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".
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".
posted by CS at
11:59 PM
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