There's a Beckam in all of us

(Thanks to NY Times)
I love playing soccer. Richard invited me to play soccer with a bunch of boys yesterday and I've tried to strike the goal three times! I've been playing for a few times now, and it's so much fun to run around and kick the ball on the field with such nice weather. Fuzzy came with us this time and she had fun, too. She said she's coming again next week.
This brings me to the subject: is there a Beckam in all of us? Professional football players train hours and hours everyday, they have started young, and they gain experiences playing in football clubs and the good ones eventually play for the regional teams or national teams. Are they still having fun playing soccer, though? Do they remember why they started to play football in the place? Is it all about money and women? That makes me wonder. I think there is a Beckam in all of us and we can all strike a goal if we are confident. To reach Pele's skill, you need to practice and perhaps do a bit of acrobatic training, but we can all dream about becoming Beckam. Why do people find playing sports fun? It's because your brain releases endorphins when you are exercising.
Gogo plays soccer, too. He plays with a club in Hillcrest. They play in a tournament and have a friendly competition to win a cup. It's good to go out there and enjoy yourself when most of the time we coup up working inside. We should be enjoying the sun and sweat a little.
With this, I give you a shot of Beckam. We salute all the football players, young and old, big and small. We may not be famous today, but we are having so much fun that we don't care.

The day of a scientist

8:06a.m. Turn the light of the office on because nobody else is at work yet. Log onto your computer to check e-mail and Facebook. You have zero e-mails and many facebook messages. Facebook messages are more colourful than your garden.
8:20a.m. You have finished bloggin, or you have finished using computer. Talk to your boss and start your experiment. Alternatively, you have already started your experiment and will go on working until tea time.
9:00a.m. Your experiment is working. You are happy about everything in the world. You haven't noticed the sun outside and the temperature because you are in an air-conditioned room. You take off your gloves to rest for a short while and get back to work.
10:00a.m. You are still too busy to have tea but you decide that the centrifuge can wait. Tea and yogurt are your friends. Talk to your friends so you are relaxed.
10:20a.m. You are back working on your experiment. It's not working, or rather, it's working, but this step is tricky and require both hands. You wonder when lunch time will start. You are getting hungrier and hungrier.
12:03p.m. Lunchtime! You have put the tubes into the centrifuge so you can have a long break. Let the machine do the work for you for a short while. You leave the lab and sit under the sun. The weather is so great. Everyone is smiling. You wonder what you are going to do in the evening. You read a part of the book that you want to finish but can't. You walk around the farm. It's very hot so you need some water.
1:10p.m. Back to work. Everything is going smoothly again. However, one hour later, you find that the yield is very low and back to the drawing board with your boss.
3:20p.m. Discussion with your boss went well so you will continue working because there's nothing wrong with your experiment! Yay! Everything is working, and you can't believe your luck. Tomorrow you will have to repeat a small part of the experiment but you don't have to repeat other parts.
4:49p.m. Waiting for five o'clock. You are tiding up the bench and cleaning up the glassware. Preparing for tomorrow.
5:05p.m. You are in your car, going home. Another successful day in the lab.

Amazing Chinese

Richard is learning Chinese with me, and I have a shortage of good Chinese books annotated with the phonetic symbols. The trouble is, once you learn to read words to a certain point, you don't need to use the phonetic symbols anymore. Most of my books are Chinese books without phonetic symbols, and only the books for children from age 7 to 10 have the phonetic symbols. These books are targeted on this particular age group of children so the subject may not be so interesting for Richard. However, I don't think the content is very important at this stage as we are trying to learn about the tones of different words, and not learning about the word itself too much.
One thing I can do to help Richard is to make a list of Chinese words that are commonly used by us. For example, greetings between people, food, numbers, time, household items, clothes, professions, transportation are the basic word groups that will be important to learn. I can also compile some conversations that are useful, such as asking direction, paying for taxi, bus and train, looking at map, buy and reading a newspaper, and ordering food. It will also be important for Richard to learn the words for emergency, and perhaps some emergency phone number in Taiwan as well. It will be fun to tell him about the culture in Taiwan, and this education is not all about learning the language, but learning about the culture as well. What do people do in Taiwan? How do we learn Chinese at school? There are so many stories behind each word, and he's beginning to recognise the drawings in the words. Chinese words never cease to amaze me: they are so interesting to look at. When you don't know how to write a word, you have to think about the sound, the shape of the thing it is describing, and words are made up by different components as well.
I am learning Chinese again: it's the Amazing Chinese school that I have opened. I am learning new words as well while Richard starts to grapple with the facinating Chinese that I've been using since I was three.

We are all mad scientists (mad about funding)

Hamilton Weather Forecast
Current conditions as of 14 January, 11:32 am NZST

Fine
Pressure: 1020 hPa
Humidity: 67 %
Rainfall: 0 mm (last hr)
Wind: NNE 2 kph
Sunrise: 6:10 am
Sunset: 8:44 pm 20°High: 27° Low: 10°
Today

Fine
High: 27°
Low: 10°
Curtesey to Yahoo weather.

The weather is exceptionally good today. Erin, Kelly and I went for a walk after lunch. We talked about how everyone is after coming back to work in 2008. We are doing new experiments, especially for Erin and Kelly as they are working on something completely new now. We talk about how we shouldn't worry about funding from the government because we have enought to worry about when we are doing our experiments. New Zealand government funds organisation in a funny way, when you write a fancy report about what you are going to do for the next five years, you will get funding; but if you don't know how to write a fancy report to say how much money you will be able to make for the government, then you are out of the game this year: you won't get a cent! Scientists are taking on the responsibility of writing these funding applications, painstakingly making up pages and pages of documents that are read by people who doesn't understand science. These people divide up the big pie and decide who should have funding for their research, and who shouldn't. Science is moving towards commercialization, and people who have good skills are pushed over the edge every year to compete for money here in New Zealand. Experienced workers are forced to leave New Zealand if they don't get funding and turned away by the funders because their proposal is not pretty enough for the funders. You have to wonder how we are going to do good research if all you care about is making money and not quality science. The government, and also the funding agencies, have to understand that fundamental science will give you the tool to make a new product, and people developing the products have to help the scientists to develop the product, not hindering their work by dismissing their proposal for funding. Yes, it is about the quality of research that we are doing, and the quality of research is sometimes not directly linked with how good our research proposal is. Scientific results are often not easy to interpretate or clear cut, they also take time to generate. If the status quo doesn't change, we will lose capability in New Zealand to other countries to do reserach simply because the scientists and technicians have no money for their projects. They can't do what they are trained to do if someone doesn't help them to get materials and equipments. Ultimately, the funders have to spot the group of people who have written up a proposal for the future that is NOT beneficial for the New Zealand general public, NOT beneficial for scientific advancement, or NOT going to help New Zealand to develop in the agricultural sector. The funders have to find the people who sugarcoated their proposal and don't really do quality work. If they are successful, then perhaps the people who are doing quality research will get funding and won't have to feel insecure for another year.

The Amazing Meganame Generator

Fan-Lin Linda Tseng's Aliases

Your movie star name: Chips Chen-rong Shih Your fashion designer name is Fan-Lin Paris Your socialite name is Bubbleblowing Machine Hamilton Your fly girl / guy name is F Tse Your detective name is Turtle Melville High School Your barfly name is Rice Cracker Rum And Coke Your soap opera name is Linda Dragonshout Street Your rock star name is Skittle Light Your Star Wars name is Fansha Tseric Your punk rock band name is The Happy Star

The Amazing Meganame Generator

Projects 2008

I've finally figured out how to knit and purl for my scarf. It's becoming a practice piece. I am not supposed to knit and purl for this scarf, just knit until I make 130 cm of scarf.

I chose blue for my scarf, because it is a nice colour, and it goes with my jeans.

My work colleague is a great knitter, she's been knitting since she was 9. She makes jersey for her boyfriend and now she's making a slipper. You can knit the slipper, and deliberately shrink the material so the slipper is think and fuzzy.

It sounds like a great gift. I am not sure when I can make a jersey, but I am proud that I have finally figured out what is wrong with my scarf. I can make other things like gloves and hat as well in the future. Aunt has left some wool for me from her project, and I've bought some wool from sales. They will be used accordingly in the next few months.

Talking about projects, I should finish my crossstitch butterfly project and cello project. They have been started a while back, and the butterfly one is going well at the moment.

Fuzzyslowmo was making a bag for her friend's birthday in May. She was sewing the bag together now. It's exciting! We can make so many things for ourselves, that's fun.