53 down, 66 across
mood: restless
i love doing crossword puzzles..especially the Daily Cal..
i try to do it as often as i can.
quite proud of myself today....did all except for 66 across and 52,53 down (grr).
yay! i think practice really helps. =)
anywez, my mum was the one that got me started on this.
she's really good.
sometimes we'd spend an hour together side-by-side, pondering over a crossword.
not really saying anything but random words..
but still bonding in our own little unique way.
i think she's really cool.
She loves roller coasters (as fast as possible please), but is afraid of riding a bike. she loves making new friends....and talks to anybody and everybody. she gives me lotsa freedom and encourages me to buy things...haha..and she makes alot of silly little jokes that are er...funny (sometimes lah).
yeah, i love my mommy.


went down to the lab today...checked up on these magnetic bead things i'm supposed to read up on.
i'm pretty excited about the research that i'm gonna do. i'll be trying to isolate hematopoetic stem cells from human bone marrow cells using magnetic beads as a sorting technique. Then we'll try and study the differential response of these stem cells in the presence of specific factors...and hopefully understand cell differentiation better.
sometimes people seem so afraid of the new developments in life sciences. Gene therapy, germ-line engineering, gene modification, blahblahblah..
i suppose alot of people worry about the possible consequences of playing around with nature....whether we will end up with a messed up genome and thus screw up the entire human race. But, i think that this is just another step that we have taken, another form of technology that we have developed. In fact, many of the popular arguments against genetic engineering are based on myths that have little or no basis. It is not so easy of genes to hop around, for genes to integrate themselves into another species, for large disastrous changes to occur in the genome as many think it is. Why shouldn't we take this risk and possibly save thousands of lives? Why hinder the research into stem cells when it could yield countless valuable secrets? Okay..this is a science person talking, so maybe i'm just looking at one side of the coin and expressing a biased opinion. True, there are many ethical issues involved in this, and we can't ignore them. Especially in america, where everyone has different opinions and where no one's opinion can be ignored =P. But somehow, i think that people aren't exactly worrying about the right thing. I think the biggest problem with genetic engineering is the control of it. How many people actually know what is going on? Maybe it should be more transparent, and more accessible to the masses. Wouldn't it be scary for the majority to reject the notion of genetic engineering and leave it in the hands of a select few? I would think it should involve every one of us, since it's our genes, our genome that lies in the balance.
oh well, just wrote a long paragraph about nothing much really.
i should be doing my essay instead.
and making dinner.
too tired to say anymore.
i'm so crappy.
hope everyone is happy...=)