The same old stuff everyday.

I'm starting to get a little bored and lazy writing my posts, probably because I have nothing exciting to report. Everyday is the same. Go to school, cook, eat, watch TV, bathe and sleep. Heh...such a boring life but that's my typical everyday life. Just finished watching Big Brother and American Idol consecutively. I still think Big Brother is dumb, especially the part where he announces, "THIS......is Big Brother!"

As for American Idol, there's only Bo and Carrie left in the competition. I do hope Carrie wins it. We need someone to follow in the footsteps of Kelly Clarkson and I do like her too. They are tons better than Ruben and Fantasia. I especially abhor Fantasia and I think she looks like a toad.

I got back my assignment on the patent report. Got 41 out of 50 marks. I am quite disappointed because I was aiming for at least 45. It is possible to score that high and my friend got 47.5. I think it's also quite unfair that the marker did not put any ticks or comments on my report so I don't even know where I went wrong and I can't go back to argue for more marks. Of course normally I don't beg every lecturer for extra marks, but this time, I wish I could.

Yesterday I had practical again with the China guy. He drives me and my friend crazy. He is SUCH a perfectionist and he blames everyone except himself for any mistakes. We were doing Agrobacterium-transformation on tobacco leaves and had plated the leaves on agar medium about 2 months ago. Then the experiment was put aside while waiting for the plants to grow. About 3-4 weeks back we checked the plates for any contamination and there was none on any of our culture. (Hurray!! Good lab techniques!!!) However, yesterday, half our plates had serious contamination and he insisted that it was because of my friend and I. We argued that it could not have been us as the last time we checked the plates, they were clean. Plus, some of the leaves had been tranferred on to fresh medium by an anonymous person. It was definitely not one of us because, like I said, we had not touched the plates for a few weeks already. We suspected that it was the lab technician who had kindly done the transfer for us (although she made things worse because I believe the contamination was caused by her). In fact, the writing on the plates looked a lot like the lab tech's. We explained this to the China guy but either his command of English was too lousy or he just refused to accept the fact that it was someone other than us who caused the contamination. Then we found that we had a few samples missing and those samples happened to belong to him, i.e. he was in charge of those samples. He questioned the lecturer, the tutor and the other classmates (he went and looked over the shoulders at the plates of other students while they were analysing their plates and he didn't even bother to explain why he was doing so and he just asked directly if the plates they were holding were his). In the end (and I suspect the tutor and lecturer were pretty annoyed by him going around and accusing people of taking/losing his plates), the tutor told him that most likely his plates had been contaminated and thrown away. He refused to accept this and kept saying that it was IMPOSSIBLE for his plates to be contaminated. I suppose he felt that his techniques were 100% sterile and perfect. After the tutor left, he turned to me and said that he did lots of tissue culture work in his high school back in China and he never had problems with contamination before. I can't figure out whether he was pointing his finger at me or the tutor for losing his plates. This is still not the end. That day's experiment turned out to be quite unsuccessful without any results and this has been the case for the past 2 experiments. So he asked me why we kept getting failed experiments and he kept shaking his head and mumbling under his breath. May I mention that during the last experiment, we had some problems with equipment failure which caused us to get negative results. He insisted that we switch machines when there was only 30 mins to the end of the prac. He wanted to do the experiment all over again so we ended up being the last group to leave and I hate that a lot. I hate having the feeling of being the last and making everyone wait while you finish and clean up. I don't really care too much about getting wonderful results. After all, in poly, sometimes you just get failed experiments because there are too many hands in the work and as the saying goes, "Too many cooks spoil the broth". You can't really blame anyone for this because we have no choice but to share the work and everything else. With so many people working together, it's difficult to control your experiment well. I really can't stand him. He has no courtesy for others and has terrible people skills. In other words, he is a typical China man; he meets my expectations of China people totally. A perfectionist, refusing to accept others' words except his own, wanting to get 100% good results all the time, pushing the blame to others and.......SUPER KIASU!!!

I don't wish to stereotype China people like this but can you blame me? Could someone please explain why all the China people I have met and known so far are like that? I think they need to be taught some serious manners and understand that results are not the only important things in life. Empathy is also necessary. I mean, don't people emphasize EQ more than IQ these days? Someone please enlighten these China people!!!