just a bit

when most teachers are having their holidays this week, i'm going for work as usual in the labs. currently there are two environmental science groups under my supervision. one on the removal of nitrogenous compounds by some water weeds, and the other some extraction of anti-cancer compound from a plant called isodon(or sth like that) - a branch of a ph.d thesis at NTU... haha, sounds chim... but basically the work starts with removing all the leaves of that plant off the branches, dry the leaves and grind them to powders, add acetone and filter two times... blah blah blah. Mrs sow, my chem teacher in tchs and teacher mentor for this project, doesn't expect the students to reach the final stage of separating and extracting the anti-cancer substance... so we are doing anti-oxidant test first. i've done trials using spectrophotometer (just colourimeter) and the results are quite ok... except that the free radical solution which acts as the oxidising agent, prepared at 6*10^-5 mol/dm3, is so unstable that it's concentration drops by half over night. inaddition i deal with stuff like, 95% ethanol, methanol, ethyl acetate, etc... all organice ones... hehe... i'm losing interest in inorganic chem liao....

and carried the rotary evaporator from HC side.. bleh... arrange to meet on wednesday but the teacher suddenly disappeared and went for a course. so we approached the lab technician on that side... obviously they have never been using that 4000 bucks machine --- they cannot find the instruction booklet, neither did they know how to dismantle it... bleh... made me to sign a 'borrow note' some more.... hehe... mrs sow was quite pissed... our new one's coming in two months time... but as we are doing the extraction now, we have to borrow others..

anyway... the rotary evaporator appeared to be an old model... the water bath always indicate a temperature low than the actual one. we set the temperature to 40 degrees, but the real temperature in the water bath can actually boil an egg. and the vacuum pump is not working properly either. HC surly has wasted a lot of money buying all these stuff.

back to scholarship matters. i'm applying for 4: DBS, SEMBCORP, FIREfly & A*star. except A*star which has a deadline at mar31, i have submit applications to the rest 3. received a phone call from sembcorp, fixing an interview on 22nd, 11a.m. I'm quite excited over the interview invitation. finally, an interview has come to me.

watched huangcheng with kenny kq xx al yesterday. among the three plays i like the first one best. for it's idea. qin1 qing2, ai4 qing2 and you3 qing2, love is the eternal them for mankind. the rest two are sort of gao3 xiao4. they are trying to incorporate steven chous' wu2 li2 tou2, from my perspective. and there is the last commenmortion of chinese high khai khis shorts. from next year onwards tchs sec 4s will enter the college with pants liao.

just returned from china embassy for my extention of passport validity. second time already. but i still left some documents. anyone below 21 years old have to present the photocopies of hu4 kou3 ben3, a chinese characteristic document, and birth cirt... i don't know why they set the age mark of 21, since in china anyone above 18 is legally considered as an adult already. hehe, i it seems that i look quite mature, as the officer didn't give me any trouble at first. but i did not leave quickly enough, as i was called back... hehe... so after some bargain she agreed to let me submit the documents four days later when i come back to collect my renewed passport.

haix... just another week passes.