Journey to Silver Award (President's Cup @ HKUST)

(juneblog #3)

With University President Tony Chan!

I just wanted to announce that my FYP team took the Silver Award for our university's competition for undergraduate research and innovation, the President's Cup 2013. I thought we could take home the whole shebang, but what can I say? I'm very proud of my undergraduate work (more could always be done, of course) and reflecting back, it was an amazing experience. Silver is still pretty dang good, I was passionate, and we did our best!

This will be my procrastination post before I have to buckle down and study hard for finals. I just spent a whole hour typing this whole blog and it got erased for some reason so now I have to spend time to pull it out of my memory once more. (Sigh)

After interim presentations and lunch with our PI.

The journey started out with our supervisor/PI (Dr. Ying Chau), our postdoctoral supervisor (Yuki) who gave us the tools to begin, and the inventor of the chemistry we used in our project (Yu Yu whom I worked with during UROP). During our first meeting, our supervisor was especially harsh on our presentation skills and background search for the project. We were critiqued for knowing so little and, in my view, having a superficial knowledge of the topic. In hindsight, though, I was glad she did that because she set the bar high for us. In turn, we set the standard high for ourselves every step of the way.

I believe the hardest part of any research project is the literature search. It can be painstaking and confusing because you have to filter, process, and integrate and because there's such a large body of existing scientific papers, it requires a lot of analytical stamina. With our FYP, the importance of the initial stages could not be stressed enough. That's when we are setting up the problem, understanding the challenges, and designing your methods of approaching the problem. We threw a lot of ideas out there and it felt like we could only do so much in our limited time.

Having experience with hydrogels before, I spearheaded the project in the beginning and we fell in a good rhythm with team structure, weekly meetings, and experiments. But we weren't perfect in how we worked together and me being the only non-local on the team had nothing to do with it. We all had varied expectations of the project and we needed communication in order to work through disagreements, even if it meant relaying things through other members.

During the winter break, I had a one month leave, over which I fell off the radar in leading the project and making sure everything was up to standard (I can be a really big micro-manager so if I don't know everything that's going on, I tend to get anxious). But where I lacked, my teammates taught me to be better. They were just so awesome beyond words. When I was very depressed during the Chinese New Year, they came to my room and brought me food for the weekend and a laminated copy of our departmental photo. On the back, they gave their signatures with short and sweet messages: "Add oil!", "Cheer up!", "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Thinking about that time again, I'm so touched by their actions.

Outside of the first public hospital in HK!

Together with the FYP team, I was happy to find myself in not just a team, but in a family. We went through many new experiences together, including going to the hospital to test out our materials. We got to collaborate with doctors and student-doctors and learned about microvascular surgeries. Our team went to the wet market to buy a pig heart. And we presented our work about five times (I guess this is normal for a researcher?) to the point where we were so well-rehearsed, we didn't have any nervousness when giving our talk to the President of HKUST.

Winning Silver was a surprise, actually, because we thought we would get Gold. But because the judges were from several different departments, the results made it made me realize the unique challenge of bioengineers. No matter what, you are always going to need several years of real clinical research before your work becomes marketable. No one will recognize something that only has "great potential." That's why I'm so excited to be accepted to Berkeley-UCSF's master's program in translational research/medicine (Fall 2013)!

The winning team (also from our Chemical Engineering department) developed a micro-pulse electric water purifier, which more or less has immediate potential in Hong Kong and third world countries. This gives me great pride to say that I studied chemical engineering because the field is so broad and diverse. It was amazing to see the many many things a chemical engineer can do. Most of what we do is aimed at making the world a better place. You can be anything. I am happy to find meaning in my own field (biomaterials, biomedicine).

Finally, to end the journey, we had a farewell dinner at Sai Kung on May 31st with our professor and everyone involved. A nice free meal using the reward money we got for winning the Silver Award (HK3,000). Thank you so much Dr. Ying Chau, Yu Yu, Yuki, and other-Andrea!

Seafood at Sawadee Thai in Sai Kung.

Shook hands with President Tony Chan!

Baggage (juneblog #2)

As I was packing my things, deciding what to keep and what to donate or throw away, I realized that this was not the only type of baggage I had.

Life is a journey and naturally, we need to take things with us. Things that are necessary to our survival and things that carry meaning for us. We call these things "life skills." But other things can be collected too... Feelings of love, feelings of responsibility and gratitude, knowledge from school, attachments to pet animals, attachments to people that bring negativity to your life, emotional residues (leftover resentment for how previous relationships changed me), unnecessary tidbits of information (did you know Kim and Kanye are having a girl?), you get the picture.

But possessions can accumulate if we are not carefully filtering the important things. I am a hoarder in real life. My car used to be filled with old class notes that I'd never look at again, my wallets used to brim with old receipts that I'd never need to use later, I have old scrapbooks and boxes and boxes of things I find sentimental--some so ridiculous like movie or museum tickets. In the same way, I am a hoarder of emotional and mental  baggage. No, I don't hold grudges, but I do tend to hang on to feelings of elation or feelings of anger (at myself) longer than I should. I tend to put too many activities on my plate--more than I can handle--and later I wont have the mental strength to power through them. I tend to hang on to the idea that I have to be the best at everything. I tend to be insecure and I tend to be unhappy with where I am at in life. I've hung on to my past and blamed it more than I need to.

To me, I sound ridiculously broken. But that's always been me. I've always had a very cluttered mind and I guess that also means I've always had a very cluttered heart. I even carry a lot of baggage physically- with the tell tale signs of finals and hell week and holiday weight on my belly and hips.

So what lessons can I take away from my short stint in Hong Kong? It has been a long process of filtering out the unimportant and focusing on the things that matter. As I packed my belongings I've had to toss out stuff I frivolously thought were of value but never realized they didn't have any long term value. If I took more things than I needed on my back, I would struggle to carry huge bags around when moving forward in life.  When it comes down to it, very few things matter in life. You decide what they are for you. Ill hold on to my own dreams and loved ones, too.

* Today, I returned my PRS and have almost settled everything with the financial office. Some crazy stuff happening but yeah, I'll be on a plane soon!

* I also saw Miranda and Shin-shin! Two people ill miss dearly. I hadn't talked to Shin for a while but it was nice to see her again. I remember during my year 1 we all went out to Mong Kok to hang out together. I think that was the first time we all really felt close because we had so much fun together? What a nice way to spend my second to last night in HK, in Mong Kok, with those 2 again. All that was missing was the sticky photos. But a chat over ice cream, hot chocolate, and brownies is nice, too! Miranda still has to send me the photo with all 3 of usss so I'll edit this post with the pictures later~

 ♥ Present (June 2013)

♥ Past (December 2010)

30 Days of Blogging #1

I'm not one to update my blog every day; I don't even know if I'm capable of it, but Sitt tagged me and the month of June is probably going to be full of things to blog about so here we go.

Well, because of some issues with the financial aid office, I've had to delay my flight to the Philippines. That makes me sad because that means there's less time to meet my cousins. It's gonna be the first time I see my extended family on the "Villaroman" side. And if y'all know, besides Daniel at HKUST, I don't really know any others by my surname. In addition, my tita and her husband run a Muay Thai camp near Manila and it sounds like a lot of fun. I've always wanted to devote my time to fitness but have always been torn between that and academics. Alas...

After June 4th (moving day), my friend was nice enough to let me sleep over at her place in Tai Po Tsai. I know now, after packing everything, that I am not a pathological hoarder. I've had to throw away a bunch of notes and I've decided to donate a bunch of my books and clothes. To be honest, I am very happy to leave behind this life in Hong Kong. If there's anything I've learned it's to be thankful for what I have and where I am. I've learned the values of simplicity and focus. And, well, I'm pretty sure I'm ready for what life has to throw at me. Reflection on HK life to come... later...

My goals for this summer are:

- Get fit! (lose 10 lbs) I always make this goal... sigh... but I never get there. I suck.
- Get happy! This is easier said than done. I just need some clarity and a focused mind.
- Travel! in the U.S. of A.

Come with me on this 30 day blogging journey :).

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reading material courtesy of CY