Wisdom & Advice

Our uni received a distiguish Professor yesterday. A guest for the day. The programme started with a detail talk on his work (both success and failures), lots of interesting chemistry and fun facts.

Then we have a round table discussion with him in the afternoon that lasted for about 3 hours. I had a few questions for him and he gave me a few pieces of advice. Coming from a great chemist and researcher like himself, I was indeed moved. I asked 2 questions:



1) Your synthesis of ciguatoxin span over 10 years. How and where did you obtained funding for such long and tedious research?



2) Can you share you post-doc experience (while working with Prof Gil Stork, Columbia)?



For Q1, he said that the most important thing is to never give up. Always be very sure of want you want to achieve. You must have some small but good workable idea when you write/apply for funding. Hence, 90% will be for these workable ideas, and keep the 10% for your pet idea. He even politely said that, without this 90%, he head will be off his shoulder!

As for his experience as a young researcher (fresh out of water), the word he used to describe his first impression on the western research are - "strange" . The room bursted into small laughter. Anyway, he said that if you are brave, you should consider taking up a post-doc in a different field from your Phd work. Only then you will be able to force yourself to strive and push yourself harder to learn. One researcher must have at least 3 background (area), so that when you are older and much more mature, and when you propose a research idea, the idea will be more ORIGINAL.

どうもありがとう!

Refreshing Ginger Ale

It's so hot here! Gotta drink this to cool down. It got ginger juice, lemon juice, lemon zest, mint and plain old bubbly soda.

Slurp..slurp...

Aaaahhhhhhh.....

Be cool.

Grill Chicken with Cauliflower Carrot Couscous

Simple dinner : Seasoned chicken breast with black pepper, salt and chilli powder. Grill it. Served hot with couscous and crispy cool ice lettuce. Yum...yum...

Chicken Kebab

Skewered chicken breast meat with green pepper & onion. Seasoned generously with black pepper. Then to make it more wicked, I threaded thin slices of pancetta around the kebab. Baked it in the oven at 180C for about 35minutes, turn it half way.

Served hot with cauliflower couscous.

WOW!

NMR Down = No Life

The title pretty much sum up my post.
What can I say?
>:<

HPLC & LCMS

Some people are so stupid... in fact... no, not only stupid but selfish too. How can you inject crude sample into the LCMS? What do you think? It's a magic machine? Inject it and your compound will come out the other end, miraculously pure? Use your head and think!
Go use a HPLC, the least you can do ....
Just because the lab technician is not around, you think you can do everything...
Tsk...tsk...
One word for you : A$$

Monday Morning

Temp: 31C

The weather is driving me crazy. Got up at 5.15am. Cannot sleep. Drenched in sweats. Left apartment by 5.45am and arrived safely at lab at 6.20am. Not a single person in sight.
Normally, this will be a wonderful way to start the day. But it is so bloody hot. Not forget to mention about the haze problem blowing from across the shore.