Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Baking for a Potluck @ Dr Chandra's Place

Three weeks ago, I thought about what to make during Dr Chandra's potluck dinner. But the thing is I'm a terrible cook based on my past experience. I tried making carbonara sauce from scratch but it tasted like vomit. I tried making claypot rice from scratch but it tasted like campbell soup rice. Despite the failures, I decide to give myself a second chance by registering for a baking class at ToTT cooking school. The class fee is costly. It is a 3 hour lesson at the price of S$106.

The title of the baking workshop is Japanese Pastry Class, featuring the Japanese Cheesecake, Sesame Cookies and Green Tea Swiss Roll. Our chef instructor is Vivian Pei and she loves teaching people cooking. You can check out her website at vivianpei.com

There are twelve students who registered for the class. I felt awkward at first because all my classmates are either couples or married housewives who set aside their free time to learn baking and we have to work in pairs. In the end, I paired up with Evelyn. She is a married working housewife whose passion is baking.

My cheesecake turned out to be a little soggy as some water happened to seep into the sides of the spring-form pan. Nonetheless, it tasted perfect apart from the slightly wet appearance which didn't look quite appealing. Here is what I brought to Dr Chandra's Place for the potluck.

I'm glad everyone enjoyed the cheesecake. Today is certainly one of the milestones in life that I will remember.

Friday, July 25, 2014

Have you heard of a Stiff Foot?

I'm sure all of us have had a stiff neck at least once in our lives. But have you heard of a stiff foot?

About two days ago, I woke up and the top of my right ankle turned stiff. Then I recalled what happened. I was sleeping with my right foot hyper extended overnight for at least 6 hours in the position shown in the picture below.

Ouch, I'm walking like a handicapped person, climbing a flight of stairs suddenly feels like scaling a mountain. One word to describe my day. 'Unlucky'. I hope my foot will get well soon and I want my foot back badly.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Blood Donation & Qi

One may think that the blood donation process is a painful process as it involves a needle and a tube bag that siphons blood off your vein. In fact, the process is painless, except for a sensation of a needle prick. In fact, the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) blood bank nurse will give you a small tiny dose of anesthesia before drawing blood from you.

Initially I thought that the process will take about an hour. But it turned out to be only 15mins. So it is not as bad as it seems. Additionally, one also gets a complementary pack of iron tablet supplement, snack and drink at the end of the donation.

I get a sense of satisfaction as I watched the nurse took 400ml bag of my blood and put it to storage. My blood will definitely be useful to someone in need. And this is a picture of my arm with the yellow smiley bandage:

But when I got home. My mum started nagging at me. Hey son, why did you donate blood? You should at least inform me first. Donating blood is bad for your health as you loose Qi and you need to drink lots of tonic to replace your Qi.

In fact, I had a slight sense of dizziness and fatigue in the next following morning. But after I took the iron tablet, drank plenty of water, took vitamin C Redoxon supplement and drank a cup of MILO. I feel that my energy recovered later in the afternoon. I read that blood plasma takes about 24 hours to be replenished while red blood cells takes a little longer 4 to 6 weeks to be fully regenerated. So it may be due to low levels of iron in my blood and the loss of blood plasma that made me feel weak. I believe in looking at scientific evidence more than the believing in Qi.

Since I'm not entirely well today, I also decided to give the A* Star Scholar Network chalet event a miss. It will not be memorable if I were to faint at the chalet outing.

Monday, July 14, 2014

Good, but a tinge of Disappointment.

To my disappointment, 23 minutes into Extra Time, Germany put the ball into Argentina's net and made it count. My heart sank. Argentina lost! And I lost the $10 bet too. It was a really close game and Germany got away with it.

The above anti-gambling advertisement has drawn a lot of criticisms online and even on Straits Times. All I have to say is that: Boy, don't worry about your savings. Germany wins and your dad gets his return bet winnings. Today marks the closure of World Cup 2014.

I may be going down to Chinatown tomorrow evening with my intern colleagues, Andrea, Apexa and Viki to check out the Singapore Food Festival. The next upcoming event will be a visit to the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) blood bank where Edwin and I will have our blood suck for a cause.

Friday, July 11, 2014

eleventh of july.

Eleventh of July is my mum's birthday. My family had an earlier dinner celebration at Wah Lok restaurant in Carlton Hotel on Tuesday night. This is due to the different commitments and conflicting schedules that my family and I have. My bro is unable to make it tonight due to an army-related duty while I have night computing classes on Wednesday and Thursday. The dishes served were exquisite. We captured the particular moment with this family photo:

Tonight, we decided on a vegetarian dinner at Novena Square at LingZhi Vegetarian restaurant. There was a salad dish in the menu called the 'Rock and Roll Salad'. It was fascinating as the waitress appeared with a glass jar stuffed with vegetables and salad dressing. She began shaking the salad jar like a bartender with his cocktail shaker tins.

Much later at night, my bro knocked off from his duty and we had our cake-singing with the classic candle-blowing session. Here is a photo of my mum and cake:

About a week ago, I was still cracking my brains for the perfect birthday gift. It struck me that perhaps a cosmetic product may be an appropriate one. So in the end, my siblings and I shared the cost of Missha's Time Revolution Skin Essence. The product was featured in the Taiwanese variety show, 女人我最大.

Right now, I'm having a dilemma. I'm deciding on whether I should book a bus ticket to Melacca with my intern friends at Bioinformatics Institute or to attend the A* Star Scholar Network chalet at Sentosa next weekend. Give me some time and I will think about it..

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Argentina. The trophy awaits you!

As of 8th July 2014, the remaining top four teams in the 2014 World Cup are Brazil, Germany, Netherlands and Argentina. Out of the four teams, I believe that Argentina will eventually emerge as the winner to lift the World Cup trophy. The basis of my prediction lies on the fact that Argentina had an easier time in their group stage, just like Spain had theirs four years ago. Having an easier time in the group stage means that the team suffer from lesser injuries and fatigue.

Here I present to you my token of support for Argentina:

Saturday, July 5, 2014

New Direction. New Inspiration.

Three Rules to Spice My Life Up

  1. Live with No Regrets
  2. Dare To Try: Let’s Make Impossible Get Real
  3. Believe in 1… 2… 3…

The Past

I like to make comparison of the timeline of my life to the tracks of a railway. Year 2012 and 2013 had been a long train journey through a stretch of dark tunnel. As a passenger on board, there were no beautiful scenery to admire at. It was a train ride that was not entirely interesting to describe. However, there were of course a few train stations where people got on and off and along the way I met interesting friends from different walks of life. I want to thank Darren, Jaden, Dhamiri and Wei Jun for making this experience different at Mandai Hill Camp.

Year 2014 marked the end of the long stretch of tunnel. There was a split road and I chose to embark on the rail road that has no train stations until perhaps a year later. I started studying in Nanyang Technological University (NTU), pursuing a major in Biological Sciences. I have heard stories that the Biological Sciences sector in Singapore is becoming increasingly difficult for fresh graduates to find jobs. So I decided to take up a part-time diploma in Information Technology, paving an alternative route just in case I cannot find a Biology-related job and have to change field. That means on top of my regular classes in NTU, I attended three night classes per week. It is stressful and definitely not an advisable path to take.

The upside is that I am satisfied in learning useful practical computing skills. I am now able to write simple computer codes in Java or C program and right now, I'm using notepad++ to write this new blog entry in HTML code. It was something that I never thought I will pick up when I was in my polytechnic days. The downside is that I have lesser time to spend with my family, lesser time to be engaged in social activities and more often that not I feel that I'm leading the life of a machine, not a human. Nonetheless, this express train journey with no train stops is nearing the end. I will be completing my IT diploma course soon by the end of this month. If you ask me whether I regret making this decision. I will say maybe. But I think that computing can be considered as an interesting profession. How about a mix and match to get the best of Biology and Computing?



The Present

I feel that since it is nearing the end of this express train journey, I should spice my life up a little. I'm thinking of bringing back some good old effective tricks and the three rules previously mentioned at the start of this post. I reinvented the To-Do List into what I called the Tic Tac Toe List. The Tic Tac Toe List is one of my old tricks and has always been a part of me when I'm about to plan something to do. I'm also thinking of keeping a simple daily log to monitor the progress of individual tasks.

I am currently working as an intern in Dr Chandra's lab in Bioinformatics Instittute (BII). It is part of my exploration to see if a merger between Biology and Computing suits me. BII is a lab coat free office if you understand what I mean by lab coat free office, it also means a lab that does not require the use of micro-pipette for experiments. There is no lab work. It involves the visualization of computer simulations and modelling of biological and chemical structures. The program uses physics calculations to account for interaction forces. In summary, it is like doing cooking in a virtual game. Computing helps Biologists propose chemical mechanism or find drug targets at the atomistic level in which experiments are unable to detect or test. But I cannot convince myself to work in bioinformatics yet. It is not an easy field to be in.



The Future

I intend to use the Dare to Try spirit to explore new things, decrease the list of things from my 'Never Have I...' list. I have just signed up for a one day 3h cooking lesson at TOTT baking school. Since Dr Chandra is throwing a party at his house for three of his PHD students who are leaving the lab, Bianca, Zohra and Lukman. Our big boss, Dr Chandra, says that we should make and not buy something for the pot luck dinner. I intend to take this opportunity to challenge myself to learn to make Japanese green tea swiss roll and sesame cookies.

Secondly, I also intend to do some welfare service by joining the school welfare clubs or even volunteer to teach simple computer programming at a children's home. I guess my next first small step forward will be to make a blood donation at Health Sciences Authority. Regina and Edwin seems to be going any time this month and I guess it will also be a perfect opportunity.

Lastly, I may try to make a small soccer betting of $10 at the Singapore Pools for the World Cup. I'm hoping that Argentina will win this world cup.