Happy Birthday Lyin

For Ling Yin, one of my longest and dearest friends. I've known her since primary school and watched her grow to a smart, independent and beautiful lady~
This picture was taken last year when the whole gang celebrated your birthday in Old Town.
Congratulations on graduation and Have a GREAT birthday !

Done, Bliss and Victoria National Art Gallery

Presentation is over. weee~ in summary,i've never worked so hard for a presentation before. I stopped experiments for the whole week just to work on my slides and practice. The presentation went okay. I was so nervous and my heart was racing so fast, however my colleagues said they could not see that and i was very calm throughout my speech. My boss also asked me what is my secret to staying calm? i told all of them i'm not quite sure what i do or did, but i was nonetheless nervous and terrified. As i was the first speaker, i had a lot of questions from the professors. Some of them asked me questions where i was like huh, what exactly do u mean? I did not tackle the questions well, maybe because i let my guard down after the talk or i was too nervous i could not think right. even boss said so, however he did say my talk was good. I'll take that.

I also realized something this week. The philosophical stuff that i have been going through my head for a while now. Why i am here and was it the right choice to come to this lab? I used to think it was a bad decision but now i'm changing my mind. What i want to achieve in my phd is to be able to problem solve, to be able to think through what went wrong and learn from my mistakes, to be able to design and have a say in the way my experiments goes, basically to graduate from my phd and be a thinker not a technician. And i finally realize now that i am on the right track. Ah, bliss. I am beginning to understand my project in full depth and i also like the fact that we do not know what we will find in the future and the whole project could take many different paths depending on what we find. That is exciting and something to look for in the future. I am also beginning to like grumpy a.k.a boss and his way of teaching me to become a better scientist, not by feeding me answers but rather asking me to think about what i can do to make it better and giving suggestions and respecting me when i don't take them because of my own reasons. I worked on my talk the whole week because everytime i showed him, he still said it could be better but not really telling me how to make it better. He's like that with experiments too, I used to hate at first because i'm new and i really don't know how i should be proceeding but in the long run, it will benefit me, and i will not be just someone who does what the boss asked them to do, but i also know why i am doing it. Really very blissful to know i am finally at the right place and doing the right thing in life and i wouldn't change it anyway or anyhow.

Yesterday, i decided to celebrate and julie from the lab said that we should do some touristy thing together, seeing she's also new in melbourne. She decided we should go to the art gallery. I was a bit skeptical at first but went as well. It was too me boring at first, I'm not a big fan of museums and walking around the big place and reading the labels. Only until we got to the contemporary art that i started perking up and reading the descriptions on the label and all. unfortunately when we got to the contemporary art, the gallery was closing so we just had time to take a quick look around. I also learnt some famous french artists from julie whose names i cannot remember now. After the gallery, we had a drink in san churros and then headed to jaipur curry bar on bourke st to have our dinner. julie is hillarous and i had a great time with her.

One down

I've finished uni and thought i'd never have to worry bout exams and homework, but i forgot something even more nervewrecking for me than exams and homeworks. PRESENTATION. this week, i'm due to present one at my lab meeting, and this friday for the WHOLE institute. holy crap. I finished my lab presentation this morning and they gave some good comments and suggestions to help me improve for Friday's talk. I'm so sorry i've not been replying your comments on the blog and chatbox, been very busy preparing for the talks. can't wait for this friday. can't wait for it to be over. as students in the baker, we are required to give a talk to the whole institute every year, so after this friday, i can relax till 2009.