first time

for once, i thought of competence, of blatant self-esteem,
a sight for sore and cold-dried eyes, enhanced with a sly gleam;
but, smile, oh dear, that wicked smile, that cunning cheat you use,
and sway this heart a million whiles, and wiles, a wildly ruse.

and silence plead, in silence plead, worse than how this heart bled,
for knowing that your wound is worse, unless it's in your head;
for once, i thought deserving that i would, i could for more,
that all stopped short of turning up and begging at your door.

for one more chance, for once i hoped, i would and may find heart,
that feeds, and stops my poetry, though ever we're apart;
i never prayed for silly whims, i never played for empty wants,
for once, i'd wait for days and years, for moments and for months.

and all i did, for if you may, had asked was all i'd wish,
but voiced it none, my dearest one, oh, fragile hearted kiss;
an ode! a line! oh, matters not, for one, for two, for all,
i swore you this, again i do, from gracious leap and fall.

for once, i'd seen the callous soul, that frigid, lifeless heart, that sings behind a veiled blind smile, which quenches with a rhyme -
for once, i'd thought, that maybe love, that even though apart, that this would be the only once, the last and for first time.

expiry date

i have been conducting more experiments on inducing bacteriophages in Moraxella catarrhalis recently. for those who find these words a bit outlandish, the theory isn't all that complicated - M. catarrhalis, or how we'll abbreviate it to m.cat for now, is a bacteria. though any bacteriologist (or biologist) will point out quickly, not all bacteria are bad for you, this one pretty much is. it causes a range of diseases, most notably ear infections (otitis media) in children, and lung infections (pneumonia) in the elderly. a bacteriophage is a virus that 'eats' the bacteria (phage being latin for 'to eat') in the sense that the virus infects the bacteria, and causes the bacteria to explode (the technical term is 'lyse') somewhere down the line. in essence, the bacteriophages (or phages, in short), infect bacteria the same way bacteria infect humans, the relationship being parasitic in nature.

induction here means i am trying to get the phages to lyse m.cat by manipulating the m.cat defence system. i've done this simply by exposing my m.cat to low concentrations of an antibiotic called mitomycin c. anyway, the whole idea is that under specific conditions, i can cause this induction to occur, and the phages will run rampant, something like if you were to shower your friends with flu virus, then take away their immune system. then hope the flu virus becomes so prevalent in the population that you can randomly pick a section of air and have enough virus in it to do whatever further experiments you want with the sample. not that i'm saying one would want to do such a thing to friends. but i'm just saying. sometimes.

in any case, the induction process was supposed to get me a high concentration of phage. but, as with all trials and tribulations of this world, science is no exempt. today, i have conducted a series of sub-experiments in order to determine what had gone wrong. kind of like how a computer technician troubleshoots or debugs codes. i think.

my conclusion thusfar it that i have been using samples of m.cat that have been kept in the 4C room too long. i find this rather... unsettling. that for the thousands of procedural and technical complexities of the experiment, my problem may have been simply that my samples had gone stale. this is both elegant and simple. but, there is more troubleshooting to be done, and only time will tell if occam's razor has struck once again! oh, thee, blade that cuts me deep.

simple

when we were younger, the elder folk used to tell us that it's the simple things in life that are most enjoyable; that money doesn't buy happiness, and that if you learn to enjoy the mundanity in what chaotic lives we live in, everything seems relatively okay. what makes you get up in the mornings, and drive down to some god-awful job? is it so banal as paying the bills, or filling the days, or putting bread on the table? or could it be something simple as the figurative smelling of roses (or a literal in figurative saying, the smelling of coffee?). even the most majestic of reasons sometimes fall under this category, from a love one to religion (or at least religiousness) to dollar bills to that sweet retirement home in madagascar, something small and simple that keeps us toiling through the days.

i cannot attest to anything too grand, and for this i apologise. but, life is a constant detriment of ease and simplicities, so one must always try his very best to find the little enjoyments that make the stress of the world that much more manageable. of recent, here are a few things that do such:

1) keeping an empty bottle of peanut butter open on my reading desk at dawn, so that when i come home, the room smells amazing.

2) reserving the last piece in a block of amazing chocolate and keeping it stashed away in my work desk until i forget about it, only to serendipitously discover it while i'm stressed doing work. this is not really recommended if you're living in an area that's particularly hot / has an ant problem / etc.

3) reading just a bit in a foreign language every day, such that one day if i meet a greek person on the bus, i at least have something to say. maybe a german or a sri lankan, too.

4) sleeping in. this is amazing. sometimes i take the day off just because i can. i'm a horrible person that way.

5) chasing the little ducks around the pond until they can't waddle any more. they need the exercise. i nearly got in trouble the other day because mommy duck came to snip at my toes. i reckon this isn't much fun for the ducklings or the mother, but there is no malicious intent. i don't scare them too much. i think. i hope?

it pains me

it pains me to see you torture yourself so indefinitely, where the answer is laid before you so plainly. i only pray that you see this before it is too late, that everything that you write, i have empathised with, have been through, am willing to suffer and bear with if you would let.

and i write in your style that you may see, that maybe, two people are not so different after all.

assumed birthright

what gives us the right to anything? to physiological needs, to psychological ones, to personal and interpersonal ones? what gives us the right to happiness? and what makes one more deserving than another?

how can one write or speak or contemplate and think, of happiness and self-actualisation and love and hope, when there are those whose most extreme of concerns is surviving the next day, or hour, or minute? when in mortal danger and with life against its odds, would we think of happiness and contention, or just making it through the current ordeal?

which begets, that if you (or i) worry about the most mundane of worries, as a broken heart or a dullness to the mind, or a lack of extravagance to life, then truly, we must be blessed for everything that is threatening and dire has already been sorted such that they no longer bother us.

indeed, how can anyone of any problem not fathom anything that is worse? and so, of presumed love, or lust, or monotonous hate - of bickering and of jealousy and vanity and fate - how can one worry so much about so inconsequential? we have all fallen victim to overlooking priorities, even those who are at the deepest end of forsaken. unless we are faced with death, or anything worse. which then begs the definition of what is worse than death? maybe, to some, to all, those things which we have just mentioned? and thence negating the argument?

maybe, we assume too much, that being in this world entitles us to things - many things - that others think leisurely and frivolous. what gives us the right to anything?

what gave me the impression that i was ever entitled, beyond that i am already blessed?

p/s: existentialism is such a humbling tool, i am glad that if all else fails, i still have it, particularly upon my deathbed.

op ed

opinion pieces are the most frivolous and meaningless of the lot, because in this day and age, everyone has something to say but just like this sentence, nothing worth saying is said and nothing said is actually worth much, if anything at all.

growing with curves

in the laboratory where i do my post-graduate, i am currently doing a series of experiments which involves generating growth curves for certain bacterial strains. this involves growing an overnight culture of the strains and then coming in early the next morning to start a 14 to 20 hour experiment that basically ends with enough time for me to come home, sleep, and if the next day is allocated for another set of growth curves, repeat the whole process again. now, i'm not complaining, because as tedious as it sounds, i do take a couple hours off to have dinner (i don't do lunch, though), and in all honesty, i only have to take hourly readings from a growing sample of bacteria. the time between is allocated for other things, such as reading up on the experiments, planning future ones, studying bioinformatics and doing the chores around the lab. all of these are not too taxing, except for the reading parts, which can become quite the headache, especially if left to accumulate.

however, it is unfortunate that, i always find a few hours' worth of time that i find free, and my mind strays to things that i want to do for leisure instead - blogging, reading a few books that lay dormant now upon my desk at home, and various other things - and i always find that my motivation is at an all-time low. it's easy to create excuses - blogging has become lacklustre in absence of a (my) muse. reading is all too redundant when it reminds me of work. and i find myself wanting to do something different. something other than watch a movie or a tv series, or play a game (which i find boring except for when i have lots of work to do, when suddenly pacman is the most exciting thing in existence).

i sigh for my lack of sleep, and i sigh even more for my lack of focus.

in any case, this is not a rant post, but a brief re-introduction for me back to blogging, which i can and will hopefully be able to indulge in more often once my growth curves are done (although, knowing how postgraduates work, i have no reason to believe the workload will get any lighter). additionally, it may be influential that it is a holy month of sorts as of now, and being the superficially pious person i am, i am trying to adhere to certain religious rituals and customs that i might normally not make time for. and once the month is done... i guess that leaves me more time to do other things, even though i shouldn't? who can tell.

hopefully i write of growth curves tomorrow - a sign that my mettle is not as fickle as my focus.