A death in the family

My cousin, Sin Yee, passed away this morning. She finally succumbed to cancer after months of hard battle.

I loved her. She was very close to my family and played a pretty big role in my life growing up. In a lot of ways, she was the older sister I never had.

Growing up, she would sometimes be the babysitter when my parents are away. I remember how she’d pick me up from school and we’d talk and laugh about everything. Gosh, the laugh, it never changed over the years. She was the happiest and most positive person I’ve ever known and I am not saying that as some sort of obituary courtesy. If there was ever a time anyone in the family was feeling down or facing hardship, she would be the one providing encouragement and support.

A pleasant memory of her during my childhood was writing letters to her when she was studying in Melbourne. I was in Standard 3 then and we would exchange letters about how our lives were going. It was beautiful looking back; that was probably the only time I’ve ever had an ongoing conversation with someone using snail mail.

Even though, in recent years, we haven’t really been in touch constantly, whenever we do see each other, the conversation would remain as warm and lively as always. That’s just her, though. Very pleasant and always full of jokes. It would probably be no exaggeration to say that she was everybody’s friend. Everyone in the extended family loved her.

Which was why it’s just such a damn shame that cancer had to take her away from us. It frustrates me; it genuinely pisses me off. It just sucks that it has to be this unfair. I saw her in so much pain and suffering and I thought that she was probably the least deserving person of this fate.

I’m gonna miss her company. It depresses me to think that I’ll never hear her laughter again.

When I got news that she wasn’t going to make it past this week, I went over to see her twice. But I never got to speak to her. Never got to tell her one last time that I love her. She was resting then and I didn’t want to disturb her. She was in a lot of pain, so sleep was precious whenever it came by. I couldn’t bring myself to be selfish and wake her just so I can have some form of self-fulfilment.

So if you can somehow read this, Sin Yee jie jie, I love you. I’m going to miss you so so much. I’m going to remember all the good times we had together and I’m going to try to live life the way you did: full of happiness and positivity.

If there is an afterlife, we’ll talk again and hopefully, I’ll be able to share my life story with you again, just like how we did in those letters all those years ago.

Goodnight, sis, and travel well.

 

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!

Entering the home stretch

I’ve submitted my “intention to submit” form today which pretty much symbolizes the beginning to the end of my doctorate journey. I’ve been writing my thesis for about a month now in between the lab sessions and it’s quite surreal to think that it’s already been a little over three years since I started this.

I still have some experimental milestones to hit before I can officially go into “thesis writing” mode but hopefully, I can get it resolved over the next one or two months. I haven’t had much luck with lab results lately despite a lot of hard graft over the past two to three months. Curse the uncertainty of semi-novel research!

However, the good news is because I write my journal articles as I go about doing my lab work instead of leaving it until the end, all I have to do once I finish this batch of experiments is to collate all the papers together to form a coherent piece of work. It’s a two to three week job at most, fingers crossed.

Also, I have had one eye on my post-graduation career for the past one year now, and after a lot of uhm, “extra-curricular” reading, I feel like (or at least, I hope!) I’m sufficiently equipped now to handle any rigorous interview processes that might come my way. I should be starting to apply for jobs by mid to late April depending on the progress of my doctorate work.


I’m feeling a whole whirlwind of emotions right now, to be honest. There’s a bit of fear because at the back of my mind, there are still some lingering doubts as to whether I can actually make that final step and complete the doctorate. Just the thought of the humiliation of ending up with an MPhil instead of a PhD makes me feel nauseous. There’s relief because either ways, no matter what happens, this mentally and physically draining journey will end by the middle of 2012.


There’s contentment, because again, no matter what happens, I have come on leaps and bounds as a person and I can feel the improvement in maturity of thought compared to where I was three years ago, and really, isn’t that just what everyone wants? The feeling that you’ve made progress and not just stagnated as the days went by?


The dominating feeling right now, however, has to be excitement. There’s just so much to look forward to over the coming months and the uncertainty adds so much to it. So first, I have to get the final project out of the way, and then comes the job applications while finishing up the thesis, and if all goes well, I’ll successfully defend my thesis, become Dr. Ng and land the job that I want. Onwards and upwards!

……. or crash and burn, end up with an MPhil and wallow in misery for the rest of my life. That’s pretty exciting too, I suppose.


Whatever. Sit tight!

The Kerinchi Link Conundrum

So it was announced last week that the government had decided to abolish two of the Cheras-Kajang tolls; one on each side of the road. This should be great news for me because I travel along that stretch every day and hey, we all love money, right? Well unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as simple for me.

“ASALKAN BUKAN BARISAN NASIO… say what? toll abolished?! FUCK YEAH!!!!”

That’s because the government has a rebate program going where if you pass more than 80 toll booths a month, you get a 20% rebate on your toll charges. Since you also get a further 20% on the rebate that is credited provided you pass 80 tolls again the next month, it is effectively a 24.8% rebate.

What this means is that if the government abolishes 2 tolls, it brings down my monthly toll count. So if (1) the abolishment of the tolls brings my toll count below 80, and (2) the savings from the rebate prior to the abolishment is more than the direct savings from the abolishment, I actually stand to lose more money.


Thankfully, it doesn’t in this scenario. I was crossing 7 tolls daily prior to the abolishment, so assuming I travelled to the campus every weekday, which equated to 20 days of travelling, I was crossing 140 tolls monthly. The abolishment of the 2 tolls brought the total down to 100, which was fine by me.

However, this turn of events did bring a new dilemma which I dubbed during my drive home “The Kerinchi Link Conundrum”.

(www.dramabutton.com)

 

You see, on the way back from Semenyih, I am usually faced with two route options, with significantly different costs each. I can either go up the Kerinchi Link and pay a total of RM 2.50 or I can wait a little longer in traffic (generally about 15 minutes) and go home via the toll-free Jalan Universiti.


Of course, for a typical driver, the cost analysis is pretty straightforward. If you can stand to wait, do so; otherwise, cough up RM2.50. With the rebate program however, it gets slightly more complicated because of the monthly toll count.

(For the sake of discussion, assume 1 month = 20 weekdays)

Each time I choose not to go up the Kerinchi Link, I lose 2 toll booth “passes” off my monthly toll count. If my monthly toll count drops below 80 passes, I don’t qualify for a rebate. Before, it didn’t matter: my monthly count was 140 passes so even if I chose not to go up the Kerinchi Link every time, my final count still stood at 100 passes. No problems there.


With the abolishment of the two Cheras-Kajang tolls, however, should I choose not to go up the Kerinchi Link at all, my monthly toll count drops from 100 to 60. So now, I do have a fairly interesting situation on my hands. Since I had time during my drive home (I always do; it’s a fucking 45 minute drive each way), I decided to do a quick cost-benefit analysis.


It turns out that to achieve the perfect balance between cost and time spent waiting in traffic, I have to go up the Kerinchi Link at least ten times. Interestingly, the difference between going up the Link ten times and not going up at all is a mere RM 1. That means it only costs me RM0.10 each time I go up the link. The explanation is simple enough: not going up the Link at all means failing to meet the 80 toll requirement and consequently, losing out on the rebate for the other 3 tolls that I do have to pass daily.


The worst case scenario would be if I only go up the Link nine times because then, not only do I lose out on the monthly rebate, but I also have to pay the full RM2.50 toll charge. It would actually cost me money to NOT go up the tenth time. I was actually amused by how counter-intuitive this whole thing was.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


In the grand scheme of things, however, I’m not sure I should be pleased about this whole toll abolishment thing. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the traffic along the Taman Connaught stretch has gradually worsen since the RM0.50 toll was abolished last year. Since it doesn’t cost a cent to go along the East-West link now, more motorists would understandably prefer to take that route home.


Which sucks for me, because, well, I’ve always been okay with paying the measly RM0.50. So screw you, BN, yet another reason to vote for the opposition….


…. except those guys are proposing to abolish ALL tolls in the country.


Hmmm…



P/S: The opposition has been saying that should they take over Putrajaya, they’ll slash tax rates, abolish all tolls, provide financial aid for the needy, maintain/ increase fuel subsidies and keep essential goods prices steady, among other populist measures.

Which begs the fucking question: How do they plan on financing all this? Just by eliminating corruption and cronyism? Even if it’s possible, I’m not entirely sure it’s the most beneficial way to spend the purported savings.

The Black Swan

I had a relatively casual chat with a friend today about Christianity's view on homosexuality. As I was more keen on trying to understand their mindset on the issue and stimulate a discussion, I refrained from winding him up just for the sake of a wind-up. Okay, maybe I did just a little. And only because some of the statements made were begging for it.

The central premise for Christianity's negative stance towards homosexuality, besides the Bible saying it's wrong, is basically this:


"Homosexuality is strictly a choice and not a congenital condition"


That is the crucial argument because from a Christianity standpoint, if (1) all living beings are created by God, and, (2) some people are born homosexuals, we can reasonably argue that God condones homosexuality. Assuming he’s a benevolent God of course; it’s equally likely that he just likes to take the piss. There's of course a slight problem in that the Bible explicitly says that homosexuality is wrong. You can then see why Christians, instead of possibly having to deal with this perplexing contradiction, would rather stick their fingers into their ears and scream "lalalalala" in the face of any potential evidence that is contrary to their viewpoint.


Based on this then, I asked him whether he thought a person can actively choose to be gay, and whether homosexuals can be "rehabilitated", to which he said yes. It still sounded fairly reasonable until he brought up how he thought homosexuals become what they are. Most homosexuals were victims of child sexual abuse, apparently.





*Struggles badly at holding back a priest/small boy joke*


I pressed him for the exact statistic. Is “most” 75%, 50%, 35%? About 40% was his estimate (A quick Google search later revealed it to be 38%). Well, what about the other 60% then, I asked him. No coherent reply was forthcoming. In any case, it was irrelevant. Correlation does not equate to causation. If they really wanted to prove that child sexual abuse is a factor in sexual orientation, they should flip the parameters. The number of child sexual abuse victims who go on to become homosexuals should be the supporting statistic.


My personal opinion is that since there isn’t conclusive proof (I may be wrong) on whether homosexuality is or isn’t a choice, an open mind should be kept regarding the matter. Adopting a homophobic stance because a book told you to is not just ignorant; it’s lazy. I then tried a different approach: “What if there is conclusive scientific evidence that homosexuality can be a congenital condition? Would that help change your mind?” There was a sudden pause followed by an emphatic no.


The reason given was hilariously flimsy, though. He would have been better off just falling back on the Bible excuse. ”Unless you surveyed all 7 billion of the world’s population and found that all homosexuals are born that way, the study is unreliable.” Hearing that actually made me go:






I don’t need to gather all the black swans in the world to disprove “all swans are white”; I need just one! Similarly, a study just needs to reliably prove that one (or several, just for the sake of repeatability) homosexual is born with a particular sexual orientation to disprove “homosexuality is a choice”. That he can’t see the logic despite being a scientist dumbfounded me a little. You know, I would have thought that being a student of science, you would be more accepting of new theories.


This anecdote kind of sums up my beef with religion besides the money-making part (have you seen their accounts?). As a device to draw strength, comfort and inspiration from, it’s great. Even the back and forth arguments about the origins of the universe are largely inconsequential. The problem arises when it’s used to spread backward and potentially poisonous ideas such as the forbiddance of contraceptives like condoms and birth control pills (a whole other post which I won’t go into detail).


Most religions preach faith so strongly that followers just surrender all their opinions and trust the teachings of a book to the letter; a book that has been doctored by men heavily over the years to suit their own personal agenda no less. I might empathise with the average person but I would expect more from a man of science than to relinquish all thoughts of inquisition. Is religion to blame for my friend’s poor reasoning skills? No, but since his opinion on the matter was already cemented from the brainwashing of religion, he’ll fight tooth and nail to defend his opinion and stoop to brittle logic in desperation.


“What if the Bible is wrong?” I asked my friend midway through our small debate. “It’s never wrong,” came the confident reply.


Galileo wept.