My uni life for the past 3 years: Self-Reflection

I am back to blogging. After a whole long period of online absence and sometimes posting nonsense on Facebook status updates and a whole lot of ups and downs.

Until then, even as I am writing this with a hazelnut latte on the right of my laptop, I think of the shit I survived so far and "wow" was the only thing that came to my mind. How did I get to where I am now?

Lecture after lecture, tutorial after tutorial, bores, anger, desperation. Why the hell did I choose Biomedical Engineering in NUS anyway? It's true that I used to think that I could make something out of whatever little I knew off H2 Bio and Chem, but it's been almost 6 years since that. Just to keep the post short, here are a couple of highlights (that I can recall off-hand that I'm proud to have survived) over the past 3 years.

1. Did engineering physics when I knew nuts about it - and found it way easier than biology or chemistry, even though I can't say I'm very well versed at physics. I still suck at it, though not nearly as much as I did when I started out.
2. Survived Organic Chemistry for Engineers module (CM1501) with a D+. NO RETAKES, I'm trying to avoid it as much as the plague, but hey, biomedical engineering. 
3. Found a few good chums during BN2202 Introduction to Biofluids module, and we've gone through shit together enough for me to consider them my uni BFFs
4. BN3101 Biomedical Engineering Design - did up a design for a percutaneous mitral valve replacement. We named it the Hywas Valve. Not too good, but at that time it was my best work yet.
5. Did up a Bluetooth enabled wireless controller glove with 3 separate control mechanisms using muscle (electromyographic signals) sensors and flex strip sensors to activate different functions. I swear, the amount of thinking that needed to go with the coding, prototyping and testing was simply crazy.
6. Simultaneously did 7 projects, on top of the research project mentioned above, while giving private tuition classes for A-Maths for pocket money and mentoring a junior group for their introductory design project (BN2203) and teaching them technical details and data processing. All in the course of a single fucking semester. With this immense amount of work being shoved up your ass, it's a miracle how I even survived that stretch without going batshit insane. A big heartfelt thanks to Fonia, if you're reading this, for accompanying me during the mugfest sessions during weekends at the Medical Library. :)
7. Probably made history by implementing the FYP Deconflict spreadsheet, allowing people to negotiate between themselves for placement of FYP choices in order to get the FYP that they want for their dissertation paper content. Last I heard, almost all my batchmates had their FYP allocated by Round 1 of the balloting process, where previously other older batches had quite a lot of people not being able to get their FYP of choice and some did not even get any topics at all.
8. Ran lots of errands for both batchmates and the faculty staff members (making sure the BME Summer Schools 2015 and 2016 ran smoothly despite numerous manpower shortages, manning the 3D printers, teaching some rudimentary soldering to juniors, etc)

Looking forward to pwn the next semester ahead, but after a few things that happened here and there, I think it's really about high time I set aside time for family and friends. No-touch timings are definitely necessary, where schoolwork is concerned. This entire uni period, even though I've been around with batchmates and being with them through the hard and good times, I can't really say I'm as close to them as I wished for. The BFFs in my squad, yes, but when everyone starts packing up and leaves, the same feeling of loneliness starts sinking in again. 

Achievements? I don't think I've done a lot. At least not enough to be significant enough for my CV when I start finding a job next year. Whatever achievements I've made, I feel compelled to share with friends and other people around me. But I'd always feel that'd probably make me a braggart in many people's eyes if I did that all the time... Sometimes it's a struggle not to overshadow other people when talking about the stuff you do, and believe me, I'm still trying to work on how to be more encouraging to others and not be the wet blanket.

Sometimes old habits die hard, and the bad ones are really the terribly difficult ones to change.

Juggling 2 biomedical projects definitely ain't a joke.

I'm full to the brim with biomedical projects. This year 2015 is supposed to be a breakthrough, but I've gotta work extra hard this time round.

For starters, I began a UROP under Prof Raye on Muscle-activated Robotics, which involves using electromyography (EMG) signals. Pretty tough, considering that there's quite a lot about the raw data that I don't know nuts about. Not only that, there's still a bunch of electronics that I have no idea how to get it working to produce a clean and filtered output that's clear enough to differentiate between different hand movements as of yet.

On top of that, there is yet another hemodynamics-related design project on Percutaneous Mitral Valve Replacement. That's quite a mouthful. Basically it's designing a heart valve that's small enough to be fed through the major blood vessels and deployed at your heart to keep your body pumping blood without major problems - all while making sure that the method to do so will leave as little wounds as possible. In short, a minimally invasive method.

Operations Management - It's an interesting module, until you realise that you can't really make out what numbers are being used in calculating the throughput rate, and the idea of inventories becomes very blurry, and vastly different from the definition you are used to (inventories in MMORPGs vs inventories in terms of Operations Management...)

Aaaaaand suddenly my experience during my previous internship doesn't seem to be all that useful for this semester's projects. For one, how the hell are you going to use 3D Printing to produce a stent frame prototype to hold a tissue valve - and make it mechanically stable enough to withstand shear and pressure forces in a porcine heart specimen? No nitinol - takes too long to fabricate, and no plastic because it wouldn't accurately model an actual stent frame in terms of mechanical strength and biocompatibility...

And oh, the most epic quote of all day I heard from my professor during Biomaterials lecture earlier this afternoon:

"I didn't have a lot to play with, so I played with mercury - a lot."

Internship: good or bad?

Internship: good or bad? You decide for yourself. All I know is that I'm doing a hell lot of stuff I never found I am inclined to do, such as learning how to work PHP, create a LAMP server framework, work with 3D printing technologies and optimise the PCs needed to run Instron material mechanical testing machines.

Basically I found that I love tackling with problems no one else would normally be interested in - at the cost of learning the skills what most people would be eyeing on to snag a good paying job with.

What to do? I'm just an engineer who doesn't know how to apply what I have to carve out a living for myself. All that has to change, one of these days.

Internship - and a much needed break

Things have been going pretty much smoothly for now, apart from a few hiccups, is what I'd like to say to others. Unfortunately life isn't always that simple.

Call it taking up too many commitments, if you will. Martial Arts Day NUS (MADNUS) 2015 isn't as smooth sailing as last year's, that's for sure. Add this onto instructional video series for my internship work and you have hell of a whack job coming your way if you don't do this juggling right.

Lately I've been working till 3-4am for my work and having to turn up on Saturday and Sunday as well. I needed the break, so there. I went to get 2 days of MC. Hopefully I'll get back more motivation to carry on after my much needed break when I report back to work tomorrow.

An entire year of Biomedical Engineering training progress - and reviving my blog!

An entire year has passed. Next thing I know, I'm already 23 years old and still have no idea what I'm gonna do in the next 5 years. But at least I'm still in university and figuring out things along the way. 2 more years and that's it. The thought is scary.

At the very least I've crossed a few important personal milestones:

1) BN2202 - Introduction to Biotransport
Toughest time of my life, but best project work team I've got. Project topic had us stuck for a couple of weeks trying to brainstorm for something related to biofluid mechanics. In the end, we chose to be adventurous to play around with investigating otitis media - middle ear infection. It involved how to introduce pressure waves via low-frequency sound waves (we were trying out infrasound) into the middle ear cavity to induce flow where fluid is trapped in the middle ear. It could have gone either terribly or spectacular - but I'm so glad that we actually made it as one of Dr Kim Sangho's best project group for that semester through even though the results were rather ambiguous.

I nicknamed my group Team Symphonius, who is still inside the NUS BME Microhemodynamics Laboratory today. Who knows what's gonna happen for the next few years, but it was a pretty good start point to begin peering into the world of biomedical microhemodynamics - blood related research. It was also then that I felt that I wasn't doing enough justice to my previous effort to get myself into NUS Biomedical Engineering - and it was high time I've bucked up before I get my ass kicked really bad by my unfavourable academic circumstances.

2) BN2101 - Principles of Bioengineering <not available anymore>
It was the last semester that NUS Biomedical Engineering was offering this overview module after 12 consecutive years running, and it was pretty sad because it was such an EASY module! Project work takes up 20%, which was by far the best one I ever did because of a few reasons:

• I was able to steer the group into a concrete, futuristic idea that seemed more plausible given today's biomedical technology: My project was to propose a paper project about a device that can treat abdominal aortic aneurysms with a highly angulated neck anatomy or a short proximal neck. In a nutshell: if the neck angle is too steep, you cannot place conventional stents down there to fix the aneurysms at that region.
• Out of 6 project members, I had 4 other teammates who were willing to push through our own limits together as a team, and had that commitment. That spurred me to keep on going even though we had that single defunct, non-existent member inside (he never attended most of the group meetings at all, and contributed very little).
• I knew all these members beforehand, across the entire first year! Best team ever - the way they did their stuff was lightning fast - and I honestly felt I was really lagging behind in terms of the hard work they have put in during their first year as I was still struggling with the basics.
• What else to talk about other than an A grade!

3) BN2203 - Introduction to Bioengineering Design
It's pure luck getting the dream team for biomedical design projects, so of course getting another group that's just as effective is fat hope. Still, I can say that among the projects given to us, this was a colossal amount of work being shitted out at us.

The only biggest problem we had wasn't the funding - out of $500 we actually spent a rough $250+ which was very cost effective, but the comments of our supervising professor always wavers - you could ask him about the stuff today, he gives a comment and you could get another completely different suggestion the next day. Needless to say, we were running around like headless chickens (due to my mistakes as the group leader) as I was also not having any concrete idea what the hell we were doing for a pulse oximeter design. There was simply too much content to digest and use, and I was desperate to push my CAP back to my personal goal of 3.5 minimum. Thankfully I did just that, whew.

We had Arduino, we had LabVIEW, but how do you marry these two working systems together? LabVIEW Interface For Arduino (LIFA), that's what. There was LINX, but we figured it was much more stable to use an earlier software version, although that came with its own problems. All in all, after much work we managed to come up with a pulse oximeter whose working mechanism was getting it to work on LabVIEW without the use of a National Instruments Data Acquision (DAQ) device. That saved our troubles by a lot. However, time was really tight, and due to my lack of programming skill my Arduino code had to be scrapped completely because I didn't know how to manipulate the code libraries to do signal processing on Arduino code... Shit.

Project results weren't that bad after all (I got a B+) - even though I was already expecting to be getting a C- or D+ by the time the project was over. It definitely felt this bad - and never have I ever panicked this much for a project ever before. Still, it was way better than what I expected, and so I shouldn't be complaining!

Much of this is talking about my biomedical engineering progress in NUS, but really. These are the highlights of my 2nd year - and I think I'm pretty proud of the personal achievements within these design projects even though my grades were considered pretty dismal. More could have been done, but I shall save the tales for another time...

Exams results - a pretty lousy biomedical engineer but a biomedical engineer nonetheless.

Terrible, terrible results.

But ah, at least the scare and suspense is over. Back to reality and finding something else worthwhile doing.

Meanwhile it's just kendo, swim, monitoring the emails and trying to find something worthwhile doing. Rejected the previous job since I thought it wasn't really worth the spur of the moment working while potentially having injuries due to kendo the day before work. Serving customers while having kendo foot problem definitely isn't gonna score points, so meanwhile I'm still waiting for tuition assignments to take up. And so far, those I've got aren't that good either so I didn't take them up. Still waiting.

Meanwhile, I've got my laptop prepped up for media editing - Audacity, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop CS6, Movie Maker, Sony Vegas 12, etc. All just waiting for that push of a button to start media work. Anytime.

...maybe I was getting ahead of myself. Anyways, to keep my holiday occupied, I've gotten myself a Logistics post for this newly set-up Big Martial Arts Carnival committee - but really, what I wanted was a publicity post, but ah well. It makes no difference, since I should be able to tank both sides of the work - what with the publicity cell - I prefer to call them "wings" - actually approaching me for help. So I said okay, and here I am. Really wanna get to working the late shifts, at least it'd give me something that I can say I can do best among all of my usual abilities that turned dormant ever since the holidays started.

Better throw me something worthwhile doing - I'm getting bored!

Holiday Mode - yet again without a proper aim

Sooo.... it's the end of the Year 1 exams just two weeks ago. And maybe I'll just head back to the urban hermit lifestyle again. No, I'm honestly going to head back to the urban hermit lifestyle. Or hikikomori mode. Or whatever suits your fancy naming style.

But argh, that's just plain sad and boring, achieving nothing for the next three months - what a waste!

I'm going to step outta my own comfort zone, do something out there. Starting with the regular kendo practice, I'm gonna get a job out there - no office jobs for me, I'm sick of them already. And then, I'm gonna do a little bit more of online study in my spare time. And I have just the avenues for them.

For starters, I've enrolled for online courses in Coursera, and they're probably more about learning stuff for fun than actually getting a certificate of achievement. Learning something outta your own faculty is sometimes cool, and I reckon I could use a bit of calculus revision since I didn't really do this well for math during this uni exams last semester, and I reckon its effects will start eating into the modules next year. Never hurts to be prepared, right?

And there's the ever annoying job hunt. No office jobs, this time! Time to actually stick my ass outta the chair and actually do retail work or something that makes me move around.

Well, it wasn't the case two weeks before, actually. Before the exams I actually wanted to participate in the BME Summer of Code offered by my faculty, which actually does programming in C++ throughout the summer holidays before school starts. Trouble is, the reply and notification period was during the exams - how would anyone be free enough to read emails during crunch time during exam prep? And so, I missed it and suddenly found myself to have a large pocket of time left empty.

Nuts. And my usual allowance was cut in half so I wouldn't splurge. Aaaaand holidays are EXACTLY the reason to splurge. Tch.

Alright then, a job it is for me then. Can't keep asking for money anyway, time to make myself useful too, so I went for job hunting. First job was for a cashiering job at Singapore Expo, but they wanted people with no commitments, so that was a big bummer, considering that there was still kendo practice for me and all. Besides, I wasn't so keen on disrupting what I started out on to begin with.

Second job was for promoting mobile apps, but the interviewing lady rejected me because I wasn't proficient enough in using iPhone. I mean, seriously, in this day and age?? I mean, though I use Android phones only all this while, but hey seriously, just how difficult can operating iPhone get anyway? Gimme 2 hours fiddling with an iPhone, I'll get your stuff up and running in no time, but nah. I'd rather prefer she enjoy her ignorance of the existence of digitally-flexible people, saves us both time and money.

Aaaaand so. I found myself hanging around at Ministry of Food - and I wasn't that particular about the pay either. I was still daydreaming about the prospects of being among the working crew inside a restaurant or cafe - I still have ambitions of setting up my own restaurant bar and picking up some nifty recipes - all while trying to finish this teapot of ocha they served for the next two hours. And it was like - I don't know. Luck maybe? Ministry of Food was hiring part time waiters. Why not?

Next thing I knew, I signed up for the job. Hopefully that'd gimme something worthwhile doing instead of rotting at home.