Some like it hot!

On the account of this entry being posted on the 53rd anniversary of the Merdeka Day, Salam Merdeka, Malaysiaku!

In my humblest opinion, this year joyous celebration (albeit moderate one) is appropriate. It gives you a sense of pride without the excessive, over the top parade and all. I think I like it better this way, similar to my taste of my daily dosage of green tea drinks.

Now, the art of tea making is the seeping of the tea leaves. You just need the right amount of time dedicated for your brewed tea drinks. Of the most important ones is of course the quality of your tea leaves. Japanese green tea in particular can be very different in flavor despite the greenish colored tea. One of the highest quality (and highly valued) tea leaves is called Gyokuro. As I've just learnt, apparently the tea trees are put under the shade before harvesting. Such tender loving care gives the mild, yet bursting flavor of this tea making it quite distinct from the others.

Identically, similar analog can be drawn to what we as Malaysians celebrate today. That to be a highly valued nation, sought after and well respected, we must be shaded from 'privileged races beliefs', 'racial slurs' and 'religious bigots' amongst all other devastating ultimatums. Problems that facing us at our homeland today are borne out of our nation ignorance collectively. You can easily provide a statistical data on the country cleanliness by just sitting at the side of a busy road where humans can simply target spit where you sit. It's that disgusting, and if problem as small as this cannot be rectified immediately we can almost forget about the having our universities topping the TIMES chart.

And while we're at that, perhaps I should ask if our 'space tourist' experimental data obtained from the tax-payers funded flights (to and fro) to the outer space are available for citation by now. I've not come across them in Nature or Science yet, so if any of us have read it kindly direct me the link.

Comment: I'm cynical about what we've achieved actually. I'm acerbic. I like it hot. Oh! I forgot... Our 'astronaut' is so engrossed with his upcoming grand wedding!

Bending time..

I was just strolling down the park the other day when I witness the magic of spring...

Often, the everyday of my life consists of jogging up and down to school, trying to finish whatever I've left in the lab last night, have a light lunch and a nice couple of cups of tea, then continue with piling up works in the lab again before finally calling it a day around 8-9 pm. Well, you might as well say I've a very uneventful life and sometime I've to agree upon that myself.

Now, what inspire me jotting down my thoughts on this blog tonight was this recent occasion in which I looked up on the dull, bald stretch of oak trees on the way to school that filled me with vigors that I've longed for quite sometime. Yes, I saw little green cuticles sprouting off those branches that made me stopped and marveled at the sheer magic of it. How can I be so ignorant all this while?

It brings to one thing that I think especially resonate with my situation so far: that I've never been thankful of each of the failure I've encountered in my research work, that without each one of it I would never know how to get at least one thing right. Is it a wonder that we, frail human beings, seek solace and happiness in only the triumph of victory? How do we bend time to make it last longer?

Comment: Thomas Edison famous quote, ".. at least I know a thousand ways of how not to light a bulb", cannot be anything but the honest truth of one's reflection of the mother of success, failure.

Courage that's chickening out!

Well, in the past week I've been extremely busy with stuff that I think I should be busy with. The life of a student! You wouldn't expect less than that, would you?

So let me tell you 2 stories of my own, that have recently happened to me in real life...

1) Callous morning call : It happened this morning. Woke up in daze. Blinked one two times and jumped out of the bed. Planning to brush my teeth before hitting on the shower. Lo and behold! I can't find my toothbrush anywhere on the, next to, above the face basin! And I thought..where did it go?? I was certain I left it there last night before off to bed. I live alone, and I don't believe in ghosts works on shifting stuff in my domain! I search high and low, concentrating more on the basin area. 5 mins passed, and it's still nowhere to be seen!! I was furious..like..really mad that I actually lost my toothbrush in the duration of my sleep! Well, I quickly accepted that today is going to be a horrible one-off to school without brushing my teeth. Just make sure you shut your mouth all the time, I cursed myself. Oh I can't!! I've some lab tutoring to do in like.. 40 mins!! Screw this.. Got in to the shower tub, took the sponge and was dabbing the soap onto it just in time waaallla.. here's my toothbrush looking at me! Gosh.. whatever happened to the lapsed memories I've from last night to this morning! It's not stupidity--it's memory loss!

2) Nightmares in numbers : Happened a few times actually, especially so when I'm in the middle of analyzing data measurements period. But these recent dreams came when I'm still working out the theoretical portion of my work. I'm meant to write never-ending codes, debug them and make sure they, above all, work for previous published data. That's what I've been bogged down into these past 2-3 months. Ok, so after a tiring, unproductive day at school, the next thing you'd like to do is hit the bed and fall into a deep slumber! Instead, I was horrified that there are nights when I actually see myself in my dreams writing bullet-proof working codes solving problems that I've been wanting to solve since last week or so. Whenever I get these types of dreams, I just have to get up and find a pencil to note down just what I've just seen in my dreams as quickly as possible before I lose them! Yeah, I'm that desperate for a miracle! Surprisingly, some of these codes do work good, sometimes they're just plain useless because I'm just clueless as to what I've scribbled down on the sticky notes.

Comment: I believe smart people don't get their intelligence from their genes or miracles of some sort. Ordinary people who worked hard with what interests them are the prerequisite of endowment of faculty of reasoning gift.