That Taiwan Feeling

“When a horse smells its stable, it’s difficult to stop him.”


It’s a nice quote from Arsene Wenger in reference to the title race that sadly turned out to be untrue as Manchester United went on to bottle the league, but that’s exactly the way I’m feeling right now.


You see, my work output for the past few months, from January to April, has been relatively lethargic, what with me only hitting the labs every other day, sometimes only two to three days a week. The rest of the time was spent staring at literature and knocking my head against the table repeatedly in the hopes that a solution would magically present itself to me. The prime reason for this was this huge experimental obstacle that I have been failing to overcome.


In a nutshell, my samples kept aggregating every time I put it through a dialysis procedure to purify it. An aggregated sample is of no use to me because all the downstream analyses require the sample to be water-soluble and also, it would suggest that my synthesis process wasn’t working.


In this period, I threw everything at the wall but nothing stuck. Nobody had run a dialysis process with nanotubes before, so I couldn’t get any tangible advice off the bioscience or pharmacy people. The process description in the journal articles that I found was also incredibly vague. My adviser understandably had no idea how to solve it because he had no experience in the bioscience field. So basically, like Taiwan, I was pretty much on my own.


And so, I became incredibly demotivated due to my lack of progress and my pace slowed down. The latter was also because my sample (insulin) wasn’t cheap at all. 50 mg costs RM670, and I went through them like water in an attempt to solve the damned problem. What was also not helping was looking at the calendar and wondering where all the time went. I went from telling people (when I was asked, of course) I would be finishing in December 2011 to January 2012 to March to July. Well, it won’t go further than July now because that’s the deadline I’ve set in stone (explained one or two posts back) in an attempt to pressurize myself into finding the solution.


And then, just like that, it happened. Last Sunday, out of nowhere, something just clicked in my head. The following morning, I rushed to the lab and immediately carried out the tweaked procedure and bam, it worked! It’s incredibly hard to explain to people what it feels like to finally get something to work: this sequence of epiphany followed by execution and sweet, glorious success. That’s exactly what I felt though, and a huge weight was off my shoulder.


As it turned out, the dialysis procedure was actually equilibrating the pH in my sample, bringing it down from 7.6 to 5.5. So, by discarding the supernatant from the aggregation and topping it back with a pH 7.6 buffer, I got the purified sample to solubilize again. It’s quite funny sometimes how simple the answer to a complex problem can be. It was the same in Taiwan last year as well, when I realized a simple application of heat to 85 C would disperse my starch solution after spending two months cracking my head over it.


So with that out of the way, I can immediately carry on with all the downstream analyses and wrap the project and, by extension, my thesis up. If all the analyses return favourable results, fingers crossed, I will be done by the end of June. There is still quite a bit more to go but the great thing is that the motivation is back again. That same feeling in Taiwan where I was eager for the next day to come so I could complete another run.


It’s that Taiwan feeling: the mad sprint towards my stable. I love it.

What a strange season..

 

.. for football.


The season started with so much promise.

Manchester United were steamrollering opponents playing sexy, one-touch football. Nottingham Forest had Steve McClaren in along with some decent signings like Matt Derbyshire. Selangor appointed former Terengganu coach Irfan Bakti off his FA Cup winning season.


And then just like that, without warning, it all went to shit. Cleverley got injured, the centre of midfield was decimated injury-wise, United fell back to playing dour. pass-it-around-midfield, football. Forest dropped like a stone. McClaren got sacked, which was fine except they got Cotterill in who was equally inept. Nigel Doughty passed away in February. Selangor languished in mid-table (signed Bosko Balaban though, which was pretty cool).


And then in the end, United lose the title in the worst way possible, emotionally. City got to lift the cup which means having to watch Tevez and Balotelli lift it. Chelsea won the European Cup meaning Terry gets to lift it. Forest narrowly avoided relegation and Selangor, well, Selangor’s still at mid-table.


Of course, a bit of perspective is needed. United still finished second and lost out only on GD. Forest isn’t in League One and Selangor, well, 32 times Malaysian Cup winners, bitches! /liverpool


Still though, what an anti-climax. Pfft, can’t even get excited about the potential summer dealings with all that lingering bitterness.

Fuck ‘em.

Note to Self:

 

“Devout religious people cannot be reasoned with. Just don’t bother trying.”


I guess it’s just so puzzling to me how religious people can be so myopic in their views and unaccepting of different viewpoints. I won’t go into details but there was a, uhm, “discussion” about same-sex marriage today which wound me up no end. The winding up was because even after I have presented my counter-argument in what I feel was a convincing manner, it still wasn’t getting through.

No point being vague, so here’s an excerpt from the exchange:


Me: "(…) Sure but just so we're clear, you agree that religious beliefs and written law should not be independent of each other? Because, having read your article, it provides no rational reason against same sex marriage beyond "the bible says it's wrong" and some vague statements about "not right to build society on it", whatever that means.”


Friend: “ my idea is simple, give Caeser (sic) to Caeser, and give God to God...
coz the kingodm that im longing for is not in the land,everytyhing (law/teaching), if it is within the Scripture contexts,then it will be good for me...”

Me:

All I was thinking after that was, “That passage implies the separation of church and state, you imbecile! Why then are you against the legalization of same-sex marriage if “the kingdom you’re longing for is not in the land”?!”


I didn’t say that, though, not because I was afraid to but more that I was actually stunned into silence. There is a Latin phrase which I can’t recall about a person being so dumbfounded by the utter stupidity of the response that he’s rendered speechless. Yeah, that’s kinda what I felt.


I mean, I can at least see the rationale behind arguments against same-sex marriage if for example, you argue that same sex parents are not ideal for raising a child. Using “the bible says it’s wrong” to restrict the rights of others, however, is just inappropriate, to put it mildly. Religious views should count for fuck all when it comes to passing or amending laws. I forgot to ask him point blank if he would be fine with hudud law being enforced on every Malaysian, irrespective of religion. Damn you, spirit of the stairs!


Their responses aren’t even logically consistent, for fuck’s sake! I mentioned an example up there. Another one is one of them saying: “Hail Jesus, because of Him we are saved by God's grace, not by any Laws” So why do you give a damn about any of our puny human laws? Besides, marriage is a state, not a Christian, institution; who cares how the Christians define marriage?


I realize this is my second religion related post in the last three or four, but I think this will be my last for a while. It’s mentally taxing, not to mention pointless to try to reason with people with such extremist views. The following quote by Sam Harris is still one of my all-time favourites:

Sometimes you just have to accept that “ignorance is bliss”. So the next time this happens, my response will be:




Christian Extremist: But, but, the Bible said, and I quote, “Thou shall…..








So there!