Taiwan & Singapore round-up

It has been 2 weeks since we were back from Singapore. I have been busy with analysing my experimental data, but I thought I would take a break and post my thoughts on the Taiwan and Singapore visit.

Taiwan
This was the longest time I spend in Taiwan. And as like before, I NEVER really travelled anywhere, and spend most of the time in Academia Sinica lab and Kenting NMMBA. The nice was fruitful. I return from the trip with sequences from my experiment 1. I was nervous that the results would turn out bad and I need to re-do some of the samples. However, it turned out that the sequences are within acceptable range. I have a total of more than 120,000 sequences for 49 samples, which makes for a long of work in the upcoming weeks.

Besides working on my experiment, I managed to make a few important contacts in both NMMBA and Academia Sinica. I hope to be able to develop these contacts into a working relationship. Keeping fingers crossed....

A good thing about this trip was the well-deserved week-long vacation at the end of the three months. Hannah and I toured a few tourist-must-visit locations, and you would have probably read some of her posts. Also, at the same time, it gives Hannah the opportunity to see if she likes the environment in Taiwan - who knows if I or she will get an opportunity to develop our career further there.

Did you notice the Academia Sinica lab is mostly girls!?

Singapore
Singapore was mostly spending time with family. Hannah and I have visited most of the tourist spots during previous visits, so we planned to spend more time with my family on this trip. We helped my mom with the Chinese New Year shoppings, playing and talking with the nephews and just hanging out at home. Again, Hannah will probably give a more detail account of our Singapore trip...

I also took the opportunity to visit a fellow PhD student/ friend in National University of Singapore (NUS), just to check out if there is any possibility of post-doc in Singapore. Singapore has a very "realistic" government and thus most of the science research that are carried out in Singapore has an applied aspect rather than just exploratory science. One of the most prominent research that is going on in the country now is the study of biofilm and wastewater treatment - the universities are starting to pay more attention to the microbial aspect of these issues and according to the "grapevine", more than SGD1 billion has been injected to fund the programs!.. Needs to check this out further!

We also had the time to catch up with friends - Alfred and Cheryl, and god-daughter, Olivia; Linda and Francis. One of the memorable time on this Singapore trip was the post-reunion family dinner. It was a rare occasion that the whole family gathers around the dinner table. It was fun...

In the meantime, we are home, back to the grind!

Disclaimer -  there may be spelling and grammar mistakes.. no time to check... too much data, too little time