Your life in PhD (Part 1)

If you spent 5 years writhing the book this thick, you're out of luck becoming a earning writer.

Today I want to ink my PhD experience as I’ve already spent 5 years of my life doing lab works and what not, mundane jobs of cloning and sequencing plasmids. Since I still have my fond memory of PhD student life and vivid lab experience, I will share with you in details. 

I will break it down into 2 parts that I managed to achieve during my PhD years. 

(1) Mindset and thinking.

(2) Doing experiments. 

There is no doubt that there are more talented, more productive PhD graduates out there who can easily figure out how to succeed in research life. I'm just laying out my take on how to manage to survive and if luck and your efforts are in your favor, eventually succeed in your PhD years. This is neither to serve as a PhD bible nor an acid test to see if one could stay in academia. It's solely based on my opinions and I hope some of my opinions will be helpful when it comes to dealing with lab environment and politics.

Workout

I just finished doing my late night workout. I used to work out to gain weight, and lately I found my weight gain has stalled and I haven't really had much time to focus on my body. Just an occasional workout keeps me fit and stay ok for me.

I did
3 sets of push-up 14 reps
3 sets of bicep curl 12 reps (10kg)

2048

This is the best I can go so far without undoing the move.

So I started looking for an apps that allows me to undo a move that jeopardize my next move. After playing for about a week occasionally when I am in the mood, I managed to get the highest possible score for 2048, i.e., 131,072 (6 digits).

Attraction (Part 1)

I have developed a theory or reached an interpretation from several readings and observations that we are participating in the process of human evolution. No matter how much I have developed a sympathy, feelings, personality over the years, no matter where I look at, I perceive the traces of past evolutionary events. I recognize the ongoing modification as we live by. I can foresee that I will be absent in future evolutionary process. Mr. XXX as I go by my parents given name, Mr. XXX as an entire entity, as a unique personality accumulated over the years, as one of a kind identity developed over the years, will not be in the future. The least I can expect is I might as well be a tiny bit of element in future evolutionary process if I decide to procreate with another human being, i.e., providing my gene package into a gene pool.

Genuine openness or just a convoluted sense of sweet wordiness?

Lately I found myself struggling with my inner thoughts and my action in life.

People are crazy.

That means I’m also crazy.

If that is real, what am I doing here in this world?

Craziness breeds craziness. 

Here’s a short story I used to listen to when I was young. It’s called “Drink Bitter Rain”.

As usual, it started with “Once upon a time”.

Publish or Perish

Can I just publish my scientific findings on this blog? 

Wouldn't it be awesome? 

Restrained

Sometimes I wonder how much of one's fortitude has to endure in any forms of physical or mental constraint?

I had expected that this day will come. I somehow tricked myself into thinking that everything's gonna be fine. But in fact it is not.

Musings on the Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins

Today I finished reading the Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins.

I bought from iTune stores for iPad because it comes with an app to play around (Only available for iPad, not for iPhone). In addition, the app offers illustrations for each chapter, theory, and findings so that a reader can better conceptualize while they're reading. The book was intended for 12 years old and adults from non scientific background. It's so much clearer and easily understandable. But Dawkins answered that it's so much harder for him to write such a book because he has to maintain scientific facts and integrity while reducing the complexity of the scientific terms.

Youtube and its Evolution

Back in 2007 when I was with my friend, enjoying random chatting,

Friend: “Hey I saw the video clip the other day, it was so funny.”

Me: “Ok, what is it about?”

“It was a song they made it funny.”

“Where did you watch that clip?”

“You know it’s very popular website.”

“um…Friendster?”

“nope. I can’t remember the site. But it’s very well-known.”

“You said it’s very popular, and yet you can’t remember?”

“HAHAHA, yea… what is it? C’mon. It’s at the tip of my tongue.”

“Well, how would I know?”

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

For holidays, I was looking for a book that I can enjoy; not too sensitive, not too fictional, not too provocative. Finally I came upon a sci-fi genre that, I thought, could intrigue and entertain me for a couple of weeks. I picked Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice (1st book of her trilogy). The book won numerous awards: Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and Arthur C. Clarke Award. The recipient books of those awards at least exude excellence and best science works in novels.