Rocks on Chests

It's getting to the point where lack of sleep really affects me. Ever since I've moved, it's been a lot easier to not leave work until late. This tend to end up with trying to get in early anyways, just to give off an air of relatively responsibility. This usually ends up with no productive work done before lunch. This stems from not being in before 9 any more. Before 9, there is a reasonable shot at getting one thing done right before lunch. This depends heavily on how much goofing off time that occurs right before. I don't know if it's because of jadedness, or because the short stint I've had at a 9-5. I don't think I've ever pulled off a week of a solid work 9 to 5, but I've made good attempts. Ever since, there's definitely more unproductive time than productive. 

On top of just a regular habit of being lazy, there's also the compounding lack of sleep. The move itself cost some sleep, especially since I was sick for the duration. After the move, the location made the habit of not trying to get out of work at a certain time. Huge lack of sleep around the time I've went on my trip, followed by the incident with the drunk boy. I don't know why I thought leaving work at 2:30am was a good idea. On top of that, running into a boy who looked way too drunk to be able to get home by himself, and instead of trying to gather the money to taxi him back home, I decided to let him stay. This led to one of the biggest clean up I've had to perform, both in terms of actual amount of work, as well as the magnitude of tasks that I've never really had to. The closest cleaning of that extreme is taking care of an underaged student who was in a similar level of drunkenness. 

I guess I've had a relatively good times with not having to deal with my friends being that drunk. If anything, I've had been that drunk more than my friends have (which, to be frank, means once). I mean, I do enjoy the fact that he was a relatively cute boy, with a great body (he does kung fu, and it looks like a little bit of parkour as well). I was very conflicted that night. Whether or not I should actually approach him, whether I should've veered off at my place, whether I should've actually let him stay. Whether I should've enjoyed holding him steady so much. I made sure not to touch him except for when necessary to keep him upright and going in the right directions. But I was still quite conflicted the whole time I had to do it. The guilt did explode a bit when I enjoyed how nice he looked when he took his shirt off. Overall it was still fine, because besides the vomits everywhere, he eventually did just left the couch, and took a piss on the rug. The one I specifically rolled up and put away so that he doesn't puke off the couch onto the rug. I was quite upset, because this was now around 6am, when I was just trying to sleep for a little bit of time now that it looks like he won't asphyxiate on his own vomit. And while he stirred, I woke a little bit, and had a shot of him taking a piss on my rug. I would like to think it's just because I was so sleep deprived that I couldn't actually do anything. To be honest though, even if I had ~6 more hours of sleep, I don't think I would've got the moxie to get up and... well, even now I don't even know exactly what I should've done. Once the stream started going from a drunk guy, is there anything you can do to stop the flow? There's not a whole lot I could've done. Tried to run for the pot that's too heavy for him to hold and puke in, and try to catch the urine stream? If I thought holding him steady was already too abusive, I don't know how out of line it would be to actually see his penis, or even to have to direct it. 

The boy came at a time when I really needed either some help, or some attention. I think the help is probably a much more needed thing. Honestly, I can't believe how screwed up as a person I have been in the last few years. Seriously, mental health, physical health, friendships and other relationships, work, the list goes on. I really needed to start putting some of these pillars back up, so that the pressure is off while I work on some other aspect of my life.

The biggest deadline per se, would be November. I push to do a brilliant review. Unfortunately it's gotten to the point where I can't just do a decent one, or a good one. For me, it really needs to be brilliant to the point that they need to ask me why I'm only doing a  Masters. I don't think it will pan out that way. I think I should be able to do just good enough that they'll pass me, but probably no more than that. I've been working towards this for so long, that I don't really know when I stopped having the motivation. I really wish I can go talk to the 2nd year me, because he seemed to have it going for him. Motivation despite all the failures, a pretty damn good attitude if I do say so myself, and definitely a lot less of pining for boys. I don't even know what kind of boyfriend I could be, much less to what kind of boy. 

There are times where it's figuratively hard to breathe because of the amount of weight on my chest, but the fact that at times, they manifest into physically weights scare me. 

Loss

A couple of times recently I've been feeling sad about things that don't necessarily involve me. I don't know if it's about empathy, or if I'm just trying to piggy back on an emotion.

My heart does go out to Jesse, for Patrick's gone too soon. Although I don't know what to do with this guilt that's attached. For no good reason really.

Female Scientists

Not a full discussion, but a quick line about female scientists, or as I'd like to think of them, scientists.

I'm not digging into disparity between professional women and men, as that has been studied and proven to the point that if you do not believe in them, you are being delusional. It is a scientist's "worth" that concerns me.

Being ignorant and slightly sexist, I don't think I realized there was something different about female scientists until more recently. I have notice that proportion-wise, men far outnumber women in STEM, and as stated before, their pays usually do too. What I did not realize, was how many competent women think of themselves as incompetent. Even in school, I've been told that my friends have felt inadequate in the field. I always felt school to be about learning, and about grading, which although is compared to others, does not necessarily pit one against each other in direct competition. I've had friends tell me that they feel like they are out-competed, even though they are in the upper percentile of students, and they do attribute a lot of it on their sex.

I like to discuss the progress of a friend in grad school with her. Objectively, she can list her achievements and enumerate how she's better than her cohort in papers about to be published, number of working projects, and so forth. Subjectively she still doesn't believe that she is doing well. There is such a big disconnect and I cannot understand the source (in that, typically, I delude myself into thinking I'm much better than the facts, not the other way around).

Even once they become established in their fields, some professors still have to fight to "prove themselves" as scientists. To me, this attitude is off-putting. I'd like to think at that point, research should be done to solve the research problem that you thought up, not to prove one's worth (although, of course, there's the issue of proving yourself as worthy of tenure). As I was interviewing for a potential supervisor, I was a little weary that that professor might also have the same attitude. Luckily, she was all about the Science, and although her approaches might not work, I appreciated it. So much so that if everything works out in the end, she'd be my supervisor in a month's time at McGill.

Post #100, or 78

There are a handful of draft posts (22 of them) that are up, causing the number of posts on this blog to balloon to 99.

I have not been able to write anything recently; part of it was being afraid to write what I was really feeling, while the other part was not having enough feeling to write.

I've recently completed my honours thesis and graduated. The thesis was not at all like how I imagined it, and it brought out both a bad version of me that I hated, as well as a surprisingly amount of apathy. I wasn't motivated to do any of the writing, and I couldn't even procrastinate productively. This past year has definitely been one of the least productive year for me.

Unfortunately, this year was one of the more important years of my life, and my lack of diligence is definitely coming back to bite me right now. It scares me a little - if I had a good year, I would still be trucking along on my path without much care. Right now though, panic is setting in, and I'm still having trouble to do anything about it. Ideally I can figure out what's going to happen with school or work, ideally within the next few weeks. That would at least give me an idea of where I'll be living. That also leads to how I deal with some of the troubles I have at home.

I think part of the scariness is if securing a purpose for next September is so key for the rest of my life, why am I so not willing to work towards it? I've definitely spent a lot more hours in bed without sleeping than ever before (in fact, I also think the amount of sleep I've got was lower than before). I've also gotten my body into some very bad states. Being dehydrated enough to cause sleeplessness and some hallucinations, being sleep deprived enough to be unable to separate those hallucinations from reality, and pretty much shutting my body down due to a champagne hangover. Also, in the unlikely event that I end up getting married, I'll need to remember that I'm only allowed 1 glass of champagne.

This past month I've had "off", mostly to just recover. I'm not quite ready to push myself again, but I think it's about time I start hitting the reset buttons so I'll at least slow down my descent, and in the future start reversing it.

Prague

After going to Prague surrounded by great great people, I left early to go to work. Not only do I not get to have the night that'll probably end up being the best of the bunch, but now I'm slumping into a sad bubble again.

The trip even made me question becoming a scientist...

Apples

Apfel. So that's the German word I decided to learn for today. Tune in in 7 months and I might be able to give you a full sentence.


So what is it about this fruit? 

• A lot of fruit "juices" contain apple juice
• The seeds of apples contain very detectable amounts of arsenic
• The forbidden fruit from genesis tends to be depicted as an apple
• Snow white. 

I feel that between apple juice and grape juice, you have the basis of most fruit dranks out there. Which leads to the occasional problem of detectable amounts of arsenic in your drank. Now that I've started work in inorganic chemistry, carbons usually found bonded to carbon, and not hydrogen, and the top 2 rows basically don't exist for me, life based off of arsenic is not actually too hard to believe. I mean, especially with things like this. It might be weird to be thinking about something that is a toxin being the basis of life, but I feel like we're just missing the big picture. I mean, we take breathing for granted; oxygen is one of the best example of life-sustaining toxins.


Of course, the inspirational toxin behind this post was not arsenic, but cyanide, but that can wait. 


I have recently listened to a podcast (insert plug for radiolab here) regarding Alan Turing. Mathematician, Computer Scientist, War Hero, Gay. A bright mind who has been called the father of computer science, who likely led the British to ending the war by about 2 years earlier than they would have otherwise, who was then convicted of gross indecency (by having implicated himself for having gay sex).


It's hard for me to understand, growing up as I have, just exactly what intolerance really means. Here is a guy who should be heralded as a hero of the nation, who probably had more claim to fame and glory than any gunslinging soldier, but instead was stripped of his manhood (by chemical castration with estrogen). This isn't being bullied and abused; this is having the law saying you can't practice being who you are. That scares me a bit.

The next two year of his life was filled with depression, until he was found dead of cyanide poisoning, with a bitten apple lying nearby, similar to his favourite scene in Snow White where the witch dipped the apple in the poison brew. This scares me a lot.

I would like to think it was a mistake (as laboratory chemicals are notorious for being unlabeled and lying around for no good reason), but I think that is a bit of a far stretch for someone like Mr. Turing (Here I am not ignoring the title granted to him by his PhD, but rather honouring the title granted to him by being a man).  Then there is the possibility of a framed murder. This is also a little unlikely, but it is a much easier to swallow situation than the actual thought of someone who has contributed so much to humanity, and who has the potential to do so much more, deciding that life is no longer worth living. That the rules inflicted on him by society are ones that contradicted with his rules of self. Who is John Galt indeed.


Our world was, and still is, a scary place.

Heritability of Cancer

Last year, one of my professors made the statement that "You cannot inherit cancer". This seems very contradictory to what I grew up with; most cancer patients I've met have a family history of cancer, which is also why I am pretty sure I'll get it one day, between the prevalence on either side of my family and the frequent exposure to carcinogens.

The truth of the statement tends to be easier to grasp once you go down into developmental biology. Cancer at its root is the unregulated growth of cells. This is a stark contrast to development, which is the process of a highly specific differentiation of cells. Starting from a relatively spherical egg, a human being begins to form "front-sides" and "back-sides", ending up with different organs, which contin highly specialized cells types: nerve cells, skin cells, muscle cells, etc. Without regulation, not only will there be too many cells, the functions that is needed for survival of a human would no arise. If an individual can proceed through development without trouble, then there must have been changes that occurred after the germ cells left the two parents.

So why are descendent of people with cancer are more likely get cancer themselves? It is because of the high amount of genetic mutations that need to occur before a cell becomes cancerous. Without a whole slew of these mutations, cells are not cancerous. So someone can pass on a lot of these mutations, but until the individuals obtain more mutations, s/he will not have cancer.

This entry, and I'm suspecting the next, will be describing some of the mutations necessary.

First off, comes telomeres. Telomeres are a bunch of repeating nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, at the end of strands of DNA. At first it seems that they are relatively useless, as they do not code for any functions - TTAGGG, TTAGGG, TTAGGG, so on and so on. They can't be read to make proteins, which provide most of the functions of a cell. It turns out, when DNA is replicated, in one direction, the cell machinery can read all the way through, but in the other, the machinery needs to start and stop all the time. Everytime it starts, it needs some preformed short fragments of nucleic acids, RNAs, from which the additional DNAs can attach to. After replication, the machinery goes along and replace all the RNA fragments with DNA. One downfall of this technology is that it needs DNA pieces of the other side of the fragment in order to replace the RNA. The last bits of RNA will be by themselves, and will not be able to replace to DNA, before they are just chewed up and destroyed. So everytime new cells are formed, their DNA becomes just a bit shorter. At some point, the "useless" DNAs are gone, and every time a cell replicates, it starts losing bits of genetic information that are necessary for the functions of the cell. These changes can be to imoprtant for the survivals of the cell, or in some cases, gives just enough damage that it'll push the cell towards being cancerous. One thing that a potential cancer cell will need to do is somehow stop this limit (See Hayflick limit) on the amount of replications a cell can undergo before it stops being able to survive. To accomplish this, they need to borrow technology from one of the few cell types that are constantly dividing - germ line cells.

With the Hayflick limit, each cell can usually undergo 40~60 divisions before stopping division, but humans definitely had more than 60 generations. It is because germ lines, embryonic stem cells, immune cells, and a few rare others have an enzyme called telomerase that would reverse the effect of the shortening DNA by adding more TTAGGG sequences back into the code. The gene that encodes for this enzyme is in all cells, but it is only active in a few rare ones. Without being able to reactivate this gene, even the most potent mutations, the mutated cells will eventually die off.

Welcome post for David

As you might have noticed, the last entry was posted by our guest David. Lifted directly off his profiles, he describes himself as "... a cancer patient advocate who cares very much about the well-being of people not only diagnosed with cancer but also their families and those who are in remission. We can beat this disease together. Keep up the fight".

He has asked to post about a few things regarding the benefits of support groups and physical exercise, and how they affect both patients and loved ones alike. I am very glad for his initiative, as cancer has always been a big story in my life.

As a result of this, I'll be tackling cancer from a scientific (mostly biochemical) perspective, and hopefully the synergistic nature of this will lead to some interesting readings. I'll planning on posting on Wednesday, with potentially an unrelated updates on the weekends. Until then, take care of yourself and your loved ones, and I hope you'll enjoy what's to come =).

How Much Does Exercise Benefit Cancer Patients?

It has long been proven that more active adults are less likely to develop health problems over time; exercise and physical activity every day can lower the risk of developing immune diseases, heart attacks, and other complications from aging. But can exercise also affect those who have just been diagnosed with cancer or who are in remission from it? Recent research suggests that yes, healthy, active adults are much less at risk for developing certain kinds of cancers than others and that regular exercise for patients undergoing treatment and after treatment ends can have positive effects on the health as well.

While the link between exercise and rare cancers like malignant mesothelioma hasn’t been explored as extensively, the link between exercise and colorectal, breast, and endometrial cancers have been reported on. Specifically in regards to colon cancer, physical activity has been known to positively affect metabolism, insulin regulation, and energy in active adults.

According to one study by The National Cancer Institute, exercise has been found to be beneficial for cancer survivors after treatment. The effects of exercise after treatment and into recovery for these common cancers has been positive, with many patients who are physically active being much less likely to have a recurrence or to die from complications afterwards.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle after diagnosis is important in regards to quality of life. The benefits to the body are numerous, as well as benefits to one’s emotional state and self-perception. Exercise can improve mood, reduce fatigue brought on by treatment, and generally bolster self esteem as recovering patients become stronger again. All of these things can influence how a patient recovers and lives during and after major illnesses.

Patients must be careful not to overdo exercising. But if recovering patients are able, taking small steps just after recovery can set up good habits for continuing the exercise in the future. For instance, walking longer distances every day or taking the stairs instead of the elevator in buildings are small things one can do to add exercise into a daily routine. However, all patients and healthy adults alike should remember to consult a doctor before starting a new exercise regimen.

The link between exercise and the risk of certain cancers has been studied extensively in the last ten years. With guidance, any patient’s quality of life can be improved with regular exercise.

One yellow daffodil at a time

On the commute back from work, the trains are split into the ones going towards the city, and going towards the airport. Generally I like dividing my train ride in two; get on the airport-bound train and get off half way through, so I have two small wait periods instead of one big one. One day as I got off the airport-bound train, a man rushed up the escalator, but was a few seconds too late. He looked dejected as he asked me which train that was.

When I informed him that it was the airport train, there was a hint a relief in his features. It was the equivalent of finding change in your couch as we go through the biggest economic crisis of our lifetime. I wanted to give the man a hug - he had lots of anxiety, his appearance was disheveled, and despite me being a chemist who's robbed of the majority of his olfactory factory, there was a familiar sweet scent about him.

"I'm going to be late, goddamnit I'm going to be late, she's going to kill me," he repeated over and over.

"The train will be here in a few minutes," I offered, "and the duration of the ride to the end won't be that long," but he wasn't having it.

Then the small talk began

"Were you coming from school?"

Work. Pharmaceutical.

"So you hand out drugs at the pharmacy?"

Make. Lab.

"This train's a beaut isn't she"

Olympics. Satisfied.

I had been waiting, but before long, he revealed that his wife was being discharged from the hospital from her first round of chemo, and that she was currently stuck with her mother. I've learned from experience that at this moment, the conversation's his - no OMGs, no I'm sorrys, no anecdotes - it was his story to tell.

"I'm complaining too much, God, why am I so selfish."

"Because it's tough on you too. In the next while she's going to need you to be there for her, and right now, for the one second, you need someone to be there for you"

Hospital cots, gift shops, bad coffee

"You sound like you understand"

Been there, done that, cried a bit

"Does it get easier?"

"There is nothing easy about watching your love ones fighting for their lives, with their lives, while you sit on the sidelines, where there's literally nothing you can do to contribute to the fight."

If you take away all the hateful messages, a little bit of me could understand what Christie Blanchford was getting at here. Our society has been shaped by men who don't cry in front of others, so when it does happen, it has the same effect as an unseen left hook.

After he recovered, he became a little more composed.

"Can you smell the alcohol on me?"

Gum was offered

"I usually don't drink, but that seems like it's all I've been doing for the past week"

"No more?"

"No more."

The duration of the ride between the second to last to last station was a silent one. He started getting antsy again. I put my hold on the side of his arm.

Godspeed, and good luck.

Stuck in time

I've been working in industry for almost 8 months now as a synthetic chemistry intern for a pharmaceutical. I'm trying to figure out if I like it more than academic, if I like Chemistry as a career, or if I want to go some different direction entirely. My biggest problem is that it's rare that I would be doing something only to experience the "I love this; this is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life". Although the most recent time I've felt that, it turned out to be one of the greatest mistakes.

I've been called an old man a few times now because of my job. Social life comes in bursts; never often enough, never long enough. Part of it is it's now crunch time, and everyone's either doing their thesis, working, or trying to take over the(ir) world.

I constantly have a feeling that I'm stuck, with no clear path to follow, and my past running at the speed of light trying to catch up with me. I need to enjoy some escapism. Last year, being in the musical helped me put my combined honours degree in a box in the back of my mind. This year, I'm trying to complete my last work term somewhere away from here; Germany, Switzerland, San Francisco, anywhere that'll take me. I do hope that I do hear back, and that the escape will be everything I hoped for and more.

Confession on a toll booth 2

So obviously a great example of charisma would be the recently departed Mr. Layton. Unfortunately, I would not be able to do him any justice. What I can say, is that he has been a brave man, and a smart one. His pivotal role in establishing the NDP as something more than a vote against the conservative and liberals. And his decision to step down before his disease took him was smart; instead of having his party to deal with the lost of a great man, and have to look for a new leader while being a strong official opposition.

Obviously, Mr. Layton had a lot of fight within him. Cancer is a disease that requires a lot of fight. From the patient, and everyone around them. Fight is all around us though. This is what my friend had to say about her mom, may she rest in peace.

"

In the early hours of August 19 my mom, died after over two years fighting an aggressive form of breast cancer which had spread to her brain and spine. During that time she rode in the Ride to Conquer Cancer, ran a half marathon, travelled, and did a million other things. I will never describe her as having "lost her battle with cancer" because it implies that she failed somehow, when in truth she never wavered. I love you and I will miss you, mom.

"

So I urge you, once again, to fight. Fight with the blaze of passion behind your back.

Confession on a toll booth 1

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It's been a year, a week, and a day since I last posted. Waiting another month is a tempting idea, although I'm sure that I will never really get around to it.

Since I have nothing to talk about, I will go through the entire blog and interlace my last year into it.

This blog was started because of http://infamyoffact.blogspot.com, which is left as a shell. That could be the same with this one, except I usually abandon, and not delete my past.

I haven't actually written any extended application since Science One, at least, not one that requires writing words.

I've actually changed my bus route, and unfortunately this means trading the eclectic types for the VC boys, the Crofton girls, and the rest of the UBC-bound.

I also haven't got a chance to make another speech, but I have quite a few introductory line: "Welcome to the Abdul Ladha Science Student Centre, the only free-standing student-ran building on campus [only for the next year or two though, not that I would care at that point]. I've had the opportunity to be involved with this building over the past year and a bit, and some of my best memories on campus has been associated with this building. I am very grateful for the opportunity to be hosting this event, and I hope you guys will have the chance to be back in this building after today." I did get a chance to carry a big stick though. T'was fun. More on that later.

And as for the mandatory quote of the post, there'll be a anecdote from my analytical chemistry course. Robin was discussing how in our field (his field), there is almost no need for quotes. The only time something would warrant quoting, would be if it is so eloquently and precisely put that there is no way to make it better or appropriate. An example, is if there is a Lt. that is being completely out-maneuvered, and after many days of surviving, he is surrounded by the enemy, and he uttered his last word, "Nuts".

I went to a rendition of Anything Goes put on by Theatre Under the Stars. It was a great production, and unlike the last time, trumpet did good. And the violinist did his tacets fantastically.

Social contract.... I'm waiting for the last season of House. That's all.

I'm now legal in another country. Yay.

It could be worse? A friend of a friend decided to put how he was having a bad day because he was in his room studying in the same category as a person whose mom's real sick and in the hospital, a person whose dog is puking continuously, a person whose mom just found out they had stage 2b cancer, and a person who was kicked out of their house. This really put into perspective for me that we should step back from our pity, before it consumes you to the point you become something that people look upon in shock.

Part 2, maybe to come.

10 Ejaculates and a Good Centrifuge.

"Go around and pee on home plate!"

There is a mediocre HBO show called Hung, in which the premise of a recent episode was the main character's son peeing on home plate, or as they called it, "defiling the baseball diamond". At first I was confused about the motivation and the big deal. Until the opening comment was uttered to me last night. I guess I wasn't drunk enough to fully appreciate it, but being on a field, the sprinklers going on, a small crowd cheering you on behind you - there's a little bit of je ne sais quoi quality about it which makes it a little bit ridiculous.

Of course, although not drunk, there needed to be quite a bit of alcohol consumption for the event to occur. And with that, my supervisor, my coworker and I had a long discussion about anything that came to mind. Lots of praises flew around, although one particular praise went on about 30 odd times in the night, with at least once where it was mentioned 3 times in a row. Quite a few insults flew too, but this time it doesn't seem like toxic environment causing - everything was honest, with supports, and not meant to be malicious towards the objects.

The talk repeated a lot of things over and over, I mean, we were quite drunk at that point. However, it seems to tell me that I could go to grad school if I want to. Of course, this doesn't actually tell me that much - before there were the three thoughts: a- want to do BEd, b- do i want to do MSc? and c- can I do MSc? Although c is somewhat eliminated, it was never really that far away from b.

I'm going to really miss my supervisor when I leave. Last night was filled with fun, even without the alcohol.

You are the 6000th visitor

Today when I plopped in my sample for mass spectrometry, the computer showed that I was the 6000th sample from my lab. Artificial fireworks flew across my screen, before real life sparklers going off beside the monitor, and the mass spectrometer playing a happy diddly. The technician comes by with a miniature cupcake with "Happy 6000th" icing and a blue candle.

....

Not really.

The machine just asked me for my sample name and expected mass. It was very anti-climatic in actuality. That's what happens when a special date or milestone was over-emphasized for ages, only to disappoint with mediocrity.

But then, why can't mediocrity be enough? Why do we strive for extraordinary things when the simple things in life pass us by without so much as a thought, much less the appreciation they deserves? Why can't we be happy that it's raining in the middle of summer? Or be excited that when we take out our pencil, and it's still sharpened? Why do we hold parades for all sorts of frivolous things, when we could be celebrating the fact that our breaths don't stink because of that pack of gum we found at the bottom of the couch cushion?

Growth of a noun

Ask a 12 years old what he or she think a scientist working in a lab looks like. The response might be lab coats or goggles, or swirling an Erlenmeyer. That basically rules out all the mathematicians and let's not even bring up the social scientists. As they grow, their definition of scientist might morph and mature until it becomes a definition they're willing to stick with.

Cab ride in the rain

I'd like to think I'm not quite yet at the level to deserve the title of scientist, but frankly, I might be close. Two years ago, I would looked at myself funny if I saw my google search left with inquiries such as "palladium-assisted indolinimide hydrolysis" and "quenching LDA reactions of acid-sensitive moiety".

Kahlua baked in cheesecake

Sure, the latter one might be just because moiety is one of those awesome words of vowel-tasticness, but I wouldn't even know how to use half of those words a while ago.

I've always said that I'm not defined by not definition, or at least that's what it says on my Facebook profile. I will make the scientist I'll be; Science will not define me. I'm not going to be a spandex- and cape-wearing B Man; Justin's gonna be throwing down with the rod of democracy.

Velvet flutter of skirts

It really is going to be business as usual next year. The amount of cancellations and negotiations that I have to deal with is mind numbing. Not to mention the budget's an utter mess.

Blood-letting and leeches

Not that there's a lot of hours that needs to be put in, but the amount of random worrying is starting to catch up to me, and my thoughts are starting to get scattered. It makes writing in this blog really difficult, since in writing of this blog post, I've wanted to change the topic 4 times. My thoughts don't get developed fully any more, so it looks like a chicken scratch of notes.

Simple full layouts

So blog posts will probably start again with a little bit more gusto, now that I have someone to write for.

Drummer

"A magnificent specimen, like a lone wolf - uncertain whether by circumstance or by choice. In either case, there exists no better lifestyle for him."

Home

"I'm going to the place where love and feeling good don't ever cost a thing."
Daughtry - Home

Home is where your heart is.

Yeah, sure I guess.

If that's the case, recently my home's been all over the place.

Home right now is really no more than a place to pass out after work. Sure, it's still my preferred place of passing out, but still.

Things used to be simple; a house is not a home did not apply, the two are the same. The house you lived in is your home.

Following your heart, getting it attached to something and grounding yourself, that's how we get ourselves through life.

For a while, home was a time. 6:45am. It was like the ultimate me time.

Associated with that time, there were two locations.

There was a little alcove opposite of the band room with a wooden bench. It's small enough that even in the fetal position, it's still cozy, yet it's big enough for me to be able to stretch out and lie there. It's an amalgamation of drywall, wood, and cement. The drywall brittle, the wood smooth, and the cement, filled with the marks of all the others who have enjoyed the little bit of safe haven.

The other was the gym. One light on out of the 12. The 800 people capacity facility, for 10 minutes is reserved only for me. I can choose to set up, I can choose to warm up, or I can choose to sit down, and accompany the 800 people worth of me.

6:45am was a magical time for me.

Come university, two more places are added, Chemistry, and Ladha.

I am doubting how homely Chemistry feels. My heart is flip flopping. I don't know if I want to treat it that way. It's not like a hospital residency, where getting in basically means devoting into it entirely. I am not bound by anyone but me to the 5 years I'm stuck in this place. All my heart needs to do is flutter, and I can be out of here.

Ladha is very similar. Although it's a lot more of a home is where my feet are situation. I'm there, almost always, so everyone teases that it is home. Pretty soon I would start believing it.

I just want to go home.

To Boris

Practice yesterday went well. Originally planned to practice today, then mom decided that she wants to play Mahjong. Mother's day means I get trumped.

Virtual Love Letter

I have always believed that writing a reference letter is similar to writing a love letter. You praise and brag about how wonderful this person is, and overlook all their flaws. Your language changes from daily speech, to a more flowery prose.

The more substantial proof is in the writing process. You start off by picturing their face; regardless of how they look, you start attributing their positive traits onto their physical feature. The eternally optimistic person will have their smile etched, and the corners of their eyes wrinkled, the sports enthusiast will have a trim physique, minimizing the body fat content, the perpetual green thumb will have that adorable streak of dirt across their forehead, and a slightly messy hair. Then the visualization comes to life. The modest kid shows a quiet inflection in his speech. The emotionally expressive person would be offering a hug. The homely would smell of fresh baking.

A good and truthful reference always gets better at the end. The process of writing builds this person up, which just further motivates you to write a reference that is worth such an amazing person. The ultimate test really is to finish writing the letter and meet up with this person, and not be disappointed. Sometimes we just build someone up so high that even the most perfect of men would fail to meet our standards.

The man I wrote my love letter to met my expectation and then some. =)