Tie me up!

The uni gave out ties and scarves to its employees today. Got mine and despite its...erm.... well meaning pictures of cute fish swimming, I found it, erm...well...

So me and Teren got hold of a tie and he made me (at gunpoint of course) put it on on the pretense that he didn't know how to tie a tie. So I was conned, no, persuaded, to tie my blue tie with cute fishies swimming upstream.
The ladies got a shawl of course, and with their piece of prestained fabric, there came along with it a guide, yes a GUIDE on how to wear the NUS SCARF!!!
Why don't the men get it?

The package:


Nice packaging, but totally not environmentally friendly, so much wastage. But at least I threw mine into the recycling bin.


Teren says: Calvin Kelin Model of flaviviLab!!!!! Fashion styleof 2006!!!!! look at those eyes!!!! so dam cool!!!!


The tie for the guys:


The scarf and the picture they got the inspiration from. What happened to the bears that go fishing like you see in National Geographic? Then you would need little spotches of red on the motif....shudder...


How to wear a scarf. Either its really really hard to wear a scarf or the girls are just, erm...

I'm so SAD

Nature 439, 254 (19 January 2006) doi:10.1038/439254a
Stress makes medics ever gloomier
Helen Pearson, New York

Abstract
US medical schools have high incidence of clinical depression.
Did you wake up this morning feeling blue? If you're a medical researcher, the answer may well be yes. A survey of faculty members in US medical schools has revealed that as many as one in five report signs of depression.

Grumbles about spiralling stress are rife among researchers, but there have been few studies to gauge its effects in any field. So psychiatrist Barbara Schindler at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia and her team sent questionnaires to more than 3,500 faculty members in four US medical schools. The questions were part of established scales for measuring mental and physical health, as well as life and job satisfaction.
The team received responses from more than half of the academics, and published its results this month (B. A. Schindler et al. Acad. Med. 81, 27–34; 2006). The most striking finding is that some 20% of researchers, both male and female, show symptoms consistent with clinical depression. This is roughly double the rate of such symptoms seen in the general population, and is a jump from the 14% found in a similar study in 1984.
Younger researchers show more depressive symptoms than older ones, and basic researchers feel less strain than those who also see patients. Although the survey is small, the authors say it exposes the toll that work is taking on academics' mental health. "When 20% of doctors are depressed you know something is wrong," Schindler says.
Researchers report various reasons for growing strain at work. Faculty members at US medical schools say they are under increasing pressure to see fee-paying patients. This leaves them less time to pursue the research and publications that win promotion. "I think these things mean there is less happiness and relaxation in medical schools," says George Mandel of George Washington University Medical Center in Washington DC.
The repercussions are harder to predict. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in Washington DC reports no fall in the number of faculty members it can recruit, or in the numbers dropping out. But increasing stress could be dissuading faculty members from carrying out research, says Kenneth Getz, whose work at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development in Boston suggests that the number of principal investigators leading clinical trials has declined in the past few years.
Diane Magrane, who is responsible for faculty development at the AAMC, says that many medical schools are already aware of poor staff morale and are introducing mentoring and support programmes to combat it. "When you measure it, it allows you to do something," she says.

new phone

lab gets second phone! one for prof, one for the rest. yay!!!

Lunch at KRGH

Lunch at Kent Ridge Guild House paid by prof for Dr.Li
Continental set lunch. Simple and quick 3 course.
The desserts were supposedly buffet style (read: eat all you can)
But after the group went and took their share, the plates were already empty. We hanged around to see if the waiters would refill the plates but nope. So we guessed that they were waiting for this bunch of people with bottomless pits to get out of the place before they put out a new set for fear of going bankrupt.
Pictures, as usual.

Choose, but why choose the lesser evil?


Spoilt for choice


The waiting was quite boring


Appetizer. Mine were (not very fresh) oysters...


Everybody else had orange coloured soup.


My lamb. Alot of fat by the sides. errr.....


The other half of the lab population went for the sea bass.


No smoking in the dining area!!!


Smile for the cam!


Dessert. Eclairs not nice. Rock melon sweet. Green bean soup not bad. Rice pudding abit too sweet. Gui ling kou bit bitter, the thing in the box no idea what.

Frekin' smart

Jan 15, 2006'Card Goddess' Straits Times

Taiwanese woman makes money by running up hefty credit card bills to earn bonus points

TAIPEI - MS YANG Hui-ju, 27, shops and spends lavishly with her credit card, but has proved she is not one of the masses of heavily indebted 'card slaves' in Taiwan.
In fact, the unemployed MBA graduate has made a handsome profit by taking advantage of bonus point schemes and discounts offered to credit card holders.
Now her bank has suspended her card in a case which has generated much media interest.
Her money-making scheme began in October, reports said. She racked up credit card bills of up to NT$10 million (S$509,000) a month and chalked up more than 8 million points.
She used the points to redeem 20 first-class air tickets to the United States, which she then sold online for NT$45,000 apiece. She also sold her card points at NT$300 per 1,000 points, said local media.
In just three months, she was said to have made a tidy profit of more than NT$1 million. But the amount of bonus points she amassed aroused the suspicions of the card issuer, Chinatrust Commercial Bank (CCB). It has suspended her card, saying her transactions were 'fraudulent'.
A defiant Ms Yang has threatened to sue the bank. She told local broadcaster TVBS: 'CCB called me up and told me I couldn't spend so much on my cards as it would make them lose money. I said, 'That's your problem'.'
For turning the tables on banks, Taiwanese netizens gave Ms Yang the title 'card goddess'.
Most of her spending was on shopping vouchers issued by a TV shopping channel. Reports said she worked with her relatives to take up a card offer to buy vouchers at a discounted price of NT$19,000.
Under a money-back guarantee, these vouchers can be refunded - at the original price of NT$20,000 - upon expiry in a year's time.
Hers is an unusual story in a society with some three million 'credit card slaves' or overspenders struggling to repay debts. Rollover credit debt hit NT$492.9 billion in October.
Ms Yang, who has been giving interviews daily, has received a job offer from an investment consultancy and invitations to write a book on her experience, PCHome magazine said.