Back to the Drawing Blog

Had an extremely long break from blogging because of the neurology meeting in Sydney and trying to cope with grant writing and lab work since coming back. Out of 9 days I was in Sydney, I think I had perhaps 1 1/2 days off to see the city. Plus I was dumb enough to sign up for teaching sessions at 7 am in the morning, so had to wake up at 6 am (3 am Singapore time). We did manage to sample really good food, though. Golden Century, Ying's, and not forgetting the tim sum place at Market City (trolleys and rude waitresses). Picture shows the kids posing with a piece of lung each (origin: poor hapless Aussie Cow). Never knew this as a tim sum dish, but this is Australia after all!

Anyway, after coming back, I had the angst-filled experience of getting my son's first report card...so it wasn't as bad as waiting for my MRCP 2A results (where I was convinced I had failed), but just a whiff of that feeling came back again as I looked at Ben's little blue book. It was surprisingly decent, considering that Fat BoBo spent the majority of October whining about having to pick up his books for the exams. So all my muttering about "if you don't study, you will become a road sweeper or a stable boy next time" appears to have worked. Plus, despite his fine motor difficulties, he managed to get an A for art and craft, which is amazing considering his father and maternal grandfather's history in this area (50/100 at best!). So the next thing is that I get an e-mail from the school giving the statistical analysis of the class and school performance in each of the 3 subjects - mean, SD, Max, Min. I know that we analyze results for tertiary level education, but this analysis (at primary school level!) has brought the "my kid vs your kid" thing to a sophisticated high.

Back to work, back to work. Have to answer some magazine with questions like "what are the 5 most common delays in children?" while trying to trouble shoot a real time PCR experiment. There are days my job is so schizophrenic I get the urge to lose it all in a frenzy of shopping. Christmas is coming, so hopefully I lose my angst in the ka-ching of the season.