Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Cool off, please...

As I said in the earlier post, an academician shall be an inspirational individual. Well, probably I shall back out of that.

I lost my ‘coolness’ this morning. And it leaves a vile taste in my mouth and heart.

It was just a straightforward PCR experiment but having a grown-up student with no background in any way in molecular biology techniques, all that I can say was “muzukashi”. Whatever that I can do at the moment was to control myself and then, asked her out of the lab for few days. She was probably under stressed as well having to do things that had never been done. This break also means that both of us can have our own calm-down moment.

Being harsh on her was not the intention. I was a foreigner once in Japan, a foreign student and it is one of the reason I am being very patient with her. With the social class as someone with high position among her own community, not being able to conduct the experiment for her probably is considered as a letdown.

But then again, I can’t be selfish on her behalf just because she is new in this country. I do have other student to look for. The reagents can be depleted in a second, but to get the funding can take as long as years.

But no, I am not giving up as yet on her. I just want her to stop trying too much. PCR sometimes work in a wondrous way. It might work one day and fail in another. Let her cool off and for me, I want to do the troubleshooting by myself now. If it is a technique, then let we finalized the deal before she jump into the river knowingly that she cannot survive the watercourse.

God, please help both of us!

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Much Ado About Colors

Malaysia has always been allied with colors. We have colorful ethics, with colorful cultures, with colorful music, dances, languages and etc. The list can go last as long as from the international border of Perlis to the end of sea border of Sabah.

This last two weeks, again the colors became the talk of nation.

Yesterday, I took an express bus from Alor Setar to Kota Bharu. While going down from the bus for a lunch break, the driver said something, “Nasib baik tak ada yang pakai baju kuning. La ni bahaya kalau pakai baju kuning.” Luckily no one wears yellow shirt. It is dangerous nowadays to wear yellow shirt. That statement was followed with laughter.

Ignorant I was I can’t even grasp the meaning of it till I saw three short stops of the men in blue throughout the journey.

Late afternoon, a FB friend mentioned something regarding her broadband lines where the blue and green were being too slow, and thinking if she shall changed for yellow band.

Me? I don’t know. I am thinking about getting a master student, start the research soon, purchasing reagents and what shall my next question to cikli be?

Much ado about colors, no, I have no other preferences at the moment. Purple is yet the unsurpassed. Even though my primary teacher once alleged there was no purple color of the sky, I was able to witness it many times.