My family moved into our parents' house about 20 years ago. I remembered that was the first time we (the kids) saw an old wood-crafted sunflower thermometer in our parents' room. My mom insisted in decorating her room with that small old thermometer by putting it next to the TV. That is nothing special to us, in fact we did complain how old that wood thermometer was. My mother protested, "It was a gift from your dad." We laughed. "Really? Was that all dad gave you all these years?"I am not a fan for gifts; for some reason I do feel a bit "embarassed" in receiving gifts. I also think that it certainly needs no event or reason to give someone a gift. I like to just get something for a person even though it is not a birthday or whatever occasion. Come on, you cherish this person and want to show your appreciation to him/her and hence you get a gift to this person as a token of appreciation. You don't have to wait for an occasion to do so. The gift does not have to be big too. The little thought that really counts.
Last month marked the one-year since I knew my Travel Companion. Two weeks ago it was our half-year anniversary since we started seeing each other. After a lot of contemplation, I decided to give him a photo frame as an anniversary gift. Although it was just a simple wooden frame, my selfish side of me was to hope that he would be able to see my presence all the time.
Maybe to you or even to my Travel Companion, it was just a photo frame. You could even laugh at it like how we laughed at my dad's sunflower thermomether gift to my mother. After all it is the little thought that counts.
♥ every page of my imagination
1 people traveled to my fantasyland
I love it. This is what I have been relying since I came back from my trip for dinners.
I'm so grateful to my Travel Companion's mom for giving me some food including those special imported instant noodles that I could not get it here in the Asian grocery shops. She is one lovely motherly lady. I probably would have died of hunger without those food these few days. All right, maybe I exagerated a little. I meant it would cause me some inconvenience to find time and energy to drop by a supermarket for grocery shoppings since I arrived on Sunday.
I am still very exhausted and the jet lag has no sign of improvement still. I have been struggling hard to stay awake at class these few days. I signed up for an interesting course that is apparently running this week. So much so that I find the topics of the lectures intellectual stimulating, I have been sleeping through the lectures half of the time. Blame the jet lag. I have been waking up at 2ish in the morning. The course is so intensive and dense that I have to wake up early to commune for over an hour to get to another campus. By the time I get home it is past 5pm. By then, all I want to do is to take a quick nap before I spend time in preparing for my presentations for the class. How could I find time to do my food shopping to refill my empty fridge?
I am looking forward to the weekend so that I would have some time to rejuvenate and do my grocery shopping and stuff. I seriously need to do my laundry, clean the apartment a little and stock up food. Well, I have to because the instant noodles/food given are depleting. I think I was munching the second last cup noodles for tonight's dinner while trying to go through my lecture notes for tomorrow's written exams. I am not asking much. Just a pass would do. Gosh, I thought I was done with written exams during my undergraduate time. If only I knew the assessment for this course was a written exam, I would have turned down the course offer. Oh well.
♥ every page of my imagination
2 people traveled to my fantasyland
Guess what? I'm back although reluctantly. But this jet lag is seriously bothering me. Anyhow, I'll be back shortly.♥ every page of my imagination
2 people traveled to my fantasyland
Yeah, I so not believe that I did it! I finally dare to hop on a bike and biked around the campus and even outside of the campus.
Well, I did not want to do it initially! I was forced to do so, well sort of. In my last 2 days in the lab, I had to go to a building off campus. If I took the bus, it would take about 30 minutes (on top of that, the bus for that route is not that frequent) and then I still needed to walk for another 15 minutes. Since I was busy tuning down and finishing up all the work, I finally agreed to bike there.
This is my first time hoping on a bike and pedaling after more than a decade. I thought my legs would be stiff and I would lose balance. The worse part was I had to pass through several streets with cars. I was a little nervous in the beginning. Call me a wimp. I would happily admit it. But hey, I really enjoyed the biking trip. I did another one today. It was more fun this time.
One thing though, my thighs and butt are a bit sore. I know. The muscles are complaining after hibernated for ages. Hey, time to wake up now, slacker!
♥ every page of my imagination
0 people traveled to my fantasyland
When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, "What will I be? Will I be happy? Will I be rich? That's what she said to me.""Que sera sera, whatever will be will be, the future's not our to see, que sera sera, what will be will be" (click here for que sera sera lyrics)
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When I was thirteen, my English teacher instructed us to write an essay, "Imagine what would you be in ten years' time."
That was an intriguing composition topic. But I struggled quite a bit to complete the homework. I guess I just was not really giving much thought about what a 23-year old should be like. You know when you are a kid, you tend to see whoever is 18 years and above is such an adult to you. Yes, adult! Shocking isn't it? I turned that 18 year adult mark close to a decade, I still feel myself like a young kid.
I was trying to recall what I wrote in my essay. I guess I was a bit not creative at that time. I remember I wrote about graduated after college, having a decent job and a steady relationship. That was how I imagined myself at 23 when I was merely 13.
Imagination is altering constantly throughout all these years since that 13 year old essay was written. I recall all my girls' chat with my girl pals during college. I would imagine that I would continue my studies till around 25-26, get settled down at 27, raise a couple of kids and working steadily towards my career path. Looking back, it seems that I would not be done for my graduate school before 27; there is still a lot of room of improvement to be a good daughter before jumping into a role as a good wife or good daughter-in-law, let alone a good mother. As for job, I am not even done with school, what am I going to use to apply for jobs?!
My main supervisor asked me what was my plan after my degree recently during one of our serious talks before my trip. He wanted me to consider staying in the same lab and assured to me that he and my cosupervisor would figure out something for me if in the end I decided to stay. He wanted me to make up my mind after this trip. Everyone around already started asking about my plan(s). Are you going to do a postdoc? Where will you be doing it?
I have been pondering a lot about my future plans. In fact I have been pondering too much that I could feel the little stress wearing up on me. Do I want to stay in research? Will I be able to get a good position in a nice lab with nice boss and colleagues? Who will want to offer me a position? Regardless of which area I wanted to pursue, will my future job allow me to have a balance life in between career and family? All sort of questions and concerns kept popping up on my mind. Yet I did not have an answer and I still do not have an answer.
What will I be? What will I really want to be? I guess at this point I have made up my mind, which is not to think about future anymore. Just focus on the present. Not to say we should stop planning. We plan, but plan changes all the time. It is better of not plan too much until it is necessary because whatever will be will be.
♥ every page of my imagination
0 people traveled to my fantasyland
Has the thought of jealousy or uncomfortable feeling occured in your head before when you see you put much more effort than this other person but somehow this other person ended up doing much better than you?I have this thought all the time.
So this is my week four here. Thus far, nothing is successful here. The technique (or project) that I am learning here involves a long and tedious multi-step methodology. That basically means it involves more than one day, and for this case about 2 weeks before you know whether has your experiment been successful or not. I have repeated a few times since I started on Day 1, which explains why up till my week four here, I still did not get anything.
Well, that is still not the point of the entry here. During my visit here, there is another student who came and learned the same technique together with me. While I wanted to make the most out of my short stay here, I had to come in to work during the weekends in order to finish off the long tedious steps sooner. Say if the whole procedure takes 10 days to complete, if I do not come in on the weekend, I would have to wait till the end of the following Friday in order to know the end result. In order to cut short the waiting time, I came in to work on the weekends. I have been doing so since I came here. Compared to the other student, who went partying till midnight and slept in for the whole weekend, his stuff worked after his first attempt, whereas mine still failed despite trying a few times. Yes, I know perhaps if I get sufficient rest (go partying or whatever during the weekends, I might be more efficient and hence productive). But this is not really the problem here. I worked during the weekends but I made sure I had more than enough rest here.
Of course I could complain how unfair it is to me. I have been encountering different technical problems and have repeated so many times that I should get it worked by now. In contrary, this other student who did not work overtime and when he came in during the weekday he complained how tired he was and did not seem that interested in his work. Yet his stuff worked. Sure on surface it does seem a little unreasonable and unfair for me. But after thinking a bit further, I realize I am learning more than him at each failure albeit some were due to stupid careless mistakes I made along the way. Even if eventually my stuff did not work (and seriously, I think it would be the case), I still think it might be due to a good reason for it to happen. Say if this stuff is not going to work, then I have to change my project plan and who knows that might lead to something more promising?
This morning I received an email from one of my sisters who recently graduated from college. She told me she got a decent job offer right immediately by a big company. This was her first job interview and to be honest, this sister of mine made the whole family worried her the most. My parents was worried that she would not even be able to make it through college. In her email, after sharing her wonderful news to me, she told me her concern, which apparently was the family's concern. My other sister was unhappy about her current job. And she had went to a lot of job interviews for more than half a year before she got her current job. She had been complaining how unlucky she was and how fortunate this sister of mine was. I empathize how my sister felt. She did well in her college, in fact she had a much higher qualification than this other sister yet this other sister got a better job offer and worse still got it immediately after her first job interview. However in hindsight, I do not think that she is less fortunate than my other sister. True, she seemed to be going through a tougher path yet her encounters and the training she is getting now makes her a stronger person and all those experiences are invaluable, which will definitely help her somewhere down the road, be it career or other matters in life.
I used to complain about rejections, failures or whatever matters that do not seem to favour what we wished for or how we wanted. But hey, actually, that rejection from the job offer, that relationship that did not work out, that failure you encountered just lead you to somewhere better for you. Without the rejection from that job offer, you would not have waited and hence this better job would have no where to appear. Thank goodness you did not be together with that boy/girl who did not love you enough, if not you would never be able to find your Mr. or Miss Right. Not to mention you learn so much more than you realize after each failure. Come on, all these happen of good karma. It will all work out eventually.
♥ every page of my imagination
0 people traveled to my fantasyland
When I first heard of the "Nobel Prize" word, I was just a few year old kid. I was told about the story what the prize was and how it came from Alfred Nobel. Wow! Yes, that was all I said and had in my mind. Little did I know how prestigious this award was. Neither did I imagine I would meet up in real life any of the Nobel Laureate.Few years ago, when I was still a college student, I met one of these famous people, Peter Doherty, the Nobel Laureate for physiology and medicine in 1996. I attended his guest lecture. In fact he was sitting next to me at a lunch in the kitchen of the department where I was doing my research work at during college time. Having lunch with a Nobel Laureate. Wow, I must be dreaming?!
The dream did not end there. Apparently the institution I am working at has a very strong relation with Nobel Prize. Again, the word "Nobel Prize" appeared in my mind. I paid a little bit more attention to it every year around this time since almost everyone in the medical research field would be chatting about it. I even happened to have a chance to listen to a Nobel lecture two years ago. It was a great talk but "Nobel Prize" to me seems sound a little distant.
Today, "Nobel Prize" was brought to me in a very close proximity. No, not that I was awarded the prize, neither was I have any contribution or direct relation to the awardee this year. But still I could not believe that I was able to witness the joyful news here life; I do know one of the Nobel Laureates this year! This Professor definitely deserves the honor, not in terms of the wonderful work performed but for the humble attitude in ascribing the success and contribution to other people.
What is so big deal of being awarded a prize, or in this case a prestigious Nobel Prize? I personally do not think it is too much of a big deal. All Nobel Laureates are just ordinary human-beings, like you and me. However, I do think that they possess some positive attitudes to making great contribution towards mankind, which made them being honored the prize. The prize is not a measurement of success, rather it serves as a tribute to those who have contributed to the society and the world and hopefully encourages many more people to contribute to the world. Am I aiming to get one? Never! I dream but not this kind of dream. It is already good enough for me to be able to witness the grand celebration here. I still can't believe it happened this morning. Well, didn't I tell you already that I had never dreamt about it?
♥ every page of my imagination
0 people traveled to my fantasyland
