Today, I officially began my attachment with the Institute of Materials Research & Engineering (IMRE) at Fusionopolis Park...
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Fusionopolis 2, Fusionopolis Park's newest complex, is a bit like the Death Star 2. It is open for business, operating quite soundly with all manner of nefarious overlords pedalling away within, but on closer inspection, you find that it probably shouldn't be, because only half of it is finished! Although it opened its doors on 21st September, I discovered today none of the research labs have been finished.
My supervisor, Dr Jing Hua Teng (written in the Western style), informed me that our wet chemistry lab will not be open until the end of the month and I have to wait until January to use the group clean room! He then looked wistful for a moment as he remembered IMRE's old home on the main campus of the National University of Singapore (NUS).
At this point, the Death Star analogy ends, because the old IMRE was not blown up by rebellious Indians; it is still sitting there with all of its facilities intact and in perfect working order, soon to be converted to new labs by the NUS.
The only Force around here is the radiative forcing from Indonesia's haze, which continues to bathe Singapore in a noxious grey cloud. The haze develops every year when unscrupulous palm oil companies set fire to forests in order to clear land for the following season's plantations, a practice which is illegal in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, but to which Indonesian ministers turn a blind eye in exchange for bungs. Because of our proximity to the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the wind carries the pollution right over us and into Malaysia, too. The crisis was so bad this year that the government was forced to shut the schools and send children home. I didn't think it was noticeably bad until today, but while having lunch with my supervisor I was seized by a coughing fit, which didn't abate until I was provided with an N95 mask, the kind you see people wearing whenever the news channels need some stereotypical footage of Southeast Asia. So maybe you'll see me on TV soon!
I hoped to see my new desk before the day was done. I had been assigned a space on level 11 of Kinesis tower (those with sharp memories will remember from my description of Fusionopolis Park a few days ago that that is the one next to Innovis). In my office, there are several rows of desks. The penultimate row contains ten desks numbered #250 to #259. I had been assigned #256. On arriving in the office, I discovered that only one of these desks was occupied. Can you guess which one?
Ultimately, it turned out that not very much work was done on my first day of work, but it still counts as one day down. My placement ends on 4th October 2017, so there are just 730 days to go!
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By
The Imperial Orange,
5th October 2015
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