Crunchy Sun-baked leaves!

Delivery tubes

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

Today, I made an interesting discovery. Remember those delivery tubes we used in sec school and jc? They arrive in the form of straight capillary tubes. You only get the bent delivery tubes when dedicated lab staff endure the blazing heat to bend the capillary tubes manually over the fire. Woah!

Moral of the story: Treasure those delivery tubes!

Leaving footsteps on earth.
5:49 pm <3

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I am thankful that I now have a full time job, but that only adds to the incentive to spend freely. Haix. I need more self-control. Having a job is good, but it doesn’t mean the job is good. In my 3.5 day(and still counting) stint as a school lab tech, I covered many duties. A typical day would be as follows:

-Report to the sci lab by 7.30am or risk getting a pay cut (means eating breakfast with my eyes closed)

-Temperature taking (oopss…the HOD found out today that I had been reporting my temperature with an invisible thermometer, this is what you call goddess power)

-Check if all the projector, mike and apparatus are ready for the first lesson (triple check again if I know that the teacher has a monstrous temper, especially one that eats students)

-Help the lab auntie to clean up (I cant help but complain that the labs pose as both a safety as well as a health hazard. The place is lined with a layer of dust and is infested with termites! Three cheers to my faithful 6-legged friends.)

-Help water the plants, sprinkle them some love using a fire hose---a must-have gardening tool! Gets the job done within minutes!

-Treat the birdies to rice grains (Their version of breakfast cereal? Rice crispies? I question its purpose, but it seems to be part of the daily ritual probably to invite them to chirp along with the school song?)

-Sit down and pant a little

-Start playing hide-and-seek with the equipment used in subsequent experiments

-Attend to teachers’ last minute requests and bracing myself for their black faces

-Test out experiments (spend 5% of the time recalling the proper experimental procedures and possible results, 50% of the time asking. The remaining 45% goes to feeling apologetic for not being able to remember)

-Label, pack stuff and sneeze away

-Lastly, I discovered that chatting with the aunties is also part of my job…listen to what they had for breakfast, lunch and dinner yesterday, the day before yesterday and 3 days ago. Ah yes gossip. One of them is particularly fond of speaking ill of other lab staff, supervisor and teachers, but it’s interesting to watch the drama unfold when other staff verbally attack each other behind their backs while the supervisor complains about practically all the lab staff. When it comes to a point when we sit together for lunch, they’ll turn their attention to canteen staff etc. The never-ending gossip actually provides welcomed relief from all the monotony.

-Basically it’s a typical sai-kang job. I think its job prospects are boundless. An area worth pursuing if you don’t like to have your butt stuck to the chair for the whole day!

Leaving footsteps on earth.
12:13 am <3

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Huge decisions

Wednesday, 1 July 2009

Warning: long post ahead

Part I---The decision

This is probably one of the biggest decisions I’ve made in my life. It involves my future, at least the next 10 years. I hope that I won’t ever have to regret this. It had been a roller-coaster ride for me. I was mentally prepared to farm locally and I thought I should stick to it. I reminded mydelf not to get distracted by any tempting offers that may come along the way, but who knows ...

Let’s be honest, I must say OT wasn’t one of the first things that came to my mind when I was selecting courses, because going to poly just didn’t seem like the route that majority would choose. I like to follow the ~~flow~~flow~~flow. I always liked science. Therefore, farming seemed more like the “natural choice”. I’m still puzzled why I had put OT down as one of my choices. I guess I didn’t put much thought into it, but it’s time to do so:

Farm
Pros:
-Loads of Chem and Bio
-Nice air-con environment
-Stable job with a good pay

Cons:
-Too much chem.= rocket science
-Can be boring/dry---zap my brain power
-Need to stand for long hours (how nice if they can provide high chairs that make me look as if I’m standing behind the counter, with wheels so that I can roll around. Preferably not those that can whirl around in case patients get dizzy)
-Erratic schedule
-Limited placing if I want to venture into research?

OT
Pros:
-Dynamic environment
-More flexibility: Able to exercise creativity to suit different needs of patients (super plus point!)
-Regular working hours (They don’t offer night therapy just yet.)
-Has quite a bit of Bio
-Greater job satisfaction (Able to witness the progress made, I seriously think patients look cute when they smile!)

Cons:
-Needs a truck full of patience (I think I only have a car full, may I have an upsize?)
-Can be tiring moving around, doing all the actions so that patients can imitate me
-Lots of psychology (it’s interesting but it’s not the typical sciency science subject,arhh!!i don’t know if I can cope with that, but I guess it should be better than econs?)

Generally, there were more insecurities for OT. It made me doubt my ability to even do it overseas, but ultimately, if I were able to overcome all that, I would consider myself a big winner.

Part II: The Minor Hiccup

When I was busy making copies of my acceptance letter and other forms, 2 blobs of brown juice splattered on one of the forms (thankfully, that was for personal reference).Desperately locating its source, I blamed my sister for eating messily and letting mushroom sauce spurt all over the place to soil my forms. Almost immediately, I regretted yelling at her.

I realized that the 2 drops of brown juice was just the prelude to a more fantastic display.1 blob of moist, dense chocolaty mousse, encased in droplets of clear, sparkling yellow juice fell from above as if it was a gift from the sky. Sounds delicious? Want more? It’s twin replica was the next to arrive. Coming in more generous helpings, it couldn’t find a better place to land on than my original acceptance letter.

The finale came when I quickly swiped it off with my bare hands (eww eww) and I looked up. It started raining lizard poo. Still recovering from the shock, I hopped up in anger and shoo-ed it away. I’ve always thought that lizards were cute creatures, but for that moment they were certainly NOT. It actually found pleasure spiting me by staring at me with its beady eyes, watching how mad I am and refusing to leave after it had conveniently emptied its bowels.

Obviously, other paper forms weren’t spared. Some were covered with mysterious brown blotches that seemed like oxidized black tea. I hope the lady at the receiving end won’t be curious enough to touch those spots, otherwise it’s always good to fall back onto the good old, handy advice by moh: “Have you washed your hands today?”.

Leaving footsteps on earth.
1:32 pm <3

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