Have you ever had the feeling as a child when you were just happy to find out something new, or going somewhere you've never been before? That is the child's joy of learning, something which formal education has the most unfortunately tendency to extinguish in almost the most inquisitive child.

I am lucky that the start of my formal education coincided almost neatly with my discovery of the joy of reading. I still remember cracking open Charlie Brown's Encyclopedia, which I had pestered my father into buying the day before, early in the morning while lying in my bed at the age of 8. I think that's the most value-for-money investment my father ever made in me. Over the next half-decade, that set of encyclopedias (which included Children's Britannica) was my constant companion. I would take a volume into the toilet with me, and remain there for a couple of hours, lost in the words while remaining in less-than-dignified surroundings.

It was this which kept the flame of inquisitiveness and free-thinking burning in me through the darkest depths of the Malaysian educational system. In a country where the physics departments of universities are the dumping ground for students who couldn't get accepted in any other courses, I was foolhardy enough to want to become an aerospace engineer (to work in space exploration), and later a physicist. It was a dreamy ambition to discover things and open new frontiers, whether in exploring the Solar System or in the realms of science.

Doing physics in university has given me a lot of 'wow' moments, but the sense of wonder was somewhat diminished, as if I was looking through a glass wall at the discoveries made by the others. I wanted to be in their shoes during the 'EUREKA!' moment, when they realised or discovered things that no one else had known before.

In the past few days, I finally got a small taste of this. After weeks of learning the background science, reading the scientific literature on the subject and wrestling with the computer systems, I'm getting down to some actual scientific research at last! It's been very absorbing, and for the first time I'm one of the last interns to leave the office! I might have to start working weekends soon....