First mission accomplished :-)

First of all, thanks to “tan sri” for his email, as well as his concern and care on “puan sri”. Therefore, my message to tan sri:" good work, keep it up and get your job done." I really appreciate.

As I promise to tan sri, I should post some latest news about me, now share some “hot” and “fresh” story about me. Well, today was a great day for me, despite a lot of bad news “de-motivate” previously. I just completed the first assessment in MRes, which is presentation skill evaluation, and I got a band score of A3, and this is very good, according to my professor.

At Glasgow University, marking schedule is very details. An “A (excellent)” can be subdivided in to A1 (highest),A2,A3,A4,A5 and B1,B2,B3 (very good) then C1,C2,C3 (good), D1, D2,D3 (satisfactory), E1,E2,E3 (weak), F1,F2,F3(poor), G (very poor) and H (fail).

Well, description of A grade:

Outstanding in every way and demonstrating a high level of consistency, with all work in suitable scientific format. Project work demonstrates independence of though and all aspects completed to a thoroughly professional standard with data quality and analysis in all essentials of a level expected of refereed publication. No essential information or analysis missed.

Other areas of work show evidence of extensive critical reading and the ability to synthesise the important aspects into comprehensive and coherent text. Work contains only unimportant (trivial) or grammatical errors. Both quantity and quality of work excellent within the time constraints. Conclusions are placed in suitable context as well as summarising details. Truly exceptional work indicating that the student would be an excellent candidate for progression to a research degree.

Anyway, this presentation only carries 8% of the entire master degree, I treat it as a kick start to motivate me, and work hard for the remaining assessments as graduated with a MRes in distinction (grade A1-A5) is the only way for me to stay.

Basically, in the month of December I have to complete RNA analysis (about 400 samples) and follow by RT-PCR, cDNA synthesis and qPCR then only can get a set of gene expression data. Without these, I can’t interpret and evaluate the protocols I proposed last time. Some more, I have 2-weeks winter holiday break soon, so must finish it asap. Hopefully, can begin new batch earlier next year. Other than that, another task awaiting me, as I have to prepare an essay on “ubiquitination and plant innate immunity” which is due in the first week of January 09, I got no idea about this at the moment, something about signalling pathway and gene regulation. Since this knowledge important for second stage of my research, so “die die” also must settle it and again—get a great grade.

First day of December wasn’t good for me…very “lui”/ (doing ashamed thing). Some real examples as follow:-

1. Winter; walk on icy road, definitely made me felt clumsy

2. Mess out RNA extraction, as I forgot to vortex them at the last stage (after dissolve them with RNA-treated a.k.a DEPC water)—sorry if you guys don’t understand, quite technical. So have to repeat and completed at 9pm

3. Went to supermarket, after paid, forgot to pack sugar (1 kg) I bought, and it cost me £0.79

4.Burned pizza, want to have a simple dinner also cant…makai (vulgar word,)..really black a.k.a. “hak zai” (literally bad luck), luckly I prepared a portion only, so consider "brown", not trully black a.k.a. "hak zai"

To show how “black” I am, the next day finised dinner I went to dustbin and took out the burned pizza..so feel free to check the picture below