BLUNDER!!!

 I was going back to miri, happy as could be because I was going to see my family after a long and tiring semester of research in IMU. As usual, while packing, we would wonder all about what we were to bring home. This time, I didn’t have to bring any luggage with me, only a hand carry bag. So I thought I could rest easy and just bring whatever I thought I needed, without making a proper check list.

 After leaving IMU, things were going on alright. A fast 1 hour ride to the lcct, no sweat. Chilling in the lrt, KLIA transit and slept in the shuttle bus. However when I reached the lcct, there was some nagging feeling and fear in me, a sixth sense I suppose, which was worrying me. When I went to the check in counter, i found out that there WAS no check in counter to miri! It had closed. 10 minutes before I reached. I whipped out my phone and checked the message again. 1625. Oh crap, here I was thinking 1645. 20 minutes is a LOT of difference. I had NO idea why the hell I had mistaken that timing. Such an easy mistake on an extremely important thing. Oh hell, this was like singapore again where I did not bother to check the proper terminal at which I was departing. Thank goodness that there was a customer service counter that allowed me to get on the plane with ease, much more ease because I was not carrying any luggage other than a back pack.

  So my flight to miri was uneventful but safe. I am really glad that I am here back at home. What more, since it is just for a week, I have to appreciate and use this time that I have here to the max. on thurday,  me and my family would be going to a 6 star hotel called ‘The Empire’ in brunei plus eat all the sushi and food that brunei has to offer. It’s just one thing, the realisation of it came like a blow to my head and I did not dare to voice I out for 5 minutes. I left my passport back in KL. The passport needed to get through the immigration office and get to this land of joy. I curse myself so badly. HOW could I not remember it!! Maybe it was that time while packing stuff, I was stupidly still watching starcraft2 videos!! I should have been more serious!! And just as a general rule: ALWAYS BRING YOUR PASSPORT WHEN YOU TRAVEL, EVEN WHEN YOU DO NOT NEED IT! My mom always said to bring your passport whenever you travel, but out of the countless times that I brought my passport, I only needed my I.C. so it did not really make sense to always bring the passport, only this time where it was just SO unlucky and stupid that I did not.

So I am going to make another bunch of lessons for travelling:

1)      Always bring the important document wherever despite not using it all. I.C, Passport.

2)      Check the details for the flight PROPERLY and beforehand. Time, terminal, luggage.

3)      Plan the timing earlier to leave the house. It is better to be early and wait then being just on time. Do not be lazy to wait at the airport earlier.

4)      Lastly, despite going through the same event countless times, DO NOT take these important events lightly, or it will turn around and punch you kin the face.

There, 4 simples rules, and you won’t go wrong when going on an important event. 

Games how i Love games

games games games and more games. how fun computer games are. from the time of the atari to the current explosion of computer games, playstations, nintendos and Xbox. these forms of entertainment consumez me!! yeah! 

  i love escaping from reality into another dimension where our only objective is to beat the enemy. shoot em, scratch them, melee weapons, strategise, build a base, get the highest score and win. focusing your mental energies to onto a game for hours on end. how wonderful that feels. 

  currently i play starcraft2 beta(no original boohoo) and League of Legends. starcraft2 is only the best real time strategy game invented by blizzard carrying on the campaign of the 3 races terrans, protoss and zerg. the current campaign only focuses on the terrans only, Wings of liberty. it carries off where starcraft (1) left off. but where jim raynor is the main character who is starting a rebellion against the current terran dominion leader, emperor arcturus mengsk. throughout the story, he's getting a foothold of the rebellion, getting stronger and stronger so that he can topple arcturus mengsk. jim finds artifacts that mengsk had been shipping, and confiscates them by force. and he starts collecting them. however throughout the story, the zerg leader, and his past crush, kerrigan who is the queen of blades(zerg bitch leader yeah!) arises from their hiding and cause a bunch of havoc in their mission which is unknown to anyone. and he's forced to fight from 2 fronts. many things happen in the campaign and i'm too lazy to say it all. 

  but whats better about starcraft2 is that blizzard has a battlenet specific for playing online with other people who have proper starcraft2 accounts. so choose any of the races and play against people on battlenet. there is a ladder ranking when you play, that is starting with bronze, then silver, gold, (after here i not too sure), platinum and lastly diamond. however, since i do not have an original, it is only something of dreams. starcraft2 with the starcraft world graphic and better, user friendly controls, elevates the capability of the strategy game. from the success of starcraft 1, starcraft2 has taken off and is gardening even more support and players than ever before. i just LOVE starcraft2. i wanna buy the damn game!!! hahaa 

  the other game League of Legends is an online game which is similar to Defense of the Ancient(better known as Dota) the creators of Dota consists of guinsoo, icefrog and eul's. somewhere down the road, they split up, one staying to develop dota, one to Hon (a more beautiful version) and lastly League of legends, a more cartoony version but simpler game to play. the heroes are not free like dota or Hon, but there are free heroes to play every week. and with more playing, we can gain IP which is sort of like online experience or money. with more IP we can buy heroes. so we work for our heroes. plus we gain level so the opponents that we are matched against are more or less of equal levels.  

 since research has been taking up a lot of my time, playing these games just gave me like ecstasy. :) the taste of games is so much more delicious when you do not play it in a long time. after a long tiring day, playing is just so wonderful. 

  reflectioin: Inside me there is a twang that doesnt let go. Games arent for the future, it is just entertatinment which has gripped us so much that we are left spending our life away on this game that means nothing for the future. its kind of bad that the games made these days are so exhilarating that it takes gamers life away. they become good in the game but get very little benefit from it. rarely do you hear gamers getting benefits from it. here is a video that has made me come to this realisation. its called: 'the only thing i know'

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKBRG_QgEAM

  

it says a lot here. it was a video sent by my mom, because, of course every parent hates to see you play games and scolds you to do something more benificial. but now after seeing this, i actually share more or less the same view. that if we calculate all our time spent playing, we realise how little worth it actually is in real life.  when looking for a job. when putting things in our resume. if i were older and looking for a job or more opportunities in my life, i would not want to be at the interview table where i regret that i played to many games in my life.

  but thank god its not me. but then, what do i do these days? anything thats not really such good resume material either. 

 this is what'e been on my mind. that in entertainment, we shouldnt be too carried away. instead , have more focus and be in reality more. 

leoneedipad :)

Dun want to let it grip me. 

celcom advertisement

wow, today is  the first day that nuffnang puts an advertisement on my blog. i feel so honored to host  it. celcom phone advertisement of the new generation of blackbury, doesnt it make you want one. 

   awesome!!! 

A taste of home

  sitting down after a fortunately not so busy day, i bit into my homemade burger and hotdog. a wave of nostalgia washed over me as i tasted my creation. the sensual combination of the taste of meat, sausage, freshly cut cucumbers and tomatoes made me remember the good things that i had back in my hometown Miri. although the meat was of inferior quality(students package of ramly chicken patty and A1 cheese sausage)  compared to the fresh and good meat products that my mom uses at home, the food that i was brought up on and learnt how to make still  puts me in a happy state. its like having a substitute mama pat you on the back and say "good boy good boy" and the imaginary tail swishes at a frequency of 10 hertz, very very happy arf!!

  we are from where we are from, a cumulative bag of experience, habits and parts of our home community. from a single bite can light up and relinquish the memories of the past. a skill can tell others what you like and how much effort you put into it. a certain setting brings out the experience and attitude on how we handle situations.

  sometimes, as a guy individual, it feels like i forget my hometown and all the folks in it. i forget how much each person, place and thing has an effect on me and how they actually, in small ways, make part of me. i wasn't blessed with the feeling of missing anything, oho, how insensitive, so catching up with my family or old friends would need a little more initiative and effort. why do i suddenly come to this point? it is because it is about acknowledging your roots, which add up into your behavior and finally yourself. plus i feel its filial piety  that you update your folks at home and that u know what they are up to at the moment when they aren't directly looking after your parasitic butt in the house. :) and after saying all this, i suddenly feel that i miss home. . . .a bit. . . not very very . . . but at least a bit is better than continuing to be insensitive.

   SO, i'll call my folks. anyone who reads this, call your folks, unless you have been doing this, then you are a good and loyal son or daughter, and i applaud you.

 saying hi to my ma soon,
leon

the solo life of a researcher

  being in the lab really allows one to be free of the world. you generate your own little bubble that detaches you from everyone, what more with a valid reason to do so. with a reason and excuse to be anti-social, i find myself having difficulty finding the wavelength of other people. socialising becomes a hassle that comes out with topics like 'how was your day?' boring . . .and ends there, with mot much to discuss more. its either people are busy or i have been unaware of whats been happening out there for too long. it gets really busy in the lab too, with repetitive work, how can we make that a topic of discussion when there is so little to talk about it. anyway, bottom line is this is emoing much over research.

   but there are stuff to thank for, especially some helpful people in the lab. all those who have learnt the ways and techniques of the experiments. those who hold an offer advise, experience and equipment in the lab that helps make lab techniques much easier and more efficient. just yesterday, my second half of my MTT test was helped by 2 people that i really want to thank, that is ashwin (as my beloved batch representative says: son of muruhades) for letting me learn how to do the procedures so willingly. the other is my supervisors old student form UPM, whose name is chua, she gave me so mamy helpful tips on MTT, advice around the lab, and even offered to lend me this fabulous, maginicifent, awesome, holy, life convenient making piece of equipment called the 8 tip multichannel micropipette. basically this thing costs a fortune of rm1000 and its as big as your hand. it allows one to seed many well at a time. plus this thing is usually borrowed form the research office, adding more hassle if i wanted because i'd have to log in and out. bla bla.

  my lovely supervisor, Dr anna ling, is really helpful and um, i think the word is caring, to her students. she's rather a quiet person, sibu foochow(awesome foochow!!) who is very hardworking. she pushes her students while being considerate and sensitive to the students feelings towards the work. i wouldnt trade any other supervisor in Bmed science for her. i thank god for being so lucky to have her as the one who guides me in Bmed science.

  hmmm, so maybe i contradict myself in the title of this blog entry. it seems really lonely and emofying down in the lab, but i have forgotten the people out there who are so kind to help others in the research lab. i have felt the frustration and i too, want to pass down, whatever knowledge i have to others to make their life in the lab, a bit better.

for the love of my silly cells,
  leon

Life in tissue culture lab 1

once more i face a long and arduous day just doing procedures for my experiment. this week is the MTT assay which is actually a simple process, but being my experiment which needs 6 plants, this simple process is lengthened considerably, which different concentrations and 96 wells to fill. to put this part of my research in a bottle, it is to
1) culture cells, count them, calculate how much i want in the plate, then fill all tiny 96 wells. like putting shells into the congkak board, times 9 or 10. i can already feel the excitement doing this =.=. .
2) for one extract(yes JUST ONE out of six) i gotta dilute them into somemore tiny tubes of 1.5ml. dilute dilute .
3) fill the 96 well all over again, but this time with the different dilutions, not like the boring same old filling of wells in 1)
4) wait one or two days for the effect of the extract on cells
5) put the magical white powder(which can cause mutation by the way) into the wells, wait. . . the dissolve it with something else and lastly
6) let a computer analyse the wells.

 oh wait, thats not all man, you wish . . .

7) repeat each plant twice and with different waiting times for extract to treat the cells.
8) repeat
9) repeat repeat
10) .  . am i dead yet. .
11) repeat. . .

 ah well maybe one day in the tissue culture lab i may finally finish it.  till then,fit just goes on and on an on. . . . (taiyo-dynamite)

welcoming myself to the blogosphere

 ho ho,

  never have i thought that this day would ever come. I, leon tang ing chi, yes me the one and only, has created a blog!! ta-da!!!! *applauds to myself*  this marks a wonderful new start to this already ending 2010 year, but heck, who needs a new year to start something new. yeah man!! Life is what we make of it. :) (yeah i have successfully quoted myself) (Lame. . )

  just for a proper introduction to this blog, i only started this because a of the company 'Extrabytes' is having this competition for bloggers. the reward is an iPad. oh gosh i SO want one! so having this blog is one of the criteria for winning this awesome piece of gadget. how its won seems to be purely by luck, either that or i'm too stupid to understand what the instructions are. you can see the instructions of my facebook page : http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=466578781352&set=a.466578776352.245067.529161352&notif_t=like
 lolz man. who the heck knows what a TLD domain is? this is IT language. i'm bummed~ i'm too dumb to even understand wikipedia.

   so hopefully, out of some purely out of the world luck, i can be a lucky winner to get an iPad.  then i'll be the hapiest guy on earth . . .till some other new gadget comes about and i get this irrational urge to get it. (since when did i get so materialistic?)

   now that i'm starting to blog, (evetho this may be my first and last entry) i need to work on my typing skills. gak!!  i played typing maniac in facebook and i can only reach level 11. . . what the heck. . . my previous housemate who is some smart-ass with a dental girlfriend played it once and beat me straight in my highest level which i needed 2 days of playing just to reach that level. gotta envy/hate/love those blessed people. but back to the point. typing without looking at the screen is a challenge, but as its cool and if once achieved, will qualify me to being a better blogger who can write shit loads into a page with such ease.

 la~la~la, my housemates are happy that i'm getting a blog. one even said not to let this be the first and last post.. . . . hmmm. . . .we'll see.

here's to my first post, mine sincerely,
leoneedipad