Am I one of the very few people out there who still hasn’t ended their lab work for FYP? Excluding those who have gotten approval to submit their theses at a later date, almost everyone I know seems to have stopped doing their experiments by yesterday.

Just 3 weeks more to the thesis submission date, and I still have at least 2 rounds of PCR to run. Thankfully it’s just PCR though, and it’s not really time-consuming. I’ve written most of my thesis, just need to do the discussion, abstract, and fill in my last results after I get them (hopefully) next week. And of course to read through my draft and edit it again. I hope I can finish that by the end of next week, so that my supervisors have enough time to look through my draft.

It’s kind of hard to believe that I’m going to end my FYP soon. When I first started my project, time seemed to pass so slowly. I had to get used to taking up a whole project on my own, and learn all the different techniques. Towards the middle, there were times when I felt really frustrated and stressed, and wished that I would be able to finish the project soon. But now that the deadline is drawing near, it kind of feels as though everything is ending too fast. While I know some people can’t wait to end their projects because they don’t enjoy doing lab work or just dislike the environment they’re in, that’s not the case for me. I’ve gotten so used to and so comfortable with being in the lab, doing my own experiments and all that, that I’m sure that I’ll feel a sense of loss when everything ends. In fact, I’m starting to have those feelings already.

Just 3 weeks left to go, gotta make the best of whatever time I have left there. And I hope that the next FYP student who continues with my project will actually manage to express the protein!

さきAKB48の１０年桜を聞いた。（歌詞と英訳はこちら。）聞いた時、「あ～もうすぐ卒業だ・・・」こんな感じがあった。

大学での四年間はなんて早く過ぎる。この四年間、悲しいこと、つらいこと、もちろん楽しいこともあった。みんなといっしょうにすてきな思い出をたくさん作った。今から１０年後、みんな何をしてるかな？結婚して、家庭を持つ？その頃までにはみんな三十路を過ぎるね。（怖い！）

卒業後絶対また会おうね！

I was in the lab around noon today, when I heard the news being read on radio, saying that a student had stabbed a professor. I couldn’t catch everything that was being read since the radio was quite soft, but I managed to find out what happened later. All the staff and students in NTU received emails about the incident as well.

SINGAPORE: A final-year engineering student at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) jumped from a campus block after stabbing a professor on Monday morning.

The professor was in his office at the engineering faculty when the student stabbed him in the back with a knife, leaving him injured.

After stabbing the professor, the male student – who was in his 20s – slit his wrists and jumped off a five-storey building.

The student is said to be 22-year-old David Hartanto Widjaja and the professor is believed to be Chan Kap Luk, who was left with injuries on his back and arm.

The professor was sent to the National University Hospital for treatment and is said to be in a stable condition.

Professor Chan, a Singaporean in his 40s, has been with NTU’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering since June 1992.

Professor Chan, who is Deputy Director of the Biomedical Engineering Research Centre at NTU, is said to have been the supervisor of the student in a project.

Source (Click for full report.)

It’s not mentioned in the article, but the student jumped off the linkway between S1 and the Research Technoplaza. Pretty near my school, and I saw the police van driving by when I left for lunch. By that time though, I believe that most of the stuff had been settled.

I think the whole incident is just too sad. Why did he do that? Since the professor was the student’s supervisor, was there some unhappiness over the project? Was he stressed because of the project? And speaking of projects, I wonder if it was FYP or something else. It is FYP season after all. I’m sure that a lot of questions would be raised, but whether the answers will be found… that’s something that remains to be seen.

It’s such a pity, really. The student was already in year 4, and he’s just a few months away from graduation. If he just hung on a bit more… Shen Hui was saying earlier, if only he had a friend around at that time. If only he had talked to someone about how he was feeling, then things might have turned out differently.

Whatever the trigger of his actions were, isn’t it such a waste to end your life because of these things? Things won’t always go your way in life. There will be tough times, and sometimes you just feel like giving up and ending it all. But I always believe that if you hang on, things will gradually get better. No matter how bad things seem to be, it’s not worth it to just commit suicide. Life is way too precious to just end it like that.

We’re just hours away from the new year, but somehow it doesn’t quite feel like it to me. For me, the last day of the year is usually associated with having to get ready to go back to school, despite not wanting the holidays to end yet. Of course, this is not the case this time round, which is probably why today feels like a normal day to me.

Most people left around noon today, but because I had to do plasmid extraction, restriction digestion and run a gel, I stayed till around 2. I was expecting to be the last one to leave the lab, but it so happened that Patricia and Priscilla were clearing their stuff and eating ice cream (I got one too!) after they were done with their midiprep, so I left together with them. I would probably be feeling really lonely if they had left earlier. In fact, that was what I was feeling when I went upstairs to run my gel at 1+ pm. Sabna and Yen Hoon had left, and I saw 2 of the guys going off somewhere. There was no one else in the lab when I went in, and I don’t think there was anyone else in the office either. The fourth floor was really quiet, and as I was loading the gel, I had this urge to call someone, just to hear a familiar voice. I didn’t do so in the end, as I didn’t know who to call. Managed to finish up soon and I got some results, so that was good. I don’t really like doing stuff on the fourth floor at night or during the eve of holidays, because there’s hardly a soul around. I like quiet places, but that’s too quiet for me! At least on the third floor there are more labs, so there are usually people around even after working hours.

Anyway… the last day of the year is always a time for me to look back on the year, and think of how it’s been. This year has been one where a lot of friends weren’t around because they were on exchange, or had gone overseas to study. In the later half of the year, when I was on attachment and when I started my FYP, I had to get used to being in a new environment, without knowing anyone. I’m so thankful that I met Jasmine and Adrian during my attachment, because I really don’t know how I would have gotten through it if they weren’t there. Han Fang and Denise as well, though I spent comparatively less time with them.

As for FYP, I’m glad that Nicholas is there, and I’m not the only student in the lab. I’m glad that Patricia, Priscilla and Jasmine (not the same as the one from the attachment) are there as well, because I usually as them for help if there’s something I’m unsure of. Too bad today’s their last day (they’re attachment students), but I’ll still see them around from time to time. I’m thankful to have Sabna teaching me in the lab upstairs, and for Yen Hoon to be around as well. And of course Eugenia! I’m so glad that she happened to be on attachment in the lab upstairs, and I had someone to disturb when I’m free. Also thanks to Yvonne who taught me how to do cell culture. I’ll have to bother her more once I’ve finished the part I’m doing upstairs.

In church, this is the second year that I’m teaching the same class, and the familiarity I had with them really helped. I taught together with Ling Hao this year, and though I didn’t know who he was before serving together, I really enjoyed having him as my partner. I’m so thankful for my trusty partner who has helped me out when I needed it!

This is the year that I transited from year 3 to year 4. Being in my final year now, I’ve been thinking more about the future, and sometimes I feel quite uncertain about what happens after graduation. As graduation draws nearer, it really makes me feel that I have to treasure what little time I have left as a student. To treasure the time I have with my friends, both new and old, because our lives are just doing to get busier from now on, and it’ll be more difficult to meet up. Friends from secondary school, JC, uni, church etc… there are too many names to mention, but you should know who you are. I’m glad that I’ve met each and every one of you, and let’s meet up whenever we have time!

Most importantly, thank God for guiding me through the year!

In 2009, I really hope to give my best as I follow my Sunday school class up to sec 3. I’ll be partnering Wei Jie, and I hope to learn from him! It’s going to be tiring managing FYP (and later work) with having to prepare for lessons, but I really hope that I can manage fine and prepare in advance for my lessons.

Hopefully I can learn to worry less and be more optimistic as well. It gets frustrating when experiments don’t work the way you want them to, and you have to keep repeating them. I tend to get anxious when that happens, and it really just makes things worse. I really want to stay optimistic and keep trying even if things don’t seem to be going smoothly.

As for getting a job, let’s think about that a bit later. I wonder if I’ll be able to secure a job before I graduate…

2009 will be a busy year with lots of changes, but I hope that it’ll turn out to be a good one!

This is really random, but yesterday night, I came across this comment made online by someone. He wondered why there are spaces between words in English while there no spaces between words in Chinese and Japanese. (I think Korean too?) He felt that because of this lack of spaces, it is difficult for learners of the language to figure out where one word ends and another begins. It’s one of those things that I’ve noticed, but never thought too much about.

Having used Chinese practically all my life, I can’t really comment about how difficult it is to determine which characters make up a word or phrase. It doesn’t bother me, and I don’t notice the lack of spaces when I’m reading something in the language.

Now, when it comes to Japanese, I do sort of agree with what he said. When there’s Kanji in the text it’s not too difficult to tell which characters form a word. However, when there’s a whole chunk of text written in Hiragana or when listening to something in Japanese, that becomes a bigger problem. Sometimes a sentence can be broken up into words in various ways but still make sense, especially when the context is not clear.

For example, there’s this particular anime preview that was released recently, and different people have been translating the song based on what they have heard. There’s this line where the lyrics go こんなにももとめてたの, and there are at least 2 different translations of that line, depending on how the translator had broken up the words:

1. こん なに も もとめてたの (今何も求めてたの), which was translated as “what are you also wishing for right now”.

2. こんなに も もとめてたの (こんなにも求めてたの), which is translated as “in this manner I also wished”.

Pretty different meanings, right? If there were official lyrics released with Kanji then what the line was trying to say would have been obvious, but since it’s just based on hearing, it’s not that easy to tell, especially if you’re just starting to learn the language. It seems like the second one should be right though, since it makes more sense based on the context. Plus the first one doesn’t quite make sense grammatically, because “wish” is written in past tense, and “now” is well, referring to the present. The も in that case is odd as well.

It seems to me that online translators have this problem with differentiating words as well. When I try to translate a chunk of text containing Kanji, it usually gives me something sensible, but when I try doing the same with a chunk of Hiragana, the results can be quite weird.

Determining when one word ends and the next one starts… I guess it’s one of those things that you’ll eventually know when you’ve had enough exposure to the language then? But during the creation and evolution of all the different languages, what made people decide to put spaces between words in certain languages, yet not others?