Just want to tell the world I am alive, not that any people will care anyway. From this sentence, you can feel that I am in a "negative" mood. Perhaps it may be caused by the daily routine of lab work, which may progress till late in the night. Or perhaps it is triggered by my lack of precious personal time caused by the research. So I will describe several life lessons I learned from the lab, which can be useful in our daily lives.
Also, perhaps it is because I am a early person. Being with a late person does really reduce the time I have a date with Uncle Zhou (周公). But then again, as long as the date is longer than 6 hours, I am happy with it. Though my mind may be blank during the research, causing me to make hell load of critical mistakes. So what is the divine punishment that I will receive for the mistakes? Bazooka-ed and machine gunned, coupled with a dark aura surrounding me for a few hours. Thus: Lesson 1: What ever you do, make sure you have enough sleep before you do any serious stuff that have high probability of killing you, especially if you are working with perfectionist woman (go watch The Ugly Truth...). Mistakes are not tolerated. So sleep more and rest more.
When doing a research, you will definitely use some machine. Some machines are not so popular and less users will be using them. If you use that most of your time, great. However, if you are using the popular instrument, chances are your machine are being used by your colleagues when you want to use it. And if your experiment is time-sensitive experiment, congrats! You just screwed up your experiment! And you are welcomed to redo it. Luckily, there is a booking system where you can booked to use the machines at certain time that you want, provided you appear within 15 minutes of your booking time. Conclusion: Lesson 2: Always plan your things ahead, at least by a day, or better still, planned everything before you start doing anything. Many people knew these, but not many people implement it. It reminded me of a friend's PM in MSN: Fail to plan = Plan to fail.
Conflicts are common in research. Your fellow researcher may want to use a certain machine. However, you already booked the machine. So technically you have the right to use it. Not them. However, beware of a jump-queue jutsu (un)commonly used to counter this problem: Lecturer-Who-Don't-Care-About-Other-People-From-Other-Group-Demand-To-Jump-Queue jutsu! FYI, jutsu means technique. This jutsu is commonly deployed by people who do not want to negotiate to get things which they could not, and we have seen a few examples here. So what can I do in this case, you asked, since the lecturers "dai sai", ruthless and even 得寸进尺? The remedy, as shown by CCJ, is to: Lesson 3: Learn to negotiate with the other party. You give one I give one. Everyone happy. But do not push me over the limit. Or you will not get anything at all. In addition, Lesson 4: If the other party want to use it no matter what, DO NOT LET THEM BE if what they want will screw up your experiment. They did not do proper planning. So its their problem. Help if what they want will not hamper you.
When you enter the world of research, there will be peoples who were here before you. So technically, they are your senior. Most of them are pretty helpful and will help you if you ask them, provided they are free and not pissed off you, which is the case of me. One of the master student (at least one) is pretty pissed off me and SL because we worked on the area near centrifuge. The area also contains other machine like vortexing, microcentrifuge, incubator etc. Thus us working there means road block to their work. In addition, we shift to a working bench nearby, and kena halau lagi cause she suspect us contaminating her whatever stuff with bacteria. Meaning pissing off that very same senior again. Anyway, which comes to my point: Lesson 5: Be friendly with the seniors. Do not create enemy out of them. They can help you a lot in the research. I have got to thanks Ms. Chuah for helping us a lot with our research thus far. Oh...And my communication skills sucks. Probably due to my "do not like to talk to people" style. Which is why I am not able to talk to people like SL did, making friends with many people in the lab. Sometime I wonder why I choose to walk this "silent" pathway...Sigh...
Thats it for now. Until I am ready with more material and free time...
Now where is my ice cream...
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