I just discovered the new blogger template designer and was fiddling around and trying out the different pretty backgrounds that they have! I have this penchant for customizing interfaces, like my Firefox, Hotmail, Gmail, and even my Windows cursor - which takes the notorious form of a peeling banana. Personalizing stuff with my favourite designs and icons just makes me very happy! Just a while ago, I was quite torn between this pinky background and the following:
The clouds are so cute and cheerful! They also fit in with the entire cloudy theme. I don't know why I decided to choose the pink one in the end either. Maybe it was because I was drawn by how the shades of pink complemented the blue and green tones in the top banner perfectly, and it was the first background that I really liked. Nevertheless, right after I've saved the changes to the template, I began to recall what my original layout looked like, and I wanted to compare and see if this one is indeed nicer. But I didn't have it saved, and it seems that the change is irreversible. Now this looks a little strange and I already miss my original template. I'm such a creature of habit.
It's been about two weeks since I've started my studentship at a lab in MRC Harwell, which is this place in Oxfordshire. I finally got to witness for myself some of the technologies and advancements that I've always only read or heard about in textbooks, papers and in lectures, and it is just fascinating. It is like knowledge comes alive and there you are, staring it in the eye. I always get impressed - perhaps too easily - by the ingenuity behind the many discoveries, inventions and theories that have propelled science and technology to today's standpoint. It is inspiring how so many tasks that were once deemed impossible have been proven to be possible. Will the cure for cancer be found one day? Will the secrets underlying the intricacies of the human brain be unraveled, and will we eventually be able to reconstruct it artificially? More 'absurdly', will time travel happen, just as Stephen Hawking predicts? I'm so curious for all the answers. The funny thing is, if I were born in an era where time travel is possible, I'll probably be wondering if teleportation will be rendered possible one day. There will never be an end to these questions, and the issues that we contemplate now will always be dictated by our passage in time. As we get empowered by the idea that nothing is impossible, we expect more and more, and it seems almost too easy to take the advancements of mankind for granted, too easy to brush everything aside matter-of-factly, as a mere natural progression. But if we just stop to think about that man who landed on the moon despite it being such an incredulous idea at that time, or that airplane that took its flight just like a bird after such painstaking effort was invested into it, it is clearly sublime that these are all miracles that have taken place to transform today's reality. I don't quite know what I'm trying to get at, my thoughts are in a mess. But maybe it's that in this never-ending quest for progress that humans have embarked on, it is worthwhile to stop and take a rest, to live for the moment's splendour and to appreciate the current context, instead of solely getting caught up with all the promise that the future appears to hold, for it can blind us to where we're headed, and then everything would lose its meaning.
I've intended to write a bit about my experience at Harwell and about Oxfordshire, and look how I've digressed so terribly. I actually started another entry a few days ago about my sister's wedding, but I started watching black&white, got addicted and just forgot about the blog entry. I'm going to watch the show now! It's super intense and exciting!