… just terribly exhausted, both physically and mentally. It’s been a trying 2 weeks, and the worst won’t be over until tomorrow. I don’t even get to sit on my office chair long enough to warm it up these days. I have things that I’d like to blog about, but I’m always so tired by the time I get home, that I don’t want to do anything that involves using my brain anymore.

But despite all this, I manage to find just that bit of strength in me to keep trooping on as each new day comes. I have a goal that I’m working towards, and I know that if I don’t give up, I’ll get there someday. It’s tough to have to encourage someone when you’re the one that needs cheering up; to be the one telling others the things you desperately need to hear yourself. But I believe that the future will be better than the present, and I believe that I can be tougher than what I think I really am, especially when it’s for the people around me, so that I can support them in my own way.

It’s been a really crappy day, but tomorrow will hopefully be better! Even if my experiments fail again… well I’m sure that if I keep trying, they’ll work someday, even if it takes time. And a lot of patience. And at the very least, I know that I will clear 2 of my presentations tomorrow, and that leaves me with slightly more free time from next week onwards.

No matter how tough the day was, I will not go to sleep in a bad mood!

ファンレター Fan Letter
From AKB48 Team K 5th Stage “Saka Agari”

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3 years have passed since we first met.
What kind of me is reflected in your eyes?

How much nearer have I come to reaching that dream I spoke of one day?

No matter when, you smiled and watched over me silently.
No matter when, you came walking under the sunlight filtering under the trees,
And enveloped me in gentleness.

In the frustration, loneliness and sadness that I can’t show others,
I feel down and wish for help.
The little self-confidence I had was broken.

I gave up, thinking that it’s impossible.
Right then, I received your fan letter.

While listening to your voice,
I came this far without getting lost.
You voice is like the light from the distant lighthouse.
Shining on me day after day, it showed me how to live…

It’s a long and difficult journey that leads to my dream.
You always wiped away today’s tears and said “be courageous”…

No matter when, you smiled and watched over me silently.
No matter when, you came walking under the sunlight filtering under the trees,
And enveloped me in gentleness.

That’s why there is a now.

The fact that I can be here today is because of the people that have been supporting me all this while. Thank you for watching over me, for the listening ears, for the shoulders I’ve leaned on, for accepting me despite my insufficiencies. It’s all these that kept me going on even during the times I felt like running away or giving up.

I’m really blessed to have met such wonderful people at each stage of my life. A new stage is about to begin, and deep in my heart I feel worried and scared. I try to take my mind off it, but the fact is that when night falls and things quieten down, these feelings come back to haunt me again. It’s a long and difficult journey ahead, and I can’t see where it will eventually lead me to yet. This is a really selfish request, but if I feel that I can’t go on anymore, please continue to lend me your ears and your shoulders. Please give me the courage that I need to take each step ahead of me, and a safe haven to come back to when I feel defeated.

4 years later, when I look back at this day, I hope that I’ve come nearer in reaching my dreams. I hope that I’ve grown to become a stronger and wiser person. I hope to say that despite the journey being tough, I’m glad I made it through just fine. And when I look back, I hope that my heart will be filled with this warmth as it is when I’m typing this out now, knowing that I was never walking alone.

頑張ります。

I matriculated last week, and it’s back to school again once the new semester starts next Monday. It feels kind of odd to return to being a student once again, and to be honest, I feel somewhat apprehensive about this whole PhD thing. It’s like I’m starting all over once again, not knowing anyone in this batch, having to go for lessons and take exams again, and so on and so forth. And I really don’t like that feeling.

But more than that, I know that it’s going to be a tough (academic) year ahead, and I’m worried that there might be times when I find it difficult to cope. 3 courses each semester (which includes lessons, projects/presentations and exams) + lab work + wedding preparations + church commitments… I don’t think I’ve ever had to juggle so many things at the same time before.

When I have so many things to do, there are bound to be times when I’m not able to put in my 100% into everything that I’m doing. I hate it, but sometimes I just can’t help it either, as I only have so much time and energy. I just hope that the people around me would understand, and not just assume that I’m not putting effort into what I’m doing. I think I will need all the support I can get during this period of time, with so many things to do and so many transitions going on (I am honestly no good when it comes to dealing with changes). I’ll try my best to not complain and let the stress get to me, but during the times when I struggle; during the times when I have to let it out, please just bear with me.

If you ask me why choose this path when I know I’ll be stressed and end up complaining… well, there are 2 main reasons:

(1) For the future and my family. I’m content with my job and I’ll probably be very happy to continue like this for a few more years. If things go well, perhaps I can even stop working after having kids, and just stay at home to look after them. Who cares whether I have a PhD then? I don’t think I would need it. But who can tell the future? It would be great if things turn out the way I’d like them to, but I cannot ignore the fact that bad times might strike, and in the worse case scenario, I would have to play a bigger role in supporting the family. Should that time ever come (I really hope not though), I don’t want to regret not doing my PhD so that I can actually advance in this field. (The sad truth is that in research, you’re pretty much stuck if you don’t have at least a Masters degree.)

(2) For myself. I hate getting out of my comfort zone, and to be perfectly honest, I like to take the easy way out, even if that means running away from things sometimes. But if I’m just going to stay in my comfort zone all the time, I’ll never know what I’m capable of, and I’ll miss out on learning some important lessons in life. Getting into the PhD programme means having to push myself, and I’d much rather try this when I’m still young and can take more knocks here and there. Thinking back, Junior College was a tough period for me, but those 2 years made me realise that I could do more than I thought I could, and that was because the environment made me push myself to test my limits. I hope that this PhD experience will be the same as well.

The road ahead is certainly not going to be easy, but if I don’t take this step, I’ll never know how far I can go. My goal now is to just make it past this first academic year. If I can manage doing so many things at one time, then I think I’ll be fine after that, when I can concentrate more on my labwork.

Now if only time would go by faster…

The graduate students in my lab have been marking practical reports recently, since my boss takes the practical sessions for one of the undergrad modules. While I’m not involved in this, I get to hear about the nicely done reports, and the silly things that people write. (It kind of makes me wonder whether I wrote similarly silly stuff back then I was taking the same module.)

Talking about the silly things that come up in the lab report, things like cleaving proteins with restriction enzymes sounds really ridiculous to us now, but if I were to think of how I would have answered the same question when I was a first-year undergrad, I might very well just have wrote the same thing. After all, when you’re an undergrad, there are still things that you don’t know, or never thought too deeply about. And when it comes to writing lab reports, especially for the discussion section, you just write whatever that comes to mind, without realising that sometimes your concept might be totally wrong, particularly when it comes to experiemental stuff, since most people lack that sort of experience.

But that’s not so bad. Someday when these undergrads get more practical experience, they will realise that some of the things they mentioned will never work. What’s really bad is those people who copy and think that they can get away with it!

1. There was this particular undergrad who copied stuff right out of the textbook, and obviously that was caught by YW while she was making the script. It’s fine to turn to textbooks to get answers, but don’t copy off the textbook word for word! Don’t think that the person marking your report won’t notice it. There’s something called plagiarism, and when you do something like that, you have to pay the consequences. Just be thankful that this was noticed in a lab report, and not something major.
2. MH was making her pile of reports just now, and just a few reports in, she noticed that the discussion section of the lab report she was reading was actually the same as that of the previous report! One of the students must have copied off her friends, without bothering to paraphrase everything enough such that the person marking the report wouldn’t noticed that they were essentially the same. Now, if you think you’re so smart to copy off your friend’s report and pass it off as a piece of work done by yourself, then why be so stupid to hand it up almost at the same time as that friend?! Obviously the marker will notice if one of the reports is almost the same as another one that he/she had just marked a couple of minutes ago. And since no one knows who copied from who, both are just going to get 0 marks.
3. And then for those who copy from the seniors… there’s no way to prevent people from doing that, but if you’re going to do something like that, use your brains! If the questions have changed somewhat over the years, and you’re going to write something down without even thinking, then you can be sure that the person marking your report will penalise you without any hesitation.

It kind of sounds like I’m really bitchy, but I have zero tolerance for this sort of thing. Seriously, you are given a brain for a reason, so use it! Do this kind of thing now and you’ll just be penalised in terms of your grades, but do it once you get out into society, and you’ll really suffer once you are caught.

(Saka agari refers to the action of pulling oneself upward with a forward, circling motion, perhaps better shown by the video here. I’m not sure if there’s an English term that specifically describes this action though.)

This song really reminds me of the days when I was still in primary school. At the corner of the school, just beside the basketball court, were these horizontal bars that were used for the flexed-arm hang test, as well as a balancing beam and some other stuff. I remember how we used to play there whenever there was time. We would divide ourselves into 2 groups and play a game of rock, paper, scissors on the balancing beam, with the aim of getting from one end of the beam to the other. Each group starts from a different end, and the person playing at the moment had to walk quicky on the balancing beam, so as to cover as much distance as possible before meeting the opponent. A game of rock, paper, scissors would then ensue, and the loser had to get off the beam while the winner would be able to move forward and meet the next opponent.

When we were not playing on the balancing beam, we would sometimes play on the horizontal bars instead. These bars are not those used in gymnastics, but rather low ones that probably only reach around my hips now. We would hang on the bars and try to spin around, though I can’t remember if it was done the way as shown in the example video. To be honest, I don’t have much recollection of whether I actually spun around those bars (anyone remembers?), but I’m pretty sure that even if I did, I must have sucked at it. What I do remember though, is that there were people who accidentally hit their heads while spinning on those bars, and it really hurt.

It’s amazing how some songs are just able to bring back certain memories. I don’t really go about thinking of the games we used to play back in the primary school days, but upon hearing the song, I just went “oh yes I remember doing that!”. I wonder how many of us who used to play there still remember it… and what’s everyone doing now?