ha, i made it on time to the lab today. 6:30AM sharp arriving the lab. Cory was already there flaming dry the flasks. he's really patient in terms of teaching me and helping me... i need to show him that I can do well... no more 50% yield... :-p. so tomorrow 8AM, i'll be at the lab again finish up the extraction... I'll do the column on Monday...

CSC...there are soooo much to do... funding requests, chartering bus, museum admission tickets, renting tables for the casino night, various games sets, buying the prizes, security staff meeting, etc... everything all crammed into the next 2-3 weeks. it is going to be pretty crazy... i hope that we'll be able to stick together and pull it through... everyone seems to be really busy, including myself...and...sigh. i hope we'll be able to get stuff done in time.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What's normal and what's abnormal? How do we judge whether or not someone is normal? By whose standard? In my Chinese class, I had to do a presentation on a short story/article about a little kid who has two horrible looking scars that extend from the back of his neck down to the lower back/waist. People in his class were disgusted by his scars and called him a monster or called those scars "the big worms." They pushed him out of the crowd, and the kid himself becomes very self-conscious and chooses to stay at the corner at all time. The scars are the remnants of the various surgery procedures that he had to go through as a child...in order to be alive and saved from death. It is human nature to repel the unknown and the foreign, because people are scared of the unknown. They don't know what it is, and they are afraid to find out because they don't want to get hurt; therefore, they push it away as far as possible so that they don't have to deal with it. They even called names which reflect their own inner fear toward the unknown. A child's innocence prevent him/her from thinking rationally about the consequence of the effects of the name-calling act. It hurts very bad, especially on a young child...because he took it personally and really thought he is indeed a "monster." It is also amazing how children that young have already developed the concept of beauty and ugliness... On the surface, the scars are ugly just like the crawling worms under the skin, but on the other level, it is the fear that's within all of our hearts.

What about those people who are of different ethnic backgrounds? People of different colors? Something happened a while ago while I was at home...and it really bothered me a lot. I wish I could change someone's mind to be more tolerant and more accepting...but you know how it is. It is impossible to change another's mind unless the person wants to do it by himself/herself. (Therefore, don't ever think of trying to change other people.) What is it that makes a person holding some sort of discrimination against another group of people? The color of their skin? The way they act? Stereotypes from all others that have passed down to the generation now from the past? There are good and bad people in all races, in all countries, in all ethnic backgrounds, and in all religions. sigh... It made me really sad and really mad... I wish I had the power to help her see...

i am exhausted...