5 times total that i've ordered my favourite drink (the holiday peppermint mocha with all the add-ons, but with only one modification: change mocha to dark mocha) this year and last year, i've only got the exact perfect order once. the other 4 times, i've had to talk to the barista because they'd not get the idea, or not give me candy cane sprinkles/chocolate. yes i know it's unhealthy, but it's only a few times a year. probably won't die. umm...i lost track of my thoughts. oh, right. making new friends. it's not the right time to go into details yet, and i'm actually not sure if there will ever be a right time. so for now, i guess i'll just say that i quite enjoyed it, which is quite uncharacteristic of antisocial me.

after a brief trip to lab (to wash glassware and set up a reaction) and judo, i met with a JC schoolmate whom i haven't seen since graduation. my nickname for her in JC was "scary", and it somehow stuck. we ate at manhattan fish market at J8, and the standard of service just keeps dropping with each visit. the place was like 40% full maximum, and we still had to remind them when they forgot an item on our order. and the staff were a little...not exactly rude, but they could have acknowledged us a little more, and with a bit more...gentleness? whatever. the food was decent, though. over dinner, we caught each other up on stuff that's been going on...stuff like me doing grad studies, her having a boyfriend (who was also present), what some of our mutual friends are now doing...things that you'd talk about after a gap of 8 years. hopefully we won't wait another 8 years to meet up again.

could have been because of the drugs test, but this past week was really bad for lab...like, i didn't have the motivation to do anything, and only set up at most 1 reaction a day, compared to the previous week's 2 to 3. guess i'll have to shake myself out of it and get back to doing more. i swear, if i can't get the substrate out, my head will roll. and in another case of amazing coincidence, i found out that the lady lab tech who comes to inspect my lab every month has a son, who was my friend in JC. how's that for an amazing coincidence!? maybe i should try an reconnect with him as well, though it's a bit more difficult since he's in NZ for work, and i don't know how long for. guess we'll let fate take its course here.

-random thought of the day: Do I want to fail?-

Undergraduate me would have killed to have my exam schedule this semester. that's mainly because i finished my one and only exam today, even before reading week! don't think i'll do very well, though, considering i didn't really study, and may have mixed a few concepts up. but like i've said before, i can probably take a C and still meet the minimum CAP. if possible, though, i'd like a B- and above to maintain my C-less streak throughout both undergrad and graduate life. we'll see how things go, i guess.

now that i'm done with drugs, it's time to look towards JLPT. so, so much catch-up to do. going to focus more on the kanji and reading, and just do what i can. seriously not optimistic.

and of course, there's research. i'm quite hopeful regarding the orange mixture in my fume hood. hopefully the reaction went as intended, and i can do a few (like 5) simple chemical transformations to get my target substrate. if it really went as planned, i'll have the molecule by the end of the week. fingers crossed.

To make up for the really stupid bank transaction thing which i did last week, i did something (which i thought was) really smart yesterday, which was to figure out why my computer kept dying. after some virus scans that showed that my system was clean, the likelihood of it being a hardware problem increased. so i did some cleaning of the fans, removed the heatsink, and saw the problem. turns out that the thermal compound which i applied sometime earlier this year had not spread across the processor chip as much as i would have hoped/expected. in fact, most of it was still on the centre of the chip. so, i cleaned it off, reapplied another layer (making sure to press down harder, but not hard enough to break the motherboard), and my system is back to normal. one thing bugs me, though. why did it take months for problems to manifest? if i was the more suspicious type, i'd say that someone went to do something funny to my computer. but nah. that would be paranoid. i'm not usually one to brag, but i felt like a genius after solving the problem. there's something quite satisfying about making a computer work. just hope that this will be the last time in a long while that i have computer issues.

got my road tax renewed this past friday, which was the last day before late charges kicked in. did the car insurance with my friend this time, and i'm with NTUC. there was some delay on the LTA side, which meant that my insurance information was not uploaded on time, which in turn meant that i had to go down to the NTUC income branch at AMK hub to get it done. it was quite fast and easy/convenient (they renewed it on the spot for me), and the customer service was excellent. not as convenient as doing it online, though, since i had to physically go down. so, this is my first road tax disc to have the second date cancelled. hopefully it's the last.

this weekend was one of the more restful ones in recent history. and by that, i mean that i didn't go to school on sunday. well, that was partially because i couldn't wake up on time (sleeping at 5:00am will do that to a person). so i missed my 11:00am NMR slot. what possessed me to book it in the first place!?? anyway. i went for judo for the first time in at least 2 months. did nage no kata with the BPS brothers again. i think i really need their coaches to be there when we're training, because the kids focus so much better. think they made pretty good progress today. my evaluation is they stand a 50-50 chance of passing black belt grading if they were to take it soon.

i'll probably have to cut this post here, since i have the second drugs test tomorrow. have to be in school early to study. covering the entire semester's worth of material in about 10 hours is not easy, but not impossible either. oh. i think i forgot to mention that i got 21 (or 22) out of 30 for the first test, which according to the professor, puts me around the B+/A- range. hopefully i can maintain that. i'd be more than happy with a B+ actually, since this is my last module, and i'm in pretty safe territory. doesn't mean i can go into the exam with no knowledge, though.

-random thought of the day: Computer processors can reach temperatures of up to 80°C while working.-

Have to add on something i just did, which was quite stupid. i was transferring some funds from my DBS account to my OCBC account, and i didn't realize that i keyed in the account number wrongly. apparently, you're supposed to remove the first 3 digits, as that's the branch code. so, stupid me went to transfer most of the money over, only to realize that it wasn't reflecting in the OCBC balance. upon checking the numbers again, i panicked, because it wasn't a small sum! *note to self here: do a test transfer of say, $5 first next time* thankfully, the nice OCBC lady told me that the account number which i entered was invalid, so i'm expecting to get the full sum back in a few days. such a moron, i am. well, at least it's just the inconvenience of having to wait, and not any real financial loss. not like i need the money urgently, anyway.

part of why i got the account number wrong is because i'm having a headache. for someone who's usually not susceptible to them, it's a bit odd. so far, i've narrowed it down to 2 possible causes: not enough sleep last night, and/or not enough water today. i'm thinking it's more likely the former, because i wasn't really doing anything strenuous today (just invigilating the year 1s' practical exam in an air-conditioned lab). whatever the reason, it's caused me to make that stupid error, and to reduce the risks of any similar occurrences in lab, i've decided to abandon my plan of doing lab work after class, and am instead going home right after i post this...which is right now.

-random thought of the day: So, so idiotic.-