Some recent thoughts (Mac 09)

Ever since I came back from my vacation, I have been so busy. Suddenly it seems like a bad time to go on holidays. The trip is tiring… I don’t know why. It took me two days to recover from the fatigue.

On Thursday, I joined a visit to Asiatic Centre for Genome Technology (ACGT) in Technology Park Malaysia. ACGT is a BioNexus company under Genting Group that specialize in oil palm genome sequencing and other related research. Besides oil palm, ACGT is also interested in Jatropha genome sequencing, matagenomics analysis and biomarkers discovery for crop improvement. I’m curious about ACGT because the company has been relatively mouth shut about the outcome of their oil palm genome sequencing in Biomalaysia 2008 conference. Naturally, we would expect MPOB to be the first in oil palm genome sequencing but we were wrong. During the visit, we were impressed by their facilities such as re-sequencing pipeline using PCR robots, five ABI 3730xl DNA Analyzer, a nice computer cluster called AGNES and in-house databases with updates once every 2 weeks. The company will be sending a few staff to J Craig Venter Centre each year for internship in bioinformatics. How cool! If you are interested to join the company, it’s not too late. Job vacancies are available, just email hrad@asiatic.com.my.

I have been keeping an eye on high performance laptops lately. Can’t wait for the next PC fair. Haven’t you heard about my laptop tragedy?! Long story cut short: laptop + water = it’s time to get a new one! Hahaha…