Simple but lovely

Life could be as simple as "I love u". It don't have to be said and crafted in gold and let all other people know about it. I love to live a life that is simple, yet lovely, and full of unspoken love.

It would be nice if we just know that we are living with a person who care, love and happy to be with us. Sometimes, simple thing that we do in daily life would be a proof that we're in love. Big boom bang of something sometimes just full of nothing.

Reality of broken society

The globalization have made this world small. Japan and Malaysia is just about a second away from each other. I can get to my mother anywhere she is. I can get hold of my friends and ask for help anytime. It is really convenience.

The big BUT comes after that. The Mumbai blast that last yesterday is the results of the damage world. Soul or life means nothing. The young so called Muslim extremists took 100 plus persons life just to make a point. The prejudice will blame the entire group, the Muslims.

Blame the Americans and Jewish, killed 100 plus of them. Will this end the case? No. It will be going on and on. The Americans and Jewish will blame Muslims. At the end, it is just like the story of egg and chicken. The blaming and accusations will never stop. The killing will never stop. A sad story to read to start my day.

What is the connection between the two, globalization and the extremist? The technology! It was very sad for me to read that they were in their early 20's. I saw a picture that one of them was walking with gun holding down from his right shoulder. It reminds me of young kamikaze jet fighters during world war II. The different between them is that this group of young extremists were successfully brainwashed till they think that killing is pardon. If they read the Koran correctly, it is not. They will never win this war by being like this. They are only cracking the stability of life other people have.

In one of they phone called made to the TV station, one of them asked where the world when their mothers and sisters were killed. Did they think killing another innocent people will bring back the death. We just need to stop the death from keep happening. Killing another innocent human is just proving that you're as bad as they are.

Why keep our soul?

Many songs talk about soul. What is soul? Why soul?

Soul according to wikipedia is "the immaterial part of a person. It is usually thought to consist of one's thoughts and personality, and can be synonymous with the spirit, mind or self". As for me it is the real thing of me.

People may see me in any way they project. They can see my face only. They can see my brain only. They can see me as a woman. They can see me as a helpless creature. They can see me as a person who is good or even bad. They can see me by the clothes that I choose to wear, by my walking styles or anything. But, my soul is immaterial. They can't see the real me under the skin. Under their eyes, I could be anyone.

The best thing about having the soul is we can choose who we want to be. Clear the mind. Think with the open heart. Talk to our soul. Ask the God to guide. Keep your soul clean and pretty because they are the real person underneath the skin and bone. Pretty face does not mean pretty soul. Bad face with bad soul is the worst thing people can ask for.

Are we human enough?

In this world, human are considered the best and complete animal. We can speak, think, see and have emotion and able to use all the four abilities to live in this world conveniently. Besides that we still show our animal characteristics in everyday life like kill, rape, jealous, anger and other bad manners. Are we human enough? Ask our self the next time we want to do something bad. It only takes a second to analyse if we are human or beast. Pause and think.

When we care...

I do think a lot, most of the time even while sleeping. That's why I can't get good sleep if I have something in my mind, some 'mind' unfinished business.

Going back to the topics, last night I talked to my mother. We may not agree on a lot of things but it's common because of generation's gap. It's never an issue between us. But one thing that both of us share is that we're the first child in the family.

I can hear some frustration in her voices and sentences when she talked about her family, which is my extended family. She seems so concern that some of her siblings made a pass when comes to one of their sister's family, she passed away about 10 years ago. I can fully understand her.

Asian family is a close knit family. We are supposed to know each other so well. In some families, three generations can still live together. Probably my mother is fearing the worst. Of course nobody wants their family to fell apart. The worst will come when they do not even know who is who amongst the family members.

My mother cares about her family. However, being a woman she can't do much because she was a married woman back then. Fully dependent to my father made her more cripple in the sense of being the first born in the family. But she cares a lot. As do I. Solution: we still do have other options if the world is against us. We can directly go to the world's Creator and be by his side. Then, even the world is smaller compared to us. (^_^)

Japanese and nature

Impromptu decision! Sometimes we need to make life a little fun. Following the old boring ways can make life stagnant. So, last two weeks after sending our guests back home to Malaysia, I asked Su if she wanted to go Arashiyama. After getting some information from the JR train booth, we bought the tickets on the spot and off to Arashiyama.

Arashiyama, a place where we can find good zen temples, was full with people coming for kouyou. Japanese really appreciate nature, I guess. Young and old, women and men spending times visiting scenic places. It is actually a good activity. Walking through the places (which sometimes takes fives hours, again good for heart), have somebodies to accompany with and to talk to and enjoy the beauty of nature. What a life!


Arashiyama is a beautiful mountain especially during autumn. The red, green and yellow leaves made the scenery very lovely. They even have special 'matsuri' (festival) just for the autumn in Arashiyama. Besides that, we can find many shops selling souvenirs if we're looking for one.

Stop and smell the roses

The hectic life could be a disaster for a person. We can keep going and make millions dollar worth of money or have thousands of people working for us. I would just like to say that money can't buy health. Money can't buy happiness. Money can't buy long life.

At one point of our life, we shall at least stop and ponder upon what have we achieved. Surely people will start counting their houses, cars and assets in the banks. But how about our own life. Are we happy? Are we contend with our life? Are we ready if today or tomorrow we are no more in this world?

I remember one particular car industrialist in Malaysia. He was successful in life and business. However, life was rather short for him. At 50 plus he passed away of an incurable disease. In within one year after he was diagnosed, he was called to met his Creator. Taking him as an example, I am sure that we should realized that money can't buy health and long life. It's all in God's hand.

Thus, while we still have sometimes in life, stop and smell the roses. We never know when is the last day of our life in this world. Appreciate the life and people around us.

Last year was the last time I saw my grandmother alive. Few weeks before she passed away, was the last time I talked to her.

A new pattern for brain, a way to improve memory

Last month, I came across an article of how to improve memory. One of the suggestions is to make new simple things in everyday life. If we like to take the same route to the office or lecture hall, probably by elevator (lift), maybe once a while we can take stairway (added value for better heart).

The idea is introduce our brain some new patterns. I think if we keep doing the same thing over a period of time, one day we can even do it 'autopilot'. When it comes to 'autopilot', we're just enhance the same part of neurons on the brain. Probably the excitement of new neurons exist but at a very low percentage (this is purely hypothetical or my own suggestion, no scientifically support) or non at all. Doing new thing will 'force' our brain to recognize new surrounding and excite new neurons. I think, I can live with doing new little things in life. It keeps me from boredom.

I did something new today. Went to Takamatsu town with Mirza by train and did some little exciting things. Yes, like riding bicycle around the town. Nothing much but exciting. I had a wonderful day. (^_^)

I want to fly

I want to fly but the my wings are not ready yet. I thought that I could reach the moon soon but the journey have to be postponed. Every night, I cry out loud inside thinking about the journey.

The sacrifice that I had made in order to get the wings kept me awake every night. It had been 2 years since the last time I really had a good night sleep. The sleepless nights were nothing like other people think. I might doze off easily, but the wings in the making will wake me up in the middle of the night. It's a torture that I believe nobody should go through. I've gave up many things in life for the wings and the journey.

I hate to say this, I want the gold wings but he's making the platinum. My wings maker is a wise man with great knowledge. Knowledge come with age. He is now an old man. Though he is good wings maker but old ages have taken some of his creativity. His time probably has come to an end and my wings are probably the last pair of wing that he can make.

I pray to the Almighty to help me and help the old wings maker.

100th post - forgive and forgiven

I am thinking of writing about conscience of oneself.

Probably, I think now is the best time in my life, though I feel bad about it, but I am having ample time to reflect my life and my journey after this. One of Malaysian motivator always said that the best thing to do before going to sleep is to forgive everyone. He means literally, everyone, yes, everyone that we have grudge against. That's means if we even hate some high up politicians in the foreign country that we had nothing to do about. We shall forgive everyone and especially our self.

In my opinion, the hardest think anyone can do is to forgive thyself. Or at least I felt so about myself. I am not perfectionist in the term of physically arrange things to the T. Like having my nails cut at almost the same pattern or the arrangement of bottles should be facing north. I admit that I may have the tendency but I would hate myself if I am so. But one thing that I can't control is my consciousness.

It is actually hard for me to forgive myself. I can forgive others and even forget them completely in order to save myself from the burning anger inside. At one point, a friend pointed it out "We are not perfect!". The sentence live with me since then. Every time I make mistake, I'll try to mend it and then try to forgive myself.

P/s -"Try to avoid hurting other people as every time you hurt them, it's like we're hitting one nail into the wall of their heart. When we ask for forgiveness, it's like taking out the nail. Remember that the nail maybe out, but a mark is left on the wall. One nail one mark, 100 nails, 100 marks. And we're losing them."

Kouyou in Kuramoto

Last Saturday, Mirza and I were left alone by the rest of the gang. As the rule of thumb in Japan, I will need any of them to help me in translation if I wanted to go for 'special' shopping. She agreed to accompany me for shopping and then we would go for 'kouyou', an activity that Japanese do during 'aki' or autumn where they will go out to see the color of autumn, changes of the color of leaves. I am very proud of Japanese people when comes to appreciate nature. They are very good at it.

We spent our day by having coffee and sandwich at Doutor for lunch, bought some facial skin care for me (I got 5000yen voucher for best poster award during a conference), cycled to Kuramoto, took many pictures (almost 150 pieces using Mirza's Nikon DLSR Camera alone), went back Tokushima Eki, eat udon, went to 100yen shop and bought somethings (just to further decreased my level of stress) and finally went to have some softcream ice cream before we parted home.

And went I arrived at my apartment, I saw Am, husband of Shima was running down the stairs after left Malay food prepared by Shima on my front door. She cooked Sambal Udang Petai (Prawn Chillies with Petai or Parkia Speciosa) and uncooked Ikan Pekasam (Rice Seasoning Fish), a special tradisional Malay preparation of fish. The fish is fermented with fried rice grain and salt. It provide salty and sour taste to the fish. I just love both dishes.

Some pictures of Ikan pekasam and Sambal Udang Petai. Most Malaysian love this dishes. (^_^)

Excite the brain

Actually, today I don't have nothing much to do. Just lingering around the house and catching up with some of my favourites TV shows. I love X-files series up until now. And the current running series is CSI, I love all three of them. I think I like the series because they provide me with excitement, I was able to run my brain while watching them. I hate to say this but 'thinking' and 'solving' puzzle really my favourite pass time activities.

Bowling - the game of mind

After having the 'supposed' birthday dinner, we went for bowling game. Tonight, I managed to strike all the pin down only once but my game (by my standard, pardon me) was improving. As far as I know, bowling is a game that combined both techniques and concentration. Once we throw the ball, we will likely will be able to know if it will hit most of the pin, all pin or non at all.

For the professional player, it was the technique that is important. They seems are able to make the ball go anywhere there wanted to. It even able to make a turn. For the beginner like me, all I need is to concentrate or the ball will just go down the gutter of the alley most of the time. Anyhow, I enjoy throwing the ball very much!

Birthday Dinner

Tonight, a few of us are going to celebrate Mira's and my birthday by having dinner at the Caprichoza Restaurant in town. It is a restaurant that serves Italian dishes, pizzas and spaghetti. We will Dutch split the cost, so there is nothing special about the dinner actually. The best thing behind the fact that we choose the restaurant is that it have a special treat for birthday girl/boy.

Beside the cake, they will took picture of the person and personalized it as a card and give it as a gift. What a great idea to celebrate birthday! (^_^)

Lunch treat - Mongolian dishes

The whole lab members had just finished having Mongolian styles lunch dishes prepared by our new lab member, Jakhlan. She is from Mongol.

 

She prepared special vegetarian "khuusurr" for me. I visited the website http://www.mongolfood.info/en/recipes/khuushuur.html to learn more about "khuusurr". Not bad for my taste.

Great but....still long way to go!

The Quantitative RT-PCR results of mine showed that the theories was true. I am very happy about it. But then again it's still requires a tons of works to properly say so.

Nowadays, the reviewers of any articles that we wish to publish in the journals will ask lots of questions once they got grip of the manuscript. Sometimes, the questions will sent us back to square one where we, the scientists will need to repeat or do the same experiments using state-of-art equipment. In this laboratory, my professor is not someone who love the modern gadgets. He only wish that the students will used the inexpensive and old techniques as long as we can produce data. Thus, one of the associate researcher have to re-submit her manuscript three times because he refused to let her used Real Time machine but instead using the RT-PCR though our lab have the machine. The reason, it will caused money to prepare the same samples and the kits to be used is expensive.

I think he forget that time is invaluable and is more expensive compare to the real money. We can find money but be can't buy the time that have passed by.

Anyhow, at the moment I think my study is in the right path and I pray to God that I will be able to write up the conclusion soon.

Follow the success habits

What I can say about myself had been said enough and explained in details in Scorpio horoscope. Some people will say that I live my life based on it. No, it's not true. Some of the characterization of Scorpio really reflects my habits. I always believe that we're born with certain distinctive qualities but we can always change it for good if we wanted to.

As example, I am supposed to be shy and love to stay quite at the background. It's true but I also had prove to myself that I can be otherwise. I've been the other 'ME' since 16 years old. I am strong headed and craved for successes and love the limelight. The reality in life is that if we wanted something hard enough it will subconsciously manifest the results in our attitude and life will change accordingly. Have a 'dream' and the 'dream' will have you in it.

My birthday

I love to celebrate my own birthday. Be it narcissist, I don't mind to be called so. I just love it. I thank God for creating me. I thank my parents for having me. I thank my families, close or far, my friends, my teachers and anyone who somehow leave a mark on my life. My life journey has a long way to go. I pray that God will give me strenght to endure the goodness and the badness of life. If He give me all the good things, I want me to be able to remember that I shall share it with other people. If He give me bad things (please don't), I want me to remember that the phase will surely pass over one fine day.

My lovely realtime RT-PCR

At the moment I am working with my Real Time RT-PCR machine. It is working overtime as it amplifies everythings that it shouldn't. When I first bought the primers, the peak was only one. I tried 3 times to confirm the conditions. Then, the problems started when I run my samples. There are smears. I had to rerun again and again to get the specific band as I can see smears on the upper lanes.

You might not understand what I am bebling about. But that's a life of a biologist who deals with molecular technology tools. As we can say that there are good days in the laboratories but long bad weeks. Cheers!

Next destination - Sannomiya Station

I am going to Kobe tomorrow evening to meet up with Su. Abg Saru, K Ann's husband together with his boss and her husband are here in Japan for 5 days. Su and I will play host and take them somewhere or help them to get somewhere on Saturday as the next day, they are going to take flight back home.

I ordered some herbs from Malaysia through Abg Saru. Thanks a lot to Ina and K Ann for going around Kota Bharu picking up things for me. I need to satisfy my appetite. Laksa Utara, here I come. Will post the laksa's picture if time permitt, which means that I do not forget to snap the picture before eating it all. (^_^)

Atta!

The word 'atta' in japanese means found. And that can be followed with 'yokatta'! which means good feeling or something good.

It is regarding the protein marker that I have been trying to identifiy since last two month. I got it today and it is perfectly suite the hypothesis with slight alteration. Thus, I am very happy at the moment.

I will not say 'atta' instead I will say 'Jumpa!!!!'.

Inter-cultural marriage

I would not say anything about inter-religious marriage as it is depend on the religion itself. Some allowed but many not.

The interesting part about inter-cultural marriage is I never think about it. I have a very logic kind of mind but somehow clouded with emotions. It means that I look at something or some problems with logic but full of ideal ideas which sometimes will not become true.

As example, in the case of inter-culture marriage, it never ever crossed my mind that besides me, there will be my mother, brothers and all the extended families inside the marriage world. My Japanese homestay mother was the one who pointed it out to me the possible problem that might arises out of marriage between different ethics. She told me that her sister is married to an American Japanese who do not know a word of Japanese language. As his mother-in-law could not speak a word of English, there are gap between both of them. They cannot communicate, thus they can't understand each other as well as they are supposed to. At the end, the love is there but it could not be expressed.

My logic will say "It's the 2 lovers that are married. Why bother with others?". Yes, that's true to a certain extend, but marriage is not only between two people. It is between two families. That's why we have extended families. Take mafia families as the example. They might be the bad guys but they love their own people like they love their own self.

The other side of me will say that after all this years living with my mother's love, I am not willing to take it for granted. The person who I'll be married shall love my mother as much as I will love his. The differences should not be the big issues. Just focus on the similarity and forget the differences, then you will feel much better. I think so! Who knows?! ('_^)

Autumn in my nose!

I can't say that I like autumn though it is the best weather besides spring. The reason is because I am allergy towards cold weather. I've started to have nose bleeding since middle of last month. Thus, every morning there will be spots of red blood in my sticky mucus extraced from sinus. And suddenly I have mucus coming out of mouth with heavy breathing every night and coughing unstopable. What are great ideas to start the autumn! 8-)

Probably the stress accumulated from last 2 years have taken it toll.

to love or not to love?

Great! Do you think by being scientist, I have no heart to love anyone? Think again.

Absolutely, this is not to do with anything like the high school love stories. I am done with that. I always choose not to love anybody more than myself (beside the families) because I am afraid of being hurt. Twice I was hurt. First, it was not me who chose it. Second, I lost my heart completely to this one person. It was me who decided to do that, under the influence of the best drug in the world, 'oxytocin' (if you're a biologist, you will understand what I mean).

Love is overrated by all mean. It is used in every single things that we do. If you watch commercial in the TV, it is there. In the drama. In real life. In tragedy.

Really, my point is we should be proud of being able to love. To feel that we have that emotion and the most important thing, to have the heart, IS the best thing in the world. I would love to fell in love once again. It is actually an addiction. Addicted to love.

I just glad to feel love again...