Lab talk

My boss came in lab this afternoon to pass me a paper. The worth blogging part is that he ended up chatting with us for nearly 2 hours and he seemed to be in a good mood. I guess with no administrative stuffs or paper work bugging him, he's a lot merrier (judging by the fact that the research article is not in my archive, which means is quite up to date).

We started off talking about our research work, then to publication and rules of the game, to how our findings and data fit into bigger picture, to what PhD is about (not making money, insane, permanent head damage kind of work), what contribution we could make in advancing knowledge, research culture in our institution, his good old time of his postgrad study in Australia, the differences of Asian and Western research culture and mind set, and even about education of kids. I asked him a few questions in between the conversation. One being why he chose to come back and do research in Malaysia. I never knew he is such a patriotic person. "It's easier to just pack and go to the greener pastures, but the reasons of staying back are because of my family and this place that we called Tanah Air." He said if everyone leave, then who is there to make our country move forward. He also mentioned that his professors in UM last time chose to stay and worked hard to make people like himself into who he is today, so it's his turn now to inspire the younger generations and thus so continues the effort. To be honest, I'm a little surprised to hear that. But I can't agree more as it is what I hold on to all this while (at least up till now). And the other thing that we share similar opinion is 'instead of waiting for change to happen, be a factor of change'.

Well, it's really good to have him back in lab! At least I get inspired and motivated or perhaps stressed once in a while in the process of permanent head damaging.