First Official Order??

Well, some interesting things happened this week: I went back to NUS for more lab stuff, I got an order for a notebook from a stranger, and TOB was well, interesting, I guess. Maybe I should go in chronological order?

[EDIT: Braces, I forgot to mention BRACES!! I got the upper and lower done on separate Saturdays because of tiem, and I guess it hasn't been that bad. I did feel some pain on my protruding molar, but after a week it's gone, so I assume it's been pushed into position lol With the lower braces on now though, my incisors hurt, so I can't really bite anything (even baneeners ;AAA; Chewing is fine though, my braces don't really get caught on my cheeks. At least now I can say my teeth are extra shiny. Okay das all lol]

After last Saturday's TOB session, I told my mum in the car that the session wasn't very clear, and that it could've been phrased differently so that it makes more sense on our teen-aged level. When I read through the student's book, I remember there was one paragraph (about our bodies and physical appearances) which I think was what the teens really needed to hear, but she didn't talk about it. So I raised that point to her, and she just kinda sighed. I don't blame her, it's not easy to coordinate lessons of majority of the content. Like out of twelve chapters of stuff, she's doing like what, three-quarters maybe, so it's tiring to do it on your own. I guess this is where I come in lol

The chapter this week is about hope and redemption in Christ, which ties in with Lent and about how Jesus died for us to take away our sins, and that the sacrament of reconciliation is good and full of acceptance, rather than it being a time to have your wrongs pointed out and be ridiculed for it, which, as a teenager, doesn't make much sense. Also, from my own experiences of Catechism in general, my batch was mostly cynical, uncaring kids. I know, 'cos I've kinda been there before, thinking I know everything already. But I know from experience, that sometimes, the one's who suppress their emotions the most and harden their hearts, have only done so because they've been through difficult, emotional times.

Anyway, after reading the chapter on Monday, I couldn't help but think of some of the people I know of, and I just wrote some stuff down, about how saddening it is to see friends hating themselves, and I just went on from there. I kinda hesitated showing it to my mum, not only because it's something I wrote and have not much confidence in my writing lol but also because I wanted to let it settle first and see how I feel about it later.

On Tuesday I talked to my mum about my thoughts on the chapter - and then she assigned me to do the beginning of the session. It's kinda built on top of something that we did the previous time: a gallery walk with things like "books I've read, friends I've made, things I've muttered under my breath towards my parents" etc on different sheets of paper, as a reflection on our past and all the good and bad we've done. And after they've walked around, someone comes around with a crucifix (Jesus) to take it all down to symbolise that he takes responsibility for all that has happened in our lives. If you look at this, you just kinda think "yeah yeah, I know what you're trying to get at; whatever", and even I thought that too when I went through TOB the first time lol So, I was tasked by mum to do this this year.

The first time I wrote the script, it was like one thousand words long LOL Then again, I combined the gallery walk aspect and the thing I wrote the day before, so that it ties in better, and makes it more relatable to teens. Basically, my point was that the kind of love our closest friends show, those who listen to our self-hatred but listens to us and accepts it anyway, is the kind of love Jesus has for us. At least to them at this age, I think that's the kind of unconditional love that they can resonate with most and understand. I don't know if someone just had a runny nose, but when I got to this point in the script, I heard some sniffling lol And according to the other facilitators, the quietness at that point was the quietest the teens have ever been, the kind where they're really taking in what is being said, and I can only hope that's true.

If I had more time, I would've talked about pride, mostly because I myself know about that lol All the times I didn't want to own up to something, or thought myself the victim, or didn't show appreciation to those closest to me, or that something we did technically wasn't wrong, or berated myself and felt guilty for what I have done yet made no attempt to amend it. This issue of pride has stuck with me, because at the end of one of the adult-TOB sessions, the presenter, when talking about confession, said that the greatest sin of all is to think we have none. That really made me rethink what it is I have or have not done, and has made me want to correct myself.

Anyway, my focus was more on the "Jesus loves you" aspect because we as teenagers often can't see that as possible, to have someone love us unconditionally with all the hatred that we posses towards ourselves. And I think I myself have failed to do that when I should have done so. For the longest time I thought I knew what to do but I never knew how to - but I should just do it anyway, especially when I knew what was going on (I'm sorry I never came to help earlier.)

Yeah, it took me awhile to try and be satisfied with what I wrote, because I didn't know if what I was going to say would be meaningful to them, or if they would even be open to accepting it, but I guess from the feedback from the facilitators and how well the session went, it's all good. Even when I asked each person in my group a question they each had an answer (even the quiet one!!) so I'm proud of them c:

I also went back to the lab, from Wednesday to Friday, because the lab lady said the lab tech has her own experiment she's carrying out, and that I could ask if I could observe her while lab lady is away during Chinese New Year. Lab tech was doing protein cloning, which involves all the splicing of bacterial plasmids with a specific gene to mass produce a certain protein. However, the focus of this week was doing some western blotting that lab lady asked lab tech to do for her. Basically it's kinda like gel electrophoresis, but for proteins. And since the bands are invisible, you can either use some fancy machine that is light-sensitive, or you can expose it to film.

Lab tech is a nice lady, and I think she's the lab tech and safety person-in-charge of her floor because of her experience. Funny though, is that she can be forgetful and a little clumsy at times. There's one part in western blotting that needs you to transfer the bands from the gel to the membrane, and she forgot to put the membrane on in one of the trials. If I wasn't there watching her do it, she would've forgotten the last one LOL

She even let me carry things around and do things, even if I'm not allowed to do any sort of experimentation!! On Friday, we were supposed to let boxes of membranes swish around on a rotator, but the time to do that coincided with her AV duty for a seminar, so she left me with her access card and told me to put the boxes on the rotator at 11.50 that morning. And I was left alone for like 20 minutes while she was gone, and it was so awkward sitting at her table, no lab coat on, and everyone else is doing their own thing and I'm just, waiting. (Waiting to do my duty hOOOOAAAAAH) I even put on gloves just to switch on the rotator. (Apparently when you're outside, you're not allowed to go around with lab coats or touch things with gloves on, so like opening a door from outside needs an gloveless hand, because the glove itself is "contaminated".)

Anyway, I went down to return her access card and sat in on the seminar, given by quite a young lady with her research on stem cells and neurodisease therapy. I managed to understand some concepts, like a gene mutation that produces a faulty protein that causes motor neurons to fail, and how they discovered a drug to extend the lifespan of faulty motor neurons. I didn't understand everything though, so I looked up an article about their research, and then I realised that I have a big job to do as scientific journalist. I really need good understanding of the science before I can put it into words that normal people can comprehend, and if I can't understand it myself then welp lol

That Friday, I had lunch at the NUS science canteen. It was okay. I had spent wednesday's and Thursday's lunch at Clementi. The reason why I didn't eat at the canteen the first two days was because I didn't want to be faced with the awkward situation of not having a place to sit, among people who go there almost every day and have classmates to sit with. Also I wanted to go Art Friend, but the former reason is still more true ;w; Anyway, I had to eat at the canteen on Friday 'cos we would get our results later that day!!

We went to the fancy room with all the scanners on the floor below us. I had been there before with Lab Lady who talked me through some of the stuff she does with the PCR machine, and it's not that easy to understand. That was a good time though, because I asked a lot of questions and learned something lol Anyway, we tried one of the scanners, but it wasn't really showing any results, so we went to the dark room to do the old fashioned way, that Lab Tech was more accustomed to doing.

Their dark room is really weird. It's like half a column protruding from the wall, with a rotating door which is like three-quarters of a black tube. So you stand in the opening, spin the door around, and it opens to the dark room. And good gourd that room was dark. It took at least like five to ten minutes for my eyes to really adjust to it, and I didn't dare move in case I bumped into someone or accidentally walked into a machine. They only had two red ceiling lights, a table where you keep your cassettes and film, a sink that I didn't recognise was a sink, and some machine that you put your film in after exposing it to the western blotting membranes.

We spent some time there, and had some success with one of the proteins. You could see some efflorescence from it quite well and had good results on the film; but the one that should have worked, didn't. Even after trying a different dye-like-solution-thing, not all of them showed up on the film. Lab Tech said that she might have washed the membranes too well that the protein markers (antibodies rather, that attach to the proteins) were washed away so they didn't show up. Anyway, she was going to redo the antibody part of the procedure on Monday, when Lab Lady comes back. So, I don't know if there'll be anything for me to observe this coming week.

And the thing about my first "official" order happened one night, and I just totally freaked out. I couldn't believe I got an order!! From someone I didn't know!! I even asked Bei if it was a friend of hers (she's been sharing my carousell posts on fb lel) and it wasn't, so it must've been a lady who just came across it and wanted one. And it felt like it was so sudden when she asked for custom stuff and I was like so excite!! It's been a couple of days though, and it's gotten me kinda worried. This lady requested for a custom-made notebook, with lined pages and a name on the front, and they both are challenges in their own way.

 I hadn't really thought about how to go about doing lined pages. Initially I thought I could use lecture pad, but the problem is that if I fold A5 pages (into A6) the lines of each folded sheet might not line up with each other, and lecture pad always have that wider space at the top and below. I managed to figure out a solution though. I watched a video about how to use lined paper in bookbinding, and there are programs that do the lines for you, so hecky ye.

Now for the name. At first I thought she wanted me to cut out a name on the cover, (like my first notebook) so I said 30 cents per letter lol but it turns out she wanted me to write it by hand on a name tag, like the one on my second notebook. She wanted me to do it in cursive, which is uh, kinda hard for me to do, with permanent marker. I spent about an hour trying out different variations, and sometimes it pains me so much, when you do it nicely once, but YOU CAN'T REPRODUCE IT AGAIN!! There was one that I did really nicely, and it would've been a shame to not use it, so I thought, why don't I just cut it out, and then paste it on the tag if she likes it. I even used my curved scissors to do the rounded edges, and I must say, I think it looks pretty darn good. (You can message me for pictures, I'm too lazy to upload anything rn)

I was kinda dumb to think, "oh, it's handwritten? I can lower my price for names lawl" so I made it 10 cents per letter, but I didn't think it would've taken me so much time to deliberate and struggle over how to write the name orz Even if I did lower my price, she hasn't replied for like, a couple of days now. I think I remember Carousell saying that the connection was lost or cancelled or something when I last heard from her, so I don't know if that's the problem. I can still message her fine though, like it gets onto the server or something idk. I don't know if this is what they consider "backing out", but even if she doesn't want it, I'll still make a lined notebook because I can experiment and figure out how to do it nicely. It's gonna be a real challenge though, to cut the paper nicely and evenly, and to get the lines match up nicely from page to page.

Yerp, that's what happened this week. I'm still waiting for a reply, I really really want to get something sold ;wwww;

First Successful Sale!!

Well, technically it was gonna be a "success" from the start, since it was ordered by coach and he was expecting it. But considering that today has been the only exciting day the past week, I guess that's a good thing.

Not much happened during Chinese New Year. One of my grandaunts passed away earlier this year, so not many of my Dad's cousins came to visit my grandmother.

Not much has happened in the handcrafting department either (except today which I'll talk about later). I've been trying to make bracelet stuff  'cos I still have the stuff to do so, like embroidery threads for friendship bracelets and whatnot. I tried a new pattern with instructions that were very new to me. Basically it shows you what to do each row, but show the direction of crossing and looping with arrows. (I never thought that the way you crossed or looped threads around each other would matter, but apparently they do.)

Most of the past week was spent moping about how no one was buying anything lol At first I thought the problem was marketing, so I started getting back into social media (sort of). I resuscitated my Facebook account, and befriended a bunch of people from school. To be honest, for a long time I felt like my worth was determined by the number of people who would pay me attention, but I know that's not true, and something to be discussed for another day lol I'll probably spread word around again when I have created more stuff.

Another problem, after talking to the Boob about it, was pretty much something I created for myself. I guess I overestimated how much people would be willing to buy my flowers, and priced them too high lol So just today, I lowered it down from $20 to $12 for a bouquet, which I guess is more reasonable. Probably should've done that from the start. if I wanted to sell my Valentine's day bouquet. Now I can't send it to anyone 'cos I'll be getting braces tomorrow and have no time to meet up with anyone.

I also should've made more individual flowers, so that at least people have a greater choice of what I have, but I didn't like the stick ones I made. After successfully making a bouquet that I was happy with, nothing else would suffice lol Anyway, I might make individual ones next week. That being said, I just made a notebook from scratch that I'm really really proud of. I guess the cutting of my paper could be better, but what to do without a proper paper cutter lol And if I spent more time cutting out my letters properly, they might look neater. I like it anyway, and I'll put a listing up tomorrow morning when there's more traffic online.

Anyway, time to get down the story of coach lol A couple of things happened, one of which was the pricing problem. The first price I gave to him was $24, because I thought each flower would be worth $2. And then I changed it to $20 earlier this week on Carousell to make it cheaper. And then again, after talking shop to Hans, I decided (again) to bring the price down. Coach was nice enough to pay $20 even after I told him I didn't want to overcharge him. His reason was that he already agreed to it, and that it wasn't fair to me omg coach I don't deserve your money ;w;

Just as I reached Bouna Vista, (not only was I meeting him there, but I needed to change to green line to get to Clementi lol) he suddenly messaged me asking if I could deliver the flowers to his wife's office, 'cos she works around there, and I was liek wat. I was like coach dis is 2 soon n so sudden y u do dis. He said that it was okay if I wasn't comfortable to do so, and a part of me just wanted to do it anyway since he implied that I can't do it heh But even if I wanted to, I was too early; his wife would have been at a company lunch then. If I had been there later, I would've done it, just to prove him wrong (and to myself I guess, that I can do things!!)

While I was on my way to Clementi, he messaged me again, with three links on carousell, saying "look what I found", and they led me to listings of my flowers. I literally messaged him "what" [omg I'm on such good terms with coach lel] Even though it's a nice thought that someone would actually want to copypaste pictures of my bouquet to sell, all I could think of was that a report was to be made. Then he said it was him, and felt so accused that I intended to report him. Apparently he put up listings of my flowers on his own carousell account to try and give me some exposure and more responses. (Thank you boss, sorry boss) I later told him I couldn't sell anymore anyway, since I wouldn't be free on Saturday, so he took the listings down (t-thank you boss, s-sorry boss ;wwww;)

I finally met him at Bouna and he gave me the $20 he agreed on, and he wouldn't want to pay less. Damn son, give this man an award for being so nice and concerned about my poopy little business. Those twenty dollars are going to be put to very good use in my wallet. I really hope his wife likes them though.

That's all so far in my crafting-business endeavours. I'll probably try and whip up something new in the coming week... if my braces don't ruin me before then ;w;