It's 2012! I'm back!

Rainbow on one beautiful summer evening at University of Tasmania

It's been almost 2 months since I came back from Australia. I did a research attachment at University of Tasmania for almost 3 months. It has been very fruitful. Now I'm writing my thesis and manusript.

There were quite a few interesting seminars recently. I've presented my PhD project to the School of Bioscience and Biotechnology, FST, UKM. I've attended PGM Seminar and AGM meeting 2012. There's a seminar on indoor air quality next week. And PGM is organizing a Plant Breeding Seminar in July this year. Malaysian Society of Applied Biology Symposium will be held in June this year. All sounds exciting but my priority is submitting thesis in August. Will keep you posted.

P.S. If you know any manuscript writing workshop in an island or near the beach, let me know. :p

Read more...

September 2011

3!!! That's the number of blogs I posted this year. What happened? I don't really know. I guess I'm busy with my project and editorial assistant tasks. Less traveling this year because it's my final year. There is a significant pressure and concern to finish my PhD in the coming semester. Luckily, I have extra 2 months time because the next (or current) semester was postponed from July to September. I hope to finish all my analysis by end of the semester and start completing my thesis and manuscript. Wish me luck!

What else is new?! Well, my long awaited publication in full text pdf is finally out last week (see link). I was very happy that the manuscript was accepted after one revision. Even happier to be the first one to publish among my peers. Sometimes it doesn't matter how fast you write, it's how fast you publish. I've started preparing for the manuscript since early last year. I spent a lot of time analyzing the data, RE-analyzing the data, draft the manuscripts and even more time revising it because it takes a week for my co-supervisor to read and another week for me to revise it and send it back. For 10 weeks, I was anxiously waiting for reviews. Once published, checking for number of views, comments and citations. It has been a good experience.

Recently, I attended a lecture and academic writing workshop by Prof Dr. Peter Brimblecombe. The lecture that focused on air pollution is eye-opening while the writing workshop is the best I have ever attended. I have written some notes and hope to post them soon. Keep your fingers crossed!

Read more...

Back from ETNA Summer School

I was away to attend the 3rd ETNA Summer School in Sofia, Bulgaria. My 10 days stay in Sofia has been very pleasant. Besides learning a lot of new things, I made lots of new friends. :)

The ETNA summer school is sponsored by European Union to provide training and networking opportunity to young researchers. The application is open for PhD students and post-doc early in their career. I stumbled upon the website last month and I thought I will give it a try. This year focus is plant genomics and bioinformatics in plant breeding. The school invited speakers from all over Europe and organized practicals for the the "omic" technologies. Travel and accommodation is sponsored. The next summer school will focus on system biology. Application is open in April next year. So keep your eyes open!

Read more...

Can't believe half year gone!

July 2010 marks the beginning of a new semester. Time flies. Lately, I noticed two questions that I was regularly asked: 1) How's your project going?; 2) When do you finish your PhD? *Sigh. Things that I should have done 3 months ago is still hanging in my list. Looking back, it's not a bad first half of the year!

A few days ago, a new desktop arrived in my lab. Finally! I had to install it twice because I couldn't partition the hard disk correctly. There is no such thing as root and swap space the last time I remember! Then, I spent two days updating the files, fixing the screen resolution and installing software. Problems never fail to arise when I use Linux. Next, I'm planning a Linux introduction workshop for my labmates.

Today it's the last day of Kolokium FST. It's an annual event where the final year postgrad student present their work. Coincidently, there is a seminar on marine biology and also one held in Inbiosis. Less people attended it compared to last year. This is a great opportunity to shamelessly helped myself to the food.

Read more...

It's 2010! I'm back!

Sunset at Tian'anmen

It's been two weeks since I came back. Haven't check my blog until now. I'm sure somebody will be curious where I went for the past four months. I was traveling. I spent almost three months doing an attachment in China. Mainly bioinformatics analysis.

Hmmm... what should I write in the first post of 2010?! A notification that I'm back ofcourse. :p Considering how busy I am lately, I don't think I have much time to update my blog regularly. It's a pity. Oh well, I guess I will just make a quick post everytime I think of something.

Read more...

My AH1N1 false alarm

AH1N1 has been around for a few months. There are over 2000 cases in Malaysia with 43 fatal cases. Some people take it for granted and some are really paranoid. And I fall in the middle category: always keep myself up to date and living my normal life. Some of the schools and universities were closed for a short period of time. I wonder when will UKM suffer the same fate. Please don't let it happen before I finish my work!

I was sick 2 weeks ago. One morning I woke up with fever and an infected throat. A few days before that, I met a few overseas friends, took the ktm and went to several public places. I'm at high risk of being infected by AH1N1. The two questions playing in my mind were: should I go to lab or see a doctor straight away. I'm too busy to be ill but I didn't want to put anyone else at risk. In the end, I dragged myself to the clinic. To my relief, the doctor concluded I have normal fever and assured me there's nothing to worry about. He then gave me a surgical mask (it's orange!) and taught me how to use it. Can you imagine my shock when I found out that I've been wearing it wrongly all this time!

When my fever was gone the next day, I went back to lab and joked about how I was overreacting. A week later, I get a text message from a friend. Asking if I have AH1N1 (in indirect manner) because my friend was having fever. Now I know I'm not the only person overreacting. :p

I noticed more and more people are wearing surgical masks in public places. I think it funny since that type of mask won't protect you from the virus. The doctor's advice is to wear mask if you have coughs. The best way to reduce your risk is to travel less. Speaking of traveling, I'm going to travel a lot starting october. And I won't let AH1N1 stop me from enjoying the much anticipated time of my life. :D

On wednesday, I attended an eminent speaker lecture on AH1N1 research organized by MGRC. It's an very interesting talk. Stay tuned!

Read more...

Some recent thoughts (July 09)

Wow... I can't believe that I haven't posted anything for the past two weeks. Have been spending my weekends with friends and family. That explains why I don't have time to write a nice review.

Two weeks ago, I attended a nice talk on how to succeed in your research. Although I have heard most of the things, it's good being reminded again and get motivated. I also learn a great deal more from the experienced speaker. I weren't sure if this will be enough for a post. A few days after that, Fejes.ca wrote a similar post about What I Wish People Had Told Me When I Started Graduate Studies. What a coincident! I guess topic like this is never late.

I'm currently reading a book entitled "Who wants to become a scientist?" by Nancy Rothwell. It's recommended by a friend/mentor. I have found lots of good pointers after a few pages. Hope to finish the book real soon because I have to return it back to my friend. Sigh... if only PTSL has the book.

Recently, I have this heavy feeling sink in my heart when someone ask me how is my progress. To tell the truth, it's not going at the pace I want. Just waiting... wanting... ranting. After reading the book, I realized this is a common problem among young researchers. When we were undergrads, our projects are small and easy to achieve in the given time frame. As we take on a larger projects for several years, we face many problems like not getting results for a long period of time. We are discouraged because something that used to be so enjoyable turned out to be so frustrating. This is something that I wish people would have warn me about and offer solutions.

Read more...

Recent thoughts June 09

Time flies...another semester has passed. Felt like my work is still where it started. Sigh. However, I'm happy I have achieved some goals to make up for my slow progress. One of them is learning Python. Two weeks ago, I dual-boot Ubuntu and it's now up and running. I found a really good introduction website to Beginning Python for Bioinformatics. Have been playing around with it the whole day. They say programming language is like normal language. You need to practise often. I have a good feeling that I can write scripts very soon if I keep this up. :-)

I'm looking forward to a busy but fulfilling week ahead.

Read more...

The blog hits 153 in one month

Ever since I put up the visitor location hit counter a month ago. I have been watching the number of visitors go up beyond my expectation. There has been 153 hits for the past month (an average of 5 visits per day). :-) Very encouraging to me. I wonder if most of the hits come from Pulau Redang and Taman Negara posts. I do hope that the readers can post more comments on the reviews I wrote because I'm not always right. Thanks again for visiting.

Read more...

Some recent thoughts (April 09)

Ta da! Finally, I got a new laptop! (Wait, no picture?!) Ever since my 3-year-old laptop met its worst enermy (water!), I have been borrowing sister's laptop. I spent almost a whole day installing softwares and updates. Now it's running smoothly. To my suprise, I don't feel any difference in running 64-bit Vista. I hope to run some data analysis with my new baby. Gotta start using Linux soon.

And a bit more on SOLiD... This week two SOLiD application specialists paid a visit to my lab. They are eager to assist SOLiD users in data analysis and publications. We definitely don't see others offering the same assistance. NGS is always evolving and very soon what we are doing now is outdated tomorrow. It's important to publish a paper FAST.

I just attended a scholarship interview yesterday. Only 5 mins is given for the presentation. The interview is over in a blink of an eye. I'm gonna stay positive whatever the outcome is. *Jason Mraz singing Make It Mine in the background*

The weather is so hot lately. I can feel the heat in the evening. Two weeks ago I visited a forest plantation in Johor. Here's what our fellow FRIM forester thinks about the weather:

”No comment"

Read more...

A blogger's problem

When I first started blogging two months ago, I put lots of efforts in customizing my blog. If you haven't notice, the template theme is green, the nice tropical calender and the digital clock. It wasn't until recently, I noticed all the features are similar to other blogs. Malaysia4biotech.blogspot is using the same template as mine (Wait, it was there before?). It seems the same calender is used by another blogger (Worst! She's from UKM as well). There are just too many coincidences, isn't it?

Well, it's time to change a new template. Thinking of expanding the width of the blog post too. Hope I don't mess things up like the last time I tried. Hehe... stay tuned!

Also, I'm thinking of changing the blog's tagline. Just "Almost everything about forest & biotechnology". Throw away the word "Malaysia". And probably add "genomics" since my main interest is in plant genomics. Thus, "Almost everything about forest, biotechnology and genomics. ". Suddenly it sounds a bit too much. :p Any idea?

Read more...

Jom Taman Negara, Jom Merapoh!

It’s been a week since my last post. Last week, I was busy solving Real-time PCR mystery. I spent my weekend at Taman Negara and only arrived home at 11pm last night. Despite all that, I came to work this morning.

The scenic view of Taman Negara Pahang on the way to Kuala Juram
The Taman Negara trip was awesome! Being the oldest protected forest area in Malaysia, it’s a MUST-GO for every nature lovers. There are two main entrances to Taman Negara Pahang: Kuala Tahan and Sg Relau via Merapoh. The entrance we used is Merapoh, a small town north of Pahang which is surrounded by limestone caves. It offers most scenic and tranquil experience to visitors.

Group photo of iClub Taman Negara Camp participators
This trip will not be made possible without iClub. iClub is a new club in UKM and the only one sponsored by an industrial company, GE or General Electric. The club is open to all UKM student regardless of races. iClub is different from other environmental clubs because it organizes various leadership, communication and motivation events to benefit UKM graduates. I’ll keep posting their upcoming activities so stay tuned!

Besides that, this trip is also sponsored by PERHILITAN. Perhilitan has provided us help and accommodation. Although they have limited resources, they are very kind to assist us in every way to make this trip enjoyable. The problems they faced are little funding, lack of publicity and limited staff. iClub has to come up with ways to promote this place and to create public awareness. Therefore, this week I’ll be sharing my experience in promoting Merapoh as the choice of entrance for Taman Negara Pahang. Just look out for many more interesting pictures.

Jom Taman Negara, Jom Merapoh!

Read more...

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…

Read more...

On Vacation

This blog will be inactive for a few days because I'll be on vacation. Finally!!!

I’m going to Redang! I was lucky to find really cheap flight tickets to KT and got an early bird 3D2N snorkeling package promotion. I have been waiting for my next snorkeling trip since I returned from Sabah for more than a year. Getting tan is the only thing I don’t look forward in this trip. I also hope to write a nice post on turtle conservation in Pulau Redang that I have heard so much recently.

Read more...