Eye of the tiger

Risin' up, back on the street
Did my time, took my chances
Went the distance now I'm back on my feet
Just a man and his will to survive

So many times it happens too fast
You trade your passion for glory
Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive

It's the eye of the tiger
It`s the thrill of the fight
Rising up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known survivor
Stalks his prey in the night
And he's watching us all
With the eye of the tiger

Face to face, out in the heat
Hangin' tough, stayin' hungry
They stack the odds still we take to the streets
For the kill, with the skill to survive

It's the eye of the tiger
It`s the thrill of the fight
Rising up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known survivor
Stalks his prey in the night
And he's watching us all
With the eye of the tiger

Risin' up, straight to the top
Had the guts, got the glory
Went the distance, now I'm not gonna stop
Just a man and his will to survive

It's the eye of the tiger
It's the thrill of the fight
Rising up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known survivor
Stalks his prey in the night
And he's watching us all
With the eye of the tiger

The eye of the tiger
The eye of the tiger
The eye of the tiger
The eye of the tiger

Alok Bday Gathering

Alok, you must be damn surprise that we all are coming to celebrate for your birthday right? Haha. Don't cry. We actually wanted to come in to surprise you from behind but end up we have to reserve seatings in n.y.d.c. Well I believe you don't need too many surprise in a day.

Making his birthday wish

This gathering really makes me misses the day back in SUN having small chat(usually stretch for hours) at the nice pantry with lots of biscuits and green tea. Really miss drinking green tea all day at work. Back in school is different from back in SUN. Different type of experience and pressure.

ermmm feeding me the ice-cream. delicious. dunno why it seems a bit gayish to me. all girls out there i'm a straight. Single and Available.

The meal there is alright but the long queuing time is a bit too long. I'm surprised by with the service over there. Seldom get such a high standard of service in Singapore. Willing to take order for us while we are still waiting and serving Qianxia is a free bowl of mushroom soup. Well she so nice to do it else we gentlemen will have to turn into a group of hungry ghost. Her diamond ring is so glaring and big, seem like she got hitched by some rich guy huh. Haha I think will get her wedding invitation anytime soon. Seems like life is getting better for everyone of us. Good thing good thing.

Left to right: H4(handsome 4) - Deepak, ME, Ronny and Zhenwei

The most funny thing is we try too hard to surprise Alok. He seems to be noticing what we are doing. Thanks for not spoiling it. I was there to check out if there's reservation. Negative result. Then QX while secretly went to Swensen to order fiery birthday ice-cream. We foot the bill and get to Swensen with QX there to surprise him. When he is trying to think of something to order. Voila the ice cream with a burning candle is placed right in front of him. Of cos this is also planned.

Seeing his chubby blessed face really give me the impression that he is the most innocent friend I ever had. Just a guy that every girl will think he is really so cute especially with his expression. Verdi is still as quiet and I always joke about his 32 bite to most efficient digestion for food. How about 32 bite of ice-cream? It just make me so satisfied to see his stunned face.

Left to right: Alok, Henry and Verdi

Once again thanks Deepak and Melvin for treating. Will return this favor next time.

The only bad point is that I have to leave early for holding a prof comm meeting later at night. Sorry prof comm guy for delaying for 1hr of your youth, you can have a chance to date me for the next 2 days. ^_^

Melvin and Qianxia

I now pronounce you Steven and Tianhong

It’s a must watch movie for gay….. and non-gay. Highly recommended by me. I was laughing non-stop from the start till the end. This movie just come at the right time to boost my mood. Really thanks to Steven and Yishyuan for making this happen. If only someone else never back out last minute, we will have one more to join us for the movie. No worry, huimin I’m not talking about you.

A not-so-gay movie with a gay-theme. It’s actually more about a partner, friendship, buddy who one is willing to go through lengths for each other. How the gay also should get the respect of others.

The story starts off with Chuck(Adam Sandler) and Larry(James) being best of buddy working in the fire-station. Larry is still grieving over the death of her wife and Chuck is a babe-magnet sleeping and fooling around. So it is really a surprise that he had to turn “gay”.
Well its actually a fake marriage to make use of the loop hole in the law so that Larry can transfer his will over to Chuck if he ever die so that Chuck is able to take care of his kids. As the best buddy and saving his life, Chuck had no choice but to help. They get married and live together so that they can escape from being noticed by the government agency. Too bad, they didn't managed to escape the inspector eyes and was scrutinized closely.

What’s the worst thing that can happen to you when you are bathing(open concept) with gays? I think you get it right. It is when you drop the soap on the floor and have to pick it up! The movie really fully exploit this topic and its so godamn funny when 2 of them drop the soap and are afraid to pick it up. Then enter the most muscular man(the one in matrix – also another gay) who starts bathing, singing and dancing in the middle of the bathroom.
I am really touched by the ending of the story. Partners willing to go to the extend to help each other like what the movie shown is like once in a million. Hmm hopefully I can have one in this lifetime. Well I’m only hoping. From the experience I had now, friendship build in army is still stronger than those in university except a few. There’s too many hi-n-bye fren within university. Everyone cares more of their concern and objective than to build a solid friendship. Well it’s just the facts of life.

I really pity Yishyuan having to endure with our laughter sitting in between. I admit I am laughing really loud in the theatre. It is really a long time since I’m able to laugh my heart out watching a movie. Thinking about it, it's been like the singles always made up the effort for the gathering. I hope the very next time the gathering will get bigger and maybe by then we will each bring our partners along. Tall wishes indeed. haha

click here for the full story

Busy Recess Break

Seems like I haven't been adding new post to my blog. Been kinda busy with my assignment and FYP. Been kinda of sch for the past few days due to the breakdown of FYP server. My other mates are also busily salvaging the server. Hopefully it will be up tonite.

Lucky that I partially solve the problem for BioInfo project. At least dun need to eyeball the desktop everytime. Also lucky to get 3 PCs to do the work for me.

Well new post will be coming tonight. Dear blog , I will feed you with post and pictures for tonight gathering.

Class Gathering

Haha. As what I expected only 5 of us came for the gathering, but enough is being said of those who "fly kite" on us. Well, smaller group makes planning easier and also easier to talk to.

Hmmm our dear Teresa wearing nice nice for the gathering. She's slim down a lot and maybe girls can start asking her for secrets to it. And Doreen has been as usual, din change a lot but maybe being a architect has made her more feminine or "qiao chui" as she always mentioned. Seems like architect's life been pretty stressful. Choon still as handsome as usual. Nothing much of a surprise for me since I've always been in contact with him. The most surprising person for all(except me) should be Ros with his long silky hair. I think he can go to become model for shampoo advertisment.

It took us no time to warm up to each others. And everyone has been enthusiastically catching up with each other. The only down point is that it's not quite what we expected with the quality in Sakae Sushi. But thanks to choon with his defective bowl, we get a 12% discount of the entire meal(almost got cheated cos I never go claim the discount until Teresa remind me of it).

We went to The Coffee Club for some dessert and continue to chit chat while enjoying the mud pie. Quite surprisingly, Yuan Xing message and we all talk to him over the phone. And it's just too bad that many had to leave at 9 while Choon and I went over to Kovan to meet Yuan Xing to chit chat and try out the Selegie beancurd. Haha... that Yuan Xing is still patient and irritating as ever. Keep probing to my personal details.... too bad that he can't fish anything out of my hp. It is only until one then we end the conversation.

Hopefully, we will have the next outing with more people. Preferably when Huilin is back in sg.

Organising for gathering

It's been quite sometime since a class gathering is organised(though there's small gathering here and there). The whole story starts with Kartika planning halfway before stopping it and as a nice person, I decided to take over the responsibility. My way to do it is to send out the invitation and just proceed with enough people.

Imagine having to be a super nice guy and to cater to everyone needs, I must send sms to everyone to get their available date and try to find one day which everyone can come and then confirm with them again. This I find is a super-tiring way of doing things.

Many people have the mentality of if she goes then I will go which I think is quite ermmm.... If you were so close in the first place then I believe you have a lot of mini gathering in between. Ay this is a class gathering.

No wonder so many people hate to organise gatherings and ironically, many people is always lamenting that no one is organising it. But before we lament on such things, we should search our soul for answer.

Bill Gate Harvard Commencement Transcript

Special thanks for Ridzuan to share this great article by Bill Gate in his blog. I am deeply inspired to do things for the unfortunate and grateful to be able to learn wisdom from the founder of Microsoft.

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Remarks of Bill Gates

Harvard Commencement

(Text as prepared for delivery)

President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:

I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”

I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.

I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed.

But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.

Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn’t even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about getting up in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.

Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.

One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.

I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready, come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.

What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege – and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.

But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret.

I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.

I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.

But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

It took me decades to find out.

You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you’ve had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.

Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?

For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.

During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United States.

We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren’t being delivered.

If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”

So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: “How could the world let these children die?”

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

But you and I have both.

We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.

I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: “Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end – because people just … don’t … care.” I completely disagree.

I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.

All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.

The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.

To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.

Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.

But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: “Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We’re determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.”

The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths.

We don’t read much about these deaths. The media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away.

If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.

Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks “How can I help?,” then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.

Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it’s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.

The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.

Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.

The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.

You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government.

But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.

I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person’s life – then multiply that by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I’ve ever been on – ever. So boring even I couldn’t bear it.

What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software – but why can’t we generate even more excitement for saving lives?

You can’t get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that – is a complex question.

Still, I’m optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that’s why the future can be different from the past.

The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a chance we’ve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.

Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”

Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.

The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.

The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.

At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don’t. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion — smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.

We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.

Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.

What for?

There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?

Let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:

Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?

Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure?

Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?

These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.

My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”

When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.

In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.

Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.

You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.

Knowing what you know, how could you not?

And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.

Good luck.

No tix for Ministerial Forum

Sigh.... Can't get the ticket to attend Ministerial Forum featuring my "Grandpa" Lee Kuan Yew. When I reach there to queue for the tix after my gym, the queue is like super long. No time to collect with meeting in 10 mins time and tutorial in an hour time.

I think he's one of the most outstanding man for the century together with Mandela Nelson. Been cracking my head for the past few days to come out with intelligent question to ask him during the forum.

The question I've thought of is more of a social issue which had been haunting developing country including China. Singapore as a non-welfare state has created a lifestyle that people will make a living even after he retired. With the trend of keeping a family small to have a better life, however, this will create a problem for the next generation where a lot of couple will be suay suay support 4 parents including their own. With the rising cost of living, inflation, medical care and housing while our salary is not able to keep up with the pace. Many family can only survive with both wife and husband out to work. So if this trend continue, what's the current take of the government to prevent this from happening. And what is the highest GST to be expected as a non-welfare state.

Anyone going to the forum, help me ask k? Cos I'm interested in knowing what MM Lee take for it and I'm pretty sure this has been thought long and hard a long time ago.

Out of BPC

Hmmm after going through the list for quite some time, I still didn't manage to find our team name there. Seems like we're out after first round. Did I regard this a failure? Nope. I guess everyone has done our best and if only we have the chance to go for it the next year.... Albert, you still can try your luck next year. For the others, maybe we should have joined last year.

Just when I thought I can have a fruitful last year in NTU but life doesn't always turn out to what one wants right? Doesn't feel good about it but there's nothing we can do. At least I've tried and give my best. No regrets! I'm sure there's something better in store for all of us. Cheer up guys!

All the best to the teams that go through and enjoy the process.

Yata Yata

Yata yata. Finished the whole season of Heroes in 3 days.

Heroes is such a great drama serial. I am totally owned by it for the last 3 days. Just finished the last episode minutes ago and I can't help but to blog about it. The storyline is great with good caste of actors. It keep me addicted episode after episode. Every time I'm at the ending of the episode, it will tempt me to come back for the next one. Holy shiitake I am losing sleep but cant help to watch the next one. Now I'm suffering a severe lack of sleep and a deep eye bag on my face right now.

Heroes Theater Trailer

I love Hiro(Masi Oka) the character soooo much. He's so cute and make me laugh whenever he tried to teleport and tried to introduce himself like this "I'm Hiro Nakamura and I bend space and time" to others. Seems like the last episode show signs that there will be season 2. Can't wait to watch Heroes season 2. I've so many questions running in my head now. Who is the boogey man? Is Sylar dead? How about the Pretrelli brother? Who the hell is the mom of Petrelli acting dumb at the first few episodes and suddenly so smart and dark the second half? Is the second episode going to start with Hiro in the Japan AD 1600? Good news is Heroes will be shown in NBC in exactly 11 days. Yata yata.

Heroes Season 2 Trailer

More good news for me when Alan told me the veno application is up and running. Thanks Alan!

Yeap now it's finally time to get back to study. Gambatte Tianhong, you're the hero and you're going to save the world! (Running high after finish watching with severe lack of sleep)

Heroes Season 2 Promo

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Here's the official website for Heroes. You can download wallpapers, widgets and commentaries on Heroes.
http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/

Result of BPC postpone

Damn sian. The result will be released in 19th Sept instead. For now let us just pray. You can check your email or http://www.ntu.edu.sg/bpc

Finally seeing the light

For the past 2 weeks, I have been reading and reading my BioInfo notes. Bobian lah been missing 2 out of the 4 lectures. I guage my understanding is around 40% of what is in the notes. Huat ar. It is even so when the lecturer is speaking in "French" and "Indian". Gambatte, I will survive!!!

It is really fortunate to have Angela(nice and pretty assistant suprv) to be working in the same lab for FYP. I'm sooooo lucky to get her to explain what is needed for the project (my proj mate is hustling me to get more tips out from her). She enlightened me with a lot of things I didn't quite catch it. Heng ar. It will save me a lot of time trying to understand the notes by myself. ^_^ will treat her coffee next time to compensate for taking up so much of her time.

Basically the project is quite simple but tedious. According to Angela, it'd take 2 weeks to finish blasting the human genes with vibrio vulnificus. In short, I will use VV to represent vibrio vulnificus. Our project focus on getting a drug to fight against v.vulnificus. It is quite a simple series of steps you need to do to find the cure.

1. Download the blast tool, human 23 chromosomes and VV
2. Do a BlastP on genes of VV against human genes (blast is a tool to find similarities between genes and/or protein)
3. Filter the genes that are of high similarities (to ensure that the drug will not bind to human genes which is toxic to human bodies)
4. Using the genes that are filtered and blast it with DEG(database of essential genes) to find the similar genes(DEG is a list of genes with the cure). Where to get the file to blast it offline?
5. Find the similar genes and you will find the drug that will be useful to the genes and not cause any harm to the human bodies.

Useful links
http://www.biologycorner.com/resources/codon.gif
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/blast/documents/blast.html

Genome proj for Vibrio Vulnificus
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=genomeprj&cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=349

note: remember to do a formatdb before blasting and unfortunately you cannot apply wildcards on it, which means you must specify each file directly.

p.s: it's so lucky for us to have only 2 chromosomes to work with but on the other hand we got 6 person(1 more than normal group size). so how are we going to make it look good for a 6 men project?

Waiting for BPC prelim result

Tomorrow is the day to know the result for the prelims whether we are in or out of the competition. Lets pray that we can whack all the way in and get the grand price of S10K, which is really good money $_$. Albert, Ching and Huimin are you with me? :-)

BPC : business plan competition

Interesting articles

Here's some of the recent interesting articles to share with all. Sheesh I don't know a air ticket from SIA or a bra can cost a HDB. How about I make a golden undies. Any takers? Nor did I know we can generate energy out of algae or by errr creating a tornado. But I thought Google Earth is old photos patched up together. Man, I dunnoe they can do a live search of a human with it.

1. $250,000 for a Singapore Airbus ticket
2. Searching lost adventurer fosset with Google Earth
3. $108k bra (man, this is serious stuff)
4. Hazardous Crocs
5. Celebrity Fights at VMAs
6. Mac endorsing campaigns to prevent climate change
7. Energy from algae and hurricane
8. Thought control wheel chair
9. Dirty secret of campus credit card

Busy Sunday

It's been quite a Sunday for me. Last minute meet up with dear Reuben to go shopping in Orchard. Haha, he is still as dark as ever. You may just mistaken him for an Indian. Shop around with him and just watching him spend the money really makes me cringe a bit. Thinking back, I should cringe even more as I spent 2.6k on a MacBook itself.

Reuben is a nice fellow with obsession in sports mainly dragonboat, it is where we get to develop strong friendship in NYP. I'm amused by his dislike for eating pork because they live in shiitake environment (they don't get to choose where they live aight?). But he got the point too that we should have less pork because they are living in really unhealthy environment(eating their own shit etc).

I'm fascinated by his design and musical talent. His piano pieces is great to listen to but sometimes he just get too fast and furious with his piano keys. Let's just pray for his piano. I just challenge him to play the bumblebee song and hopefully he's not losing sleep over it. Here is his piano pieces which I find it really good. Really regret I didn't get to learn piano when I'm young! Ok la no piano at least learn how to play recorder. LOL

Meet up with Zooey after that. She's still the same old person. Never change at all!!! People who knows her for as long as I do will agree with it. Seems like working adult is under lots of pressure to deliver. She's too kind on one hand that she literally don't know how to reject request by other people. I use to be like her, always accede to other request even if it is me who have to sacrifice the most. Hopefully she will learn that it's not possible to make everyone happy and friends around her cut her some slack k?

Useful post when I become a Dad

Just finish reading a post from DumbLittleMan and find this article particularly useful when I become one(a dad in the future). It'd be great to come back to this(if i'm still blogging) to remind myself of what needs to be done when I get really frustrated with my kids. I certainly hope I can be a cool loving dad in the future without using any punishment.

Here are some advice from DLM

• Have a plan before hand
• Learn the skill
• Take a deep breathe
• Walk away
• Seek first to understand
• Laugh it out

Check out the full article here.

Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girl

I heard this song over BBC radio on my MacBook and fell in love with it. Recommend this song to all my dear friends out there. Anyone know where to get the mp3?

Pavarotti is dead

The world's most famous tenor is dead. It is quite surprising for me as its like I just saw him on TVs. Life is so fragile so let us appreciate what is given to us even more. The funeral service of opera singer Luciano Pavarotti is to take place in his home town in northern Italy. Click here for full report.

Borders Discount Till 20 Sept

Check out the offer here.

Borders Voucher 5-7 Sept Only

Borders voucher at 20% off for teachers and students from 3-7 Sept only. Click here for more details.

Business2.0 closes

I am saddened by the news of it. It is only recently that get to lay my hands on this super informative magazine of the latest trend in IT industry. Especially their weekly session on disruptive technology is such a great treat to read! For the entire report click here.

EnI photos

Check out the pictures I took with Xiu Zhen. She make me look so good in the photo and also MP Teo Ser Luck and Darryl David. Of cos there are many many entrepreneurs worth mentioning especially Annie Yap from GMP for remembering me after so long. Special thanks to Neo, Xiu Juan, Ridzuan, Steven, Cherry, Sze Yong, Zhou Jing and Yuan Mang for making this event such a success. Check out other photos here. You can also read the post of it here.

Firearm in Orchard

Heard this radio news that a NSF was caught in Orchard with Sar21 and live rounds. This is a perfect example of when emotional part of the brain override the rational part as written in my previous post on Practical Intelligence.

For me, I really pity the guy for he is just 1 month away from ORD! His future is gone just in a day. This really give me a wakeup call on how 1 day can change a person totally. On on part I hope that the judge can be lenient on him but on the other hand, it really freak me out to know someone in orchard is carrying a weapon.

Interesting articles to read

Here's some of the interesting articles I find it worth reading

1. Blogs will change your business
2. Mentally ill suffering neglect
   
3. How six sigma changes Starwood
4. World is getting flatter with new high speed line
5. Google becoming VCs?
6. Radical Collaboration by IBM
7. Desktop takes centerstage again

30 apps for Mac you should have

Thanks choon for giving me a link of 30 useful apps for mac user. This list is definitely helpful to a newbie like me to explore the capabilities of what I can do with it now. Check out @ link.

Windows apps on Mac

Everyone check this out. I am simply blown away by this product called vmware. So glad I'm a mac user now and there's no reason not to be one. Here is also a report by BusinessWeek about the product. Seems like its the latest darling in town.