12.16 Two days before back home

At the middle of December. Two days before back home and is typing in the Shek Mun library. Full of people preparing final here which is so different from those normal days, but it's not that noisy so I can focus on my computer screen. Is keep modifying the powerpoint for honour project this morning, and visiting this blog just for relax. Have viewed some of the previous posts, and those words have really described my status accurately.

These days. All what surround me is "uncertainty" "stressful" and "worrying all the time". Cannot figure the origin of these emotional feelings and they really cause many trouble and drag me from being an ordinary person (although a real person, but real abnormal). Most of the time, I feeling having a lot of things to do (and indeed I do), but my brain is kind of heavy and dizzy and I do not know which one to start with. Cannot perform multi-tasking, or a lower output will be obtained in both tasks. However, once a task was chosen and started, many things related with the task cram in and I can be easily distracted again, not able to focus on single item.

What am I busying with these days?
1. Oral presentation and a written thesis for the final year project
Oral presentation is not a difficult one. I am good at delivering presentation and making clear slides of powerpoints. It is just about what kind of information I choose to let the audience know. Thing comes a little different because this time I am presenting something that determines whether I will be granted a bachelor degree in science, which is the honour project. In the past year, I conducted research in Prof.Yung's laboratory, studying the genetic basis of drug abuse and addiction. That is a large topic so I am trying to narrow it down here. By using a drug called nicotine and the animal model of baby zebrafish, I want to know whether accepting more nicotine will lead to certain pattern of changes of some biological mechanisms in zebrafish's body, which finally promote the development of drug abuse and addiction. To understand the biological mechanisms, some techniques are involved to study certain genes and proteins. I have learned quite a few techniques in the last year and the experience really help train me to be a researcher, and what I need to do in the presentation is to describe what techniques I used, what results I have obtained, and how I integrate these things together to tell a story to people who come to listen. Many preparations are definitely helpful to make an excellent presentation hence an excellent defense for the bachelor degree, which builds to the pressure.

2. Applying graduate schools
Up to now, I have applied more than 10 U.S. grad schools, as well as one in U.K. and one in H.K. I should be checking the information of these schools everyday, even a little each time, but these days (starting from December, when I got some exams to prepare) I am sort of lazy on the checking. Some institution requires a written sample of research proposal and I have not yet started that stuff. Some professors I was trying to approach don't seem to be interested with my application, and some honestly does no help to construct my confidence but instead build up my fear in entering the field of a PhD. Certainly, many factors are involved in the process and I cannot cast all the blame on anyone; but the whole issue of application depends on how much I want to be a graduate student and if I was, what I am going to do. Seems that my attention on this is decreasing these days which I have to highlight once again. Start tracking every institute I am applying, making sure all the documents are delivered, and going through their websites to check the updates.

3. Preparing to be a research assistant.
Most likely I will be employed as a research assistant after graduation in the spring. But it seems that I have not get prepared yet. Before the final week start, I have read a few articles and come up with some frragmented ideas which I also discussed with the professor, and now there seems to be some confusion between us and I need to be clarified. We have to be on the same page and that is very important to make sure I did not mismatch his expectation nor mine, at least I should not make myself confuse before I go into anything. Shall be confident that I can do the job of RA well and what I need is being more active, motivated, and patient on improving the laboratory skills. Have a critical mind (or practise to have a better mind) through reading articles and attending seminars, talk to the professionals for advices, and keep the mind open. Being an RA is really a good opportunity to shape my personality.

4. Shanghai, Shanghai
It is always good to be back home. Has been almost one year and I am missing the streets, foods, friends, and a lot of things in Shanghai. Is planning to meet some people and visit somewhere (most likely Beijing), though many things have not yet decided, it's better to put it off a little and find a better time with the family. There will be oral presentation after the winter break so this holiday will not be that relaxing, but just trying to be relaxed according to the guidance of the psychological consultant (that's right, I am seeking help to relieve mental stress) since I am so nervous about doing things wrong these days. Kai can be cool, funny, and a good guy to be with only when Kai find himself back.

For my friends and family members, Kai is undergoing some strange and kind-a-suffering period of losing ego and being stressful these days, which make Kai not so cool as he usually does. Always bear in mind that Kai loves you, Kai misses you, and Kai will be happy if you are happy.

10.22 Typing in T1111

The lab is very quiet during the night. Is typing ramdomly on the keyboard. Just finish editing the word part of the website for BIOMOD competition this years. A lot of work. Minor modifying may needed in the following days, but feel like a thing has finally settled.
Efficiency is much higher than working at home. Sometimes I feel I am a quiet guy always enjoying my little world.
Am I the one that I am afraid of? Two years ago, I wrote down such a sentence in my diary, that I am afraid I would be looking at the world with a cold mind. Seems that I am so focusing on the little thing happening to me that I ignore many other things. Don't know whether it is good or bad. Time passes by and I grow older and older. Feel quite awkward of saying something truthfully or honestly without any temptation. Pretend to be strong and positive.
What should I do, and what could I do to change this.

10.20 can't enjoy life

Seem not able to enjoy the life. Roommates are playing games together to kill the time, which is so extravagant and luxurious for me to do. Rational thinking excludes many possibilities of life. Life becomes simple but also quite bored. I want my emotion back. Feeling so stressful.

10.20 organic test tomorrow

Is having a test tomorrow, which is also the first test of this semester. Don't know how well I can perform over it, and I did do some review over the past week. However, now I am sitting in the study room of the old campus and procrastinating. Frankly, I am a little tired from the meeting of BIOMOD, the competition that we are about to attend; and I am kind of lose my mind the whole day, reacting slowly and strangely towards things and people. And I cannot really focus on the study. Even I told myself to do so, the efficiency is quite low and never could I think continuously and attentively.

Keep having a busy schedule over and over, which should not be what the life ought to be. Maybe I have pushed myself too hard towards the life, that I must prove myself to be a strong man in front of people. I am strong enough, just need to be relaxed a little bit. I am cool when in the relaxing mode.

It's just so hard to find that mode back, which makes me miss the version of me when I was in Mercer. I am somewhat jealous to what shirlie is enjoying now. That is a great place, a place where I find my dream back. 

Life is still going on, just face the challenges and go through it.

7.28 Sorry.

You are never in my plan, from the time I came back from the U.S., to the time I leave Hong Kong.

I am sorry, and I don't like my plan very much, neither do I like the current version of myself.

But I have to do this. I know that life must move on, and I believe that I will finally get happy if I stick to this plan.

Perhaps, it needs some time, maybe ten to twenty years, to test whether my decision, at this point, is a better one or not.

Take good care of yourself, and I will give you the best wishes. Thanks for appearing in my life and leave me such a good memory.

Life is hard, but we still need to be positive, make joke, and smile at this world.

7.28 a weirdo

Too much pressure. I need somewhere to hide myself. Acting too awkward in the front of people, do not know what to do. What is going on? Why you are so quiet throughout the dinner?

This is hard to explain. Am I a weirdo? Couldn't I just remember to carry the umbrella?

6.11 And I need to learn more

There is no guarantee in the world.

I need to learn how to respect the honored.

People are trying their best to help me, with their own judgement. It is their mercy to respect me as a person. However if I cannot understand and respect what they cannot do, they will leave finally anyway.

Learn to be a more mature person. Be a better person.

6.3 And I am still alone

1. Had dinner with two friends tonight. We know each other since 2009 when we became freshman of BU. One of them is going to study for master degree in the United States; he will get his visa tomorrow, and leave hong kong on Thursday. The other guy, who is also my roommate during the freshman year, will study for master degree at CUHK.

2. Hong Kong is extremely hot these days. The sun is spicy, the wind is humid, and the only thing good is that all the building have strong air-conditioners. So, staying in the lab all day is not a bad idea to keep away from the high temperature.

3. GRE is about to come. Have practiced a bit on each sections already, but haven't tried altogether thing yet.

4. Conduct a lot of researches on biomod these days. Team members are doing everything except responding my message, so the tense is accumulating with a little complaint. Also the lab thing still have not started so personally I feel very very worried.

5. Have to do a little presentation to the representatives of Water Department next week. The transgenic zebrafish is on the way to become a monitor for water quality. Cool stuff.

6. Most of the friends are leaving me. I feel very tired of meeting new people and saying good bye to the old friends a lot. I need somewhere to find who I am, where I am going to, and making sure whether I can actually realize my dream.

7. It costs like ENDLESS to stick to a dream, an ambition, or whatever. I hate this but having no choices. Things are changing, people are coming and leaving. No one really care about you except you can choose what kind of life you want.

8. Happy birthday, Isabella Wong. You are my good friend and I'm truly grateful about having met you in Hong Kong.

9. People seem to focus on themselves so much as I do. Who care about having a dinner tomorrow together?

10. And I still have to work on my CV, Statement of Purpose, figuring out which institutions have good neuroscience program for application.

11. I will meet one of my good friends in Boston this november.

12. And I am still alone. How long will it last.

13. Sometimes, being mature, independent, or whatever, is a very very tiring thing. seriously.

5.2 Let it go

A girl has really make me fell guilty and confused for a long time. At a loss of how to face myself, how to face her, and kinda questions like these. Have the feeling like my life is moving in darkness, and what I could probably do is to keep the faith that light will come and just be patient. No matter how many curses come, believe life will become better and keep it clear in mind about what kind of life I want, and what kind of person I want to be.

The 23rd birthday. Celebrated by guys from debate team. When they asked about two of my wishes, I said something sound pretty dumb and selfish, that hope I could become a PhD one day. I can definitely come up with some better answers making everyone feel happy, but frankly speaking my mind seemed to be absent during that time. I don't know what to say. And the situation during that time was a little bit awkward. What I really wanna wrote down is the words I said to her the day before my birthday. I confessed that I've committed something really mean and bad, making her feel hurts which I feel really bad about. I'm just too protective on myself, and sometimes neglects how other people think. And I hope she will find a great guy some day.

And she got mad again, which actually doesn't hurt me much. Can totally accept the response, coz I've never expected forgiveness from someone that I've deeply hurt. But the thing confused me is how she respond. Well, what she said may not necessarily reflect what she mean, but she just wanna be alone, and do not want to hear from me ever.

Maybe this is not the point at all. I have to face upon myself, what's wrong, and where's the problem. Not until I fixed it can I get a true love once again.

But something will be remembered, and someone will never forget.

So, just let it go.

5.1 Worrying about the loss

Maybe I'm worrying too much about the finals. The hypertension almost traps meyself in the ego. Can't speak fluently and react properly to the outside world. The more I want to come out, the more helpless I feel.

Is decided to cook myself a big dinner. Food is always the thing that can make me happy when in sadness or hardship. Bought some ingredients from the Parkenshop this afternoon: eggplants, eggs, minced pork, potato, and onion. Will make one potato pancake for my roommate which he always says is his favourite, and will create some dishes to satisfy my stomach and mood.

Can't explain why these is happening, but one thing is for sure, that I want to be happy, and I want the people I care feel that I treasure them in my life.

Set aside the GPA thing for a while, and there are more things to be valued in my life. Life is beautiful. Those can't stay will be definitely loss, even you try the best to save. Even though I won't perform very well in the final exam, even though I may fail the GRE test in June, I don't want these to stuck me to appreciate the life. And I will do my best in the academics.

So afraid of being a loser in academics. That's probably why I'm so stressed out by the coming final. Everything will be ok, just need some relax and patience. As long as the revision goes as is planned, I will do fine. See what I've achieved last semester. How come I'm much more stress now. This is so not like me. Kai should be kind and hardworking and relax.

Thanks Chase, Noah, Phillip, Patrick, Mei, Ashley, Shirlie, Meng. I am weird a lot of time. But I love you guys. You guys give me light when I'm in the period seem to be the darkest.

4.7 Fish in the lab takes many efforts to work on

Just has spent three hours cleaning the filtering system, and three of them have been cleaned, but one having a little wate leaking problem. Is considering tightening it tomorrow, because that doesn't look like a big problem, and I hope there won't be water everywhere tomorrow morning, which get the labmates angry. I just feel so tired today and need a long long relax.

Though spending three hours on it, and it will improve the water quality of the zebrafish somewhat, I still cannot be sure whether they will be happy enough to produce eggs for my experiment. But after all, their eggs won't be good if the water quality is bad, so fortunately I'm still making progress today, which should not be complaint about so much.

Patrick is leaving tomorrow. He is having a dinner with Kevin tonight, and I asked whether he mind I come; he said no problem, so what I'm doing right now is just waiting for his message to see when will the dinner happen. Since it may take a while, I'd rather do some other stuff, definitely not the lab, but maybe writing the progress report a little bit. For tomorrow, I can come back to the lab early and start the egg collection, then seeing patrick off at kowloon tong station, then going back to the lab to see whether eggs are produced. It will be another long day.

Though focusing on the fyp so much, there are for sure more things that I should catch up with. Is completely shut down by the statistics yesterday and today morning, and I almost forget how to use the SPSS to generate data and bar graph. Can do it tonight later. There are many lecture note that I haven't gone over yet, and I shall not procrastinate on it. The time to do the final is getting closer, the closer the final, the less time I will have to do all of them. And the BIOMOD. It is like a mess still, and the time for registration is about to end.

So probably it is time to forget about the fish now.

3.22 To the girl whom I will miss

I wish you will be happy there, though what you get may not be what you really expect.

You may expect the exchange to be perfect, but don't do that way, you may get disappointed by the culture shock and those homesickness, coz these will be endless.

I will miss you very very much. You are my good friend. Though we do not talk much this semester, I keep thinking of you sometimes, and those happy time in Eco lab. Though we may never see each other in the future, I always have the best wishes to you, because you are such a sweet girl. There is a time that you said hi to me outside the lab door. you may have already forgotten, Because you probably had done that to many people that day. love that smile. I have a bad mood that time (and actually, for a long period of time.) îBut your smile has really made my day. I feel that there is something in my heart that I lost for so long, and suddenly it came back. I am so glad that I have met you such a great girl.

Hong Kong makes me so suppressed, and I don't know what and how to blame. I can't blame anyone, I just feel not happy and cannot let it out. I am afraid when such a feeling lasts for so long, it will become norms of my life.

And I know that is not the true version of me.

At least, I hope not.

You are right, that life is unpredictable. I could never predict that i would have had a feeling on you when accudentally sitting next to you, that we had some funny time in the fieldtrip, that we had a serious but honest talk on the 10th floor outside the greenhouse saying something that i had a feeling on you, but i could not foresee the future that we were possible to be together, and you had some problem with your good friend, and you did not really know why it happened. I am afraid that in the future when you come back, when I graduate, we don't even like knowing each other, and I am even not caring how much I am missing you like this. And all these become a history that neither of us care to mention.

Don't know what to say. The brain seems stopped. Good luck, girl, I have the best wishes on you.

3.10 Things are leaving while you cast a blind eyes

I'm not sure what I've lost, but I'll figure them out someday.

Just feeling not very well. The mood fluctuates largely during the week.

3.10 tired of being a tasks attacker

1 sociology paper, 3 lab reports, 1 final year project progress report, 2 midterms, 1 statistics assignment, GRE preparation, BIOMOD.

I'm serious. I'm really tired. I can't have a relaxed sleep everyday until I go over tons of lecture notes, trying to figure out at least one more concepts.

Are all these what I deserve? What does this semester want me to learn in terms of 18 units? Can all the things I'm dumping efforts in have a good ending?

3.3 Back to silent mode - Culture reconflict?

Finding myself no longer willing to talk with other people. This is gradually occurring when I leave America. No more chatting, no more greeting, no more patient listening to others. Of course the final year load is heavy, but compared with what I withstood in Mercer, there is no complaint about it. During that time, I studied till very early in the next day, still feeling happy. Ideas could be easily exchanged between me and my friends. But now, that feeling has just gone away.

And I could feel that I slightly change back to the status before. No more questions in the lectures, making me feeling dumb when confused with a point. No more communication between me and grandma, parents, and the friends surround. Although this is not all my bad, I do speak out my opinion at first, but what I received frustrated me. They don't tend to listen at all, just stating how they think and never ask for negotiating. This is like an order, a thing that I must follow. Perhaps after many times, I feel tired and decide to just follow their advice, without any challenging. And I become gradually like them. I become silent, have a lot of thoughts never tell anyone, and only speak it out at the very last second, making other people feeling tense. Communication need to start as soon as possible, when I can sense the necessity. If not, then there will be some troubles. All of these might be due to the parental order here that I shall follow what my parents and grandparents said, or even think. They are feeling annoyed when you cannot find a thing, blaming you to be too careless; they are criticizing at you for reading too much western literature and understanding too much christian view (in their mind, they certainly hold a stereotype view on these thing and never wanna change it.) They want me to be the same as them.

The power of culture is so amazing that I don't even know when I hold this version of my ego. Or this is not important. The pass worths to be missed, but the contemporary condition also deserves to be remembered in the future. Probably all these things can be summarized as a "Re-conflict of culture".

It's final year and I know indeed I must dump in more efforts. But I'm also more than happy to share my stories to anyone who willing to listen. People need to talk, and I don't want to be silent all the time.