It's How You Use It

Jake Shimabukuro playing George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on a ukelele.



Most impressive.

Science In Singapore: Part I

I still remember the smell of the medicated oil and the whirring sound of the generator.

The year is 1984.

I was a little boy accompanying my grandmother to a mobile clinic providing traditional Chinese medical services such as Tui Na and acupuncture to the elderly.

It was just a simple van packed with various medicated oils and powered by a portable generator. My grandmother suffered from chronic joint aches and was consulting the TCM practitioner there. So I sat on a stool at the car park and waited while she was being treated.

I could not have known at the time, but right then two very powerful people were having an important discussion. The Prime Minister of Singapore Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and the Director of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge Dr. Sydney Brenner had this conversation -

Dr. Brenner: "You must have an institute of molecular cell biology where people can be trained in research. You can't do biotechnology without it."

Mr. Lee: "We are a nation of technicians."

Dr. Brenner: "If you do not take up this path, you will remain a nation of technicians forever."

The Institute of Molecular Cell Biology (IMCB) was established three years later with little fanfare, signaling a modest beginning to Singaporean science. This new institute provided job opportunities for an early batch of Singaporean scientists.

One of them (who is now an associate professor) once lamented to me that research positions practically did not exist prior to IMCB. He worked as a manager in a media company before an opportunity arose to do science at IMCB, and he has been doing research ever since.

While IMCB and the universities have been steadily producing good science for years, the Life Science endeavour really took off only at the turn of the century.

With the completion of the American-led Human Genome Project just on the horizon, in Sept 2000 the chairman of the National Science and Technology Board (NSTB) Mr. Philip Yeo announced that the 21st century would be a "biocentury" filled with exciting new opportunities for bio-industry.

The life sciences will be the next wave in Singapore's economy. Local universities began to offer life science degree programs in 2002. Construction began in late 2001 on a new, multi-million dollar research complex called Biopolis, slated for completion in 2003.

There was much excitement among the general public about this new vision.

But I was rather worried. Around that time, the dot.com boom has enticed many young people to take up computing and engineering, only to face unemployment when the bubble burst. Will the life science endeavour suffer a similar fate?

To be continued...

Vending Machines And Expensive Restaurants

We have two vending machines in our institute, one dispenses cold drinks, and the other dispenses snacks such as potato chips and cup noodles.

Every Wednesday they get replenished. By Tuesday, they are nearly empty, especially the snacks machine. It is especially hard to get your hands on a cup noodle since they are immediately snapped up once they have been refilled.

As a related observation, the Biopolis complex has a number of pricey restaurants which are nearly empty every day, while the cafeteria is packed with people, sometimes with lines that are more than ten people long per stall.

Many others rather eat at the food centre at Holland Drive. In fact I know that one of our deputy directors likes to eat Yong Tau Hoo (Stewed Tofu) from the Holland market.

People, regardless of nationalities, prefer not to eat at the fancy eateries here. Of course it's no surprise that cheap food is more popular. But the expensive restaurants are really deserted. I often wonder how long they will survive. Some eateries have already closed not long after opening.

I also wonder who decided to put those expensive restaurants here? There must have been some misunderstanding going on. Of the approximately 2000 staff in Biopolis, only a handful of people are rich enough to eat at such places regularly.

Most people are "salarymen" getting by on a few thousand a month. Students are even poorer. The market size for expensive restaurants is already tiny.

To make things worse, scientists are not in the habit of spending frivolously. I know a senior scientist who wears a black plastic Casio watch to work every day.

Years of living on very little have taught them to be cautious with money. Especially foreign scientists whose home countries were not that generous with science budgets.

So, unlike business people or administrators or lawyers who drive big cars and live large, even top scientists watch their expenditure closely.

And the biggest problem about putting fancy restaurants in a science complex?

Time.

Scientists don't have it.

One of our group leaders doesn't even eat lunch until recently. He once said that time should be spent doing experiments rather than having lunch.

I know he is exaggerating, but it is true that most people would rather quickly grab a sandwich or a packet of rice and head back to the lab. It's hard to imagine anyone having the time to leisurely chit-chat for hours in a fancy restaurant while your experiments are brewing in the lab.

Which is why vending machines, for all the cardboard nutrafood that they provide, are still so popular.

Somebody must really be disconnected with reality.

Animusic

Cool shit.


Pipe Dream

By Animusic.

What A Week

I just recovered from a serious bout of food poisoning. Body aches and diarrhoea for a few days.

It was very painful.

Now I just generally feel weak, but it's not just the illness - truth be told my health hasn't been that great these few years.

While resting at home, I was thinking about Fresh Brainz and noticed that this blog has become more impersonal, obsessed with top ten lists and drifted gradually towards American rather than Singaporean concerns.

By omitting the local environmental and cultural context in Singapore, I have completely failed to communicate just how strange and novel the nascent scientific endeavour is to our tropical island nation.

I plan to rectify this.

To reveal the hopes, the excitement, the triumphs, the worries, anxieties and disappointments of the pioneering batch of Singapore life scientists in all its genuine, weathered colour.

Presented in the same chirpy language style, as always.

Only here, at freshbrainz.com