I've complained a lot about being trapped in windowless basement laboratories, spending hours by myself battling legacy Visual Basic code, making miniscule adjustments to align a set of mirrors, or other tasks that would never make exciting reality TV viewing. However, armed with another India-induced epiphany, I am ready for Round 2 in the lab. While lying semi-conscious in bed due to some stomach ailment, I realized how my true passion was the communication-related aspects of science, rather than the solitary hours at the bench. In high school, I loved explaining my science projects to the judges and public at the science fairs and even now I enjoy talking about the mechanical properties of DNA with everyone ranging from grad school friends and co-workers to taxi drivers and gelato machine salesmen.
"Results-oriented" is one of the first phrases that comes to mind when I think of Singaporean culture. Throughout their lives, Singaporeans are tested to determine their path through the education system and government bureaucracy or corporate world. Wei Keong, one of the students in a neighboring lab, explained the rationale for this: Singapore is a small island with human capital as its only natural resource. If a substantial fraction of the population decided to become poets or pastry chefs, the economy would face rather dire consequences. This can lead to a short-sighted, competitive atmosphere. Wei Keong observed this in junior college and another friend at Biopolis mentioned that some scientists go so far as to give only partial protocols to researchers in other labs, to avoid giving them an advantage.
Lying on the bed in India, with a conveniently-placed bucket on the floor next to me, I realized that I had incorporated many of the negative aspects of this philosophy and focused too much on a few short-term goals instead of seeing the big picture. My true goal in Singapore is to learn as much as I can about the local culture (and biophysics) and tell all my friends and family about my latest discoveries. Moreover, communication is a central feature of science as well, whether it is an interdisciplinary collaboration with another research group or a presentation to a funding agency. I am doing my own meta-experiment to see if David Allen's GTD system (see photo) will help me be more productive in the windowless basement lab, but I will always keep communication as my central focus. It's the reason that I started this blog in the first place.
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