I'm back...

Hi all... blog entry coming soon, I hope. I'm back in England now, with 37.7kg of checked luggage. So much to do now that I am back... and that doesn't even include work stuff. Shopping for food seems quite important. :P More later...

A taste...

Waterfall-let
Originally uploaded by enlightened0ne

Blogs are still to come, but I've been sorting through my photos and thought that I should post one. I wish that photos could do justice to the beauty of Jiuzhaigou; the colours here are what the camera sees, and can never quite reproduce what the eye sees. I'll post photos that include still water later... you won't believe that I haven't used photoshop to add the colours!

deadly household appliances

overheard on the tram (a while back now):

"... and the washing machine fell off the wall, smashing the chair that she had been standing in 2 seconds earlier!... none of the neighbours came to check - I would have come home to find her DEAD!!"

I love eavesdropping.

An interesting way to find the site...

Just briefly, I thought that this was very amusing. We have had one visitor to this blog via google, apparently from Auckland. The search term he/she used? "rat faeces photo"... This took her/him to Joanne's blog entry from a while ago. I checked, and if you search for the term on google we're about the 12th link. Since I've written this, we'll probably shoot up closer to number 1. So if you forget our address... just search for rat faeces!

Quick notification: Hong and James are still alive

James: A proper entry or three will be coming soon, but at the moment we are travelling around Sichuan, and not really able to use the computer. We're currently at 3000m above sea level in Jiuzhaiguo, with a tenuous link to the internet via a 3G modem. For the first time in a while, we are properly warm, with a hotel room that has 24 hour airconditioning (that works!) and hot water during the times that matter. It's funny that it seems expensive and luxurious, when it's only about $12 each per night. One place we stayed at was about $4 each per night... but had a pillow and doona that smelled of sweat and cigarettes, and hot water that required significant negotiation with the owner to ask them to change the battery in the water heater. Oh, and to get there we had to cross the channel that had been dug to provide a new subway... a 30m deep pit with operational earth-moving machinery and construction workers giving advice about where to climb. At least the climbing skills were useful, as they were put to the test in JZG today, when we used them to access closed walkways in the park.

 

Hong: Sorry to disappoint all of you who are expecting something more "exotic" to have happened to us. But we have survived a city of dust, a bum-splitting 10hr bus trip through earthquake rubble, landslides and rock falls, a freezing old town without any functioning heating device, except our fevers, which stemmed from URTI of dubious origin... (James' assertion: probably the expectorated bacteria of someone in Sichuan; they spit everywhere, including on buses and on carpet!) Jiuzhai is very beautiful, as an understatement, and please be prepared to be inundated in James' photographs, as well as an album of the photo maniac James taking photos during this trip. Hmmm... what else.... Oh, and bought a Tibetan maroon lacquered coconut, being sold as a special Tibetan fruit that grows in the mountains and taste like sour milk. Ours tasted like normal coconut milk...

As you can probably tell by now, I have very little desire to do well at this AMS gig. I have low interest in the subject, my supervisor is a tool/n00b/incompetent (as a supervisor... as a clinician he does well), and I'm tired. Very very tired.

I'm taking a weekend off from 20-22nd November. Can't wait.

I just got water on my notebook. Damn.

I'm going to buy a camera, so I can post photos of really uninteresting crap (unlike James, of course).

I want to go home and bake. and then throw the cake at something.

The Head

The Head
Originally uploaded by enlightened0ne

A photo from before the battle in Leominster. You can see how serious the people were... this would be a heavy helmet, and it's dented too...

Gourd flowerpots

Gourd flowerpots
Originally uploaded by enlightened0ne

Aren't these cool? I want to grow some gourds at home and use them for this... These gourds were found on the side of a covered road in a little village on a hillside. It was a funny village; no vehicle would be able to traverse the majority of the streets because they were so steep and so uneven, and little old grandmothers lined the ways, selling apples and oregano and (mmmmm) figs, as well as some hand-made things. There was a tiny area with some tourist-oriented shops, and the village was famous for its wine (which was, apparently, very unusual; quince wine?), so quite a number of wine stores were offering tasting. We ate in a restaurant which sold delicious stuffed zucchini flowers. The owner of the restaurant challenged me to a chilli-eating competition, which was fun. :) Small green chillis are hot, though not unbearably so...

The things one learns...

Yesterday, I found out that a cell line with which we have been working in the lab actually has prostate cancer because of a virus (Xenotropic Murine Leukaemia virus-related virus), and we have not been working with it in a containment level appropriate to this. It's been in the literature for 2 years, but we were only told yesterday... and my supervisor wanted us to keep working with it. I'm not too keen on getting chronic fatigue/prostate cancer, so there's a definite NO from me. It's pretty terrible that he asked us to keep working with it! I just hope that I didn't catch it while the cells were growing.

Ah well... at least it was found out before I started doing heaps of work with that cell line...

On a happier note, my site is now fully up and running; it has 20 prints for sale, at last. It's shocking how expensive it is to actually have something printed at high quality, though; I really want to find a cheaper source! (Other than the really good one in the US that won't ship outside America)

Turkish meat

Slabs of raw meat
Originally uploaded by enlightened0ne

I don't know what this stuff is called, but it is raw meat, semi-dried. Not dry like jerky, but not that bloody. It's coated in something like flour, which has become soaked in blood. It appears to be kept for months at a time, and is eaten as is... no cooking, no washing, no disinfection. It seems the Turkish are quite used to eating meat that has sat around unrefrigerated for a considerable amount of time; most of the doner kebabs sit around all day, free to any flies, dripping meat juice and fat, until evening comes and the cooker is turned on. Still... the stuff in this photo is worse, eaten raw, as it is. It has a strange smell, too...

Marshaling

In the light of having plenty to whine yet nothing much to actually tell, I'll write on the boring subject of marshaling at the GP Exam.

This is the exit OSCE exam for aspiring GP reg's. While it can be taken at any stage of GP training, most candidates sit for it in their last year... which can be pretty sad for those that I have seen 3 years in a row.

The 14 OSCE stations can range from basic to very challenging; purely Q&A to procedural skills. A marshal's job entails ensuring smooth transition of candidates between each station, bringing them water and escorting them to toilets, and making sure they're not doing what they're not supposed to do. It really is a easy job - therefore not surprisingly boring after the first hour. Apart from looking after an unbelievable number of nerve-stricken candidates, who's cerebrum automatically shuts off and therefore cannot see signs, are unable read their names on the name sheet, and fail to hear instructions, there is not much else to do. And as long as one is vigilant at recognising such lost sheep and provide babysitting service promptly, any drama can be avoided.

Because I've marshaled for a number of times now, I became the lead marshal for Sunday afternoon's session @ RWH. An even easier job, because rather than being stationed at a particular position and watching over that whole area, I was the roamer - which actually means that I don't need to do anything at all. I did attempt to make myself useful, by volunteering for the occasional water jug refills, chatting with the College admin staff, and sometimes strolling around, smiling at everyone and asking "everything cool?" The rest of my time were spent either at my Spanish workbook, which I did pathetically little of, or in front of mountainload of very yummy free food... muffins, yogurt slices, fruit cakes, croissants, biscuits, sandwiches, rolls, puffs, salads, nectarines, apples, pears, bananas, melons, pineapples, strawberries, dried nuts, dried fruits. By the end of 6 and half hours I concluded that GPs, too, are a contributing factor to obesity.

So when this finally ended we counted the marking sheets, mused ourselves with glimpse of not-so-nice examiner comments on candidates who I have seen 3 years in a row. And then as the marshals get their $80 gift voucher, I get $120 for my "additional troubles". Mmm, not complaining =).

Photo schmoto

Cupcake doodles > James' arty farty shots.

Only kidding. Can you tell my mind is wandering? If only my feet could too.

Columns

Columns
Originally uploaded by enlightened0ne

Greek/Roman ruins in Turkey... they're everywhere. Actually, Turkey has an amazing amount of history attached to it. It's been the home of the Lyceans, the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, the Ottoman empire, the modern Greeks, and now the Turkish. All over Turkey, very extensive ruins of all these civilisations may be found. I'll have more photos from an absolutely enormous ruin we visited in Pamukkale, as well as the beautiful travertines there.

Pensive Cat

Pensive Cat
Originally uploaded by enlightened0ne

I thought I'd break my Turkey post into a number of (disjointed) posts based on some photos that I am processing. Please tell me what you think about this idea, if anyone except me still reads this. :P

Cats are everywhere in Turkey, and I mean /everywhere/! The funny thing is that they're not malnourished, and nor are they scared of humans in the way wild cats in Australia or England are. In fact, I was so surprised when I got back to London and saw a cat running away from me, because I had just spent two weeks with very friendly and obedient cats. All cats in Turkey seem to have an intuitive understanding that "tss tss" means "Go away" and a sound I can't represent with letters (that is made by creating negative pressure in the mouth with the mouth open but the tongue at the roof of the mouth, then pulling the tongue downwards, making a click-kind of sound) means "look this way".

I met a range of cats, from very boisterous kittens to slow, stately older cats. One particular kitten would not stop moving, and hunted everything that moved, including one's feet as soon as one dared to lift them. Tying my shoes with the cat attacking both my hands and my shoelaces was a rather amusing experience, and I only managed by diverting its attention to my mother's shoelaces.

Funnily enough, with cats everywhere, dogs would probably be expected, but except in the rural areas they are completely absent. I think this has to do with the fact that dogs are haram for muslims. Even in rural areas, they are quite rare, though we had an interesting experience in one town where we were adopted by a dog for part of a walk, until we came to a blind corner (in a ruined Greek village). Around the corner was a man with a slingshot and a large rock, attempting to ambush an kill the dog. The dog had clearly met him before and refused to round the corner, whereupon the man came around and, disregarding our party, began shouting at the dog and attempting to shoot it. Fortunately the dog was clever enough to get away and we were spared the sight of an injury or death... Talking to a local later it turned out that man was a bit strange, and that he and the dog have quite a history. It seems quite propitious for the dog that the man was a poor shot with his shanghai!

(oh, this photo has my new watermark... I thought I should start adding that since I'm starting to sell them, though I don't know whether I should make it more obvious. I don't want it to get too much in the way, but I want to prevent people from taking the photos without permission...any comments?)

It's feeling a bit empty in here...

Hi everyone... It's feeling a bit empty here! We need to get some more posting going. I will try to write up a post about my Turkey trip in the next few days, but it would be great to see something other than my rambling. :P If you would like to be subscribed to the blog and/or comments in your email, then just reply to me in this post and I can add you to it. Then, in the rare event that anyone posts or comments (:P), it will be sent to your email so that you don't have to visit the site to know that it's there. :)

In other news, I've started up my own websites, http://enlightened0ne.com and http://enlightenedphotography.net. Currently they both redirect to the same temporary website. I am working on learning how to make a decent site with proper paypal and credit card payments etc. If anyone needs some hosting space, I have plenty! :)

Oh, and just so that there's a picture on the front page, here's one of the Turkey photos that's passed muster:

Again, comment here if you want to receive blog posts and/or comments in your email. Hope AMS is going well! :D

BATTLE!

Okay, so this post is also quite late, but many weeks ago (5th to 6th of September), I hired a car and drove from Cambridge to a town near the border of England and Wales called Leominster to watch a re-enactment of The Battle of Mortimer's Cross. The car I hired was a Vauxhall Corsa, and the only good thing I can say about it was that it took me 350 miles and was still 1/3 full. It was terrible to drive, though, both because of its complete lack of power and its poor design. For one thing, the indicator was on the left-hand side of the steering wheel. This doesn't make any sense, since in a manual car one has to operate the gear stick to shift down at the same time as indicating one's intention to turn. My first hour in the car was plagued by the wipers being turned on at every corner...

My second discovery was about English drivers. I have encountered impatient drivers in Australia, but never like this. While travelling at the speed limit on the motorway (70mph), if someone travelling at 85mph is forced to slow down in order to change lanes and overtake, as they pass they will lower the window, shout obscenities, and often raise the finger as well. I couldn't believe how frequent this occurrence was, often despite there being two free lanes to my right in which to overtake me. I always laugh at people becoming so impatient that they feel the need to shout their frustration at being slowed down to the speed limit for a couple of seconds... particularly when they accelerate right into a speed camera.

On the topic of speed cameras, the system here is quite interesting. Instead of straight speed cameras, average speed cameras are often used. I don't know how effective the implementation is, but if it works it would be a lot better than the single shot cameras, at least for people who do obey the speed limit. I'm always worried that I'll be hit for a ticket when I am accelerating to overtake someone, so average speed would make that less of a worry.

My drive across England took about 3 hours, and I reached the battlefield at about midday. There were heraldic flags denoting the location, and I parked right next to the entrance. There was a rather anachronistic ambulance tent by the entrance, but beside that was a tent demonstrating traditional surgical techniques. Unfortunately, this was where I realised that this particular fair was a little more focussed towards the younger audience than some of the others. There were a large number of toy wooden weapons etc. on sale, and not too many serious forged ones. There were however 3 tents which catered to reenactment enthusiasts, and those were quite interesting. One could buy all manner of armour and weapons, as well as bows and arrows, though being for the enthusiast crowd they were less decorative and more functional; not what I was after.

During my wandering around I came across an interesting tent run by one Dave Hodges, an interesting man with whom I had an extended conversation. It turns out that he is the person upon whom the Terry Pratchett character "Hodgesaargh" is based. He was also the owner of Lady Jane, a falcon which appears in Lords and Ladies and Carpe Jugulum. It was fascinating to talk to him about his Falconry and Pratchett and all sorts of things. He's a very talkative man, and really is a living TP character.

Another aspect of the show was the living history area. All participants in this spend the weekend living as a medieval army on the move would have done. They spend their nights in authentic tents, cook over fires using medieval ingredients (including hand-milling their wheat), and avoid modern tech. Many of them were quite keen to be photographed, so walking around with a camera gave me plenty of opportunity to talk to many of them. I made some contacts with the British Plate Armour Association, who have a branch near Cambridge, and I intend to go and visit their training at some point. That should be fun...

The battle itself started in the late afternoon, and I will post the photos soon. (I have about 1000 photos in my backlog that need sorting and editing!) It was interesting to watch, and they were certainly attacking with vigour! Someone fighting with a pick completely destroyed his opponent's shield, while another fighter was showing a bruise that extended from his wrist to his elbow caused by a swing that he had failed to block. This bruise was caused despite the full plate armour he had been wearing.

Anyway, the day was quite enjoyable, and I took a leisurely walk around the nearby Leominster, before driving to my B&B for the night. The owners of the B&B were an elderly couple. They were quite the unintentional comic duo; the wife was much taller than the husband, and the husband had a very high-pitched voice, so it was almost a role-reversal. They were very friendly, and my room was large, well-appointed, and comfortable. It also had the best 3G strength I have found anywhere outside of London, which was surprising on the border of Wales, outside a tiny town.

The next morning I met with two older couples over breakfast. One couple was American, and were in England searching for various lost relatives, with a peculiarly American lack of sensitivity; going into people's houses when they weren't there with the justification that "this was my family's house in the 1740s". The absolute doggedness with which they were pursuing this family tree was quite impressive, however.

I spent the morning visiting Hampton Court Castle. Note: Castle, not Palace. The castle is quite small, but on very beautiful wooded grounds. It's still inhabited, but parts of it are available for viewing, and it was an interesting experience to visit a place that has been inhabited by aristocracy for so long; there were artifacts from British colonial times (lions' heads, ibeks, Boer war memorabilia), as well as Saracen battle standards and many many suits of armour. Wandering in the gardens and eating in the locovore restaurant were very pleasant too. I'd love to go back there at some point. After leaving I drove straight home and left my car with someone who may or may not have merely been pretending to be affiliated with the hire-car company. Judging by the fact that I have not been receiving calls about the fact that my car has gone missing, and the fact that my bank account seems okay, he probably was, but he really acted like he could have been a scammer. Ah well... it would have been their problem and not mine if he had been.

If you've got to the end of this, I'm certainly surprised, since it's been a fairly long entry. Well, not as long as it might have been had I actually typed it out once I got back instead of a month or two later, but still quite long, so well done. Photos are due up soon, just as soon as I can get time to edit them and upload them. My flickr address is now www.flickr.com/photos/enlightened0ne, so I'm easier to find. I don't know why I couldn't find the setting to change that before. I'm thinking about setting up a site to sell art prints of some of my photos, since that might bring in a little money. I've also started selling stock photography, so we'll see how that goes. As far as AMS goes at the moment, I'm writing a review with a couple of others in the lab, which should be submitted for publication by the end of Oct! Scary stuff...

Feel free to comment on how long-winded and boring this has been... I can try to make my Turkey post shorter, or serial, (or absent) if you would prefer.

fatigue

I'm not recruiting today.

Simply...

Because I'm tired.

Because I'm overworked.

Because I'm stressed.

Because I'm a whingey, conflicted, irritating person to be around.

Because I've just ingested cow's milk.

Because tonight I have to go make some more stupid calls to alumni.

Because I've eaten too many biscuits at work.

Because it's a Tuesday, and people are only nice on Monday and Friday mornings.

Because I miss him.

Because I get home at 10 pm every night.

Because I want to spend all day reading blogs.

Because I want to finish the book I've been reading for two weeks.

Because I want to take a holiday, right now.

Because I feel as if AMS is bullshit.

Because my stomach is upset.

Because I still owe a ridiculous number of hours to Hypnos.

Because I want to hurry up and be a real doctor already.

Because my supervisor is useless.

Because I want to be that feverish little girl in the waiting room with her dad, watching TV and sucking on a purple icy-pole.

The weekend nightmare

Saturday, 11:30pm. The weekend nightmare began rather inconspicuously by a few loud noises of glass breaking outside. No one in the household suspected anything, because it was near the city council’s hard waste disposal day, and as per usual there are many fossickers moving about during day and night. Someone must have dropped something.

Sunday, 10:30am. The horror of the waking nightmare struck us like a spear making a hole in our heads – or, making holes in our car. As I was about to leave home for my usual daily mice injections, mum’s distressed voice brought me quickly to the driveway. And there it was – the rear window forming a mosaic of thousands of tiny pieces of glass, surrounding two big holes, the inside of which dangles the broken layer of tint... it was sunny and warm, with white fluffy clouds decorating a beautiful blue sky... with a long slit on the left side of the rear window, completely detached from the frame except at the bottom and top... and the street was cheerful and clean, with a row of red roofs and green lawns neatly lined up on each side... except a rear light cover completely smashed, no where to be seen... leaving only a comfortable, gentle breeze caressing our faces, and greeting the street where no one else seemed to be there.

Sunday, 11:50am. The next thing I knew, I was at the police station, sympathetically nodding at the constable, who was too busy for half an hour first, and then complained that this had been the 16th case around the local area this morning, and that there would be more to come.
“Collingwood supporters, they must be.” He said in disgust.
At my raised eyebrows he added, “They just lost yesterday.”
“Oh,sorry.” I sincerely apologised, “I don’t follow footy.”
“Well, I don’t follow Collingwood anyway.”

Sunday, 12:00 pm. On Springvale Rd looking for a Car Repair Service that is not closed on Sundays, but didn’t have any luck.
“I don’t want to go to Yarra Honda for the repairs, how expensive would that be!” says mum.
“But insurance will pay.”
“ – after we pay $500 excess first, and then have raised premium next year. If a glass window costs less than $500 elsewhere then I won’t go through insurance.”
“Plus the rear light. And the tint.”
“How much would this cost anyway?”
“Why did they target us? None of our neighbours’ cars got smashed.”
“If they catch the people would we get compensation?”
“Unlikely, according to the police officer. Most of these people have no money and no job to begin with.”
If driving with no rear view was a bit scary on big roads, parking and backing out would be like walking backwards with eyes closed.
“This is not very safe. We should get it fixed ASAP.”
“And another thing, mum, you can’t park and then leave the car like this. Especially not on the street like you normally do for work.”
“Then what the hell am I supposed to do?”

Sunday, 5:15pm. I’m sitting in the train towards Glen Waverley. The sun has began to set, turning the white clouds into grey and gold, and the warmth into coolness. My head feels slightly tight and heavy, as if someone has put an iron helmet that doesn’t quite fit on it. I am thinking of the many times at late night, when I felt my heart pounding fast at the sight of a shifty looking person at the tram stop, the only person waiting there other than me. I am thinking of the drunk people singing, swearing and screaming loudly on Friday night trains, beer bottles flinging in their hands. I am thinking of of the dim-lit residential streets nearby, deserted and haunted by only the howling trees in the winds. And then I am thinking of those paranoid news reports of violent crimes in Melbourne, bloodied murders and rapes, youth gangs attacking people... And then I begin to feel homesick, a feeling that has been there constantly, but never as much and as intense as now. I miss the days when I would walk in our residential block at midnight, when there was no street light and I could barely see anything, yet there was no sense of danger... I miss the summers when it would be past 10pm and the streets would still be full of people, families sitting on the kerbs of footpaths enjoying icy poles, men and women strolling along with their dogs, neighbours chatting away, primary school children playing badminton with their parents on the footpaths... I miss the days when the only insecurity I felt was towards the pickpocketers on buses and in subways, and I miss that place called Beijing where the notion of a youth gang consisted of some of my rebellious classmates who would gang up and skate on roads at 2am in the morning, or that when they get into a fight they would pull knives through each other but would never hurt anyone else who was not involved. In fact, I would consider many of them my friends by the day.

Of course, I’m sure, malicious assault and property damage do happen on a regular basis in Beijing, as it does in Melbourne. But for a city of 13 million permanent residents 8 million temporary dwellers, violent crimes are such a rare occurrence per capita. For Melbourne’s low population density, the amount of insecurity per capita is truly something I am uncomfortable with. There are times when I am totally sick and tired of this place, and today is one such day.

So many errors in previous post!

I can't explain why the last few sentences of my last post are in italics. Oh well, meh! :P

The lab and I

I'm back here again after a month of writer's stagnancy... Apologies for random switches of topics in this post because I'm quite tired now.

For the past few weeks life at the lab has been all about brains - cut up brains, glued brains, gDNA and RNA from brains, sectioned brains, stained brains, frozen brains, imaged brains... This strange, sometimes abstract, entity 'the brain' has become something that permeates all levels in my life. I now find it hard to socialize without subconsciously or consciously thinking of brains - whether it's because the person works in an area of research that involves the brain (which is EVERYONE who passes me by in the lab, except the cleaner), or because my lab friends react differently to social situations compared to medical friends (which makes me think of environment interactions and brain plasticity), or because I'm so worried when my lab techniques troubleshooting isn't progressing that I bore any person who stands beside me with all the details of my pain and frustration. With that last point, I feel sorry for Rahul :p. Dear me .. he must be scarred now.. ^^

So far I've been enjoying work here in the lab. I like the buzz, the laughs, the talking to rats part, the exhilaration when you find there is glimmer of hope that a technique problem can be solved, the challenge when you're perfecting a technique, and (as all poor med students like) the constant inflow of free food :p. Free food can be found everywhere. If you're free enough to search throughout the hospital, you'll find free meals almost everyday, morning and lunch ;D

Besides the free food, working in the lab also provides the opportunity to bask in the glory of some seriously respectable people. Terry O’Brien and Margaret Morris at lunchtime and meetings, Neil Strathmore and Geoff McColl at the lifts in the mornings :D. I’m such a nerdy fan of people involved in education/research :p. Apparently I’m not the only one being a nerdy fan – occasionally Mithun would drop by for lunch and give us a very ambitious talk on meeting the ‘Big Dogs’.

But perhaps what makes up the most enjoyable experience in the lab are the people working in it full time. For one, I’m glad that Rahul is always there with me and always keeps me company at lunchtime, in the office, etc. An interesting yet embarrassing confession to make is that I occasionally sing in the lab when there’s only the two of us doing work(mainly because it can get quite boring) :p. . Other than Rahul, I’m thankful that I have friendly supervisor Nigel who is actually quite child at heart – something that this immature person in me can relate to (besides to Rahul). Therefore, I feel comfortable around my supervisor, a little too comfortable perhaps. Sometimes I hurl some childish taunts at him and start some taunting war, jokingly, of course. Amusingly, he is also like a dad to me – telling me not to run in lab everytime I do so (which is almost 80% of my moving around time anyways). Guess I’m a bit of a handful as a student. The other people around in the lab are also incredibly helpful, with those precious few always being around to help you whenever you need help. Help is often invaluable when you’re new in the lab. They do it so willingly too, despite being so consumingly busy with their own work. However, conflicts do happen when a few people get annoyed with my supervisor for asking them to work on my project and show their frustration at me although I’m not in the position to make decisions. Sometimes I’ve shed tears over it in front of Rahul, but I pick myself back up eventually. :)

Ok, I’ve written a little too much now so it’s time to stop here. New update, in tomorrow’s journal club, Rahul’ll be presenting. Good luck Rahuligan! :D

Public Peril

An interesting conversation occurred in the Arts Centre lift today.

Girl 1: I wish this lift could go faster!
Girl 2: Remember in Physics, we talked about jumping in the lifts to actually make the deceleration faster?
Girl 1: Oh yeah... I REALLY want to try that one day.
Guy: You mean jump in a lift going down?
Girl 1: No. Jump in a lift without pressing the button. And see if it will start going down.
Guy: ... are you sure you want to do that?

Hong's note to self: in future do not get into lifts with these people.

-So ends my waiting-for-FACS-machine entry on the Wednesday evening-

Kentish photos

I thought I might as well link the photos here, since the blog has had a paucity of content added recently. Therefore, prepare for a long post. Whole set is here.

Pumpkins in my cousin's garden

A flower... can someone identify?

A sunflower lit from behind. It was about 4m tall! Actually, I saw a much larger sunflower two weeks ago, but blog entry and photos from that still to come.

Beach huts down at Tankerton

Another bee... I'm going to miss them when they go away for the winter. I do wish I had a macro lens, though.

The beach... note all the breakwaters.

Beach huts again. Weird to have them sitting on grass.

Proof that sand can be found... with difficulty.

But this is how most of the beach looks.

A gull looking out into the harbour, probably waiting for someone to clean the old fish out of their boat.

Reminds me of home, really...

I love the mottling on these pebbles, and the worn shell in amongst them.

So there are a few photos to bore/interest you. There are more in the full set, so you're welcome to view the rest if you're really bored at work. :)

fail

just got in trouble with a doctor.

dammit. is that just the way I am?

Need 48-hour days...

Sometimes the trick really is finding that silver/golden/chrome/pink/purple/blue/creamy/white/transparent lining of that cloud. Surely it must be somewhere in my head. *sniff around*

My Time in Kent

Note: sorry about this being a week or three late; I forgot to finish it earlier.

Well, I've had a wonderful weekend so far. Kent is very different to Cambridgeshire; to begin with, it is a much more rural area. My cousin's house is a converted farmhouse; one farmhouse has become 5 or 6 houses joined together, and the way of partitioning the rooms is quite interesting. It does not follow the typical method of joined houses, where there are essentially two houses sharing only one wall. This house has interleaved rooms... my bedroom is above the next-door neighbours' kitchen, and above me is one of their bedrooms. The house is like this throughout. Apparently some conversions are even on a scissor system, where two adjacent kitchens downstairs lead up via crossed staircases to two (or more) adjacent bedrooms upstairs. However, each person's bedroom is above the other's kitchen. The reason for this is that then the staircases don't take up much of each person's space, as they would were they to lead to a bedroom above the owner's kitchen.

My cousin rents out a series of allotments, for £5 per year. She has 3 runs full of chickens, and grows plenty of vegetables; the food here is, as one can imagine, delicious! The chickens themselves were very funny; in one of the runs, despite having an ark (large area for roosting), and two boxes designed for a hen to sleep with her chicks, there were about 9 hens sleeping in one of the small boxes (about 1 foot by 2 feet!). It was very cute to open the lid and see 9 sleepy-eyed hens peering up to see what had disturbed them. Not at all good for the hens' health, though, since there was redmite present, and having so many of them packed together must have helped transmission.

We spent the Sunday down at my cousin and her partner's beach hut at Whitstable. I am unused to English beaches, with their lack of sand, and much construction. The beach huts were on a grassy slope just above the beach, and it was very pleasant to have somewhere to sit and watch the sea. The weather was not excellent, but we did take the time to walk into the town and see the market there. We missed the fish market (Whitstable is a fishing village specialising in oysters), but saw some of the large oyster dredging barges docked. They have an amazing sail:deck ratio, though I suppose that would present a significant problem if sailing when not towing the dredges, especially when combined with the lack of stability due to a shallow draft and no keel.

I'm sorry about the brevity of this post, but I have a few more I need to write: last weekend in London, and the weekend before at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross (anyone following @enlightened0ne on twitter will have seen some photos already). I will post some photos of my weekend in Kent to Flickr tonight, I hope; I've had a very large number to sort out, and my computer has had precious little hard drive space, making that somewhat difficult.

Kent is a lovely region of the country; well worth visiting. It is both rural and suburban; filled with farms and twisting laneways (inevitably barely wide enough for one car, with tall 500y/o hedges encroaching on the road to either side), but dotted with villages every few miles. In this way rural England is a bit like rural Australia with all of the vast distances contracted; it's very easy to ride a bike from one village to the next, and farms tend to be quite small. I think that this must be a result of the previous feudal system, where small farms were given to people to work on the condition that they gave 1 part in 9 to the Lord, or whatever it was. These farms probably formed the basis for many of the farms that are still used. The walls and hedges that separate the fields are often medieval or pre-medieval. I feel that I was only barely able to begin to explore, and want to take a convertible and a month of holiday and just travel around, finding interesting villages, eating local food, and enjoying the winding roads. Only in summer, of course... but even then it rains fairly often...

Next post should be in the next couple of days...

The hours of living and the hours of aliveness

I enjoy my lab work in every way except the hours.

For the past month, I’ve been arriving at the lab on an average of 6:30am, which ranges from 5:00am to 7:30am the latest. This week I've come to lab at 5am everyday except today where I got there just past 7:00am. The better end of the deal is that by doing this I could go home at an average of 5:30pm, and could squeeze in about 75% of my spanish tutes. That explains why I've been just a bit too tired to write proper, more frequent blogs, despite there are actually some interesting things happening around.

I'm mainly working with mice and T cells straight out of a mouse, rather than cell lines, which is good since I don't know how many lines I'll contaminate with my clumsiness. Right now, and probably from now til China in mid-November, I'm coming in every weekend to inject mice with peptide, or doing post-injection monitoring, or finishing up unfininshed work. One "round" of injection is 14 days, and since I would need to repeat the experiment at least 3 times for replicability, September to November really isn't that long in this regard. (Too long, otherwise...) So what we've decided to do is start up a fresh group with fresh round of injections while the first group is in its last days of injection, so that leaves a week-long window where I could assay the T cells from the first group and do my results analysis, then my next group would be ready... and so the ball rolls on.

And so I'm rolling on as well. But in until the end of last week my body seemed unable to cope with the hours and slightly different circadian rhythm (i.e. getting up at 3:50am) and there are times when I was walking from Dept of Micro and Immuno to Redmond Berry I thought I would literally drop dead on the ground in a matter of minutes. But of course I didn't. Instead I ended up in Richard Barry then Raymond Priestly and looked around confusedly. Probably like some stoned druggie.

It’s amazing what tiredness can do sometimes. A couple of weeks ago I accidentally got on Lilydale train rather than my usual Glenny line, and it didn't register to me all the way until I got to Surrey Hills! (thanks to Alyssa, I actually remembered Surrey Hills as a suburb, or else I probably would've missed this cue as well) so I had to get off at Blackburn station and take a bus to Syndal to get mum to pick me up. But it wasn't all too bad... It’s been 7 years since I last visited Black Station, back when I was at the English Language School. So I had fun sniffing the lush green foresty smells, (yes, rain-sniffing and forest-sniffing are my addictions), reminiscing the old times, and laughing at my absent-brain-ness. Then 703 came and I hopped on, way too happily for even Hong’s post-stuffing-up standards, and alterenated between napping and amusing myself with interesting stop names such as “Wandinong Sanctuary”. Hmm, had it not been 7:30pm and pitch dark outside I think I would've hopped off the bus and had a look at what that place was like.

I really do hope everyone can find their silver linings in their black clouds. Or else just live as if it's the last day of your life. At least that's how I feel sometimes, even if it's literally...

Pay no mind to my black humour.

Another weeks flies by...

I realised that this weekend I will have been here for two months... one sixth of my time overseas. In many ways, I'm glad; it brings me closer to my trip to Turkey, to winter, and to China. It also brings closer the end of what is proving to be a rather boring time, as far as work and everyday life goes...

I don't feel intellectually stimulated by my work at the moment, and I feel quite disconnected from medicine. I would rather get my results as quickly as possible, write up my thesis and a paper, and then spend 6 months enjoying myself, than drag it all out over such a long period. Over the year, I'm sure that I will end up doing some interesting work, and I will hopefully have the chance to publish a paper or two, but it's not a good thing that I don't feel engaged with the work I am doing. I think that the problem is that there's no real context for what I am doing; investigating the role and function of a protein. Useful knowledge, maybe, but not directly relevant to anything, and I won't be the one to use the knowledge in the development of therapy...

Hopefully seeing my cousin this weekend and actually doing something different will allow me to refocus.

finger update

It still hurts.

!

ten things

1. Life should be a fucking box of chocolates, complete with gold foil casings, an illustrated guide to the contained confectionaries, a sensible eat-by date, list of ingredients (including possible allergens) and a nice secure box that won't let any sweet goodness escape. Not to mention cherry liquer.
2. I propose the formation of a Cholecalciferol Club, the purpose of which is to protect the ongoing bone density of its members. I earnestly believe that this will be most effectively achieved by partaking in extended daily luncheons in the fickle Melbourne sun.
3. How many literature reviews does it take to fill a recycling bin?
4. When I was in grade 3 or 4, we made placemats. The method goes something like this. Firstly, obtain a sheet of canvas. Secondly, paint it, however you wish. Thirdly, cut out random bits of image from wrapping paper, preferably that nauseatingly populated with teddy bears and pastel-coloured balloons. Fourth, slather the whole lot in a layer of Estapol. Fifth, gasp outside after desperately holding your breath in order not to inhale the undoubtedly toxic fumes. Sixth, repeat steps four and five as respiratory and neurological function allows. Seventh, enjoy your placemat (or, as it were, take it home and let it languish in a cupboard until your mother relegates it to that most holy resting place of all school art projects - the bin).
5. My laptop is a machine abused.
6. "Could everybody please check their pockets for the blue keys?"
7. A horrible fatigue has set in - not that I shouldn't be used to this by now.
8. "Ignacio Provencio is the discoverer of melanopsin, a photopigment found in specialized photosensitive ganglion cells of the retina. He is currently an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Virginia."
9. I don't believe that we have a purpose but I do believe my brain can perceive fun, regardless.
10. I hope you aren't wasting my time like I am. Bloody AMS.

A long time between posts...

Well, it really has been quite a while. I've had my computer back for a week now, but the incompetent service people (some of whom appear to have been sacked) have still not repaired it successfully, and it experiences the veil of death once per day, often at inconvenient times. I cannot bear to be parted from it again so soon, since it is the only way I can get video chat with Australia, but I know that it's going to have to go back in for repairs very soon.

As to what I've been doing for the last few weeks, the answer is really "Not much". Research has been proceding, and I am now mostly working on my own. I haven't done a great deal with my main project yet, since I have been working on a separate project in which my supervisor seems quite interested. It is a more clinically-focussed project than mine, looking to develop a treatment for prostate cancer. I don't hold much hope for it, but we shall see what happens. So far, though, it has not been good. Why? We have previously run a couple of QPCRs looking at the two RNAs of interest in the prostate cancer cell lines we have cultured. The results had been fairly stable. However, I took a look at the literature to see what was expected, and although the data were very scarce, what we had found seemed to be different from what would be expected. Therefore we decided to change from SYBR green (with which we had had some problems) to TAQMAN, which is far more specific, but much more expensive. For comparison, 250 reactions with TAQMAN probes is about £300, whereas a similar amount of SYBR green primers costs only £3 (and arrives from Germany on the same day/next day... shockingly fast post). With the TAQMAN probes, we got the same results as we had had with SYBR green. However, I repeated the experiment in triplicate to have some solid data, and the results were significantly different. We thought that this could be a problem with the cDNA, but the RNA that I looked at at the same time, as well as the housekeeping gene, showed previously validated results. I ran an experiment with the last of the old cDNA alongside some new cDNA, and the results of both were different, and also somewhat different to the previous results. What was interesting was that the results were closer to what would have been expected from the literature.

Yesterday I ran yet another repeat, and the results were different again. Two particular cell lines seem to have results that shoot all over the place, and there is little explanation for it. It still remains to be seen what is the problem...

I have not been doing any cell culture for a few days now, which has been nice because it has given me the last two weekends free. I will have to start doing some culture again soon becuase we have run out of RNA of a number of our cell lines. This means that I'm probably going to be working 7 days for a while as I struggle with 7 cell lines at once. At least I only need RNA and not miRNA and protein at the same time. I am learning transfections, which I have not yet started, but will be doing at some point in the next few months when I have established a decent cell line panel for the SPRED (Sprouty-related Enabled/Vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein homology domain 1 Domain-containing protein...) and have good data about the expression levels. I will not begin my culturing this week since it is a bank holiday (=long weekend) this weekend, and I will be visiting my cousin in Kent. She has a place in a fairly rural village, with chickens (yay!), and I am going to visit an English beach. Should be interesting... I will have photos to show.

This will be my first time leaving Cambridge since I arrived here, and one of the things that really shocked me about this was the cost of public transport here. I am travelling a distance of only 82 miles (approximately equivalent to Frankston to Geelong), but the tickets cost me the better part of £40! Just imagine if it cost us $80 (or even $40) to make that trip. For the same price, I can easily fly to Sydney or Brisbane from Melbourne. Oh, and this is after the 1/3 student discount, and the cheap off-peak tickets, and booking well in advance to minimise cost. It is no surprise that everyone here seems to own a car; when a car will pay for itself in 10 trips (yes, cars here are very cheap; a new car can be bought and insured for under £2000, and second-hand cars start around £200-£400 for a reasonable car with low mileage)

The weekend before last, I had some free time, so I decided to visit the Fitzwilliam museum, since I have heard a lot about it and wanted to see it for myself. I was there for a whole day, but was only able to explore a single floor, so I will have to visit it again. It is an huge place, with artifacts from all over the world, and it is well laid-out. Most importantly, it is free entry. While I was there, I was fortunate enough to discover that a recital was going to take place that day, so I was able to hear an excellent violinist play a number of pieces, the only one of which I really cared for was La Campanella. I am looking forward to the early music festival that is approaching, and there are early music recitals every week. I just wish that work finished in time to regularly attend, but even if I could that would certainly reduce the number of dinners I would be able to have each week. Many of the festival recitals will be on weekends and in some of the cathedrals around, so I am quite excited to attend these.

I have posted some new pictures on Flickr. Please look and comment. :) There are still a number that need sorting before posting, so some more will be up in the next few days. Here is a church I discovered while meandering outside of town on my bike.

There is a lot of beautiful rural scenery and nature around here, as well as the ancient buildings. Nature here is interesting, since with Australian eyes it all looks man-made. In many ways, it is; this country has been grazed and farmed for so long that even the forests conform to man's will. However, it's lovely to see wild apple trees, plum trees, and blackberries everywhere, and to be able to pick and eat fruit while riding along (if one can avoid the ever-present wasps). Back home, these plants would be considered evidence of man's presence, but here they are actually native. On certain roads there is the ever-present smell of cider from all the fallen apples fermenting by the roadside.

One of my weekend activities seems to be to fight a war against the wasps. I don't like these insects, but refuse to kill them, and perhaps they realise this and therefore are rather bold in their attempts to eat my food. No matter how much I close my windows (something which I do not like doing), draw the curtains, and trap the wasps in bathtowels, they keep coming back through my window and flying around, looking for my cordial, I think. I close it tightly and wash it vigorously, but the wasps still seem to like elderflower cordial as much as I do. One wasp had the misfortune of becoming trapped under a towel which I must have pressed down slightly too firmly, and was a casualty of war. The rest have, for now, been put off by the slightly cooler weather. I dread the forecast of sun for the weekend, because it means that the war will resume. These wasps are far too ingenious; I trapped one in my bin, put it out in the corridor still trapped in the bin, and closed my door. It managed to eat its way out through the plastic, crawl under my door, and fly around the room again... Very clever for an insect!

Some wasps attacking a cluster of blackberries

I will post some more soon, and certainly after this weekend, when I will have some new scenery and new experiences to provide blog-fodder.

finger pain

On Thursday the mobile blood bank came to RCH. I dropped in to see if they had any appointments and the lady said I could do it right then. I'd had lunch before, and I was bored, so I happily agreed. I filled out all the enrolment and history forms, and proceeded to the cubicle where the Red Cross worker would put me on the system and test my haemoglobin levels.

*Prick*

A quick jab to the side of the tip of my left ring finger. Ouch. I chatted briefly about the glucose test we did in first year uni as she squeezed out a few droplets of bright-red lifejuice, the final drops onto a cute little glass slide.

One to two minutes after the initial prick, it was still very painful, and I told her this. It was then that a foreboding fist of nausea began to burn in my belly. "Oh SHIT," I thought.

"Do you need to lie down?"
"I don't think so."
"Are you sure?"

---

And, naturally, I rise, my vision begins to fuzz over, like TV static, and I'm lowered to the floor, legs elevated, and there are three or four people looking down at me, one pressing a cold towel to my head, the other wiping one around my neck, the other saying "I don't think you should give blood today..."

After a few minutes, I get up, and am directed to "Go! Eat Cheese! Biscuits! Cheese! Eat Cheese!" I do so (well, I eat biscuits but not the cheese... it was that cute little wrapped stuff that I loved when I was a kid).

Sigh.

---

The strange thing is, the pin-prick point is still extremely sensitive when I touch it or fully extend the finger, even 2 days after the event. Explanations, anyone?

It's been a long time since I last posted...

Okay, so I’ve been very, very lazy with blogging... and my crazy hours plus inefficiency doing experiments doesn’t seem to help much. – which I will write about later. First thing first...
Last Wednesday the lab had a feast, because one of our researchers, 4 weeks before her due date, was going on maternity leave – which I kept on making the mistake of calling it a “holiday”, and getting funny looks from her. So we decided we should have a session to feed her and the baby.
So one PhD booked the Teaching Lab room, where we had almost all the Sem 5 pracs, for lunch, and everyone in our lab brought something along. Plates and trays and plastic containers piled with different foods lined up desk/bench in the room, where Sandra used to neatly line up the microscopes and petri dishes. Hmm enticing...
Nonetheless, food was abundant, and mostly interesting and tasting very nice, with a gross oversupply of desserts.
The most interesting dish was probably the some dish called Saaq....something, made by the Iranian PhD. It was long, thin-grained rice (not a familiar species to me since I’m used to the short, oval-grained northern Chinese grown rice) with a spinach/onion puree. The rice is slightly harder and drier than the ones I usually have, and with a different aroma, and the puree was slightly sour tasting.
Then there were Indian , which were brown, pyramid shaped pastry with hard shells and a spicy curry pea and potato filling. Slightly too spicy for my liking. Another PhD student from India bought the Indian version of the spring roll, with exactly the same type of pastry, but curry fillings, and unfortunately I forgot to ask her the name of the dish.
And of course, there were the party pies and sausage rolls brought by the organising PhD student, that everyone seemed to have ignored in the face of all the other delicacies... then there were savoury Chinese pancakes with carrot and radish fillings made by the other Chinese in the lab, who was a senior researcher, and the soup-filled buns that I bought and steamed.
Onto the desserts. Regrettably there were too many varieties... Home-made muffins, yo-yos, coconut biscuits and a DELICIOUS lemon tart (made by our Dutch-born, part-time vet, king-of-structural-immunology; the cooking prowess of this 50yo+ man puts me to shame... but then again, everyone’s cooking would put me to shame) were amongst the favourites. But people also bought chocolate-coated teddy bears biscuits and a custard-filled-chocolate-coated pastry thing (please excuse Hong’s shocking Western culinary vocab), and a very curious “cookie” that resembles a walnut, with hard cookie ball-shaped shell and soft caramel core.
Most bizarre of all was that someone even brought their homegrown lemons, which were tiny and tasted like a crossbreed between lemons and oranges. Despite their looks, they actually proved to be excellent after-meal fruits, especially when everyone was bursting with food. So much for feeding Luda.
A few random amusements took place during the lunch. Not only were people from other labs peering into the room and giving us sad looks when being informed that it was a McCluskey Lab only lunch, but in fact people in the tea room started nibbling our goods while they were heated up in the stove or in transit from the tearoom fridge to the Lab across. Then there was a professor of medicine from WA visiting Jim, our lab head who's originally from WA. So yet another stranger came to enjoy our free feast, and got his clinical judgement quizzed over Luda's "condition" which will prevent her from working. Interestingly, Jim is a double specialist in Pathology and Rheumatology (plus subspecialty in clinical immunology, of course), but he used to work as a Royal Flying Doctor in WA ages ago... Makes me wonder how old this guy really is...

The long journey

So it's been a month into AMS, and the journey to go is still long

Well, for me, it seems that everyday, my journey to AMS is long enough. 1.5 hours there and back is taking a lot out of me.

I'm tired by the time I get to the lab. I sit at the microscope and stare at stains of muscle...and it all looks the same. I stare at genetic sequencing results, and every peak looks like a genetic mutation. I sit in meetings where world-class clinical geneticists and neurologists discuss rare cases of muscular dystrophy without a definite proteomic or genetic diagnosis. And I'm interested, but not much really filters through to that space in my skull called "brain."

So I'm investigating novel proteins and their potential role in muscle disease. Stabbing in the dark and testing patients for abnormalities in proteins that may only have been studied in mouse models or stand alone proteomic assays. I love it as a research topic, I really do.

But what I really love more is sleep.

Stress is getting into everyone

In the last 2 weeks, I started growing accustomed to running around in the lab frantically and confluzzledly trying to accomplish trivial but oddly difficult tasks, such as collecting liquid nitrogen, and purifying DNA. Thankfully my supervisor Nigel had been patient with my painfully overcareful ways many a time, but patience does have its limits. I do recall one time last week when I was fixing a brain for microtome slicing ever so painfully pussilanimously (if there were ever such a way of describing it), that he suddenly reached out and over my fingers, squeezed the fixative forcefully out of the tube in my hands . I gave a yelp of surprise at the time because I thought that was a little forceful of him to do so, and also the brain had shifted slightly away from midline. Well, that's Nigel for you, very paternalistic, fatherly-like, always treating me like a child. Not that I have any problems with being treated like a child :)...

Today after writing down my protocols for RNA extraction, I find myself faced with an entire day of just sitting down and reading papers or facebooking, which is really much appreciated when in need of rest. But, instead, silly me decided to go observe my friend Gabi with the Morris Water Maze test. This behavioural test is pretty cool, because watching a rat swim around in a pool of water and ruffle its wet fur when perched on the platform is just too cute! Well it was cool until you realize that you have to scoop up rat faeces from the bottom of the pool after every 2nd or 3rd swim, plus there are 4 trials altogether per day for 5 days, so if one has 10 rats, that would be in total 40 rat swims to record per day, 200 per 5 days, for just one cohort (note I have 18 rats waiting). I found my interest fading away after the 10th swim or so...

But even for the first day of the water maze behavioural study, Gabi is starting to show signs of stress - the "losing it" stage. At lunchtime, she told us that over the weekend she dreamt of her dog having a seizure, and there was an incision over its head (refer to rat electrode implantation below and you'll get what I mean). And later on, she asked lab coworker Amelia (who is a close friend of hers), what day it was, and laughed to say that the answer was 218 (referring to the age of her rats). It was a joke, of course, but still I adviced her to have some well deserved rest.

Thankfully, my mind is still intact and well functioning. But my brain had been sulking quite a lot lately that today it finally brought upon me this horrible migraine to disable me from doing work. Finally, I had to admit defeat and left during a meeting because my urge to vomit had become quite overwhelming... I'm all better now, after having emptied all my stomach contents into a plastic bag, and having carrots and golden kiwis (all of my week's stock) replace my lost nutrition. Right now, I'm reflecting on how much Rahul was there for me when I needed a shoulder to lie on, on how much my lab mates and supervisor were concerned for me when I was sick today (no, it wasn't the swine flu fear), and so am really thanking God for having such a lovely work environment. :)

Will hopefully be going Go karting and Darkzoning soon with my lab mates in an organized outing soon. Can't wait to destress! :D
















Above is one photo I stole from the lab.Please keep this secret and do not post it elsewhere or they'll murder me! D:

FML

Friday, I moved out of my place in Carlton North to live with my parents for a few months. This is where all hell breaks loose. FML

Saturday, hell decides not only to break loose, but to form a cone around me personally and not burn me but slowly roast me, cooking my insides to a sad, mushy mess. FML

Today, I don't know what to do with myself. FML

Of Weekend Work and Fortune Tellers...

Well, it's been a while since I last posted, and will probably be a while until I post again because I am taking my computer back in for further repairs (I love being able to get every thing fixed for free, so I have a new computer when my warranty expires...) So... on to what happened during my weekend...

On Friday night I went out to a pub with my coworkers, and had a good time watching drunk people and talking, though of course the gradual increase in decibels of the music eventually made talking impossible and my continued inhabitance of the building undesirable. Still, it wasn't a bad way to spend an evening. I ended up spending most of the rest of the night on the phone, which wrote off some of Saturday morning. When I finally got up, it was time to go to work, since I had cell cultures growing that needed to be split and frozen down, and others which needed to be thawed and grown. They're like little chicks, really, constantly needing feeding and attention, regardless of the day. At least there is some ability to control them, since you can plate out very small amounts which will take quite a long time to grow, or large amounts which will grow quickly, but the cells tend to be quite temperamental, and like to grow in particular ways. Therefore there is a range of percentages by which they can be split, and the rate of growth sometimes means that they cannot be delayed for more than 1.5 days.

I finished work at 6, and rode out to the Backs (the backs of the large city-centre colleges), to sit on the bank of the Cam and drink (lemonade in my case) with my coworkers. It was pleasantly sunny and the atmosphere was nice. As we were sitting there and observing people, a strangely-dressed man was observed. He was wearing a patchwork jacket of gaudy fabrics, a jester's hat, torn socks, and loud pants. We were remarking on this apparition, when he decided that our little party looked like an interesting place to visit. He sat down and said something like the following very quickly: "Good evening esteemed sirs and madam I wonder if I would be able to beg the enormous favour of a moment of your time to introduce myself I am appelated Andi Pandi and I have the fascinating and esoteric talent of being able to read everything about you, more than you would ever cogitate or consider credible, simply from the order in which you select these coloured cards I have with me etc etc etc". We decided that it would be amusing to partake of this offer, so he went ahead and laid out his cards. I picked some, repeated the sequence a few times, and when he was happy he began to spout an awful lot about my many layers of feeling. As expected, he said enough that was general so that some things applied, and enough that was specific that he had observed from my interaction with workmates. After he finished, it was such fun to ask him specific questions and watch him wriggle... Particularly when he couldn't work out what my profession was ("something involving scrutinising"), despite a lanyard around my neck saying "Addenbrooks," and a hospital ID and a research ID. Eventually he saw it and pretended to "discover" that my colours meant that I was a doctor working long hours in the ED... not exactly. Anyway, it was quite a lot of fun, and he was a good sport.

Sunday was a bit of a non-day. I went shopping. That's about all that can be said for it. It's funny that even the aforementioned hypermarket is not open for long on a Sunday; only from 10am until 4pm. Still, that was enough. And that was my boring Sunday. I was going to go to someone I don't know's house for dinner, but then his wife was sick, so I ate a lonely meal and slept. Sometimes life here is not very exciting...

This is true procrastination...

So it's about 7 hours until I'm supposed to get up for a brand new AMS day of a brand new AMS week, but I'm still sitting in front of the computer, feeling utterly sluggish and not wanting to do the work that I was supposed to have done on Friday:
Experiment design.
It's a relatively simple antibody workup. But not so simple when there are 4 or 5 antibodies that needs to be done on relatively few samples. We're only harvesting 2 mice spleens and 4 mesenteric lymph nodes. One mouse spleen might yield 10^8 lymphocytes, if my technique can be called "up to scratch". That's not a lot of cells to stain. Another practical difficulty is the selection of fluorochromes for Flow Cytometry. Wouldn't it have been nice to have all the colours in the world? But at most there're only 5 available for our use. Not to mention the cells still need to be stained with the usual anti-CD4 and anti-Valpha/beta to select CD4+ T lymphocytes.
Experiment starts 8:00am tomorrow morning.
I'm sitting here feeling anything but productive. Must be the whether, I think.
Ah well, at least I'll get to have fun searching for little white blobs of Lymph node in the big white fatty mass of the mice mesentery tomorrow. That's always something to look forward to.

Procrastination... Not...

The first week in the lab has passed and soon will come the second week. I've been deviating so much from the actual work I need to do that I'm truly and most terrifyingly behind on my lit review. So far, I've only read one review and another paper on the effects of reelin' expression on cell migration in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, and even so neither of them I can talk about without uncertainty.

However, this week I've been on a steep learning curve, with the first and second day running around in the lab preparing artificial CSF and RNA/DNA mediums, trying to remember which chemicals have to be kept in under 4 degrees, -20 degrees and -80 degrees, or in the water bath, and when to switch the temperature, and when to remove them from those temperatures. Huge pain in the arse, I might say, that the supervisor seems to place a large amount of trust in my memory by giving me instructions as a passing comment. One time, I forgot to remove the artificial CSF from the magnetic stirrer on my second day and left the solution at room temperature overnight, and so I had to remake a new batch on the day next and so there was a delay in the rat brain harvest surgery.

There were 2 cool events that happened in my first week, one of them by chance. On Tuesday my lab partner Gabi was showing me on how to weigh rats when one of the status epilepticus rats went into grade 5, then 4, then 6 seizure. Grade 6 is most terrifying and is also known as 'popcorn' among the lab people - because it is when the rat jerks violently up and down like popcorn popping. I thought 'popcorn' was a bit of an understatement because the rat jumped up and down so violently that the lid above broke off and the creature unconciously made its escape. Thankfully, Gabi was quick enough to lift it and hoist it back into the cage before the rat fell off the table. The second cool event (but perhaps not too cool) was the rat brain harvest. Rats had to be guilotined for the brain harvest and since general anaesthetics will alter the methylation status in the brain, decapitation had to be done with the rat fully awake (and writhing for its life). I'm thankful that I'm not ethically permitted to decapitate a rat, because it's terrifying watching a living creature being killed like that, let alone doing it. My only job in this process is to wipe up the arterial blood spurt and wash the bloody equipment. Until now I can still remember the rat's eyes as they widen with fear when the blades hit all 4 sides of its neck, and that gaping mouth to let out one last unheard squeak. I don't think I will forget this, ever.

Ok, I think this will do for now. Time for dinner!

Lunchbreak!

My favourite time of day! The office is quiet today, for some reason. Franz Babl (what an awesome name, right?) is back this afternoon and we are somehow throwing an afternoon tea (who has afternoon teas at 2pm?). Franz is the research head in the ED here, and one of the crazy hardcore doctors who seem to do everything.

Nom nom I love corn...

Had an enlightening conversation over lunch about the age that people want to get married.

Getting tired of literature review, as I find it impossible to absorb anything on screen, but feel guilty printing all the time.

Brain stops...

...here.

New blog appearance

Tell me what you think about the new blog appearance... I changed it to this so that landscape pictures aren't cut off.

Some photos of the past few days...

Well, here are some photos, at long last. There are a few more on my flickr page. Sorry for crowding up the front page of the blog...

Another weekend on the other side of the world...

Well, yesterday and Friday both count as weekend, I think. My coworkers needed a break, so Friday turned into an extension of the weekend. We went into the city centre, and finally I bought a sim for this phone. Unfortunately, while I was in the city, rain began. Enormous drops began to fall, thunder pealed, lightning forked out of the sky (destroying a couple of mobile phone towers and giving me signal problems), and I became a thoroughly wet figure, riding with bowed head into the driving rain. I was so soaked that I ended up having to turn off and go back home to change, before taking the bus back to work, and from there out to a very long lunch. The afternoon was spent back in the lab talking, with a very long discussion about the biological aspects of homosexuality. It is interesting how, for someone speaking a second language, the language itself betrays prejudice. For example, my co-worker was trying to differentiate between homo- and heterosexual, and he said, "If he is gay, or if he is man"... I knew what he meant, but it's funny how the language shows part of his view (essentially that homosexuality is a mental disease, [though he wouldn't have put it quite like that] and that it bears no resemblance to "natural" [sic] relationships). It was a very interesting discussion, however, and continued on the walk home, even when the rain began anew. I'm so glad that my coworkers are people with whom one can have this kind of conversation.

Saturday and today were largely consumed by the need to shop. I rode down to Sainsbury's (a British supermarket chain), and it was not a supermarket but a hypermarket. It was the size of a large Bunnings, and had aisles or everything from organic fruits and vegetables, to stationary, toys, homewares, garden products, etc. They even had a cafe for tired customers! I suppose I shouldn't really be so shocked, but I am in a town not much larger than Frankston, and this is one of two of these monstrosities, and one of at least 10 supermarkets. There is a giant tesco, a small tesco, two small sainsbury's, etc etc etc. What I found strange was that for all the European and Indian foods available, the Asian food was limited to two varieties of soy sauce and some pot noodles. Worse than even safeways... Therefore today I went exploring and found two Asian supermarkets. They were somewhat pricy, but I managed to find most of what I wanted. The Chinese supermarket was funny, since the lady there didn't speak English, so I had to use my very very limited pidgin Chinese to ask for what I wanted, and didn't understand when she asked me if I wanted a bag. At least I know where those shops are, even I I'll hopefully only have to cook for another 3 months. Well, that will do for now. I might post something again soon.

My computer is still two days away if I am lucky. I hope that they give me a shiny new computer, though... Would be nice indeed! :)

I know this is a blog, not a tweet, but seriously.

THIS WEEK HAS BEEN FAIL

Commiserations to anyone who has been screwed in any way.

A weekend of exploration

So, my second week begins. I spent the weekend exploring Cambridge with Hon, and it was a lot of fun. My student card worked wonders when attempting to enter colleges, as the '2.50 fee is waived for Cambridge students, and queues may also be avoided. The colleges are amazing in their scale and their intricacy, and their age is evident in every stain of lamp-oil, in the paths worn smooth by centuries of feet, and in the ancient stems of the ivy growing up the yellow limestone facades. Each college is immaculate; enormous lawns stretch out, perfectly clipped and as flat as the mirror-like Cam which bisects them. They are often surrounded by pleas to avoid walking on the turf, or noting the exclusivity of the location to Fellows or members of the college, which may contribute to their maintenance in this state.

Photos will unfortunately not yet be forthcoming, as my computer is in at the Apple store (so nice to live within walking distance of one) for repairs. I am hoping to have it with me again my Wednesday, but we shall see.

We explored not only the colleges, but also the many laneways and sidestreets of Cambridge, and walked up and down the banks of the Cam. Punters were out in force, and it was amusing to note the difference between the graceful, effortless control exhibited by the professionals, and the directionless meandering of the first time punters. Particularly chuckle-worthy was an incident in which someone had planted the pole and been unable to twist it free, and had therefore been forced to watch as their pole remained fixed in the river bottom while their punt sailed blindly forward. I unfortunately didn't have the chance to see (and photograph for posterity's sake) an upset punt or a punter left in the river after trying too hard to free their pole. This had apparently happened not long before we arrived on the Backs of John's, as there were a number of males dressed in nothing but underpants and looking rather wet. It appeared that one had fallen in and the rest had followed, deciding to swim if that were the present fashion.

We ate at a number of interesting places. The Lettuce and Slug was an interesting modern pub, serving some kind of Mexican/Italian fusion food, while The Mitre was very much a traditional pub, complete with drunkards. A group of young men, and one old man, were enjoying rather too much of the local ale, and much hilarity ensued upon their attempts to walk, talk, or drink from a glass. Also in that pub, Hon struck up a conversation with our neighbouring table, and perhaps only in Cambridge would you discover that a table of four similarly-aged, multinational people are conducting research into carbon nanotubes and molecular genetics. Their nationalities would have suggested a Contiki tour; two Turks, a Pole, and a Frenchman.

Food here, at least in restaurants, is proving a deal more exciting than expected. It seems that even staid old England is coming to realise that not everyone eats meat, and is thus beginning to provide vegetarian options. Even food in the supermarket is labelled "vegetarian" when it satisfies the criteria. Even cheeses note whether they are suitable for vegetarians or not (whether their rennent is made from processed calf). I had a delicious baked potato with garlic mushrooms at "Tatties", a potato specialist restaurant.

I'll post this now and write more later. I'm getting frustrated with how long it's taking the bank to send me my pin, as well as the fact that my computer is not back yet!

Convergence

• ethics not done, supervisor n00b at it, due monday, supervisor leaving for overseas on Sunday for a week
• someone pulling out of seeing Harry Potter with me and refusing to reimburse me or to find someone to take the ticket
• problems with new property

... in short: bad luck, thanks for playing.

stocks are low?

So we settled into our new office today, and I noticed a box in the corner with scrap paper, some stationery, and some other bits and bobs. And four full boxes of Tamiflu.

Awesome.

a tale of two burnings

It was the best of foods, it was the worst of foods, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of pressing too many buttons, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of disbelief as I walked back into the kitchen, it was the season of Light (fire), it was the season of Darkness (rice+bowl), it was the spring of cluelessness, it was the winter of total fail, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us but smoke inhalation, we were all going direct to AMS tomorrow, we were all going direct to lung cancer - in short, the period was so far like when I was eight and mum said "10 minutes" in the microwave and not "10 seconds".

---

It was the year two thousand and nine. Culinary and academic revelations were conceded to me at that favoured period, as at this. I had recently attended my first blessed day at AMS, bestowed with a paltry three hours sleep. Even the prospect of a full day ahead did not remove the thought of the smoky microwave from my mind. At 12:30 am that morning, I had risen from bed and attempted to clean it. Even at 2:30 in the morning it stressed me. I believe I got up at 6 am.

The Royal Children's Hospital, less favoured on the whole as to matters holiday-related than her sister of the late bedtime and lazy breakfast, loomed with exceeding ugliness up the hill, making my day several hours too long. Under the guidance of Michael Marks, she gave us an insanely boring two-hour seminar on how to use Ovid to search for things, as well as a rambling talk on Clinical Research something-something (quality? This was at about the time when the lack of sleep kicked in). It is likely enough that, rooted in the yonks of experience of the RCH AMS unit, they have good reason for doing this. It is likely enough that my grudging acceptance of this may have been slightly (very) influenced by the excellent morning tea of berry friands, muffins and jam donuts. And tea. Lovely tea.

In the Fourth Floor of the RCH, there was scarcely an amount of order and excitement to justify much blogging. Daring powerpoints by men munching covertly on potato chips, and seminar-way robberies of my valuable brainspace and time, will take place every two weeks, compulsorily; victims... I mean, students, were publicly cautioned not to go out of town at these meeting times; the students will annoy the supervisors, and the supervisors will annoy the students, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman of boredom, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a lazy kid on Saturday who had been told off on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand with whatever came out of the microwave, and now burning rice at the door of an apartment on Lygon Street; today, taking the life of a rather stupid girl, and tomorrow of my dad who is gonna come over for a little while (he says that smoke smells take forever to come out).

All these things, and a thousand like them, will come to pass in and close upon the dear old year two thousand and nine. Environed by them, while I work unheeded, trod with total randomness, and carried their rights in a plastic bag that gets shoved under the seat when I need to be Asian. Thus did the year two thousand and nine conduct their Lessnesses, and myriads of small creatures - the creatures of this chronicle among the rest - along the roads that lay before them.