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.

Sign reading

During CNY, you see the upside down "fatt" and think its good fortune pouring into the house. People look at the stars to tell them their status. I decided that enough is enough and came up with my own prediction. Believe at your own peril.

A bad sign is a sign that has dropped off. Flavi-sign-reader predicts this year to be a hard one. The sign shows that we are not even off the floor. This happens every 23 years when the hyperbolic expression of the Capsid protein aligns itself with the tangent of the NS1. During that induction phase, it is best to stay on the safe side of the biohazard II hood and not play with dead chicken heads. However, once the 1st log phase has passed, Flavi-sign-reader predicts a sudden surge in energy comming from the host mitochondria that will bring you from the '1st to the 5th' floor err... dimension and if you tell your storey errrr... story well enough, you may even find yourself diffusing from the '1st thru roof'. Those who are not of the flavi constellation can remove your gaze from this prediction and instead go stair errr... stare at ‘stair 1’, which could or could not align your viruses in a double helix motif to give you either a good or bad year. Well... it all depends...

toothpick update

Couple of days ago, posted some pics of some idiot who put a bottle of toothpicks in a plastic container in the 150C oven. Well, the guy didnt take it out even though it stank and so now check out what happened to the whole thing. No one admits doing it as usual.

new toy

New year must have new toy. BioRad's iCycler. Whoo Hoo!!! But then, not that I am going to use it much anyway. We got the 'split top' add on that splits the tray into two parts and both parts can run different settings, so its like two machines in one! How cool is that?

The old machine now no more lonely.

water bath

Jas was cleaning the water bath and she went "EEEEE!!!" so I knew must be somethign intersting and grabbed my cam. Water bath in super dirty condition. Only reason? Probably not washed for the past 2-3 weeks. But OF COURSE those on duty the past week did their duties, how could you suggest otherwise? isk isk isk....

smelly slimy gooey stuff. Drink oledi garentii you become toilet bowl best friend one week.


As usual I make my mark. Hey, look at it this way; the person on duty has lesser surface area to scrub now.


Another angle, just in case the first one didnt turn out right.

work safely - at mrt construction site

Work safely because you may not get another chance to work safely. However, if you work dangerously, you may get many more chances to do it again.

Who am I?

Identity crisis!

Burnin'

Some idiot put this plastic bottle of toothpics into the 150C oven to dry and ended up melting the whole thing. The interesting thing is that there is this glass container directly under it to contain all the dripping waste. Is is some kind of sinister plot?

Pariss Lunch

Dr. Li's treat. Pariss seafood buffet at Marina Square. Oysters and mussels!!!



The people:


Teran the terror:


Jas doing open surgery on a crab claw:


Kuai Ling Gou, marshmallows with choc, some Taiwan jelly thing, and cakes:


Dr. Chu demonstrating the fine art of getting every morsel of meat out of a crab.



Yummy lamb chop to the right:


Crocodile soup on left and scallop in steamed egg on the right. Bottom; fish, prawn and baked scallops:


Chomp chomp:


Satay, scallops with garlic, braised fish, fried fish, seafood pasta, etc. etc.


Scallops, oyster, mussels, crayfish, crab, cold meat, abalone, octopus:



lets go back again soon!!!

Happy new year

Happy New Year everybody!!
May your cultures grow well and may your work published in Science/Nature/Cell!!!

Christmas Lunch

Lab's annual event, sponsored by the boss.
We went to a local buffet at the Grand Hyatt at Orchard Road. 12 people, one table, lots of food.

Here are some pictures for you to oogle over.



There's this wall just stacked full of wine bottles. Quite a sight to behold. Very nice.


Amazing roasted chicken and duck. and the pastries are not bad at all.


Fresh fish, oyster omelette, etc etc etc...


Small talk while waiting for some others to arrive.


Someone found a worm in the cheng t'ng. We showed it to the waiter and all he said was thanks for pointing that out, I will go remove the whole pot of cheng t'ng. We were hoping for a 10% discount or a free cake or something.


After the worm thing, I found an ant on a piece of papadum. Makes you wonder actually how clean the place really is.


A toast; to remember a good 2005 and to usher in a hopefully equally amazing (if not more amazing) 2006.


Group shot. Taken with the cam's autotimer. Asked a waiter before this to take a shot but it came out blur.


The entry to Straits Kitchen. Very good ambience and deco.


A round fixture on a square wall. The whole place very nice deco. Quite overwhelmed by it.