Despite being terribly expensive, Geneva was a pretty good weekend getaway, with CERN, the Swiss National Day celebrations as well as the charming old city. Not that there's no Altstadt in Hd but the character's totally different. So one thing that I learnt in Switzerland is that although expensive, what you pay for is really quality. Havent had the misfortune to have anything really shitty there but better dont jinx it. who knows when it'll come my way. and i enjoyed it more so than Zurich, which i think has less to see than in Genf. Hopefully it was not just a weather thing.

The Financial Times was the first piece of real news that ive read in a long time. and i can no longer get how certain actions affect certain pieces of the GDP equation. not that i could get everything back when i was taking FNCE101. sure, certain things make some sense but the whole detailed mechanisms of the ISLM and whathaveyou models elude me totally now. its like i might as well have just stuck with ECON001/2. lol. and you wonder how the Wall St. wizards can cause upheaval in the financial world, considering that not much macro knowledge is retained after the invigilator warns us to stop writing. hurhur.

Anyway, there was an article titled "3 Years On - And The Markets Are Masters Again" by a Philip Stephens. In it, he discussed the weakness of governments all over the world in trying to regulate the financial industry. Despite some having claimed that the last recession marked the end of finance as we know it, some years later the situation remains the same. Salaries and bonuses return to pre-crisis levels even before we are out of the woods and GS and Citi "settle" charges of misleading investors by paying the SEC an infinitesimally small portion of what they earn in a year. Moreover, in certain cases of doing so, save stock prices from dipping and in fact make a gain out of it. Disgusted? its at times like this i wish the SEC had the Old Man's suing prowess. Bankers get around new rules which are pathetic attempts at best, due to vague wording. Hardly surprising since they are already famous for financial innovation eh. This begets the question why politicians lack the political will to exact penance from such nefarious institutions. sure, i can understand why banks are important since they facilitate the efficient flow of capital and assets in the markets BUT why should the statesmen be afraid of the bankers?? Is 550 billion the pricetag of justice, when trillions of taxpayers' money have been infused to keep the crumbling system on life-support? so much for big talk when the action is so little. we always seem to know what is good for us but because of certain lobbying groups, the delivery of the panacea is often retarded. so are we going to hesitate further and watch those pompous self-fellating assholes pad themselves even more with other people's money and dissolving the rest away in risky instruments which even the manufacturers dont even know about themselves? i hope not. rewarding yourself for a job well done is only natural. but pitching it at figures that might not be attainable for some who slog their entire lives away not only reeks of sheer arrogance but is also insulting to the bailouts when the rest of the world is still grappling with the uncertainty ahead. and then u read an article about how managers claim there is no incentive to conduct serious stress tests in the banks on how they would react in times of crises and my mind just goes blank.

when touring UN premises in Genf, it struck me how we need an international organisation to be dealing with all the humanitarian needs of the world. With all the countries in the world as member countries, it was mind-boggling how no individual country had a ministry that deals with the noble missions of the UN. instead it seemed more like a place where foreign policy is honed and national interests are pitted against one another. the best of intentions marred once again by self-interests. dont tell me that all these countries are in it only for the name. oh, i do good so that i get some goodwill from other places and look good on the intl stage. and then i think of the buffoons in the banks carrying suitcases of cash home and the children who have no food, education, clothing and water, amongst others and i dont know what to think anymore.

i like being in lab. definitely not inhaling the solvents or let it cling onto you like a wet shower curtain on hot and humid days but i find it somehow satisfying when the end product of that darned column chromatography has been isolated be it viscous amber oils or yellow crystalline solids. i guess its seeing something tangible that matters, especially when we didnt even know if something will have worked or not in the first place. not to mention the little tips and tricks for manipulating those little crystals and droplets we call substrates into our desired vessels that have been primed for reaction. and i like learning by asking, where i dont have to google for my own answers but try to work them out but if not, ask and i would receive (hard soft acids and bases o_O). call me lazy but i think that definitely beats an entire day in the library, knee-deep in the literature and not having any remotely human contact (not that there isnt IM or Facebook just that a day could easily become weeks in the library with such fatal distractions).

that being said, i have only once encountered a reaction that didnt work and the thing is i hadnt planned it. suffice to say, i havent really experienced the frustration of things not working, which is purportedly common in the field. so im still really undecided on where to bring this, but at the moment, i will just enjoy being in a German lab (americans work 24/7, nicht so gut) and the many grillen and weltmeister viewing that have happened or are going to come.

3 wks in deutschland. i still feel uncomfortable with most groups here, german, american, exchange or otherwise. i dunno why i always feel this way but perhaps it's just me. and i still dun get what my supervisor is trying to get me to do, other than perform reactions for him ie extra manpower. kinda sucks. nehmind, ask on monday. at least i have fri off and today to watch amateur soccer. 3.5 day wks rock!

It's been a week in the lab now and ive yet to blow up anything, which is a good sign. Am still pretty impressed at how hi-tech the stuff is, even with a service team just to help take more complicated NMRs and simple IRs. and there's even an in-situ IR machine too! even for the simple 1H NMRs its an automated process (read: no shimming etc) and it can just be queued and then read overnight. amazing! The only thing is guess is that the solvent (triethylamine) stinks! omg and that is an understatement of the year. bleah, for those of you who know. 150 ml of that stuff is no laughing matter...


anyway, this afternoon Germany played Serbia in the Weltmeister and the whole lab took the half day off to watch the match in Horsaal West. of course the results were disappointing but i was still amazed at how seriously they take the game or how 爽快 they are on a Friday afternoon, however you choose to see it. Even though I dont normally follow soccer, since the day off was for that, that's exactly what i did - watch the game like eveyone else. It was a little weird when the crowd reacted to all of Serbia's attempts at shooting and all of Germany's failed attempts at scoring. For me it was like: ok yes the ball went into the goal. no, the ball bounced off the pole. no scheisse no swearing, more like yes, that happened or no, that didnt happen. in fact, it felt rather surreal, like somehow im just observing an event. i still dun understand how people get so emotionally caught up in something that occurs 1000s of miles away, on one football field. oh well, but that's just me. i think i have a problem communicating with people and i acknowledge that. like its always very difficult to sustain any conversation beyond 3 lines. i just dont know what to talk about and dont want to bore anyone with the trite "how are you" opener which invariably gets the "im fine thank you" reply. oh wells.


nothing to do on a weekend. might be meeting sh to get the bike from him but i heard he's having exams soon so not too nice to take up too much of his time. thankfully there are plans to go Stuttgart for steamboat on Sunday so at least there's more than research papers to read this Wochenende. yay.

I dont know why but i just have been unable to study anything. nothing goes in at all and now i cant even bother to read and remember what i read. i hate rote-learning classes. i really do.

winter break officially ended 13 Jan 2009. A cold Munich and the historical Rome are now almost 2 weeks away. It was rather unreal, eating, sleeping, sightseeing and getting lost in the many side streets. and putting up with many miserable quotes, not to mention all that alcohol thanks to anonymous alcoholic. lol. and then there had to be those freak blizzards that battered across Europe. and the stupid terrorist attempt that made it all the more difficult for me to go back. all the things in life that are out of our control.

The new semester looks long and miserable. but my new year's resolution is not to get drowned by my classes and other activities. very very hard considering how i like to push things till the last possible moment. bleah. lets test the theory of doing more things so that time management will be better lol.

paris is a beautiful city. but it's too smokey. too much cigarette smoke. but there's also good food and drink. and i think we've only seen the nice side of the city. champs elysee, the louvre, arc de triumph, pantheon, eiffel tower, pompidou, notre dame, chateau de versaille, gau de nord, st michel, mouffetard, the tuileries, monmarte, rambuteau, moulin rouge. all the places are nice and historic and probably preserved by the government or some tourism agency. but i guess tourists will never know what the French feel about living in Paris, in France, under their own regimes. it probably takes more than a semester of exchange, getting to know the locals, experiencing the random strikes, protests and bad weather and subtleties of being french. of pronouncing 'R's as a very nasal "H'. and getting to love the metro and RER systems and the perks and privileges of following the bebes. the charms of paris lies in the historic monuments, the time-honored piles of stones, boulders and 'esmeraldas' that preserve the glorious past of France.

i guess it was rather disturbing that Paris was the first city that came to mind when i thought of France. For such a big country, i wonder what happened to the rest of France. Embodied by the Bordeaux and Burgundy which the rest of the world knows as wine or beef. or maebe that's just the picture of themselves that they want to paint to the rest of the world. or perhaps the rest of the world just cant be bothered enough to look beyond the vin and viandes.

off to munich and rome. time to move on to other cities. paris had been fun but like new york i guess its a little too overwhelming for my liking. the little messiness just grates on my nerves, not unlike that of tokyo. perhaps that's why i would never like the hustle and bustle of huge cities. the sheer number of people will get to me somehow. sometime.