Vol.3(5)

So, the result came out as 1:2 for Eng:Ger, which is totally different from my prediction. Well, the game might have progressed as I imagined, but a little bit of "surprise" factor could easily turn the game around. As I said, England had created plenty of good but hard to score chances. We had glimpses of Micah Richards' brilliance for Lampard's first goal. It's just too bad Lahm couldn't cancel him, if I guessed correctly that Lahm was the left back with Arne Friedrich on the right. As I predicted, Lehmann was on-form to save point-blank efforts from Owen. But the "surprsie" factor here was that the usually very steady Robinson (England's goalkeepper) could make mistake. Another surprise package was Christian Pander from FC Schalke, who scored the long-range winner. In conclusion, as a product of Klinsmann's regime, Löw continues to build a young German team with discipline, resilience, and confidence in scoring.

On the road to Euro 2008 Final, I am pretty optimistic that Germany will win the group. For Czech Republic (14p) to overtake Germany (19p), it requires Czech Republic to win against Germany on the German tuft, and Germany to lose another game in the remaining five matches. The following video is specially for the babes. Opps...for the ladies. It is a video of the hottie in die deutsche Nationalmannschaft^^

Vol.3(4)

Germany will play against England at the Wembley stadium in London later tonight. As a hard core supporter of die Nationalmannschaft, I would like to comment a bit about the supposed-to-be highlight friendly of the evening. To the frustation of mine as well as of the other football fans, the injury lists for both teams are too long and with the absence of stars/regulars/experienced, the game could lose its motivation and spark.

From the starting lineup, England seems to have more depth than Germany. Although the news claimed that England is lacking options at the back, they have just enough players to fill in the back four: with Terry and Rio as the center back, and the new "Wunderkind" Micah Richards and Ashley Cole covering the flanks. Germany will have their usual "steady" back four, though it would be delighted to see Jansen adding some impulse down the left flank.

The midfield is where England has the upper hand against Germany, and I think this is the deciding factor for the prediction of a final score of 1-0 in favour of England. In parallel to the German absentees that include Ballack, Schweinsteiger, Frings, and Borowski, England will be without Gerard and Hargreaves. However, it is not as equal as it looks, since Carrick will be able to fill in the role of Hargreaves, while Lampard will "reasonably" spearhead the attack, with Joe Cole ready to reinforce Lampard's duty, if he is not delivering "again", who knows? Besides, they have effective subs like Wright-Phillips and Beckham. What about Germany?! Schneider, Hitzlsperger, Odonkor? That's all?! I have watched Hilbert playing before: he is just too inexperienced.

While England has lost Rooney, Germany will be missing both Podolski and Klose. Luckily, the most effective striker in Germany's recent games is Kuranyi. However, he needs de facto a provider like Schweinsteiger or Lahm, and screener like Klose. On the other hand, Owen could prove to be a lethal sub in this game. In conclusion, this German lineup will find it very difficult to gain possession and deliver crosses into the box; while England will see their chances of scoring but fail to score plenty against the German defense and upbeat keeper.

Verdict - Eng:Ger = 1:0

Vol.3(3)

It was a sunrise viewed at 4095m above sea level, on May 12th morning. This series of photos were not very well taken, as I was still new with dSLR. This is my third times summiting Mt. Kinabalu, which is situated at the heart of my lovely homeland Sabah, Borneo. It was some sorts of like graduation trip for some of us. There were eight of us: three Singaporeans with the rest from Peninsular Malaysia. It was a super saving and enjoyable trip that included countless hours of "Call of Duty II" in cybercafe and a day-trip to the beautiful Manukan Island, don't you guys agree?

As I said, it was my third time. I used to boast about my ability to reach the Laban Rata Guesthouse (3273m) from Timpohon Gate (1866m) in slightly more than 3 hours, 6 to 7 years back. Sadly, it took the hell out of my life this time - for more than six hours! Worse still, I was overconfident to go without the walking stick, and ended up hurting my knees the following day. This story tells us that, maturity is a deceptive camouflage for the loss of youth, while time is mercilessly taking away our vigour. Anyway, it can also be our excuse of not exercising regularly! The other issue I wanna talk about is that Kundasang (the town at the foot of Mt. Kinabalu) is not as cool as it was a few years ago, and I badly missed the freezing chill during the summit climb. I am sure it won't be hard for you to relate it to the comtemporary hot topic - global warming.











Zoomed into the above photo, we found evidence that Tang was going after Elene (I hope I spell correctly), someone we met on the way, and taking care of her tenderly from behind^^







Sayounara, 神山!

Vol.3(2)

In all of a sudden I am very excited to leave a post. After two weeks, I've started to fall for my new lifestyle - sleeping at 5 hours ahead of my usual bedtime, waking up in the morning rather than in the afternoon, enjoying the 45-min trip to my workplace, and starting the day afresh everyday. When I was rushing on the street with the sweat wetting my pants by the time I got onto the bus, I realized that there are many different kinds of faces moving at their own speeds, chatting their own interesting topics, and that's very fascinating to me. I no longer exclude myself from the world with a pair of earphones.

I have to write this down as I find my memory is deteriorating in keeping the moments intact. I have had this fairy tale-like dream that I was marrying a girl, of whom I knew in my dream but was unable to recall after I woke up. Of course, dreaming about wedding someone is definitely not my first time. But this time is special, in the sense that I knew her and saw her face in my dream, and we were faking it to please our parents, or perhaps my parents^^ We were dancing in the church, and then, near the end of the dance, I hugged her close and kissed her. Instantaneously, I fell in love with her and wished that we were not faking it. Boom! It's another morning.

Since I am becoming a member of the NMR community, I would be glad (and of course syok sendiri) to introduce the powerful spectroscopic method as well as to attract attention of my fellow peers in different fields to this highly potential tool for biological research. A simple outlook on NMR is understandably obvious: it is alien, too farfetch, and it is as difficult as is useless to the frontier of biomedical advances. The verdict on one hand is: it is really difficult at first attempt, 2nd attempt, and so on. You just have to keep on trying, at least it is true for me. As I am still learning it myself, I promise I will put up some guides for interested peers who are willing to take up the challenge.

On the other hand, it is in fact already a very useful tool for drug discovery (e.g. SAR by HSQC), while there's still potential in it waiting to be unleashed. Most people thought NMR is only related to solving solution structure of proteins. Put aside the significance of these structures for drug design most often overlooked by the biologists, NMR can also be used to study the dynamics of protein in solution, and probaly in vivo one day. Why the heck studying their dynamics? The term "intrinsically unstructured protein" may be too novel for scientists not familiar with protein science. There are, in fact, increasing number of protein domains being discovered to adopt no structure before they bind to their target proteins. But what the heck is the significance? I would say, the answer could probably lead you to a new perpespective on cell biology and signaling. Knowing from the history, biological research had benefited from technological advances on several occasions, e.g. PCR, RNA interference, etc. In my opinion and to my own liking, methodology development is essential and it may one day be helpful in getting rid of the hurdles and limitations faced by the current techniques in biological research.

Of course, you may question the significance of elucidating the molecular snapshot at atomic resolution. Phenotype associated to knockout of certain gene will immediately correlate it as a component of the pathway; keep on screening for the most efficient isotype in the serum of a challenged animal will eventually get you the gold-mining blocker. Why care about designing proteins? Biological system is robust and specific at the same time. Sometimes, you could solve the problem without any delicacy, just by shooting the culprit with an antibody bullet. It may not always work. Scientists have been scratching thier heads figuring out how and where in the neurons is the PrPC being transformed, and many groups are dedicating their 24/7 to look for the "Protein-X". Of course, I do not have the answer, but I just think that maybe the answer could be revealed by looking at the PrPC conversion at atomic level. I mean, the scientific community has to be coorperative as well as working in different directions as individuals. So, here I come. I hope to equip myself with the technique of NMR and being able to design an useful NMR experiment in the future to solve unforeseen problem. Lastly, as my last resort to convince you guys about its contribution, I would like to refresh your memory on these respectable Nobel laureates:

(Physics 1952) F. Bloch & E.M. Purcell: for the development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements

(Chemistry 1991) R.R. Ernst: for the development of Fourier Transform NMR

(Chemistry 2002) K. Wüthrich: for the development of resonance sequential assignment in structure determination

(Physiology or Medicine 2003) P.C. Lauterbur & S.P. Mansfield: for their discoveries of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

Vol.3(1)

This is supposed to be a blog talking about my first few days of work in Konstantin's lab. Yes, he doesn't like people calling him by Prof. Sadly, I just have no time to talk about it.

"People grieve over the death of their dearest,
while I lament that she has found her happiness, eventually."

I would like to show some examples of digital photo post-processing. The first pic is the original one. It is not good at all, as the lens is not "tele" enough to single out the subject and get rid of the distracting twigs. So, the way to do it is either to crop the high-resolution photo (2nd pic) or to apply a "edge-darkening" technique in Photoshop (3rd pic). The effect of highlighting the subject by cropping is minimal, as it appears inferior against the usage of a macro lens in this situation. However, the "edge-darkening" in the 3rd pic is overused, producing an unrealistic photo. The conclusion is: save some money and get a macro lens!




I have taken a series of photos during my three-day trip back to Sandakan to see my grandma^^ The following are pics of birds reared by my Aunty. I have forgotten what are these birds called, and never keep counting on to which generation do these lovely birdie belonged, as my Aunty has been rearing them since I was in secondary school. All I remember is that, they love to kiss each other^^ As the camera is unable to auto-focus over a foreground with pattern, just like the cage, I would have to focus manually. Please take note that the camera is OUTSIDE the cage, rather than INSIDE the cage!





最后送上她曾经很喜欢的一首歌。如果时间会倒流，我一定会付出更多尽力地追求她的。希望时间有一天真的会倒流...