Although some people may view research as a 9-to-5 job, I see it as my lifestyle. In the mornings I run, during the day I do biophysics, and in the evenings I cook. However, I value the first and third as vital activities for the second. Going back to the running analogy, my time away from lab is "cross-training" for my biochemistry experiments.
Running provides a great opportunity for amateur research since it's both easy to quantify (distance and time), but filled with confounding variables (e.g. rain storms and late night partying), since I'm not willing to live the type of monotonous lifestyle needed for a truly scientific experiment. As I train for the Lion CIty Marathon in late June, I talk to other runners, read articles, and experiment with different training strategies to find the best way to prepare. Wei Keong has done considerable research as part of his triathlon training, so he has discovered a good mixture of long runs, track intervals, recovery drinks, and daily nutritional supplements. On a related note, my friends John and Sukhjeet took a whole course about sports nutrition from Clyde Wilson at Stanford, which leads into the enxt topic: cooking.
Cooking is the other obvious example of this type of extra-laboratory investigation. Singapore is one of the best places in the world for exploring global cuisine: Chinese, Indian, Malay, Peranakan (a mixture of the previous three), Japanese, and even French, Lebanese, and New Mexican. Initially the Makansutra was my guide to finding the best tasting food, but I became increasingly curious about the history behind the various cuisines. I recently purchased "On Food and Cooking" by Harold McGee, one of the most amazing books that I have read. Instead of recipes, the book is filled with the evolutionary history and science behind the foods of the world. I now view cooking as the collected wisdom of hundreds of generations of people solving problems: using animals (milk, eggs, meat, etc.) to derive nutrition from otherwise inedible plants, applying salt, heat, or microbes to kill harmful bacteria and preserve food, and so on.
Of course, there is more to life than running and cooking, so I am always on the lookout for recommendations for things to do in Singapore: places to visit, festivals to attend, hawker centers to try, books to read, movies to watch, music to hear, and on and on. Louis Pasteur wrote that "chance favor the prepared mind," so I view my philosophy of being as open-minded as possible as preparing myself for some serendipitous discovery in lab.
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