Transidiotory

After nearly a month of going to lab every working day, I finally discovered that there's a bus that goes directly past my house AND lab. Groannnnn.

Today is one of those great days where if the -20°C freezer dies, we can just take all the stuff and put it outdoors =P

Like Paul Atreides

Apparently my death will be by Disappearing:

You scored as Disappear. Your death will be by disappearing, probably a camping trip gone wrong or an evening hike you never returned from. Always remeber that one guy who was hiking alone and got in a rock slide. He could have died, but he cut his own hand off to save himself. Don't end up like him (or worse, dead). Disappear 87% Bomb 73% Natural Causes 73% Accident 60% Poison 53% Suicide 47% Cut Throat 40% Eaten 40% Disease 40% Drowning 40% Stabbed 33% Suffocated 27% Gunshot 20% How Will You Die?? created with QuizFarm.com

From my kid sister's blog.

Oh, and aren't you wondering why the probabilities don't add up to 100%? Even if you delete the ones that could overlap (e.g. Gunshot, Stabbed, Poison, Suffocated, and Drowning could be under Accident, all of those plus Cut Throat could be under Suicide, etc.) I mean, probability of dying can't be > 1...

Food for lazy people

I tend to spend a fair chunk of my time at home cooking and doing the subsequent cleaning up. This is more because I'm inefficient, not because I'm a big gastrophile like my friend Nick. However, I do prefer to cook my own food when I can, even though it's only marginally cheaper than buying frozen prepackaged meals in this part of the world. That means I usually end up eating extremely un-fancy meals: usually rice with stir-fried veggies (always ALWAYS with garlic) and some kind of meat.

Whatever I cook has got to be straightforward and not take too much attention, not because I'm an incompetent cook - to quote Dr. Aiken, "If you can't cook you're not worth a damn as a biochemist" - but simply because I'm lazy. So, here are some quickie recipies for lazy people.

From me: pork souffle

1 large	egg
200g	ground pork
1 tsp	sesame oil
pinch (ok, 0.5g)	salt
1/8	large onion

Beat the egg in a bowl. Mix in the pork, sesame oil (for flavour; my mum puts it to add fat to the minced lean pork but seriously, you don't need it if you bought ground pork), and salt. Steam either on a metal rack placed over water in a covered wok, or if you're cooking rice, just chuck the bowl on top of the half-cooked rice. While it's steaming, chop the onion roughly (domestic violence!) and fry until brown. Sprinkle on top of pork/egg mixture. Mmm, porky, eggy, oniony comfort food.

From Angela: leche asada (translates loosely as "baked milk")

1 tin	condensed milk
1 small carton	heavy cream
1 tin volume (i.e. use the condensed milk tin)	regular milk
4	eggs

Mix everything together, pour into baking dish, bake at 425F for about 50 minutes. Makes a solid custard, quite sweet yet not too sugary.

An aside: Baked custard is super easy to make. It's the [misnamed] "boiled" variety that's so hard - you have to heat the pot very very gently - NOT boiled - otherwise the egg will coagulate instead of remaining suspended and cooking into a nice colloid. I always screw this up becuase I'm impatient.

From Aba: milk caramel - so easy it's almost idiotic

1 tin

condensed milk

Boil UNOPENED tin of condensed milk in a large saucepan full of water for 3 hours. Open tin, roll caramel into little balls.

---

Lotta new things in my life this month...new house, new boyfriend, new school, new lab, new computer...new wok!

It came with instructions on several ways to season a wok - something that my mum's never done at home - and I'm fairly amazed at how well the process works, even though I just used the stovetop seasoning method. The bottom is pretty much as nonstick as Teflon. I've decided to stop using Teflon-coated frying pans due to my tendency to burn stuff (usually a combination of overenthusiasm and laziness). With a steel wok, if the oil coating burns, you can scrub off the black bits and reseason.

I'm really curious as to the chemistry behind this...the layer of "seasoning", whatever it is, is bonded pretty well to the surface. It doesn't come off with dilute dish detergent.

One old thing that's still with me is my good friend the Xenomorph (21st birthday present to self - 21st birthday was very lonely). He's taking up abseiling as a hobby.

This is where I work now

FEAR ME, MORTALS!!!

Off topic, this sign was on the kakilima outside and I just thought the word "sod" was funny. Too much Pratchett.

Dog story

I've been wanting to blog about my dog Max for a while. Today my mum emailed me this story, which only serves to confirm my prejudice that she's one of the smartest dogs I know and our other dog Happy is still an idiot:

Oh must tell you that early last Monday morning, about 3.30 a.m., I heard loud barking downstairs. I couldn't sleep and the barking went on and on, so I decided to check things out. Turned out that Max was at the back porch, barking ferociously at a wild animal. I thought it might be a civet cat (long tail, pointed ears). At one point, Max caught hold of the animal and sunk her teeth in it and started swinging it round and round. Max totally ignored me and I decided that I'd better get Pa's help. Roused him and he managed to get Max away from the animal. Then we kept Max in the enclosed area where the back kitchen is. Papa got a pail of water and a brush and washed away the blood. The animal was lying on the ground but got up in a defensive stance when Pa approached it. So Pa just left some water for it and we left it alone. And where was Happy all this time? She showed up after a while. She was scared and kept well away from Max. Anyway, we put the dogs in the office corridor overnight. Wah, Max kept drinking water after the ordeal. She must have been totally exhausted. Next morning, the animal was gone.

I learned some things: Max is a real fighter; she is courageous and 'wild'. While I did not want the animal to hurt her, I also did not want her to kill the animal. And I was scared of the animal too, I guess. What would you have done if you were here?

Cute DNA ladder picture

Just arrived in lab at 10:49am and nobody else is here...wow. At least I don't feel like a twit for oversleeping today.

Got a flyer for some company selling ladders for electrophoresis and was about to throw it away, then I noticed this:

ROTFLOL that is cute.

(Quick explanation of DNA electrophoresis for non-biologists: you take a flat slab of agarose - aka purified agar-agar - with a row of holes along one end. You put DNA in the holes. You run an electrical current through the agar. Since DNA has a negative charge (it's deoxyribonucleic ACID mah), it goes toward the positive side. Since small bits can move faster than big bits (except in the anime universe, where giant mecha robots are the fastest known objects), you get a column of bits of DNA in order of size. A "ladder" is basically a mixture of DNA bits of known size that you run alongside your sample so you can tell what size your bits are (that sounded vaguely dirty...).)

New baby

The other day I saw an flyer advertising a secondhand computer - which was still under the original manufacturer's warranty. In case anyone's wondering why I've been quiet lately, it's because my old laptop died. I'd been thinking of just buying a new hard drive, then I saw this ad.

Steve said it was really good for the price. Called the advertiser, arranged to go to his house, checked it out. Turned out the guy was selling it because he needed the money, and still has a desktop at home besides.

Long and short of it is, I have an almost new computer with pretty good features (actually that's a review of the Intel version; mine has a AMD Turion 64 X2 processor) for $700. This puppy.

One of the cute things about it is that it has a little remote control that slots into the side of the chassis. I foresee a lot of lying about in bed watching Stargate SG-1 in the near future.

The road less travelled

Talked to Koidy Koid on Gmail chat this afternoon. She'd sent me an email with a link to this entry on the Education In Malaysia blog and the following in the comment thread:

Anonymous (Wed Nov 29, 02:40:32 AM): PhD + 3 years postdoc experience, optimistically you may get between RM5K to 7K per month salary in IPTA (public uni) or IPTS (private uni) in Malaysia.

You are on probation and most likely you will work in a department whose head has not heard of Nature Cell Biology and Cancer Cell; neither the dean knows Nature Cell Biology and Cancer Cell. They know how to answer to the call of nature.

If you are in IPTA, your first priority is not getting your research gear up and ready. You have to sign 'Aku Janji' form and attend induction courses and other silly civil-service based classes to be educated about stuff totally unrelated to your scientific career, so that you are well prepared to take exams that you must pass for your confirmation and promotion later^* .

Then you have to cope with grant applications from various sources like IRPA, SAGA, etc.

When you are finally ready to carry out your world-shattering frontier experiments, you have to cope with unexpected power cut and zero water supply, which happen a bit annoyingly too frequent.

Meanwhile, the clock goes tick tock, tick tock and you discover that your brilliant virgin scientific ideas got published by your competitors in Nature, Science, Cell, PNAS, EMBO Journal, etc.

After one or two years, you may make a bold decision - cut loss, give up science, and go into politics (the best exponential rising path is to join Umno Youth or Puteri or Putera, if you qualify) to salvage your bright future.

On the other hand, if you are as smart as you claimed and have guts to face rewarding challenges, then, my boy or girl, go south - the little red dot (which most likely will give you a starting salary in S$ more than the equivalent RM of a professor in IPTA in Malaysia, and you pay less tax, and no 'Aku Janji' to sign, and no civil-service based classes to take, and ....!) - or other leading nations in the world!

Smart people must know how to make smart choices. Good luck to you.

Koidy: Hi taikach.
me: hi koidy
Koidy: i'm thoroughly depressed.
me: just got your email
Koidy: yeah.
me: Unfortunately it's what I heard when I was doing a bit of career path research back home. (calling people up, talking to Emily Tan's dad, etc.)
Koidy: that plus the essay... can go bang head.
me: how buys are you this week? would like to talk on the phone. it occurs to me that i don't call friends much, but would like to.
Koidy: sorta busy, because Tar coming back tomorrow, then got this essay, also making him pressie. but i can make time :)
me: ahh okay
wanna chat tonight? just for a short time if you're working on the essay
Koidy: sounds wonderful :)
thanks.
need your pragmatic grounding on issue at hand.
but dang, future so bleak.
me: hehehe ME? pragmatic??
maybe we shoudl form a Malaysian Scientists Support Group on facebook.
Sent at 1:27 PM on Wednesday
Koidy: we should...
sighness.
me: /me sighs too
Koidy: maybe could have found rich boyfriend.
pulak-pulak Tar is also completely into low-income jobs and serving the poor.
me: i was just about to type "engineering pays well" and then hit Del.
Koidy: :P
sorry.
me: I'm seriously thinking about moving to Singapore.
don't want it to be permanent though
Koidy: really??
yan is there?
i mean, yan is there.
me: the impression i got from the people i talked to is that there is some hope that M'sia will improve over thnext decade or two but it will be SLOW.
Koidy: and how will it improve if people like you run to sing??
me: yeah, she's on a 3-year bond after uni =P
Koidy: i wonder how she's doing with the to boys.
me: HAH
i think it's one of those quantum statesthat's neither here nor there but the waveform will eventually col.lapse.
Sent at 1:32 PM on Wednesday
Koidy: are you referring to yan or to malaysia?
me: clarification: what i'm afraid of is getting stuck as a junior
lecturer with no power in an IPTA.
Yan =)
Koidy: haha. kenapa?
oh yeah. i know what you mean--all my hopes of research dashed.
me: my hope is that it might be possible to build up my career for a few years in Sg, and then move to Malaysia and start a new job with more seniority.
Koidy: makes sense.
but what about steve?
me: yeah. there's literally nothing for him in M'sia.
we saw the list of MS projects in the Biomed Engineering UM website, and he said they were undergrad caliber.
some of them were totally ridiculous, like "Changes in Body
Composition Before and After Prayer in Muslim Women."
Koidy: aahhhh! stop stop!
enough bleak news about tanahair.
beh tahan.
wanna bang head on mass spec and cry.
but arthur keeps holding me up and exhorting that no matter what, we
need to go where God calls us.
frustration and poverty are not things to run away from.
me: s'truth
Koidy: i agree with him about poverty (not that either of us will ever
be impoverished)
me: was reading an article in The Scientist about sicence in Africa
Koidy: but dunno about the frustration part. that's harder to deal with.
me: scientists in dev countries all over the world are fighting this
kind of thing. at least we've got company in misery, it' not unique to
M'sia.
Koidy: mm.
that's hopeful.
bleh :P
sorry... being petulant.
but taikach, what about your vet dreams?
me: shrug you know what's funny? after i figured out that vet school was going to be too expensive and applied to grad school as a backup, i really wasn't upset at all.
learned from my internship that i liked research. and weirder...ever since i could read^** (literally!) i've had this morbid interest in infectious diseases anyway
i think this is the right field for me. anyway, it still involves work with animals - zoonotic disesase, veterinary vaccines, just on the research side instead of clinical.
i think God wants me here, 's what i'm trying to say.
Sent at 1:40 PM on Wednesday
Koidy: sounds wonderful.
i really think there is a place for God's people in the sciences. as much as there is anywhere else, but there is definitely a dearth of Christians in the sciences.
for me, i'll go to grad school, then see how loh.
i think i'm committed to going home.
and if that's where God wants me, hopefully, i'll find in that (my
calling), the staying power to do what's necessary.
me: meetoo.
bah, i should remember to pray for you more often. i usually forget to pray for frineds unless they email me about their grad school apps.
Sent at 1:46 PM on Wednesday
Koidy: grin
it's okay.
i'm only currently trying to up my prayer life.
gtg liao.
to my other, more relaxing job at the library.
ta... and thanks!
call me after dinner?
around 8-ish or something liddat?

^*Werner's Where There Is No Doctor was one of my favourite books from about age seven. I still can't explain why, but it's laid the foundation for a lot of the things I think about now. It's the manual for rural healthcare workers.
^**This isn't just the one guy's opinion, according to the UM professor emeritus and new PhDs I talked to back home, funding depends a LOT on seniority, and a lot of the tenured profs are deadwood.

Bloody chickens!

I have to write an IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use) protocol for our future animal studies. The mouse part is okay, me having had extensive experience

me: Hey, Angela, have you ever worked with chickens?
Angela: What?
me: Chickens?
Angela: No, I just eat chickens.
[Angela goes back to lab and I can hear her asking Keith about it. I asked him yesterday and he said he wasn't an animal guy. ]
[I saunter into lab]
Keith: Nope, I don't know anything about chickens.
me: I think I'm just going to email the bird flu guy at the vet school.
Keith: You could just Google "bleed chickens".
me: I couldn't find anything on the Internet about it.
[Keith sits down at one of the computers and types "bleed chickens". At first glance at least a few of the top hits are relevant.]
me [paiseh]: I think I was trying to be too fancy. I was searching "phlebotomy".
Keith (who has spent about twenty years in Africa): You have to understand, these are Americans. They don't know big words.

I love white mice. Really. When you look into a cageful of young, healthy, perky mice, their sweet faces are like a bouquet of little flowers.

Putus rantai, putus asa

My bike chain broke today just as I turned in to the sidewalk up to my apartment well after 11pm. Thank God it didn't happen earlier, say as I was crossing a major road late at night or whizzing down Midvale Boulevard at 15mph.

Come to think of that, the chain popped off the back gear on Midvale earlier today and I noticed a defective link but kept riding anyway. Maybe this is why I spend so much money on new innertubes and other repairs. I can't bear to stop even when something is spoilt.

The problem is that this is an ancient Motobecane, and I was told at two different bike stores that given how worn the gears are, the chain can't be replaced without replacing the sprockets, and the bike is so old that they would have to be specially ordered. Which would cost several times what the entire bike is actually worth.

So, new bicycle on the horizon. Or, hopefully, a good cheap secondhand.

On top of that, my computer has been BSODing (Blue Screen of Death) at least once a day for the past several weeks and won't connect to my landlord's wireless network for more than a few minutes at a time. It's over four and a half years old, so it looks like it's on its last legs.

Although I do have enough money in the bank I don't feel like I can justify buying a new comp till at least a couple of paychecks from now, having just spent a bit of money moving into my new apartment. (No, I will not get a Mac.) So...Waion will have to wait before I offload this one onto him for playing DotA (Pa's suggestion).

So it looks as if I'll have to do a lot of spending in the next couple of months. Much as I hate to admit it, my laptop is a non-essential, but the bicycle isn't, even though it isn't necessary in the strict sense for sustaining life - how shall I say this? My computer gives me imaginary freedom; my bicycle gives me real freedom. I don't like having to depend on other people (including bus drivers) to fetch me to work, to get food, to church, to see friends, etc.

And nothing on the Internet, wonderful as it is, can open up your mind and your senses the way flying down a road on a bright, crisp day can.

Whoopsies!

Silverfish Books kinda put its foot in its mouth with this story.

Someone tried to order a book on Malaya from Amazon.com and when an error message came up saying that the book couldn't be shipped to Malaysia, he/she concluded that Amazon was collaborating with the Malaysian government to ban the import of certain books.

Then a reader (scroll to the end of the Silverfish story, read the first comment) pointed out that you simply can't have Amazon Marketplace used books shipped to certain countries. I think there's an option to provide international shipping when you put a used book up for sale on Amazon Marketplace, but you might still need an American credit card to purchase it (i.e. if you were buying from Amazon.com not Amazon.co.uk or some other regional site).

Jumping to Conclusions, are we? =D

Hybridisation

Some science fiction story I read a while ago (I think it was David Brin's "The Uplift War" proposed that in the future almost everyone will be a near-uniform shade of light brown - that is, ethnic groups will pretty much disappear due to mixed marriages. I doubt that will happen. I don't have any structured argument as to why...just a feeling that people will cling to ethnicity and race will persist long into the future.

Even space exploration and colonisation, should they ever happen, will tend to follow rather than erase ethnicity, since nations will end up claiming planets and constructing space stations by themselves, once there's enough to go around.

What I've been noticing is that certain kinds of mixed relationships tend to be unidirectional for the most part. There are lots of East Asian women (ethnic Chinese, Japs, Koreans) married to white men, but no E. Asian men married to white women that I know personally, and only one such couple that I know of. On the bus and around town here in Madison, I see lots of black guy - white girl couples, but I haven't seen any going the other way.

I don't know enough about black and white culture in the US to speculate about the latter, but I can come up with theories about the former till the cows come home haha.

I dunno lah...if I'm going to fulfil any stereotypes about Chinese women and white guys, let me be the arse-kicking kungfu assassin babe.

There's a frigging EPIDEMIC of yellow fever at my church. It's kinda funny.

On my mother's side, my sibs and I are the only Chinese grandchildren because my mum's younger sisters married, in order, an Englishman, a Malay, and an American. It's rather ironic that it's my Malay cousins and not us who can speak Mandarin, however, because they went to Chinese school. I feel so bananafied.

Masalah teknikal

Sooo...I haven't been blogging for a while because the wireless connection in my new place keeps disconnecting. Don't know why, since the signal strength is generally quite good. I haven't seen hair nor hide of my new neighbours yet, so haven't had a chance to ask them about it.

Anyway, I wish landlords would stop advertising "FREE WIRELESS INTERNET" or "FREE HEAT" because that's complete nonsense. It's just that the wireless or heat is included in the cost of the rent. Still going to wind up cheaper for me though, because last year in my 3-person apartment, during the coldest months heat totalled nearly $100 for each of us.