Fingers crossed

One month of wait will end very soon. The verdict will be out in about a week's time. I took the time and laid my minds clear.

Got it then do it, don't get it then finish the agendas at hand, which is pretty amazing and challenging in my own standards. After all, these two points at pretty much the same direction overall, and who knows it might lead to a twist of fate? All in all I need is just faith in my own abilities and never give up.

Best of all, 2015 is looking to be amazing. Wedding preparations are going on well and I look forward to everyone attending the big days.

Enjoy Winning

Ever since I pop my first can of Tiger beer here in Singapore and I started dwelling more into this local-global brand, I fell in love with their marketing phrase : Enjoy Winning.

I guess at this age when we are still young and enthusiastic, we really should not back down and keep going strong and hitting things hard. Because ultimately, we enjoy winning.

Readings to be done over the Christmas Break

HAHAHA.. congratulation to myself. Found myself tossed into the middle of a big project after my glorious holiday trip to Shanghai ( I MISS CHINA, WILL DEFINITELY BLOG ABOUT THAT WHEN I HAVE TIME).

I don't know whether I should be happy or sad to be honest. Now that I am first authoring this "thing", I better get things done on the fast track, though that was easier said than done. Snapped up some journal articles to read while I slough my work through this Christmas in the lab =.= What to do, lab rat must get the job done anyway.

Just a selected few of the papers to read and understand this whole "thing".

Good luck to me. I think I am pretty much booked and stretched out all the way to my wedding photoshoot in Taiwan this coming March.

Surge and reach for the sky

On a fine Saturday, all I wanted to do is to go the lab, read my papers, conduct my experiments and find solace in the chaotic life of a researcher.

16/9/13

Totally paying the price for being a slacker. Will not let this happens anymore from now onwards.

COMEX 2013 and 4TB Seagate

Finally, after purging all the evil spendthrift in me for the past 9 months, finally it is time we get a new toy (actually it is really a necessity) for 2013! Am thinking of getting a 4TB Seagate for all my storage needs. Glorious!

September

Can't believe that it's already September. It has been 8 months. While it is an enjoyable session, with lots of praises and new skills learnt, I admit the whole effort lacks focus. Too many parallels going on and I have yet to close any yet. Papers better be churn out fast, cause I'm really running out of time!

Extremely pure DNA extraction.

So our lab was dealing with shit loads of DNA work. I mean like ... err.... 20 terrabyte of DNA sequences? Yup. So when it comes to extracting high quality DNA, skills and experience is really what it takes. So you don't end up with 20TB of rubbish data.

Having work with these DNA extraction over the past few months. I think I should start writing about some basics of DNA extraction here. Specially from animal tissues (different tissues, different methods. Think bone vs muscles), plants, gram-positive bacteria and even random stuffs (think soil, think carpet, think CSI:NEW YORK!)

The most important think is about how you want to manipulate the DNA physically! Yeah not chemically because you just want to make them mix around and then purify them, removing other stuffs that will inhibit your downstream analysis. Also I think I will talk about how to transport DNA. For example, sending DNA from one lab to another to different countries requires special care. After all, remember, you are probably sending only a few drops of preciousness that will give you gigabytes of FASTQ files!

Pocket poor.. Very the poor.

ROAR poor ah poor!!!

Pilling up my warchest

Recently I started adopting a rather "low maintenance" life style and all I can say is I'm beginning to reap those golden seeds now :) Reading investments newsletter didn't really got me into investment, but they taught me very well in financial planning so far. Suffice to say, we are all in the war-chest building phase. Nobody can just jump on with a bucketful of gold, unless you are born with a silver spoon. But then again, those are not the money you earn yourself. You're simply sucking on to your mom and dad's financial teats. Just like a pair of attention freak, well endowed with cash twin brothers I have in my Facebook friend-list. Nothing respectable about those fellow, just admirable. OK enough babbling about jerks and rotten donkey dicks. I had a glorious week albeit a tiring one. Shall just enjoy my weekend, in the lab of course ;)

Days without internet

There's a very exciting conference going on now with live video at genome.gov but fml, no internet at home.

Weird breed

I think I'm one of those weird breed. Well it's good to be weird. After all weird, freak, special, unique, rare and extraordinary points to the same thing but on different points of a positive tonegative  scale-bar, right?

"The future doesn't belong to the faint hearted, it belongs to the brave"

"The future doesn't belong to the faint hearted, it belongs to the brave"

These words, by Ronald Reagen, are reminders that to be a pioneer, to be a discoverer, to be an explorer of the frontiers, be prepared to face failures. Use failure as power, as your steer. Good luck!

Self-induced stress

Do you folks actually believe in the power of self-induced stress? Or perhaps if you put it in a more positive manner, self-driven self-empowerment? Yeah I'm one of those freak that likes to live in a stressful environment.

Life without stress/challenges are simply... too boring.

End of holiday season; start hunting for my first authorship.

It's been a happy May-June period. With happy moments at home and at Phuket+Singapore with the Tigress. Happy days, days we love, days we cherished.

Now that it's over, its really time to get fully bogged down on the bench and in front of the workstation to get the analysis done! Better fast than sorry, I don't want to be late in hitching up a PhD scholarship!  

Good morning world

Wishing people a glorious day ahead. May your experiments be good and your pipette be accurate. 

Reading of the day

Better improve my cell cycle knowledge!

Beautiful DNA with bit of RNA left

Beautiful things are coming out! This one should be good for BMC Genomics I guess? Or maybe a PLOS One? Who knows... All I want is a first author. One before I hit 25 if possible =)

Frustration cycle

Just to remind myself not to fall into the "frustration N give up" trap again. Been there, done that, not again.

Primer-dimers

I keep getting shit loads of primer dimer nowadays. Not really sure what's the reason behind this but I'm troubleshooting hard enough. From the pipette to the annealing temperature all seems fine! Very likely it's the problem of my primers but according to my colleagues their amplifications are just nice! Damn. Maybe I'll try some chelex today and see how does it go. Or else i'll have to try some new flanking strategies to get this gene out.