Research and interest of myself

I am the sort of person that learns best visualisations and doing experiments and see the results myself... If I can see the changes that mean it’s a fact, if it’s just hearsay or rumour, don’t expect me to believe it. When the person (or marketeer) demonstrates something to prove his point, then I am convinced that is true. I don't usually buy into sweet talks of the marketers to convince me to buy that product as I know many of them are lying. Of course I got budget constraints lah, I can’t buy any thing I want.

I live for food instead of eat for survival that’s why I have grown a bit plump. I am an avid food taster and has gone to many hawker centres, canteens and fast food restaurant to taster their foods. I also have tried many snacks like potato chips, nuts, twisties and other sort of crisps. I like to try new foods as too much of the same boring old food I have at home bores me. My favourite foods are laksa, mee rubus, hainanese chicken rice, nasi lemak, tuna sandwich, turkey bacon burger, calabee potato chips (spicy), twisties (spicy), Domino’s tortilla corn chips, Indonesian prawn crackers.

Back to research projects, actually I quite like these; I don’t think it’s a waste of time like many of my classmates said. Like what Dr Yang said, researches are rather meaningful and I get to create new compounds which I can market and file for a patent which I can make money from my invention. If there is no research there will be no innovations and we won’t have so many gadgets like laptops, MP3 players, plasma TV, wireless LAN antibiotics, chemotherapy drugs, brain booster programs and so on. I can be as curious as Dr Yang for some subject areas, but due to my fear of failure or lack of time, the passion can die down as quickly as I started. I have been doing many researches for much of my studies, but most of them are theory, statistics or opinion based. Of course I have been surveyed on about my allergies, health status, monetary status and the foods I like. I have also done many independent research in the past like what laptop is the best value for money, what things do I need to build a customized desktop, what other things that are needed for good health (ie optimistic attitude, exercise), how to refine means-testing, what stall sell the food that is the most delicious, what kind of foods is the most healthy Only in this semester I am doing research that is experimental based which is very different from most of the research I done in the past... Actually I prefer experiments much more than theory, I learn so many modules all theory based one, only the chemical process labs I and II and research projects this semester are experimental based modules.

I learn so much theory until I become very blur already, don’t know what the lecturer is talking about. Computing is one of the subjects I hate most because that language is very confusing to me even though good programmers have done many trials and errors to get to their desired programs running without much problems (although still have bugs lah). I only computing program I know reasonably well is Matlab, that is good for Engineering calculations and Process Modelling. There are so many Maths in Chemical Engineering is extremely confusing for me. After the examinations I will forgot 90% of what the lecturer has taught. Only a few lecturers in Chemical Engineering that teach in a way I understand then I remember more of what they have taught me. A lot of modules I just manage to get borderline grades. PS: I HAVE DESCRIBED THEM IN MY PREVIOUS POSTS DONT NEED TO REPEAT AGAIN.

But I still remember the outline of many of the experiments I have done lah... I remember what I see better than what I hear lah. I still remember how to do titration run a fermentator, operate machine panels mixing A and B to get C and so on. I dreamt to be a chemist in the past but I think I chose chemical engineering instead because chemical engineers make more money than chemist does. I think a chemist with a bachelor’s degree earns a starting pay of $2200 a month but chemical engineers usually got a higher starting pay (probably due to their more valuable chemical processing skills). I sort of regret my decisions now as most of the modules I don’t have passion in. I only like subjects like Thermodynamics, Heat and Mass Transfer and Chemical Reaction Engineering which I can apply to chemistry also. I do have passion in chemistry research though; chemistry has been my favourite subject since I studied in secondary school. I am doing research on polymerization/ immobilization of living cells which require a passion for chemistry and polymer science both of which I have interest in. My project supervisor is also one of my favourite lecturers. I haven’t yet planned what to do for the research project but I will think about what to do during Chinese New Year haha, I have no rest during Chinese New Year leh.