Ok, my last blog entry was dated 21 May 2006 and that was 3 months ago. The last 3 months had been eventful, full of ups and downs and before I could trace back, a new school term has started. It will be my final semester in NUS and to be exact, 103 days before graduation! (a good NS friend of mine prompted me to do such count down, something similar to the ORD countdown we did in the past)

The last 3 months saw me doing labs like nobody's business for my FYP, training the Singapore squad for the 2006 ICHO, doing writing up for project X and preparing powerpoint slides for Prof. Wu. Some time towards the end of July, I was hospitalized for appendicitis and I was subsequently operated upon and rested at home most of the time for the next 3 weeks. I had some positive results for my FYP and my progress report was held on 21st July. It wasn't too bad, except that I am sore over the Q on the mechanism of cycloaromatization using Co2(CO)8 which I couldn't answer. The Singapore squad for this year's ICHO did well, securing 1 Gold, 2 Silvers and 1 Bronze. I am happy with the results and I hope the subsequent years will see better, if not equivalent results.

The content for project X is completed and all of us are proofreading it now. We have met up with a few publishers and we are still waiting for the reply of a favourable publisher. The hospitalization came as a surprise; it was probably a signal of "it's time you get a rest!" and there I was, in there for 4 days. It was a scary experience and my time almost freezes when I was pushed into the OT. The operation was a success and I recovered fast. Dearie Emily took care of me well when I was in there and visiting me whenever she can fork out the time. It's very sweet and I am very thankful to have her around. :)

I am now one week into the new term. The past 1 week saw me resting at home from a bad flu, going for lectures and performing freshmen organic lab (I applied for the lab demo this semester!). From next week onwards, I'll be going back to lab to continue for my FYP. Hopefully, things will turn out well and I will get more positive results. I am taking 4 modules this semester, namely CM3222 Organic Reaction Mechanism, CM4223 Asymmetric Synthesis, CM5121 Graduate Organic Chemistry and CM5221 Advanced Organic Synthesis. The last module is the most hardcore and I hope I can survive it well.

Wish me luck.

The last time I wrote something was slightly more than 2 weeks ago. Apparently I was right about the fact that I'll be even more busy after exams. I rested till 8 May and continued my Honours project (aka FYP to some) after that. FYP can also mean "Forever Your Problem"! Indeed it has been bothering me since then; there is a need for me to get something out before the progress report in late June. It's worth 25% and if I screw it up, it'll be quite detrimental to my project grade.

But then, is grade everything? Haha people has been arguing over this; by people I really mean anyone under the sun - from cabbies to academics to politicians to your neighbour. My best friend once commented that people who said that grades are not everything are most likely to be those not doing well and just put forward this argument for whatever purpose. Those with good grades will tend to say they got it "by luck". It seems that everyone have their way of arguing for their case.

I recalled clearly reading a newspaper article in the October 2003 about a Malaysian named Jiang Fung who entered NUS when he was 15. He was a wonder boy as he was the youngest person to be admitted into the faculty of science at that time. The newspaper reported that his CAP (aka grade point average in the American system) is of the 2nd lower range and if he managed to ace his exams in November, he'll get a 2nd upper. This article struck me extremely hard as I could fully emphatised with him and I can really feel for him, especially when he made this statement: Before I entered NUS, I thought I was extraordinary. After four years, I think I'm just an ordinary person who has tried his best.

True enough, I shared the same sentiments. I always wanted a first class and my dream was kinda dashed when I received my results in the first semester. It was way below even the 2nd upper range and is near the bottom of the 2nd lower range. The feeling was really lousy and I seriously think that the exams were flawed at that time. My CAP reached the 2nd upper range only in the 6th semester. I guess no one will believe this; in fact, all whom I spoke to laugh it off and said I am kidding with them . People feel that I am of 1st class calibre; if not it should be at least high 2nd upper. Indeed, if one omits other subject and count only Chemistry ones, it's indeed first class. Perhaps I am just plain lazy and ignore other non-Chemistry courses. The first 4 semesters saw me being plagued by many problems outside school.

At the end of the day, my feel is that it is how you fare in your major outside school that matters. What the outside world want in the long run is people who are versatile, broad based and at the same time, have an in-depth knowledge of his own field.

Besides FYP, I will give a brief summary of a couple of interesting things that has happened in the past 2 weeks. Sat 6 May say the results of the General Election 2006 being released; basically everything remained the same with PAP, the ruling party getting 82 out of the 84 seats. The oppostiion took Hougang and Potong Pasir and these 2 places have been with the opposition since 1984 (for Potong Pasir) and 1991 (for Hougang). For me, my greatest disappointment came when Steve Chia didn't manage to capture the Choa Chu Kang ward that he contested for the second time. He was being described by SM Goh that he can easily pass off as a PAP candidate and hence one of the more credible opposition candidate. What I like about him is his passion to serve. I see this in him when I watched his rally and I can tell that he is really sincere in serving the people. Alas, he lost and I guessed he'll leave politics for good. It's not because he is a quitter; rather he really need to find a job to support his family since he has spent the past 5 years getting only NCMP pay. Apparently, they were not enough to meet his daily needs.

I had my first lesson with the Singapore Chemistry olympiad representatives on 10th May. They are really smart and I am impressed by their attitude and inquisitiveness. I am sure Singapore will be able to achieve better result this year. Vesak Day saw me attending the Chemistry graduation ball; though weird (as I am not graduating yet) but I still manage to drag myself there. The food sucks but I guess most people were there to catch up with one another and also to see one another in their best attire. Initially I wanted to buy a bowtie and went out with Emily to buy the day before. After I wore it with the tuxedo shirt, I realized that it's not wise to spend so much money on such stuff now and thus put the idea aside. We picked a cufflink in the end and the rest of my attire were old stuff from my wadrobe. Some new combination made me look pretty smart.

Not too bad right? :p

I met up with some of my old friends the following day for some catch up session. Sunday was Mother's Day and together with my dad and brother, I brought my mom to Pearl River Palace Restaurant at Suntech City for lunch. The lunch was pretty good. ;) The week that has just pass (starting 15th May) was really busy as I worked 7 days. Emily felt neglected and I am sorry about it. Once my stuff is on track, I'll be able to fork out more time. It's still quite uncertain now and I am troubled by it. The progress thus far has been fair and success started to come towards the end of the week. I guess Emily dear gave me the blessing and luck. :)

Work will continue tomorrow; I'll only work till Wed this week as I have a series of events coming up. Results will be out on Thu and I am planning a one day Johor trip with my friends on Fri. Sat will be outing with Emily and we'll be going to the World Bookfair at Suntech. Sounds good.

I am done with exams 3 days ago and I'll be continuing my Honours project next week. Unlike most of my counterparts, I'll be spending another semester in NUS. As of now, I've no regrets. There are 2 reasons why I've no regrets and I'll just state it concisely:

1. Going to HK for exchange gives me the experience of living, planning and working independently and this is something which is not possible for me locally. In addition, the chance to meet great friends with interesting perspectives over there and to see the world through exploration will not be easily achieved over here (time is a serious consideration).

2. The chance to spend another semester in NUS allows me to take modules which I love and dream of taking. Adding to that, I'll be able to meet new people (my juniors) and thus allow me a chance to work with a different group of people.

Back to the exams on 2 May. It was quite a turn off actually. I expected it to be difficult as it's a difficult module. Not only that, the questions from the past year papers were of substantial difficulty and I organized a disscusion the day before just to discuss with the 4 of my classmates to see whether our answers and thinking conincides. I don't know why but in the end, the paper turns out to be pretty straightforward.

I met up with my lab-partner Yiming after the paper. He's a great guy and I love to share perspectives with him. We played drummania, chatted, pool, dine and finally bought a drink and chatted along Esplanade till around 10pm. We chatted about many things; one of the issues which I find meaningful is about teaching cum presentation. He made a point that when he prepares powerpoint slides, he will make sure that when the audience look at the slide, they will have an idea of what he's going to say but not know everything that he's going to say. What's the point of the audience knowing everything by just looking at the slides. Then there won't be a need for presentation; might as well give the audience the slides and save time.

Went out with Emily dear on Wed, after her exams. It's been a real long time since we last have a proper outing. We went to Potong Pasir and Hougang to take pictures of the opposition wards; it's an enriching experience as I have not been to Potong Pasir personally. We took a bus to Yio Chu Kang later for the opposition rally to see what they have to say about national issues. The first speaker (forgotten his name) and Steve Chia were good speakers. We left after Steve Chia's speech as it was pretty late and we have yet to have our dinner.

Incidentally I went for the opposition rally again yesterday at Choa Chu Kang. I met up with Chee Siong and Yuan-Ting after their exams and they were pretty keen to see some rallies; we wanted to go to a nearby place as we do not want to get home too late. Choa Chu Kang was the choice and it was Steve Chia's party again.

Got inspired to write after reading an article by The Sunday Times journalist, Cheong Suk-Wai. She wrote an article titled "Idylls and ideals", which describe her experience in 26 cities owning to her jobscope and how at the end of the day, Singapore is still no. 1 for all-weather living.

Quoting 3 paragraphs from her article illustrating general living condition:

If, for instance, you can deal with rickety, four-storey-high elevated train staircases, round-the-clock newsflashes of murders and mayhem and potheads stoned out on the bathroom floors of fast-food outlets, then Chicago, with its treasure chest of an Art Institute, is a fine, intellectually stimulating place to be in.

London is a waking dream for an Anglophile like me, but who can stomach its prices? (14 pounds or almost S$40 for a bowl of soup noodles with chicken and spring onion shreds, anyone?)

Hong Kong is a legendary place for shoopers buy my lasting impression of it was paying HK$45 (S$9) for a bowl of soup noodles which was just that - rubberband-like wonton me in an oily-grey liquid. You wish there was a garnish.

Quoting another sections on her experiences with racism:

... ... Of course, it's unfashionable to talk about racism in these consciously cosmopolitan times, but I sure felt it when, trying on a bargain leather jacket at the Politix boutique in Sydney recently, the salegirl walked up to me, pulled the sides of her eyes down and said: "Ooh, look how small your eyes are."

"Well, yes," I replied coolly, "but how smart is it to state the obvious?" That shuts her up.

Earlier this month, on a two-hour train ride in New South Wales, Australia, with my mother, she bit her lip at three Caucasian teen pessengers heckled her mercilessly throughout the ride, calling her an "Asian cartoon" because of her drawn-on eyebrows....

Upon finish reading her article, it promts me to write a little about my experiences in 5 cities during the stint of my Student Exchange in HK. My experience will of coursre not be as diverse as she is but it's enough for me to appreciate Singapore. It's strange that when you are here, you take everything for granted. It's only when you are overseas that you started thinking how fortunate we are in this tropical Global City Asia.

During my exchange stint, besides HK, I've travelled to Macau, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Guangzhou. The latter three are cities in China and being bilingual, I have no problem communicating and travelling around. However, I have to be extra careful travelling around as there always seem to be an extra pair of eyes staring at you, looking for the right timing to strike when you appeared less vigilant. I will never forget the incident in Shenzhen when a guy zipped open my bag, trying to see what he can get from there, before Emily dear screamed at him. Walking around with prostitutes approaching you openly was also an experience; some of them appeared to be advertising for massaging service and some even asked you whether you want to "have fun".

Cleanliness wise, Zhuhai resembles Singapore most, with streets beautifying with trees and trying to keep a litter free environment. However, their effort seemed to vary from places to places, with those nearing to Gong Bei (Zhuhai-Macau custom) least tidy. Police were everywhere in those three cities. At first sight, you might feel safe with so many of them "looking after law and order". However, how many of them will actually be helping you when you are in trouble. A couple of times, I saw some of them sleeping, chatting and idling at their post; if not, they'll be found smoking at some corners of the streets.

Food wise, all these cities definitely have much more to offer than Singapore. Those in China were generally 30-50% of the prices in Singapore and tastes much better. HK wise, it tends to be a little more expensive but yum cha is cheaper, around 70-80% of the prices in Singapore. However, a couple of my HK friends once mentioned to me that if I see how they prepare their food in the backyard (even for fast-food chains like Mac and KFC), then I wouldn't want to eat them again. For me, I don't mind, so long as their hygiene is ok and nice to eat.

On the whole, HK resembles Singapore most in terms of looks, prosperity etc. It has advantages over Singapore as well. For example, it boasts of a more efficient transportation system and more nature reserve for hikes and camping.

Ultimately, I think peers in my generation should go out of Singapore and take a look (and live) in the world outside for a while to appreciate what we have/ don't have. It is very important to have a global picture at this age.

Oh man, this is a long awaited blog entry. I am suppose to update it 3 days ago but I'm kinda lazy and decide to rest and revise for my Tue paper. This is going to be the hardest paper in my 4 years in NUS!

Nothing really exciting happened for the past 2 weeks. It consisted of resting, revising, exams, occasional journal reading to catch on the latest research updates, chatting etc. I had Bioorganic Organic exams on Monday. The paper was fine except that I felt it's more of a Medicinal Chemistry paper than anything else. Advanced Coordination Chemistry was kinda crap; it was really easy and I guess everyone will score really well. This translates to poor grade for this module. Bioinorganic was an interesting paper. For once, characters from Huckleberry Finn came out and discussed Chemistry; we were suppose to judge whether their discussions were sound. Interesting.

Along the way, some of my poor juniors were lamenting to me that the Transition Metal paper and the year II organic paper were very difficult. I took a look at the Transition Metal paper; Prof Hor changed his style in asking Q and it was a really exciting paper. It's more of selecting students for competition rather than exams. I showed Zhijie the paper and he displayed his giftedness in inorganic by naming 5 out of the 10 unknown metals effortlessly. o_O The year II organic paper was pretty challenging too. One of the Q is really mind bending. Hmm...

I guess it's good for our junior to tackle more difficult papers. Or rather, it's good that the profs in Chemistry department now set more challenging papers. In this way, it'll give students the intellectual challenge and stimulation.

Poor Emily dear is having tummyache. Wish her recover fast so that she can go back to her books and concentrate on her presentations. Hope that she'll sail through her remaining paper and presentation in the upcoming week.

Ah yes, election is round the corner and I hope to take some photos of it after my exams. This is the first time in my life that I become more politics conscious and am pretty interested in what's going to happen. But too bad, I am not able to vote.

I think I'll be busier during the upcoming summer holiday than ever. I'll be doing Honours Project, coaching Chemistry Olympiad, preparing notes for Prof. Wu, reading my favourite books, going to categorize my piles of journal articles into a more orderly manner, project X etc. Wah, seem occupied ah. In addition, I'll be looking forward to my upcoming semester, which is my graduating semester. In that semester, I'll be taking 4 organic modules! So exciting!

The semester finally came to an end, except for the upcoming exams starting 24th Apr. It ended with the Honours Symposium yesterday; though I'm graduating one semester later than my peers, I am still required to attend this big event where my peers presented their posters in the University Cultural Center.

Before that, I will like to write on events that occured the day before (i.e. Wed). It was the final day of official lesson for me and I attended the last Advanced Coordination Chemistry tutorial. Nothing very interesting happened except that the lecturer answered some queries fro mthe students. I went to find my CSS junior who were holding the Exam Discussion Day for the freshmen and sophomores. Similar to the past, very few turned up as most have not done their revision and thus they feel that such event is useless. I chatted with my juniors most of the time and had a good time catching up with them. Following that, I attended Prof Hor's pedagogy workshop on "Tough Teaching without the fear for Adverse Student Feedback". He gave the usual charismatic speech and most of the time, I feel that he might be better off as a politician. The day ended with the final session of bioorganic presentation and once again, the same group of people dominated the floor by raining questions at the presenter. How unsightly!

The Honours symposium was an awkward occasion for me and I wasn't comfortable throughout. I'll just talk about the interesting things. Besides the posters presentations, there are 4 plenary session speakers - Nicolaou, Planck, Hahn and Wuthrich. All of them are big shots in their respective fields - organic, construction chemicals, inorganic and NMR respectively. Nicolaou gave a brilliant talk on the Science and Art of Total Synthesis. Although I have heard similar talks on 2 others occasions, it is still interesting to hear it again. The prof. who chaired the session asked him what it takes to be a synthetic chemist. Nicolaou talked about patience, perseverence and most importantly, having this intuitive feel for the molecules reacting in the reaction mixture. His talk ended with a negative note when someone from the audience asked why didn't he won the Nobel Prize. Holy shit, what a rude question! His face expression went a shade darker; he thanked the person for his compliment and replied, "...we do Science for the sake of discovery and passion, not for prizes..." the audience gave a thundering applaud after that.

Planck's talk was interesting too and it was mostly about cements. I am surprised by the fact that cement chemistry can be so complicated and it was really an eye-opener. He was pretty crappy at the end of his talk when he asked the audience whether they wished to know what it takes to be a cement (or in general materials) chemist. The audience laughed and he went on to say that what they need is to have a sense of composition and feeling for the material etc. It's kind of lame but made the audience laughed nonetheless. Hahn's talk was on carbene and it was very educational. Nobel laureate Wuthrich's talk was on NMR spectroscopy of protein. It tends towards more physical and is a little day. Nonetheless, I was exposed to 2 new formed of NMR spectroscopy - TROSY (Transverse Relaxation Optimized Spectroscopy) and APSY (Automated Projection Spectroscopy).

The day ended with a cocktail party followed by dinner at Guild House. I wasn't happy throughout; I am thankful to my year III lab partner Yiming for keeping me company during the awkward situation. I enjoyed catching up with him a lot though and I can say with conviction that he is one of my best friends in NUS. He understands me well and is able to see eye to eye with me in many ways. A friend that is hard to come by.

Sometimes, opening up your heart and accquiring the quality of acceptance will make one a happier person. I watched a show a couple of months back and found its quote penetrating - "sometimes, what you see from your eyes may not be the truth; you need to feel it with your heart to differentiate between them".

It's been around 2 weeks since I last blogged. Term is coming to an end this Thursday and I'll be having exams from 24 Apr. This semester seems to pass by fairly quickly; one of the reasons is probably of projects and presentations - ya know, as you start to rush to meet deadlines and you hit one after another, time passes before you know it.

I am getting a little tired - my semester begun immediately upon my return from HK and there appeared to be no real break for me in-between. I am just hoping this semester will pass by quickly as I can't wait for the holidays to come so that I can rush to complete my projects and at the same time, engage in something meaningful - example, helping out in the chemistry olympiad training.

Had a 2nd bioinorganic test today and it's worth 20%. I kinda screw up in it as usual as I "refuse" to remember some of the obvious stuff. My only consolation is that I did well in the first test (worth another 20%) but the problem is everyone did very well in that test too. So no reason to be over the moon over it. I never like test that is not able to spread the students out.

Poor Emily dear is staying back in school again to complete her projects. She has a couple of projects which require her to work in the computer labs and thus she needs to work overtime. I watched her group's project on amphibious vehicle last Friday. It was pretty interesting and worked fine, just that it moved a little too slow. I can never imagine myself creating a vehicle that can move. Engineering was never my cup of tea, I guess.

I am not sure how I am going to survive with 3 exams in a row (24th to 26th Apr) but I hope things will turn out fine. Luckily Natural products is on 2 May, which leaves me a couple of days to revise. Tmr will be the final day for bioorganic presentation; Dr. Lu is probably going to brief us on exams stuff after that. Tmr will also be Chemical Sciences Society's exam discussion day - I'll be going there both to help out and to catch up with my juniors. Thursday will be a big day for most of my cohort people as it's the Honours symposium. I'm suppose to go and sit in; well, I'm actually not very comfortable in attending it. The consolation is that big shots like Nicolaou, Stang and Hahn are giving a talk on that day.

I have always hear people using the argument that "there is always 2 sides to a coin". But if you think carefully, life is not a piece of pancake and there are many facet to it. No wonder Forrest Gump remarked that "Life is just like a box of chocolate, you'll never know what you're gonna get". Clearly, the world is 3-dimensional and many a times, there are many ways to assess a situation.