Engineering cyanobacteria

I like to think of myself as an environmentally-conscious person who tries to save energy and reduce my carbon footprint. But there are times, like now, when I just want to keep my apartment warm enough to wear shorts and not feel guilty for contributing to carbon dioxide emissions. What if we could recover the carbon dioxide molecules that’s produced from burning fuels and quickly convert those molecules back into energy-rich fuel molecules? It’d be a different story.

Killing stories

This past week, I had two blog entry ideas that were supposed to become two blog entries. But somehow, I convinced myself that they were dumb ideas and I shouldn’t write them. And now I’m writing an even dumber entry about this story-killing process. So I guess, even though it’s the middle of January, this year, I would like to be brave enough not to let the fear of failure stop me from trying. I would like to learn to be OK with imperfect blog entries. I would like to be brave enough to fight the good fight.

Published
Categorized as blog Tagged

An old news story – Kopitiam in Boston

The Kopitiam Poster

Yes, it really is an old news story – so old that I got a little embarrassed to send my professor another reminder that it’s still not on the BU News Service website. But still, I think it deserves to be out there, and so, even though this is supposed to be a science blog, I’m going to very shamelessly self-publish my story here: Kopitiam in Boston.

Kopitiam in Boston

As noon approached on a recent Sunday, a line of people began to form outside the multi-purpose room in the M.I.T. Sidney Pacific Graduate Residence. These people were mostly from Singapore, queuing patiently, as Singaporeans are known to do, for good food. The rich aromas of cooking curry mixed with various aromatic spices began to waft from the doors. The chatter grew louder, more animated, until it abruptly fell to an absolute silence as a student came out of the multi-purpose room and calmly began to instruct people what to do once they went in. Then, the line started moving. The kopitiam was open for business.

Welcome to Do The Molecule Dance, and 2013.

New Year's Eve at Faneuil Hall, Boston. Picture taken by Cassie Martin on my phone.

This is not the first entry here, but it is the first entry in 2013, and since this blog just sorta got a new look, Welcome to Do The Molecule Dance! Also, I guess it is kind of an afterthought, because I didn’t write a ‘First Entry’ when this blog started in October 2012.

So here goes.

First real publication!

My first published article on BU News Service!

I am required to file a new 500-word story every Wednesday at 2 pm for one of my classes. Which means that usually, that new story gets written between noon and 2 pm, during my two-hour break which is also supposed to be my lunch break. So I was really, really pleasantly surprised when my professor liked the mushroom story enough to have me do some edits and get it up on the Boston University News Service website!

Kopitiam in Boston

This is not my first time living abroad, but I don’t think I will ever be able to get over Singaporean food (yes, not even with bacon and eggs and grits). So I was really excited to go to an event organized by the MIT Singapore Students Society, Kopitiam, for homemade Singaporean food!

One of those reflections on life

We had a guest speaker for our class on Friday, a stay-at-home mom with a child diagnosed with autism. She told us about her experiences – bringing her son up, his problems with digestion, her struggles with their doctors, and the camp that her son went to this past summer. She briefly mentioned that before she had her children, she was working at MIT.

Her stories resonated with me for several reasons.

Mushroom walk in Lincoln

The mushrooms that Matt and I found. For the life of me, I couldn't see anything on the ground that didn't look like fallen leaves.

Getting out of bed at 7 am on a Sunday morning isn’t usually my thing, but for what I went to, it was totally worth it. I went to a mushroom walk in Lincoln, hosted by Trish Adams of the Boston Mycological Club. Pictures!