My Space. My Life. My Story.

Whenever I see the chinese restaurants around in Australia, I've always noticed some of them always used the same wierd fonts which is very typical of telling you whether it's chinese food or not. I do not have the darndest clue of why it has remained this way and it's the same thing with chinese fortune cookies which you only see on american shows. Who invented it? Hmm....a thought to ponder...

 

Anyway, only in ALBANY (400km from Perth) will you notice something which you will never ever see in Perth city.

We went to this Chinese restaurant down in Albany city (partly because my family and I had not eaten rice for the past four days and on top on that, we were just sick of fish and chips sprinkled with lots of salt, deep fried shitty chicken and cRAPbonated soft drinks).

Once I stepped into the restaurant, I was waiting to be greeted in cantonese by chinese waiters....nope i was wrong.

All of them were ang mohs or aussies greeting us. Surprised would be an understatement.

At least the chefs we saw in the kitchen were chinese or at least they looked like chinese to me to justify it's Chinese restaurant storename.

 

Bowls and chopsticks should be a normal layout for any Chinese restaurant settings.

Only in Albany will you be eating chinese food with a plate and a set of fork and spoon.

After further probing with the waiter did the chopsticks come.

Hmm...why didn't he give us a bowl too? I was imagining us sweeping the rice into our mouths with the plates.

We had a good laugh and nope, I didn't use the chopsticks at all.

 

Food Rating: 2/4 (Nope...it sucks)

Slut Rating: 4/4 (Driver, navigator, organizer, tourist leader all rolled into one.....I should behave like a he-bitch!)

“Bam Bam Bam! Hello? Anybody home?”

“Bam Bam Bam! Hello? Anybody home?”

“Bam Bam Bam! Hello? Anybody home?”

3 repeats of my Sony Ericcson phone alarm was enough to get me out of bed…

Its 7am…the day is the 2^nd of November 2006…

JUDGEMENT DAY for my honours presentation…I’ve clocked only 3 hours of sleep, definitely not a lot to start with.

My head is full of “what ifs”:

“What if the examiner asks me why is the expression of the humanized Renilla luciferase is higher than the native Rluc at different concentrations?”

“What if they ask me why the Monster Green Fluorescent Protein is not as bright as the Venus fluorophore?”

TOO MANY WHAT IFS, TOO LITTLE TIME.

I actually didn’t do too well for my initial presentation (at least for the Q & A session) and am determined this would not happen again.

“Once bitten, twice shy” as the saying goes.

This pea-brain of mine can only absorb that so much of information.

I was the 2^nd speaker scheduled at 10am to present…right after Werner at 930am…Werner had some really tough questions to start with…and if you think people holding PhDs and are examiners are gonna give u a hard time for the 10 min Q and A sessions, YOU ARE DAMN RIGHT.

They probably don’t know what the hell you are talking about during the presentation and asks you questions based on what they know and they themselves have done…so in a way they are asking irrelevant questions directed at you. You get stumped by some of these questions and the last thing you wanna do is to say the FORBIDDEN WORDS: “I DON’T KNOW LEH…”

So you try to smoke your way through by stringing up intelligent sentences which has been used for a long time:  “Hmm…that’s a good question (U must say this to make the examiners feel shiok/great/intelligent)…Unfortunately, my work was concentrated more on agonists than antagonists ligands, and also I am unable to tell you what may happen if the Beta-arrestins do activate other signaling pathways which may affect the binding affinity…”

SUCCESS…

Sometimes u get questions u know at the snap of your fingers, but due to your nervousness you are unable to answer it…shit happens…oh well…

I don’t think I did too badly…but definitely can be improved…

Anyway…my lab members and other colleagues all came down to support me and Werner which really felt good.  They felt that we have done well and that’s the most reassuring and heart warming part.

Another stage complete, another one to come

4 HOUR WRITTEN EXAM on 8^TH NOVEMEBER…

Bring it on…

 

2pm:

Woke up, "Today's the last day you can check through your thesis, make full use of the time to read through it" My good inner self-conscience was telling me that...

"No need lah, you've came so far already! What can you do in 24 hours? Time to relax and play some Counterstrike!" My other evil half was telling me that...

 

Evil won this time round...goddamnit! One hour of game to wind down wouldn't hurt, I guess?

 

Had lunch and then back to checking my thesis...

 

Venue: Flat 53 Student Village

Free dinner by some friends...a SLUT like me will never miss this oppurtunity...

Hainanese chicken rice...hmm...not much...but enough for me

 

Prepared to camp in the laboratory till sunrise...thesis is due at 9am the next day...

I came into the lab...I sat down...and I played Counterstrike again for an hour...(Whoever gave me the game on friday should be shot with my AK-47!)...must fight evil!

 

 

Joanne and Sham are my fellow honours students in the department of Pharmacology...

Joanne needed to bind her thesis and came over to my lab to do it...took us 45 mins to bind 4 copies...

Sham is a buddy of mine from Singapore whom I met here. Each night leading up to the thesis will be spent talking to each other on MSN till 5-6am bitching about how freaking tough this thesis is and getting no real work done...it wasn't very productive but then we were enjoying it aren't we, Sham?

This funny bugger is saying that his discussion section is not good enough to hand up and kept worrying...I know the feeling bro!

 

We took a drag and then started some real work...

 

Sham finished printing everything...I finished checking through everything and now's my turn to print...

 

Last minute checking again...Still there's some typo errors and grammatical mistakes here and there...not that it matters to my marks but whatever I can change, I will do it.

 

 

Went to Fast Eddy's for breakfast with Joanne and Sham.

Sham being the nice guy that he is...sent Joanne back and we got to play with her dog, Bluey.

This dog is like 11 years old (that's 77 years old in dog years) but kept prancing and jumping around like a 1 year old.

Point your finger at him and shout "bang" and he will fall to the ground and play dead! Cute...

 

By this time, it was nearly 24 hours since I've slept and the only thing keeping me running was adrenaline.

Bang...hit the beds and slept like a baby...No more thesis.....hmmm.......shiok ah!

 

 

         

 

 

 

"There are a lot of people I would like to thank throughout my Honours year. First and foremost, I would like to thank A/Professor Karin Eidne for giving me the opportunity to undertake this interesting Honours project and also A/Professor Peter Henry for agreeing to be my co-supervisor. I would also like to extend my sincere gratitude to Dr. Kevin Pfleger, who provided me with encouragement, sound advice and lots of good ideas. He also took the time and great effort to explain things clearly to me whenever I’m in doubt.

I’m also deeply indebted to Dr. Martina Kocan, whom I’ve really enjoyed working with throughout this year. Without her around to provide me with encouragement and support during my darkest hours, I don’t think I would’ve been able to complete this thesis on time. Thank you for all the countless hours you’ve spent throughout this year to design my experiments, discussion and also going through my thesis in great detail.

I would like to say a big thank-you to all the people in the 7TM laboratory at WAIMR who have been helping me throughout this project. Special thanks to Ethan for teaching me the basics of maintaining and transfecting cell cultures and also for all the discussions we’ve had. Thanks to Ruth for her help and also the entertaining pranks that she pulled on Karin, which was a stress-reliever. The pHD students in our lab, Matt and Jasmin who spent lots of time and effort looking through my thesis and correcting it, and also all the helpful discussions we’ve had throughout the year.

At the Biological Imaging and Analysis Faculty (BIAF), I would like to thank the always cheerful Dr. Paul Rigby for his training and assistance with the CCD camera equipment which he helped to acquire. The imaging work presented in this thesis would not be successful without his help.

To all my friends, I thought I’ve almost lost of all you throughout this year due my project commitments but you all have proven me wrong. Thank you for all the laughter, entertainment that you’ve provided. Special thanks to Zhenyuan, Derrick, Gio and Alwin for pulling me out of the darkness and placing me back on track. It’s time like this that you know whom you can really rely on during difficult times. To the gang at Kingsmill and Pinewood drive, thank you for cooking for me and the endless laughter whenever we go to Utopia to sing!   

Finally, the biggest gratitude goes out to my family, especially my mum and brother. My mum has continually believed in me and provided for me financially and emotionally. Without her support, I could not have this opportunity to come to Australia to further my studies. My brother Adrian deserves a big thank you too as he has been financially supporting the family while I’m away.

I believe that this thesis is by far my most significant piece of scientific work ever produced in my life. I also believe that Honours year is also the time where you learn lessons in life which cannot be taught in books, which is learning to work effectively with your colleagues as a team. I really hope I’ve done that throughout this year and will carry that lesson with me at all times."

 

If there's any word to describe the state of room, it's the word "Shit-hole".

 

Journal papers strewn on the floor, laundry not done for 2 weeks or ironed, floor not vacuumed for months.

It's a good thing I've brought enough underwear to last me till I hand in my thesis and avoid flipping them inside out and wearing them again. (URGHH...)

On top of that, my room smells like Indo-Mee Goreng, coffee, green tea and sandwiches which is like a goddamn cafeteria in full operation.

I can barely spare time to do grocery shopping and down on my provisions of instant noodles.

Not that it matters anyway since I can't spare time to cook too, which I enjoyed doing.

 

Sleep doesn't come till 6am in the morning everyday as I spent the whole night peering through countless journals and articles looking for that inspirational idea or solution so that I can place them in my thesis.

 

Wake up at 1pm, have a quick lunch, shower and off to the laboratory to get feedback from my supervisors of my thesis draft that was shown to them the day before. After editing, it's down to discussing what to write for my discussion section. Dinner comes at 10pm and after that it's again writing thesis again.

 

The cycle has repeated itself almost everyday for the past 4 weeks.

It's like being forced to watch a horrible movie over and over again, you could stand it for the first few reruns, after that you will want to just a spoon and dig your eyes out.

 

Sleepy...it's 6.10am...time to sleep...the rerun's gonna start again from the moment I wake up...pass the spoon please...