With much blessings, I do hope that Aus brings luck more... I've asked the PI at ANU to support me and she has kindly delighted me by extending that nice invitation. So I'm changing track and going to the bush capital in Canberra. I know the challenges: racism, poisonous snakes, spiders and bush fires. But I've been to KSA which is a desert...

I'm rejecting Oxon because they're asking me to pay an exorbitant 200K for a PhD. I didn't know you have to pay for a PhD... 

I read in ST recently an article by Robin Chan (I remember him from my NS as a Lt from the same battalion). First I was pretty surprised by a familiar lanky face. But what was most interesting was his article that heralded "Made in Singapore Inflation" repost here Anyway, I find it rather gutsy for a young reporter to place some blame on inflation at the central planners :).

Recent times we've seen domestic prices skyrocketing, precipitated by overheated housing sector and an over-explosion of shopping malls. Prices of commodities like oil and food have also risen these few years, and sharply. It was a trip to marketing with my mum that I realized that groceries have risen by about 30%. Public transport costs up by > 12% (used to cost 65 c and now 73 c for a single trip). To deal with inflation, the sg dollar has been rising against the US and other currencies. Of course bad is my US dollar deposits and my all my earnings from KSA has dropped significantly. 

One of the incumbent party's MP did attribute the fault to our central planners: in so eagerly opening the floodgates to foreigners. The positive side is that this caused a rise in employment and made our economy bouyant. However, there are also side-effects to this in terms of inflation and shaving off median earnings of citizens. Because firms could hire more cheaply, the income of lower earning citizens has fallen although they are now able to secure employment more easily. However the prospects of these jobs aren't great. There is always that delicate balance to unemployment figure and placing enough food on the table. Benefitting from this are firm owners. So the rich gets richer and poor, poorer. It is inevitable that foreign firms once drawn by the attractive labor conditions now gets uprooted to setup operations elsewhere where costs are lower soon.

Perhaps what the Lee government wishes to achieve is short-term gains coupled with long-term problems and social ills like greater income disparity.

The Écoles Supérieures (ES) in france is a term for prestigious select of universities that are highly competitive like the Ivy League in US. Such schools are well-endowed, and resources are a plently relative to other universities. They also boast a pool of alumni who are powerful, rich and successful in their fields.

Are elite schools born out of necessity?

The question begets us to examine the relationship between elite schools and the needs of society. In this context it would be interesting to first set the statistics that elite schools give birth more naturally to leaders in many fields (as we would expect from other schools). Such notion follows the philosophical threadings of Plato's Republic and the philosopher king. Plato's philospher king is one would be most wise to carry out judiciously the management of the people's interest. Thus elitism in education engenders the 'most enlightened' people who would govern above us all.

Clouded view of the leaders

In mount Olympus, the gods live high above the clouds ruled by Zeus. However, the gods usually peer through their clouds to see the happenings of the mortal world. Thus I would term such as clouded view, with some connotations of prejudice and detachment in feelings of governance. Indeed in the writings of Homer, he would paint the gods as sometimes biased and selfish. Miscarriage of justice do happen, even in the rule of the pedestal gods of Olympus. 

The same goes for elite schools: imparting the notion to children that they will in future become our leaders whom we aspire them to be is quite strange as it sounds. It seems that elite schools mill our younger generations to be into a model that quite strangely befits them. Are we according them with too much expectations and is elitism in schools a model that has to be reviewed?

Leaders and followers

It is true that we still measure the potential of a child based on academic abilities. In the past we have been too rigidly placing much emphasis and been dogmatic in extrapolating academics with potential to become leaders. However, it is not true now from my experience that elite schools mould all students into leaders and expect them to follow a path of glory. I have students who range from most driven to least and so it is quite a spectrum. I would say my students shine in different areas, but are more driven on average. Thus this led me to feel that students from less privileged schools are as smart as students from elite schools but only lack both drive and confidence.

Diluting the name of elitism

All students should be treated equally. Thus it is important to stream students based on their merits and abilities. I am fond of the notion of streaming, but we should always erase the associated connotations of elitism in schools that are highly selective. Every schools should nourish its own leaders and recognize them rather than placing exclusivity on elite schools to do so. We should also dilute the notion of academics as king and it as a measure of one's potential. Every child has their own inclinations and sieving them according to their preferences is still perhaps owing the best to their interests. On part that elite schools have more resources, perhaps it is time best to review this parity. Perhaps sharing that part of extra resource that elite schools have with other less privileged schools would more than humble the elite.

Grandma's legacy

At last count, Grandma has left 7 sons (1 deceased) and 2 daughters, 7 daughter-in-laws and 2 son-in-laws, 30 grandchild (including 9 grandchild-in-laws) and 14 great grandchild. At 87, she has lived to a life of full and been to many places. She died peacefully after being bed-ridden and not ambulant for some months now. I am glad she is no longer suffering from pain.

Her last ever sober conversation was in Jan when I came back to Singapore and before CNY. She asked when I will be coming back for good. I said I'm not going back to saudi but leaving again soon for another place. She told me if she would ever live to see me back again after my second time leaving, this time for me to do my PhD. She always loved the dates I bought back from Saudi and asked for them but this time she never did.

When I came back a few months later in Feb, she was hospitalized again. Clearly she has changed drastically and not remembering our names. I felt she was struggling to recall. She didn't even know she was in hospital. She had her longest stay in hospital before returning home. After leaving hospital, she still struggled daily with eating and was bed-ridden. Never once leaving her special bed. She stayed in my uncle's house and a maid took care of her daily activities.

News of her passing came rather abrupt last Monday. But it was strange that my parents and I were about to visit her last Sunday but I couldn't because of my upset stomach. So we postponed the trip. The news came from my brother on Monday after my lessons. 

What Lessons Grandma Taught Me

Grandma was quite detached from my family and so my brother and I weren't very much doted (of course my mum had her mis-givings as Grandma never help our much during our financial mire when I was small). She always used to tell me that when she was in a China trip she dreamt of carrying me as a baby from our long deceased Grandpa (whom I never met before) back to Singapore.

She recalled that Grandpa said in her dreams, "Here carry the baby back with you".

Soon after she returned, my mum is pregnant with me. Coincidence perhaps, but she had always then drew funny comparisons of me with the Chinese in ways I behaved when small. The coup de grace came as soon she knew I took to playing er hu as my CCA in school. This however did not precipitate my aversion of Chinese culture. I became rather much more interested on the contrary. Perhaps subconsciously in her smiles as she called me "the baby I carried from China", I felt some warmness and bonding in her words.  

Grandma cooked terribly well. I always loook forward to eating her vegetarian meal at the first day of New Year. She would also cook very nice peranakan vegetarian dishes like Buah Keluak and Achar as she is a nonya. She would spend the night before the meal with the maids to fry and cook the mock meat and vegetables. It is a pity that her skills are only half transferred to my dad. When I was in Saudi I missed home cooking terribly. The first proper dish I whipped up was vegetarian Chup Chye (Black Soy Sauce Vegetable) and it is always well received by my friends there and is super easy to make:

Essential ingredients:
Chinese Cabbage (cut into half)
Tomatoes (4-6 depends on size of cabbage)
Carrots (1 - 2 depends again on size of cabbage)
Mushrooms (Shitake dried ones or fresh)
Soya sauce – use dark soy sauce (dark soy sauce is more fragrant and less salty)
Sugar
Garlic (I like it with liberal amounts)
Jew’s Ear
Tofu skin
Vermicilin

Directions:
1. Chop up garlic
2. Cut cabbage into shreds (smaller shreds = easier to cook)
3. Cut carrots into semi-circles (would be good to first let it cook in boiling water till hard-soft texture, otherwise when cooking in the pot with other vegetables it will take a long time for it to be done)
4. Soak dried mushroom in water for 10 mins before it softens and cut it into slices. No need to soak for fresh ones
5. Jew’s Ear have to be boiled over to clean and soften. Then cut it into small shreds
6. Fry garlic until aromatic
7. Throw in the cabbage shreds and fry until the cabbage softens
8. Add soy sauce/sugar to taste (try a adding a small amount first 2 tsp soy sauce before adding more. Sugar is the same)
9. Add in carrots, tofu skin then tomato.
10. If you did steps 6-9 in a wok, you can now transfer the vegetable into a pot.
11. Cook and simmer under low heat until all the vegetable becomes soft. Add more soy sauce/sugar to taste.
12. Rice vermicilin is added in the last step when the vegetables are simmering in the pot
13. This is a very easy dish to create and does whet's one appetite because it is both tangy and sweet

Next I hope to recreate her vegetarian braised taufu which is more difficult as it requires frying the taufu and caramelizing it.

Reminiscing the matriach

It is a natural rite of passage that one lives to die. The legacy Grandma left were not merely culinary, but as she was alive, she was the fabric that threaded the family together. As the family grows and new family members marry and join in, the familiarity and bonding would soon be diluted. Perhaps there will no longer be the convivial home gathering bustling with the brood of Grandma celebrating her birthday or New Year. Perhaps there would be less celebratory meetings and gathering. Just as the family is joined by a common surname would it soon be disjointed?

In her final days Grandma would have uttered that her sons, daughters and grand children were filial and had her in their hearts. Whenever we saw her she would utter inaudibly and said again and again not to visit her if we were busy. It came as sadly as she was reliving her penultimate days alone. Yes she was happier as she left on to the next world and peacefully as she grasped her last mouthful of breath. In her mind she would very want her descendants to come together once more and celebrate all births and marriages. Not only that but also to forge deeper ties.

It has been 2 months or so at RGS.

After their recent assessment, I would say from my preliminary analysis that 3/5 of my class did make it: not very good statistics considering some 60 students got marginal to fail marks. Two classes did pretty well (but there are always some outliers in the class) and it is not hard to imagine these are the students who mugged despite all their complaints about having too much CCA and commitments. I thought the paper had been very easy or manageable at least.

These are all nice kids, but I would not be interested in dealing with 'concerned' parents whose kid failed in the test. At least RTs are absolved of the responsiblity to communicate with parents I think.

But do I think those who failed deserve to fail?

Well for starters I failed my first science test in secondary school. I also failed English in my EYA in secondary three and got the lowest overall mark in my class. I was of course devastated as I really like science and I never failed English before. But these setback did not affect what I was to achieve so far. At least I got a masters in chem and have 9 published papers; I think I write reasonably well in English and speak well. So I guess to certain extent my failures spurred me to do much better than before. Otherwise without those failures I would not have identified my weaknesses and worked much harder to overcome those obstacles.

I do not know what to say to those who failed. Perhaps I could have done much more from the start and identified those who were weaker and given them more tuition, if only I had the knowledge. I guess I assumed too much that all students fit good into a mould. Times are very different as teachers are expected (from parents) to do more (than once upon in my time) and different classes have different dynamics. This is due to the society increasingly 'paper-chasing'.

Indeed it is hard to teach kids whose abilities vary very widely even they are from a good school: I can have very good scorers to the lowest scorers in a class. It kinda fits my expectations of a gaussian curve or Poisson distribution. So this proves that those who failed weren't listening or my pedagogy did not really work for them...

Learning from failure is a very important lesson in life. I hope it is the first calling or initiation to the world they ever optimistically beckoned for.

Made a few educational videos and uploaded on U-tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcL0BG1Lk_8&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qs3dBNtRqM&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVVT1D8VydE

All from lecture slides in my lessons... More to come. Enjoy!

Words describe our macroscopic world; mathematics for quantum mechanics.

Being in an elite IP school (RGS) is quite an experience. Of course I have to overcome my innate soft voice and be more expressively enthused about the things I teach, but the travails of being a teach (now) is so well known. Kids now express better and tend to ask questions that either really drill into the core of earth or out of the orbits. For one it means that they either did not read the books or notes they're given or they are very anxious and wish to know more deeply about a particular topic. But I reckon that asking questions require thoughtful analysis first and well reading. So from the questions the kids ask, I gather somewhat the level of provisions or revisions they've made for the lesson and also whether I have brought to them the concept in a convincing and articulate manner.

Other than that I guess my experience rating so far is boring... but teaching has taught me new insights to dealing with people. Like different classes have different attitudes and 'cultures', it is still always not feasible to apply the same practice or teaching methods to every class and every individuals. Like some classes call me Mr Lee and some Mr Richmond. But none called me Mr Rich. How I wished...

I am still adjusting my biological clock. Cannot sleep. Woke up at 2am after turning into bed at 11pm. I have been a zombie ever since...

Happy 2012. I will soon step onto a whole new journey, teaching at RGS. Yes, it is quite far from where I stay...

2011 has been quite a year, with tsunamis, revolutions (Arabian region), earthquakes (NZ), and my departure from kaust. Hope 2012 (as of today) will be shimmering. Alhamdulillah! Many thanks to God; Praise Buddha, Amitabha!

I've kind of severed ties with kaust but I'm on a LOA (leave of absence) for until August. Strange as it may be, I will probably not be back to Saudi (for good).

On the day of my flight back to Singapore, boss brought us (the whole lab) together for a session of donuts. Weiguo (a good friend and postdoc) is leaving the lab and country too. I was asked to make a speech about my time in kaust, and so I made an impromptu one.

"Kaust has always been a platform for better things to come", summed my feelings. 

It is in many aspects. Yet if one were to factor in the contradictions and rhetorics the society play on minds and feelings, one would respect that however best kaust may be, the greatest hurdle is still whether their society has moved forward. I remember the day as I took my first flight to Saudi Arabia, I was hesistant. My aunt and father cried for I think they feared it was a lawless country. I think I was then foolish, courageous and adventurous, and the land of sand did beckon.

It was an amazing and checkered two years. You can imagine leaving a compound type kampong, where feasts and merry with friends will end. But then all the camels and sharwmas* might be happy and Davin and XZ might be quite right to add about me, " Where is my sharwma! I've been waiting for 15 minutes!!!"

With no pomp, it ends like this.

Saudi Journey
28 August 2009 - 28 December 2011
Best friend and a lonely companion.


*Sharwma is a kind of arabic sandwich. It is basically arabic bread with wraps of kebab fillings, fries, pickles and mayo sauce.

There are oft routines, when one's back home away for quite a time, to follow. The first is acclimatization to the wretched season of rain/monsoon. Next is battling throat infection and a weakened immune from 13 hours of flight and facing passengers (of the same flight) with lung issues. And after that is jetlag...  All this suffering and pain for the next 2 weeks.

This, I hope will be my penultimate return before going to UK if the scholarship goes through. I came back with a lot of fresh perspectives and with many baggage of feelings. Departing from KAUST was a decision wrought 8 months ago. I could have wasted quite a year, but the work (in research) done all this year was afterall went barely unwasted. PhD was never quite a goal in my life, and never will. Being more educated doesn't really make one smarter. Smart people make better choices and doing a PhD is like (blindly) following the academia fog if you're unsure what that leads you to. Many people think of academia when pursuing PhD, but the statistics doesn't lie - there aren't many PhD jobs.

However, I think my selfish ambitions are aligned to the naive thoughts of finding the truths of universe, just like how Lamistry were to be called to be. Doing research might fill the 'purpose' void in my spirit. Someone said I was confused and want to stay back in SG and settle down. That person's right. I really want to settle down, get a steady job, get on with life and die with little regrets. But the younger me wants to roam the world too, for I have too my polished foolish dream about finding a better oasis in life. We never realized we're camels roaming the desert and traveling with Bedouins until perhaps that day we cease to be ridden upon. Never miss being home, especially with the faithful routines of being sick.

It is hard to know the truth, when it is there in front of us. We are just oblivious to ourselves and our surroundings that the most obvious fact is just staring in our face. The blade of grass or the air we grasp is held by the commonest principle of this universe and that is its uncertainty; the principle that prescribes the conditions of the behaviour of particles and waves and befuddles if we try to correctly define one or the other. 

So We'll Go no More a Roving* - Lord Byron

So, we'll go no more a roving
      So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
      And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
      And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
      And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
      And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
      By the light of the moon.

* Point taken

Paid harshly and working like a Donkey is the most delightful and colorful annecdote that I can think of that weaves the common theme of a grad students' life. However so poorly treated, grad students are no worse than their peers in the realm of job market. I would think one who has lost contact with Earth would most certainly act unearthly; and most grad students fit into the bill of being unpresentable, crazy and detached, thus defining the common stereotypes. But who can blame me to say such things?

Grad School is Not Prestigious
Getting into the Ivy leagues of Ivy league is not impossible, that is if you pay for your own tuition fees (which are astronomical) and do not rely on a scholarship/fellowship (if you eat into your savings). Most schools will accept you if your GRE and undergrad scores aren't too bad.
Anyway, grad students are mostly probably geeks or social rejects.

Why We Work 25 hours a Day and Six Days a Week
The conscientious workers: Science equates failure. You fail X amounts of times before succeeding. If you do a survey a population of grad students on their no. of attempts on an experiment before succeeding, you'll get a gaussian curve. The outliers are ones who're probably too lucky or unlucky depending on the abscissa. We'll probably have many tries more before it works, so even in dreams we'll probably be still thinking of how to get the bloody reaction going.
The others: On an average in lab, we spend 6 hours gossiping, procrastinating, eating lunch/dinner, writing blogs, staring at computer screen savers, talking to oneself (me), facebooking, twittering, youtubing and reading online juicy juicy news. The other 6 hours is time needed to find and assemble your experimental protocols and apparatus and you'll be left with none to work on the experiments.
No choice: Group meetings are usually strategically made on Saturday evenings. So bosses expect students to turn up in the morning/afternoons.

It takes 10 Years to Graduate
Given the economic climate and Europe and US, advisors and PIs now are forced to let their students graduate earlier. So it has been cut to 4 years I'll probably imagine.

It is Hard to Finish a PhD Work
Not really, as long as your advisor wants you to graduate. I know of some with no publications and still graduated with a PhD and some with 10 over publications and did not graduate.

PhD is Hardwork
Yes of couse, but not so crazy as you might imagine. You can produce a crappy thesis as long as your advisor allows. But still it requires rigorous original scientific content and ideas. The minimum requirement for a complete PhD work is that one is capable of proposing original scientific ideas and work to implement them (proving or deproving). In other words, one has to be a great story teller.
PhD experience is pretty subjective, for someone who has 6 years of doing PhD would certainly be more well prepared than one who's only 3 years. Again, the crux is that as long as the advisor feels that the student is ready to graduate.

Bright Future for PhD Holders
Not true at all. Your advisors, friends and fellow PhD colleagues will either make or break your career path. Without any good recommendations, one can never dream of Ferraris, bungalows and dating hot undergrads. At the end of the day, it still boils down to social connections. Scientific collaborations will also greatly benefit a young researcher so treat your colleagues nicely! 

Is Doing PhD an Enjoyment?
I have not met someone so mad to enjoy working on his/her PhD.

So What Good is a PhD?
It is only as good if it fulfills some void in your life... PhD is good to have, but without it, life still goes on.

Words of Encouragement for a PhD Wanabe
Think carefully.

~Rich

"We have met the bitter discord in others, but not the contradictions in ourselves."

I think my life has come full circle somehow. Before that, I guess I owe all folks an explanation for the very long hiatus for I was rather busy - spiritually and mentally preparing for papers and my excursion to the next phase of my life (PS: I am so glad that finally a paper that caused me undesirable nights is finally published in JOC, which previously got me 3rd prize in WEP poster session :P). My frustrations in Kaoz cannot be more so enlightening so hence my decision 6 months ago to finally move out and seek better pastures. Then months ago I began my exhaustive search for sponsors for my phD education (anyway I already got my MSc when they intially said I can't graduate with a degree!) in UK and Canada. Some turned out with positive replies given my extensive fabrication (publication) records and prowess in story-telling (I consider writing papers as telling a make-believe story especially when you're doing theoretical chemistry; sometimes you'll not even believe if your own data is true so that's why they say theorists are philosophers). Initially I asked a prof from Bristol if he wanted to accept a poor student and he was very forthcoming and modest (a nice guy I feel). But he also reasurringly cautioned that funding is a problem for overseas student like me (as I have already anticipated). Later, I emailed two Oxford PIs working separately on DFT in organic and inorganic and they were enthused but had again no funding for overseas students like me :(. Due to the economic climate in UK, it is highly concievable that funding for students is limited and if so I would have to fight for the university-wide free scholarships which are very competitive. To tip on the competitiveness, funding for UK synthetic organic chemistry has decreased, so god knows the scholarships for international applicants. One of the PIs did broached an A*Star scholarship which I am hesitant because I do not wish to be indebted to the .gov.sg.
 
Recently boss got me into his office and announced that if I might be interested in doing a bioengineering project with his senior from NTU at UCLA on microfluidics (I think he's still keen to keeping me) but the catch is that I will spend most time at UCLA and probably few months back in Kaoz (3 months would still be bearable I think....). He wanted me to work in UCLA and complete my DFT part of my thesis such that I will get my phD in chemistry from Kaoz and shuttle back and forth for the next 4 years to complete my phD in bioengineering and getting the degree from UCLA. Two phD degrees sound pretty crazy and boss is the one who is the spring of ideas that are both illogical and logical. But the offer is pretty unchallenged in terms of creativity. In term of jumping wagon, it is very cool and I like what they are doing. My brush with cells did not die from the day I was enrolled in chemistry. I was pretty keen in doing life sciences from the very start but was constrained by the promise with a life sciences degree. But chemistry did open a lot of windows for me. At least till now I know the role of alcohol dehydrogenases and the molecule responsible for hangovers. I was rather passionate about Alzheimers because I am rather quizzed at why an alien protein (prions) can cause the misfolding of proteins in the brain, causing aggregation and loss in cognitive functions. That's why probably at this stage my life's come full circle. Back to biology, back to my nascent interest (Alzheimers) that I can probably apply to some stage in my life if I choose UCLA. At this stage, I'm pretty unclear of what future presents.

To Bristol, Oxford or UCLA?

 

If one were to recount of one's experience overseas, to a true blue Singaporean, perhaps there would be no place better than home. A sentiment uttered in a majority of the 50,000 plus contigent of citizens living abroad, it is strange that the very reason that propelled them to venture out is the very reason that makes one miss home. I do envy my friends and family who are back home enjoying the comforts in their own. The food, sights and weather (to a certain extent) makes me do feel wanting (and welcomed) to come back at once.

Today I was at the laser flash photolysis training by an old Brit, in his 60s and retiring. He recounted how horrible was the recent choatic riots in London and spread to affect other major cities in UK. There were burning, bulgary and damage to properties. Possible things that could go horribly wrong went awry anyway. Apparently a policemen shot dead a Carribean descent whom first shot the policemen. Soon, there was via facebook and tweets riots organized and people immobilized in an immeasurable and large scale. It drew similarities to the the Egyptian revolution and shared the same theme of social injustice and eventually went uncontrollable. Imagine your own backyard burning in flames, and the factory that you once worked smoldering... These are uneasy situations and happened in a democratic advanced western nation.

Come late August, it would have been my 2nd year in KSA. Time flies, and whenever I do look back at the past 2 years, it had been partly enjoyable and not. Also being alone in a foreign country takes toil in one's spirits and elements especially if you fall ill. But health has been on my side luckily. Through the passage of time however one does feel increasingly more alienated from home considering my stay back home aren't many: having to go back for a month altogther. But I've seen how small and vunerable is outside the protective bubble of Singapore and many things that we've taken for granted. It is very sad too to see the youths being awash with worries that make them neither strong or tougher.

It has been 2 years outside. But I'm not ready to come back even though I miss home very much.

Creativity is only apparent after one's been filled with content.

-Rich

A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live. 

Louis D. Brandeis