Crowd

AMK is one of the oldest heartland in Singapore. 3, or even 4 generations of ppl live and work here. From students to working adults to senior citizens, the whole spectrum of average Singaporeans can be found here.

AMK is crowded with human traffic, especially during the rush hours. Walking among the crowd of people coming in and out of the MRT station, looking at the faces of the everyday commuters, had you ever wondered: do these people have dreams? Do they have a plan to improve their lives? Or is the pressure and reality of life too much for them that in order to survive, they have to forsake their dreams and plans, and live life by the day? Or did they let others decide wat their dreams and plans are? Just follow the crowd (like they way they commute) and do the norm, or watever is the flavour of the moment.

Looking at the faces in the crowd, terms like average joe and commoners come to mind. But ain't I an average joe too? The way I dress, the way I look, and the way I walk, I look jus like anybody else. I am a no-frill person like them all, so yes, I am also an average joe. But I do have my own dreams, my own plans, and sometimes that makes me feel abit different from the stranger beside me. Then again, if I have dreams and plans, wat makes me think that this stranger beside me dun have similar dreams and plans as I do? Jus becos he looks and behave like an average joe? Shall never judge a book by the cover.

In a crowd, everyone looks the same. There is no individuality and you can never know whether that face in the crowd has an ambition or not. It's a crowd; everyone is an average joe, everyone is living lives day by day, going along with the flow.

Only when u break away from the crowd will ur individuality starts to show. Finally the world can see whether u have ambition, dreams and plans. So wat's mine? Work for now. Earn my Msc, get my Phd. Work even more. Get a few promotions before getting burned out and start hiding in academia and do teaching as a retirement plan. Along the way get a loving wife and a few children. It may not be grand, but still it's mine, and that makes me feel special.

But then again, that might jus be a dream of an average joe.

Thoughts For 3 Days.....

Ok, so after 35 hours (half of which are waiting time), and more than 6800 miles, I am finally back in Singapore for the next 4 weeks, and in time to attend the ROM of best fren TH.

TH tied the knot with Veron on Saturday. Their relationship has always been a stable one, and marriage is jus a natural development. But still, watching him taking the vow with Veron, I can't help but think that this fella, whom I known since NS and been thru my NUS years with is now stepping into another stage of his life and taking on new responsibilities. Things are gonna be different.

Differences is the central theme of my thoughts since I left Changi Airport. On my way back home in the cab, there was a fleeting feeling that it's almost as if I never left b4; that everything in Basel had never happened. However, that thot vanished when I arrived at my house doorstep, and the maid (whom I am seeing for the 1st time) opened the door. The house looks the same, but feels different. Suddenly, I dunno where to unpack my stuff, where to sleep, and I am not even sure whether my desk is still mine. Then while taking a bus to TH's place after the ROM, all the scenery outside looks so familiar, but it feels jus so different.

So no, everything in Basel had happened; the good, the bad, and the unforgetable. Things over here in Singapore might look the same, but there are changes. In the very least, I dun feel the same anymore. 1st time in my life, I feel like moving out.

I still miss Singapore anyway. By the 2nd day back here, I already dun feel like going back to Basel. However, I am too poor to have any funny ideas, and I need the money anyway. Returning to work at K's lab sounds demoralising, but then work is work, like it or not. If it has to be done, it has to done. Jus have to suck it up and go.

3rd day back here and something still weigh heavy inside me. It started in Paris and I dunno why. Issit b'cos of the anxiety of readapting to life in Sg (maybe), or the fact that I am only staying for 4 weeks (probably)? Issit b'cos of something back in Basel or here in Sg (most likely) or someone (definitely....)? I dunno, most likely it will pass.

So, the tide had changed. Things are different, ready or not. I'll have to prepare myself and tackle watever comes my way head-on. Bring it on.

Keeping Notes

One of the things I learned from the past few months working here is the importance of keeping notes. Well, people (at least myself) are forgetful, so keeping notes helps. Whenever I am unsure of something, or I jus wanna repeat my previous experiment, I can jus refer to my notes and see whether I left out anything.

Initially I dun like the idea of taking notes, cos I dun really feel the need. This is partly becos I am very confident of my own memory. In fact, maybe it's also due to this confident that sometimes I think ppl who takes a lot of notes are forgetful. I believe that I am blessed with good memory and that I can remember anything that I wanna remember. Jus like when I read someone's blog, I can remember wat is written on it cos I wanna remember it. However, for some strange reason, the power of my memory jus can't be applied to the lab, and things that I need to remember, I always forget (hmmm... maybe I shall write an entry about my opinion on needs and wants.... but that's for later) and end up making mistakes.

So, after lotsa mistakes and a serious scolding later, I finally took up a notebook and started to take down notes. The notes are not well-organised, whenever I need to take down something, I jus scribble on the notebook, and the only organising that I did is that reaction-related notes will go into one notebook, while every other things will go into another. The notes are all over the notebook, but I am always able to find wat I want. And jus like the saying "I listen and I forget, I write and I remember, I do and I understand" (or something like that), I remember things better when I take down notes. Yah, I should realise this long ago, but well, better late then never....

So now after finding out the usefulness of taking notes, I am starting to take notes when I am doing other things, and not jus in the lab. This is a transferable skill cos it work jus as effective no matter wat I use it on. Helps me remember things that I need to remember better, and if I wish to, I can also "unload" these "need-to-remember" stuffs and concentrate on things that I wanna remember.

Ok, that's all for now, time to go read and remember blog (and I dun need to take notes for this...).

New Record (Which I Dun Want To Break)

Ok, to prevent my blog from becoming stagnant and stale, I shall make an effort to post at least one entry per week.

So wat can I write for this post?.... Maybe I shall talk about the disasterous Monday, where I (hopefully) set the limit for the longest time I stayed in the lab. For that day, I worked from 6 am to 8.25pm. Minus lunch time it's a whopping 13 hours and 25 minutes I spent in the lab, earning myself an overtime of about 5 and a half hours (and over here where 2 hours of overtime is already too much, 5.5 hours of overtime is simply a horror). It all started with a 4 hour reaction that K, at 11 am, told me to setup. It got set up at 11.35 am, and it's simply bad luck that the product must purified after the reaction, and even more bad luck that it must be purified by column. So, with the reaction, the purification, the finalisation tests, and the clean up of the lab before I leave, plus a stupid remark by K that almost make me wanna slap him, I went home pissed and tired and drained.

To prevent such a disaster from happening again, I decided that night that I will draw up a more detailed plan for everyday, and I shall brief K about my schedule every morning. That way he will at least knows wat I am doing, and so will not throw work at me at random. I started doing it the following day and it seems to work. Now my overtime is reducing, and things are progressing in a more orderly manner.

So the lesson of the week for me is that having your own plan and sticking to it is a good thing. Come to think of it, it's better to have ur own plan then to have others make plans for u. Most of the time it will only be for their own interest.

Ok, enuff mindless rambling for now. Actually, now I'm starting to generate some thoughts that I wanna unload, but I guess I will jus regulate them and leave them for later entries.

Early Bird

Ok, so after much delay and procrastination and slow uploading, I had finally uploaded all my photos to a new online photo album in webshots. The "photo album" link at the side is updated too....

All right, so now I talk about my work. So for the whole of this week I had been going to work at around 6 am in the morning. The main aim of doing so is to hope that I can knock off earlier (it's flexi hour here; u can come to work at anytime as long as u clock 8 hours per day). But turns out, I still knock off at around the same time as before, cos my boss (let's call him K), partly not knowing that I had started to come early, is still throwing work at me when it's close to my supposed KO time. So I have to stay and finish it up. As a result, my OT for this week is incredible. Think if I keep this up, K's eyes gonna pop out and roll on the ground when I show him my time sheet at the end of the month.

However, starting work early is not w/o it's merit. By starting work early, my work time b4 lunch is longer, and so I can run my rxn at a more comfortable pace w/o worrying that it will clash with my lunchtime. In fact, for last week, most of my planned work was already finished by lunchtime, and I am only left with some simple tasks after lunch which I could easily wrap up and KO.

But of course, there's always the extra work from K which is always holding me back in the lab. I dun really mind the OT cos over here the OT can be converted to time off. At the rate I am going, think I can accumulate a month's worth of time off towards the end of the attachment. If I want to, maybe I can use all these OT at the end of the attachment to stop work earlier. However I'm not really considering that now. For the moment, I jus wanna work.

Last Year's Leftovers

Ok, this is a very backdated post about my X'mas holiday. Originally I planned to put it up once I transferred all my photos to my new online photo album. But thanks to some procrastination here and there and the longer-than-forever uploading time of all the photos (yes, uploading is still in process), I decided to jus put up this post before it becomes too ancient.

So, my x'mas holidays stretched from 23rd Dec to 2 Jan. In Switzerland, 25th and 26th of Dec are public holidays. Since these two dates landed on Monday and Tuesday respectively (which also means that New Year Day is on a Monday), I jus took 4 days of leaves (for Wed, Thu, Fri, and the follow Tue) and had 11 days of rest. Pretty cool huh?

The x'mas holiday actually kicked off on Friday night. SK's gf jus arrived from Singapore to visit, and LY came over to stay the night. It was all a very chalet atmosphere. So after alot of chit chat and a good night sleep, it was x'mas eve the next day, where we welcomed the arrival of LY's fren, Peixuan (to be known as PX) from Germany. That night we had the x'mas dinner: lotsa food, chit chat and fun overall.

After a good day of rest on x'mas day itself, I'm off with two pretty ladies (LY and PX) for my x'mas trip on boxing day. First stop is a beautiful place called Grinderwald. It is located in central Switzerland on the alps. So once u step out of the train station, u will see this very beautiful mountains (And yes, there is snow, and it is cold). So the 1st day we went up to Jongfraujoch, the highest point in Europe to be accessible by train (or something like that). And the second day we went sledging. Going down a slope on a fast moving sledge, while trying to figure out how to turn, and having the occasional snow in the eyes can actually be quite fun. Once on top of the mountains, there weren't many ppl, and everything was so quiet. It's hard not to be awed, and suddenly u felt so at peace. All the troubles seems to jus disappear. Ah, how nice.

On the third day of our trip, we said goodbye to Grinderwald and left for Lausanne, which is a sloppy city. Once out of the train station, it's hard to find a stretch of flat land. Most of the streets are either going at an incline, or a decline. Lausanne is the kinda city where they try to inject new life into the city while preserving the old. So along the old sloppy clobberstone street (I guess), there are new modern buildings sitting side by side with the old. Lausanne is also situated at the French part of Switzerland, and so not suprisingly, ppl here speaks French. It is so different from Basel (which is on the German part of Swiss, and in comparison to Lausanne, Basel is a small town) that a guy like me, from tiny homogeneous Singapore, can't stop wondering how two places that are so different can stay together as a country. So anyway, for our stay there, we visited the Olympic museum (very very impressive), walked along the waterfront, took a train to nearby Vevey and Montreux to visit the ancient Chillion castle and had chocolate fondue, and on the last day, toured the city on foot and visited another museum (it's actually a few museums housed in a building), 2 Catherdrals, and some other old buildings.

Got back to Basel on the night of the 30th. Countdown on the next day was a quiet affair compared to wat we had in Singapore. Basically we jus followed the crowd and gathered outside this very old church in the city, listening to a small band played while waiting for the clock to strike twelve. As the time approached, at the very slight sound of a bell, ppl jus went into cheers and wished each other a happy new year. Some brought alone their own bottle of wine and started sharing with frens. After the countdown, it's down to the bridge where there was a 20min of beautiful firework display at twelve thirty. This is how the new year begins: with a bang and flashes of brillance.

So, with the beginning of the new year, comes a new hope. Let's jus hope and pray this is the year where everything is for the better (and let's not end up in a mess again....)