Safe in a Crazy World …

I read in the papers yesterday night that Taiwanese actress Xu Weilun had met with a serious accident and was in critical condition. At the same time, I heard that she had actually passed away, just that the news wasn’t available at press time. This morning, wormie smsed me that the actress had passed away at 7 last night, and she felt that it was really a waste of talent.

I guess both of us felt something else besides the loss of a great person - her age. She was just 28, merely one year older than I am. To think that her life had to end so soon. When wormie and I were at the crematorium to visit zing, we noticed that there were quite a few young people, some younger than us, who had passed on. The sight of these really wrenched our hearts, because they were all so young, and gone too soon. It is a kind of feeling, which up till now, I cannot put into words. Even though these people were not related to us, we kind of feel for their loss, and feel helpless. Same with the case of Xu Weilun’s death, it saddens us as well. One moment this person was alive, and few minutes later she was gone. I guess it is too short a time frame to make one accept such a sudden and shocking event. Even if we were to think of them years later, we would still sometimes be dumbfounded, or even have to remind ourselves that they are not around anymore, which seems very weird. There are 2 songs which convey this feeling of mine very well - "Invisible Wings" by Angela Chang, and Sissel’s "Summer Snow". I don’t know if you would be able to feel what I feel after listening to them. It is very subjective after all.

Anyway, I can only say that these are events of fate, and that we should treasure our loved ones while they are still around, and be more forgiving towards their imperfections. Easier said than done huh. Well, I myself cannot do it all the time, but I always tell myself that at the end of the day, these people, no matter what imperfections they may have (esp our parents), are the only ones in the world who would give us unconditional love.

This is another sh** period of time for me. I am doing a project which determines whether I can graduate after 4 years of brain damage. And it seems that I cannot communicate well with my boss, and to make it worse, we have different thinking on certain steps of the project.

I got scolded today because I did not get enough cells in time to grow for a certain step of the experiment. And bcos I feel that there is another method to get around this problem, I felt that I should let the cells grow before proceeding, rather than proceed to the next step and not get any useful information on the results due to low cell count. When I asked boss, he was so angry probably bcos he is stressed over not getting substantial results for my thesis. But you can’t change reality - that research projects usually take years to complete, what’s more I have only 3 months!!

We are not required to produce outstanding results, but most importantly to analyze any results or even mistakes, and gain insight into how we should approach the experiment or troubleshoot any problems faced. Mistakes actually give us more information on a step or even our target cell or protein! It is very common for a project thesis to contain no results, but only troubleshooting of problems faced, due to the time frame given. These are useful information which could guide future experiments, and the school accepts them in the thesis because that is the reality of research! You might well get stuck on a particular step for months, and it could be just a step which helps you isolate the cells or protein etc you need to even START your project. Apparently my boss thinks that we must get some results significant enough for the school to see, and bcos he was the one who gave me the project, I don’t think that I have the right to argue with him.

I don’t mind going back to lab 7 days a week, never mind that I don’t have time for myself. But I just hope that he could understand the intensity of brain exertion and labour that I have to put in on all the procedures. I wish he could try it out himself and not forget that I am only human. Everything is so multi-factorial that just thinking of them makes my brain experience a mental block. Sometimes I would hang like a computer and I would ’stone’ to regain what I had been thinking earlier on. Different groups of cells have different factors, different time to process, different things to add etc. I feel like a robot having to remember complex things and the smallest details, besides not having enough rest and NO LIFE.

Everyday is a war. Once an experiment starts, I have to make sure everything is ready, if not, even a few days of work can go to waste. This makes me think of experimental steps even while having dinner. And when I realized that I had forgotten to coat some 96-well plates for tomorrow, I almost fainted. Which means I had better go to lab 1-2 hours earlier to coat them tomorrow morning. If tomorrow’s operation goes wrong, I wouldn’t want to think what might happen to me. Just bcos of the limited time frame given, I am working much more intensely than even the lab staff, sigh … think my brain is going bonkus anytime soon …

Ok, I shall have to get going after all the complaining … sorry that you had to read this haha …