File 5 @ IMRE: "Travelling Weirdness"

This would be my final installation of my experience at IMRE, or at least for my internship. (Because I’m going back there for my FYP.) I’ll be talking about going to work and coming back home. Weird topic to end off.

Travelling to IMRE, I’d have to take a train to Habourfront then take buses to IMRE. Most of these buses were double decked. I didn’t know about other people, but I do have a special feeling about those seats right in front of the second deck. Some people like them, some people not really. For me, it was neither, I only seat them when I feel like it, mostly only when I was feeling exceptionally happy or exceptionally unhappy. It doesn’t matter whether you see grey, dull construction, or lush, vibrant greenery. It was probably the 270-degree vantage view you can have that made you feel calm. Or it could be the highest and the foremost seat that made one slightly the king of the world, the captain of the seas, etc. This greatness feel is something one could never reject.

I didn’t know when it started. But I start to see advertisements on the front of those buses on the second deck. Those adverts were plastered all over the front and side windows, blocking off external light and added gloom to the interior. I was just… sian. One of those little things that made my life slightly more interesting has been cut off from me. The vantage view that made me superior, the openness that is so absent from this concrete jungle, has been brutally extracted. (Nope, I still support commercialization.)

It is a weird thing to comment on but this has somewhat been a small thorn stuck inside my throat.

The time to knock off has given me some pressures throughout my internship. My boss does not care what time I go off, as he only demands results. Hence, I have this freedom to abuse. My counterparts, however, did not have this privilege. The eagerness to knock off never change, but the guilt to leave early does increase over time. I laugh it off most of the time, but would show some team camaraderie occasionally.

It is weird that when the bulk of people that joined as interns as me left (NTU people have 22 weeks, we have 24.), this “guilt” vaporizes instantly. It seemed weird that I who thought I wasn’t bothered about what other people think would be this affected by such trivialities.

Talking about weirdness, my boss left me high and dry at the last 4 weeks of my internship. He told me he was leaving for France for a conference then go for a 3 week long holiday around Europe on my last weeks. That means I had to rush my reports and do all my admin stuff just before he leaves. If not, I’ll be stuck in mid air. Thanks, boss!

－异客拍客 Last Day @ IMRE －

Some Interesting Pictures

I am not too sure if anyone is still reading this blog but anyway, here are some pictures I have taken for the last few months. Quite interesting. :)

Can you figure out what is that?


A puddle of water? May be... but it is not exactly colourless. A closer picture:



A closer examination shows that it is a yellowish-like liquid.

I know what it was. It was urine actually. I took this picture at NEL's Outram Park station. Well actually, before this picture was taken, I saw a man hiding behind one of the pillars of the platform door with his front facing the glass. I was not sure what he was up to. Then I noticed a puddle of water start to flow out from that pillar where the man was still standing there. I decided to maintain a safe distance first to observe what happened.

Seconds later, the man seemed to realise he was being watched. I acted as if I was busy looking at other things. He walked away immediately and when he was out of sight, I stepped forward and to my horror, I could quite confirm it was urine because there were droplets of 'water' on the pillar, as if someone has sprayed liquid on it.

OMG OMG OMG...

It was obvious from his dressing and appearance, he is not local. Don't intend to reveal too much about his nationality though. :)


Saw this small note at a florist shop at Junction 8:



If the picture is not clear enough, it says "Please do not disturb the balloon".

Hahahaha...

Spot the mistake from this Kopitiam receipt:



I guess it is quite obvious. Since when Kopitiam is known as "Copitiam" ? I wonder how such a mistake can be made... especially Kopitiam is quite a reputable food and beverage company. Somemore, this is from the Plaza Singapura branch.


Apple chips are healthier... no healthy food




I bought this (healthier/healthy) apple chips from cold storage. I was fascinated that they actually used a golden marker to cancel out all the 'healthier' words in the package. I noticed the first one I took was like this. I took out a few more bags and different flavour bags and all of them had the word 'healthier' struck off!

This must be some tedious work! My guess is that this brand of apple chips did not pass some sort of food test in Singapore to be labeled as a 'healthier' choice, hence so much work has to be done to strike off the word.

Hahaha...

That's all I have

-dakepaike-

Finally, Sporting Gijon DRAWS!

After 33 games in the 2008/09 Spanish la liga season, Sporting Gijon finally got a draw! This is some big news... every week, the highlight commentators would describe Sporting Gijon not getting a draw as 'amazing' and 'phenomenal'.

Currently in a relegation battle, they started their season quite brightly with a few wins and a few losses, hovering around the mid table zone. That was quite impressive considering they were one of the newly promoted teams.

I think that have set the record for the longest drawless streak in la liga history. The last team with the longest drawless streak, if I have not mistaken, is Real Madrid with 27 games I think.

The draw did not come easy. Visitors Bilbao scored in the last minute of the match to earn a 1-1 draw against the home side.

We have seen teams unbeaten throughout the season (Arsenal), we can probably find a team that has not won any games. The possibility of a team not having a draw however, will still remain a myth for now.

-dakepaike-

File 4 @ IMRE: “Poly Invaders”

Yup, there’s a File 4… Further on, I’m not too sure. This file marks the end of my 11th week at IMRE, which translates to week 9 at NUS and week 10 at NTU. But it’ll be end of my 13th week when u people read this. Yes, week 11 or 12 at the major universities. You should not be here, go back to study/mug/kill/ burn nights. I went overboard with confusing weeks with you people.

Recently, there had several batches of poly 2nd year students coming into IMRE for 3 month internship. Nope, this File does not criticize them but it’s more like I’m trying to understand the rationale of short term internship. I understand polys in Singapore decide to place students who had finished their 2nd year to be attached to companies for internship to gain experience, working and social. Taking context into internship at research institutes, which would be letting them gain research experience. I am going in circles.

Let me give you an idea on how is their daily routine: First, report to work. Second, go for morning tea breaks. Third, come back after lunch, and then slack at the small library that we have. Fourth, go for tea break at 1530h to steal all the biscuits that our coffee auntie had displayed for everyone. Fifth, relax at the library until it’s time to go off.

Did I mention about work? I did not. What I’ve understood is that they do not have much work in the first place. It does not justify letting them learn their supervisors experiments or projects for such a short time. (That took me 6 weeks to get a good idea. But till now, I’m still discovering things along the way.)

What about machines or techniques or physical experimenting? 3 months is not enough. This is exactly enough time for me to get a good understanding to be a lao jiao. Good experiment techniques require many trial and errors to be proficient. By the end of their internship, they would acquire just enough information to know how to do experiments properly. But too late, they are leaving already. The supervisors may have spent a lot of money, raw materials and effort coaching them, but getting nothing back in return. It does not help in the project at all.

It is not surprising that supervisors here just let them do some literature study and preliminary work for the projects. No real workplace responsibilities were given to them. Worse, I heard from my NTU counterparts that came from poly that the business poly students have offers from GV to sell movie tickets. They pay well though. But sell tickets for internship? Waste time leh. 6 month internship is much more fruitful. And then can continue for FYP project. Haha!

I started typing this since boarding train at Habourfront and have reached Sengkang already. Good luck for exams.

－异客拍客 @ IMRE －

File 3 @ IMRE: “Which boss should I take?”

Right now it is supposed to be the end of my 12th week and it is end of week 10 at the 2 major unis. But actually, I’m watching Aston Villa vs. Tottenham right now. Both are good teams under great managers. This match reminds me of the similar current situation I’m facing at work and future. The I-don’t-know-which-one-to-choose dilemma, hits hard on the television screen and the following problem I’m going to face.

Being a 3rd year engineering intern, I constantly face questions and questioning about the upcoming senior year, or more specifically the Final Year Project. My peers are a little more apathetic to the situation but I am helpless to it. In IMRE, there are tons of people doing their FYP; hence I can understand its nature and requirements better than my peers. Most of them work at private corporations.

Some idealists think that to do FYP, the project has to be interesting, so that you would end up enjoying the whole FYP experience. Truth: The project, engineering especially, is not important. Interest can be cultivated. On the other hand, no matter how much interest you have the start of the project, the two tons of academia and bureaucracy would pulverize your soul.

Some FYP students I met chose to come here. Most didn’t. They were most likely pushed by their profs to be attached here to suffer under a indifferent supervisor. This brings down to the issue to be tackled: Find a good mentor/supervisor/professor. Some of these highly figures are nonchalant about what happens to you. They throw you to other asst profs, postdocs, postgrads, attached you out, whatsoever. (Normally, these are the full profs who have “no time”.) Some of these nice figures actually push you hard and demand answers every week. (Asst profs fits here.)

My Viet supervisor is a Singapore MIT Alliance scholar, the smart young (29 yrs) playboy. He do not care what you do, hence explaining my freedom in IMRE, he just wants results. You can leave office by 1pm if you want to and have nothing to do. Such freedom however, comes with stress to produce something for meetings. My S’porean supervisor (36 yrs) is the traditional scientist: Hypothesis, Circumstantial Testing, Experiments, Research, Experiments, and Conclusion. He pinches your every step and hounds your every movement, with great concern. You won’t get lost with him as supervisor. For me, I need someone to tok cok to, which both satisfy. I need guidance, but also want freedom. So how?

All in all, it boils down to the situation: I have a Popsicle and an ice-cream placed in front of me. I hesitate to choose. In the end both melted. “Must make a good decision fast!”, yet “good” and “fast” aren’t really accommodating.

Disclaimer: Dr. Quang and Dr. Andrew, If you happen to read this, don’t fuck me. Think you know who I am right now. Haha…

Tottenham is currently leading at halftime, with a Jermaine Jenas header. File 4? Haven’t thought of it yet.

－异客拍客 @ IMRE －

File 2 @ IMRE: “You really want to know?”

It is already in the 11th week. Haha… But I still see Michael Essien scoring against Manchester City. Anyway, this is week 9 at school, a good time to pick up your studies and to decide whether to do honours or not, or determine you can do it or not.

My job at IMRE is to help my boss do stuff. I’m a research assistant after all. Good enough? Not really.

Basically, there are 2 parts to my job. One is to grow film; the other is to analyze the defects. To grow my required film, which is zinc oxide (ZnO), I need to thermal clean my spinel (MgAl2O4) substrates by scrubbing... Heat to 750 deg C overnight... Placed in some prepared solution... Heat to 90 deg C for 4-6 hrs... Seed layer of ZnO formed... Cleanroom (the 9pm show) for patterning (photolithography)... Photoresist spin coat... UV rays through mask... Activate the unmasked areas... Etch... Grow the Laterally Epitaxial Overgrowth film of ZnO... Place in another solution... My job is mostly to vary the parameters of this final stage of growth and to check the morphology and size of the film.



The 2nd part is a little more jiatlat. I was to use Transmission Electron Microscopy to view the samples and to analyze the defects in the films that I’ve grown. I have to cut my samples to 3mm by 3mm... Wax to stub... Polish spinel to 50-100 microns... (1 micron 1/1000 mm) Stick face-to-face + 2 similar sized silicon epoxy... (industrial superglue). Polish one side using wax and a glass slide... Wax standing on stub... Grind to flat... Polish... Fix 3mm copper grid to top... Cure... Flip... Grind to 50 microns thick... Polish... Dimpled using a dimple grinder to make a dimple... (WTF!) Ion milling for 20min to 2 days... Then, the sample can be viewed under TEM.

The long tedious steps make my sample fail every time, with a success rate of only 5-10%. Felt like a rookie oncologist. Realized that my films get delaminated under strong mechanical shear, the traditional method mentioned above is not useful. We are using Focused Ion Beam technique to get our samples done, and it is none of my business.

Can’t tell you much anyway. Yar, I purposely wrote them in long paragraphs. Read again if you do not understand. Key words: hydrothermal growth, photolithography, lateral epitaxial overgrowth, transmission electron microscopy, ion milling, focused ion beam. Haha…

Well, it is the end of the rich vs. the richer game, Essien being the only scorer. My next file would be about my bosses. (Not a good idea, eh?)

－异客拍客 @ IMRE －

File 1 @ IMRE: "It’s my nth choice!"

Hi, long lost people. It has been 10 long (maybe, not so long) weeks since my internship started. Should update you people once in a while.

I’m now currently at Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), which is one of the many institutes under A*STAR. Yar, I know it sounds like high and mighty, but actually, not really once you start working there. For a start, it is actually located behind business school. So it is like I go back to school this half year for internship.

Given a choice, I’d rather go to a private company to do my internship. But you know, last year isn’t exactly what I’d call a good year, so they aren’t hiring much interns. Adding agony, the 45 of us were up against the 220+ savages from NTU, for those diminished number of internship “opportunities”. Luckily we are on an S/U basis, so… we… can… slack… a… bit…

IMRE wasn’t my 1st choice, or the 2nd, or the 3rd. I can’t remember, nth probably. I remembered I flunked the interview at Credit Suisse, due to all the pretty and captivating OLs there (Excuses!). Then followed by no responses from 3M, Micron, Rohm and Haas, I turned towards our dear government. Surely they have a place for a lost sheep like me.

They do. As usual, for an interview, I would dress up with business pants, well pressed shirt and polished leather Hush Puppies. As, my interviewer-cum-future-boss comes down, I stunned. I was dressed much better than him. Polo and jeans? I bet he was laughing loud inside.

Rather than he giving me an interview, I was more or less subjected to a sales talk. Many times, I heard this: “So, you interested or not?” My mind was all in a whirl. “Go back and study lah.” Vs. “I need work experience.”

I grabbed it. And here am I. And 10 weeks have gone. 14 to go.

People ask me so often: “So what do you do there?” My instantaneous reply: “You really want to know?”

－异客拍客 @ IMRE －