adaptations

In the American Scientist issue I'm currently reading (Jan-Feb 2005), there's an article called "Exercise Controls Gene Expression". It describes how exercise activates signalling proteins that move GLUT4 glucose transporter proteins to the plasma membrane. GLUT4 transports glucose out of the blood, into cells. GLUT4 is held in vesicles below the plasma membrane, released by exercise or insulin.

Daily exercise also activates the GLUT4 gene to make more GLUT4 mRNA, and thus more GLUT4 protein. Without exercise, proteins are less sensitive to insulin, and there comes a time when abnormal amounts of insulin (through injections) are required to regulate blood sugar levels. This can be viewed an adaptation for vigorous exercise that humans have developed, since glucose has to be conserved as a fuel for the brain. After writing this out, I think I'll have to read it again, because I honestly don't fully understand this.

The point of me writing this here is actually to remind myself to exercise more. =)

My parents have adapted pretty well to my vegan diet by now. Last night was at Zion Road hawker center, which has no vegetarian options, and my dad suggested to go across the street to eat nasi padang. Then I was going to order this tauhu telor thingy at the nasi padang place, and my mum said that one is egg tauhu, which was confirmed by the person doing the serving. This behavior by my parents surprised me somewhat.

Anyway, that nasi padang place is kinda strange, there are 2 stalls next to each other, both selling nasi padang, but one has newspaper clippings and massive crowds. The other one was empty. My mum didn't want to eat at the empty one, but it was pretty crowded in the other one, so my dad convinced her that we should go try the empty one. Does that place survive on the overflow crowd? Wouldn't a stall selling some other kind of food do better? The food was ok, not that different, I felt, but I'm not fussy anyway.

We went to Chinatown after that, walked around, saw waxed ducks and "air plants" (soiless), red everywhere and cool stuff like this contraption to aid in folding clothes. It's just a platic T shaped piece with 3 hinges. You put a t-shirt on top, flip over one side, unflip, flip over the other side of the T, unflip, then flip the bottom of the T up, and you've got yourself a neat folded t-shirt. It's the first time we've been in Chinatown.

By the way, that program I developed at work has won $500 for the department, and we've got to do another presentation on Monday (for a yet higher award?). Don't seem to have much fate with the hematologist, who was a pretty naggy woman (telling me to eat less wheat, etc). I saw her because my hemaglobin levels were high when the skin specialist ordered a blood test for me (skin specialist was for my hives). The point is that I've an appointment with her on Monday, which, incidentally, was supposed to be several weeks ago, but I had to cancel that earlier appointment because of some last minute work. Luckily I won't have to reschedule yet again, because the appointment is at noon and the presentation is at 3, so I should have sufficient time to get back.

Found out that Yinglan actually knows machine C and did some image recognition project thing. Which really doesn't explain why he's gushing about Excel macros like they're so great.

My parents went to see my granny just now, and they say they'll transfer her to Ang Mo Kio Community Hospital on Monday, for her to do rehab. That's great news. The last time I saw her, she sneezed twice, but she's pretty sleepy.

Have been talking quite a bit with Ben, regarding various technical concepts revolving around databases and web programming. Then one day was talking with him and Doreen, and we got to talking about philosophy, which Doreen said was bullshit, so I brought up the hypothetical "one guy needs liver one guy needs heart one need lungs one needs kidney so should we save four lives and sacrifice one" case, then moved to a scenario where two people are both dying, one needs heart and the other needs liver...

Then started talking about if someone is in a coma, should take off life support if the person cannot pay for it, then Ben said government should pay for it, and Doreen was like "woah there"... anyway, we were kinda cut off at that point because work beckoned. So perhaps it would be good to have a minimally communist State? The problem with government, really, is that it has too much power, and that causes problems because it's a human institution after all, and fallible. You need power to do things, but you need control, and there's always this tension between power and control, if the people power control themselves, things might be great, but experience shows it'll probably be disastrous.

How do you get self-regulating systems? How do you get companies to care about the world, to care about the environment? Pretty soon Singapore might be submerged under the rising sea levels. The sea water creeping into hard disks, corrupting data. I'm scared for our future because though people seem to care, not nearly enough people seem to care, and I fear it will be too late when people finally start to do something.

Speaking of power, I think you can really feel it as a sysadmin. Looking in the shop windows at 10-port KVM switches, 40-port 10/100 Ethernet hubs, is to look at zillions and zillions CPU cycles working together, processing data, automating tasks, yet that power can be used to hack into networks and bring down the civilized world. Already it feel pretty good to have the 2-port KVM switch at my desk that allows me to switch between computers.

I have to do IPPT. Which means I'd better get in shape, because it's probably not good if I fail. Web programming is pretty interesting, and I'm trying to get into it as quickly as I can. Daniel ORDs on Tuesday. Everyone else will be leaving this year, will really need to get more NSFs in otherwise work will kill us. Already we're just about managing with 4 or 5 NSFs; there's no way 2 will do without overtime.

Quite a bit of FTP problems, though, with the web server. Basically using ASP with ADODB, accessing databases through SQL. By the way, if you assign keyboard shortcuts to Excel macros you write, if the CAPS LOCK is on, the assigned shortcut keystrokes might not work if you're using an older version of Excel (not sure about 2000, but 97 got this bug, and 2002 doesn't). It took me some time to figure out that the CAPS LOCK was the problem.

We did spring cleaning in office on Friday, and I found a pair of speakers which I've appropriated for my desk. So now I've got sound on one of my computers. Got a sign for my desk too, that says something like "no unauthorized entry, seek proper permission".

Superman 1 is on TV now. My dad is having Chinese New Year poker night with his friends tonight. Confetti crusted into the road surface in Orchard. There's a sports shop in Paragon that sells really good looking hockey sticks. The futuristic kind that looks like it's made of aluminum: the wood grain is painted over.

I really want to start writing again, and I guess really start reading... blade to ice, it's double diamond time... it's a new month... the weekend just goes so quickly.