Eric J. Ma’s Website

After a harrowingly frustrating weekend in the lab, I swear I will not go into the lab and do heavy-duty lab work anymore. At best it’ll be innoculations for overnights. That’s it.

Time to chill on the weekends buddy. Chill and wait. That’s probably better than actually doing lab work. Wait, just as the Israelites did for 3 days before crossing Jordan.

It is in the quiet crucible of your personal, private sufferings, that your noblest dreams are born, and God’s greatest gifts are given, in compensation for what you’ve been through. – Whintley Phipps

Sunsets at the Rose Garden provide the most picturesque view of the North Shore mountains. It also is the most tranquil time that one gets to enjoy within the 16 hours of awakeness that we experience. The calm wind blows a gentle breeze, the sound of a jet plane high above the sky, the occasional car that cruises by… The atmosphere is just amazing. Absolutely suited to silent reflection.

If your intentions are purposeful, and you communicate your intentions truthfully, and your actions match your intentions, you will never have to be coy, shy or embarrassed of what you do. You will walk in the light, you will have righteousness on your side, and you will always have the clearest conscience ever. And that matters the most, over money, fame, intellect, and the most earthly things you can ever imagine.

… to ruin what otherwise was a perfect day.

It just takes one blemish… to ruin the image of perfection.

Argh, the blemish always is there. It’s so hard to get away.

Appearances are deceiving. Indeed.

Stop looking at your target and saying, “What a great thing/person it/he/she is.”

You do not understand the internal struggles, the defects, the imperfections that are present.

Stop revering earthly things.

You do not see beyond the polish.

Stop.

Let the thing be the thing that the thing is, and let him be himself who he is, and let her be herself who she is.

Does not the Maker have the power to mould and shape each individual into a glorious vessel and a cheap vessel, both at His own will?

Let the Maker do His own job, and let us stop tagging things and people with labels.

Writing, writing, writing. I just love it. But writing with writer’s block just doesn’t pull it. I hate that.

Writing about myself is even harder. I’m okay with writing about other things, issues, objects, even other people (although I do try to follow the Biblical principles of being diplomatic, gentle but truthful in my assessment of others)… but myself? That felt like Moses writing “摩西为人极其谦和”… blowing my own trumpet about all of my achievements. Oh well, it’s a necessity.

So writing till 1:30AM in AMBL is quite the experience. MSL is quiet then, and nobody’s around save for a few PhD students still trying to complete their experiments. The custodians want to clean out AMBL, but they see me inside and hesitate – what if he’s doing some important things on his computer? (Really, I wasn’t, just writing my scholarship applications…) I let them in, telling them, “At this time, when you’ve got to do your job, you’re the boss.” Apurv comes by, and Qingning too, both of them from the Ellis Lab. Late-night workers. I call a few people, to relieve my mind, and pacing up and down in this large, expansive and clean lab keeps my mind clear.

I finish my writing at 1:30AM, realizing that my juices have dried up and that I need a rest. I am ostensibly tired, though my mind still has whizzes of brilliance flash-banging through it. I pack up, quietly, making sure that I have everything that I came with, before wheeling my bike out of AMBL. As I wheel out, a maintenance guy comes in, and I ask, “Late night call?” He replies, “Oh no, something broke.”

We exchange a “cheers”, and I bike off into the night, to my bed, to rest my tired head.

As Jophat takes his customary hour-long shower, I thought I’d do a bit of writing on this dusty old blog of mine.

So now I’ve decided to do something unprecedented, something I never thought I’d do as an undergrad: I asked a prof if I could be a TA for his class.

Yes, I was blessed with a mind that could do problem solving well, so when faced with a problem in front of me, I would fiddle around with it (mentally) until I arrived at the correct solution. Genetics has been my best course in the Life Sciences. Being a problem-based course and not a memory-based course, I showed my aptitude in the course by scoring an A+ in the course – 93%, my second best ever. As much as I have learned a lot from my microbiology courses (and I still do retain quite a bit of the info, such as the concepts of gene regulation hierarchy in the hell-of-a-class MICB324, or the formation of synapses in immune system cell-cell communication from MICB302), I have learned the most about tackling a problem from the Genetics courses.

I certainly didn’t think I’d muster the guts to ask, but only after chatting with Lee Ling about this did I say, “Okay buddy, no try, no know.” And only after chatting with Charles about it, to assess whether I’d actually make a good TA did I say, “Okay buddy, just go do it.” So I did it. I shot Craig and e-mail, asking for the opportunity to give this a shot.

I don’t know how this will turn out, if he’s already secured the TAs that he needs or not… or if I won’t get this chance at all with a direct “no”. I do hope I get the chance, as it’ll be a great way for me bolster my educational portfolio. But I will leave the final decision to God alone, and let Him decide whether it’ll be a good chance for me or not.

There’s been a lot going on lately in my life, with the whole “getting ready for graduate school” being the main focus. Scholarship applications, school applications, canvassing for reference letters, trying to do research at the same time… it can all add up.

It sometimes feels that I’m in the midst of a rat race. An unwanted rat race. A race that I don’t really want to be a part of. It’s stressful, not enjoyable, and causes me worries. Worries that I’ll not be considered good enough. It makes my heart skip a beat, at times, when I recognize the stress of what’s going on.

But then I reflect, and realize, actually that skip of a beat comes from a guilty conscience. A conscience that wants to put the focus on “self”, on “me”, on “my own” achievement, “my own” reputation, “my own” research, “my own” accomplishments. That focus on “me” alone makes me worry that I’ll have so much at stake to lose.

However, I do know that I don’t have to worry about this anymore. The epiphany, as all epiphanies which happen to me, came in the washroom. I think I was showering. I just had to hark back and take a “God’s eye view” of things, and realize that when I stop focusing on myself, I release myself from the shackles of pride and conceit that tie me down. I become able to take pride in my work without being proud of myself. I become able to focus on service to others rather than servicing myself. I synergize with others with rather than advancing my own goals at the expense of others.

It’s taken a long, long while to realize this. Third year taught me a lot – there’s the whole “med school” rat race which I inadvertently had to get embroiled in if I wanted to go to the best graduate schools. People viewed me with suspicion, because an excellent “pre-grad” student would necessarily, due to the bell-curving, come at the expense of a pre-med student. Not forgetting, of course, that many Microbiology and Immunology students are considered “pre-med”. Then there was the whole thing with a research idea being “scooped” – I really hated that, and I still do, and I wish I had done my literature search better. Sometimes it makes me wonder, will I still come up with something good and novel anymore? But I know I cannot second-guess myself, because I know that “novelty” and “utility” are not the biggest measures of wisdom. I know of a better standard. Just gotta take the “God’s eye view” of things.

Translated from Sally’s “One in a Million”.

茫茫人海中

时间飞逝而去

身边的朋友如同春夏秋冬

一季一季地轮流改变

为何密友在远方，

而仅仅的熟人在身边？

偶尔有时相见，

偶尔能约会，

然而一忙起来就错过

重拾旧忆的机会

只好说一声：“不久后。。。下次吧。。。”

因着以为会有下一次

才会当朋友的存在是理所当然的

人长大了，老了，会改变

渐渐就失去联系

久而久之

就没有了共同话题

而我，就会认识新朋友

认识新的人

然而，唯有一直陪在身边的朋友

虽在远方的朋友

拨冗约会的朋友

偶尔留言的朋友

保持联系的朋友

共渡患难的朋友

共享喜乐的朋友

才是万人中稀有的好友

但愿我不失去任何个朋友

但愿我不与密友失去联系

但我就不能找到

万人中，那位稀有的好朋友