The Happier Times of Days Gone By

you know.......I feel so old.........not in the sense that I've put on another year of my life and my joints are starting to protest, but just that I feel like I have all these weights on my back that I never realized was there before

Today was probably the first day during the entire week when I had some time to wind down (hence me reappearing after the last post)......but so much seemed to have changed since then...it doesnt seem like it's about being a rebel anymore, but it seemed to have stirred a deeper question - where do I really belong?

I always thought that Vancouver had been my home, and that church had been more a family to me than anything.......but something seems to have changed this week. Maybe it's a mood thing, maybe it's not, I don't know

Having been traumatized with a few half-way-across-the-world moves as a kid, I have been quick to attach myself to this church. True it's no secret that our church is plagued with problems, and it still is, but over the years something seems to have changed. In our effort to move forward and improve we seemed to have lost something along the way. The spontaneity, the genuine care and support. Everything seems to institutionalized and sterile now. This felt especially so after the Sunday school meeting today

Despite the current system being "better" than what it was, there is a great part of me wishing it would somehow just go back to the way things were. I don't even remember how I became involved with Sunday school. But it just happened one summer. For some reason it was just me and henny teaching. There were the Saturday nights pouring through websites frantically trying to think of what to do with the kids the next morning, because there was no cirriculum. There was the blue sky over our heads and the green grass under our feet, becuase it was summer and we spent much of the morning outside, seeing as no one really cared about how we did things, so long as the kids were taken care of. I suppose that was where I found the childhood that I had lost. But now it all fades into distant memory.......

I must say, the new Sunday school arrangement is our finest yet. It's a great program and I'm surprised myself that it was this elegant. But it is just a program, no matter how perfect or how elegant it is......We seemed to have travelled down a road that is now completely irreversible. In our ambition to become as successful as other churches we've traded spending time with the kids because we want to be with them for a teacher rotation. We've traded the fun and games and let God work His magic along the way for curriculum that seems to be geared to all the other kids in the world but ours. We've given up the random trips to all over the place for consent-formed activities, and we've let legalities and parental consents cloud over our hearts to care for and help the kids.

What have we done?! What have we done...........

Lutheranism - Old, Male, and Lifeless

OK, I'm prepared to be offending a lot of folks with this (I mean, just look at the title, it's not the most politically correct), but hey, i guess it takes some overarching generalizations to get the point across and maybe draw some attention.

I was graced with the pleasure of staying all day at UBC yesterday. After the busiest day at work yet (I filled out 7 whole pages of my lab notebook, the most yet in a day), I somewhat reluctantly stuck around for the opening service for the LCC ABC District Convention (Lutheran Church of Canada, Alberta-British Columbia). And I must say, it was quite the experience that got me thinking....


Moo was saying how there was a certain air that defined us Lutherans.....white-haired, slightly hunched, with general lack of momentum......and i must say, this is true......it's not only the general lack of youthfulness, which Flo later pointed out, that seem to define the denomination, but more of a stubborn unwillingness to change.

True, we are the oldest Protestant denomination, and no doubt we are the closest to Catholicism you will get without throwing the Pope and all the saints. But I'm beginning to wonder, has our adherence to tradition gone a bit overboard. It's not news that different congregations adapt and omit different bits and pieces of the liturgy (basically preset dialogs you speak or chant as the worship service progresses) because of complaints that service would drag on for too long without anything really meaningful. But the problems don't end there........

I'll admit here that me and pastor are not on the best terms. There just seem to be some uneasiness between us that we mask with superficial friendliness and goodwill. I suppose the reason being that I've always challenged our church traditions. I have no problem with the theological views we hold, but it's the unspoken traditions that make no sense to me.

There seems to be a general snobbery, especially amongst the older generation, that you are not truly Christian unless you are a Lutheran. Despite this thought being less verbally expressed, there is still a ridiculous amount of hostility toward other denominations. More than once have I experienced this first-hand as I tried to push for more collaborative events. Concerts, city-wide youth rallies, joint fellowship with other churches.....and time and time again the response I received was that we were allowed to go as individuals, because the church has no control of our actions, but we were not allowed to go as a fellowship or as a church, because the events were not Lutheran and we were not to have any dealings as a church with other denominations. There was some brief mention of differing theological views and conflict avoidance. But this was made most clear during a pastor's meeting last summer where all the pastors from metro vancouver met up. There was an overwhelming tone of resignation and defeat in the announcement that there was to be no Lutheran evangelical effort for the 2010 Olympics. We had to join up with the collaborative More than Gold effort put on by the rest of the churches in Vancouver. Is it truly such an appalling thought?

And then there just seems to be a general disregard for the youths in the denomination, as very evident by the lack of them last night (I can almost claim that I had the most singular hairstyle in that room of 500-ish people). It's not that they are not concerned about us, but we seem to have very little say in the direction of the church and even less so in the direction of the district. Even the government has a Youth Parliament, but as obvious in the delgates present in that opening service, the people chosen to attend the convention is doniminantly older, Caucasian male. Ask anyone if youths are important and I'm sure they will more than agree we are the future of the church, yet all they really seem to care about our growth and maturation is that we follow their example. Anything new, anything different, begone, devil! This was evident when a student at a Lutheran seminary became so frustrated with his professor because he basically demonized the whole contempory Christian music movemnt. It was evident when I attempted to convince the church to purchase a drum set. It was evident when pastor introduced me to a seminary professor yesterday, saying, in an apologetic and he's-weird-that-way-please-don't-mind-him tone, that "He like the modern praise songs."

Sigh.......increasingly i feel like I'm a problem that the larger church is trying to fix......that I'm a rebel that needs correction becuase I'm unwilling to conform to the way things have been done since the 1500s......and the sad thing is that whenever there is an idea brought up by our fellowhsip, there is always a general verbal agreement that it's something that should be done. But the support ends there, and any deeper conversation with any of the older members would only have them point to some higher person in-charge that would oppose the idea. And so despite them verbally giving support, they are in reality against the change in thought and in deed. They just very cleverly disguise it as an opposition from someone else.

We Lutherans, however, do have one redeeming quailty. We sure can sing. The overwhelming operatic male voice we sung the hymns in cannot be described in words. It simply has to be experienced. (If only our congregation can sing like that.....)

The Road to Immortality

Mankind has always been in search of immortality. Whether looking to some scarcely known cult, or to some mystical Chinese herbs, or more recently, to cryopreservation and the secret workings of the telomere, we have been relentlessly trying to uncover the means to beat even Death himself.

Honeybee cells, however, have chosen a different path.

After being painstakingly picked out of a frame of honeycomb, surviving the rigour of sterilization with bleach and ethanol, and enduring the seemingly endless hammering of a pipette tip, the honeybee eggs (or rather, the cells within those eggs) have earned a well-deserved two-day break from the pressures of a laboratory experiment. Yet little do they know, their eternal fate is in the hands of a largely ill-equipped co-op student --- me.

The task at hand appears deceivingly simple. To find an oncogene and introduce it to the cells. Yet one key factor has been overlooked. The person entrusted with this critical issue has absolutely no experience with genetic manipulation. True I have introduced foreign DNA into cells before, but the extent of that endeavour amounted to mixing two solutions together, drip them over the cells, and presto! the cells glow green the next morning! The task at hand, however, is a completely different story......

Not only are there many possible methods to introduce foreign DNA, there are a plethora more oncogenes identified. As if to multiply the difficulty of this problem, I am responsible for actually finding the plasmids required, and if a commercial copy is unavailable, I will have to somehow, someway figure out the exact sequence and all the leader the trailer sequences and all the primers needed......and to deal the final blow to the hope of these unfortunate cells, there is absolutely no previous literature on anyone attempting this feat with honeybee cells. Our best bet rests with the common fruitfly.......

I guess the quest for immortality is no easy task, even for honeybee cells. Thank God for Jesus, eh? XD

Full-blown Summer (or not) and the Shampoo Problem

Yesterday was definitely a day reminiscent of full-blown summer, although that thought was quickly drenched today.

The fact that we were all sweating in our choir robes, plus the lunchtime quest with the Sunny school kids to Shell for a slurpee, along with the dinner gathering at the Tsui's (despite it being a hotpot dinner and not barbecue), and the post-dinner adventure to the playground for grounders definitely signals the advent of another round of summer =P.....But I must say, eight months of isolation from the playground has definitely taken its toll on this rusty body of mine. I'm no longer tha agile self with it comes to outmanouvering the kids (or i suppose some of them has secretly crept up the age ladder and became teens over the years)......

Amongst the many trophies of the night I have stumbled across many a sore muscle, a banged up knee, and a completely scraped forearm. The muscle pains were inherited from months of disuse (honestly, how often would i find myself climbing up bars and hanging off of railings in the sterile lab environment). The banged up knee came while attempting to leap up while completely forgetting about the wooden ledges that were suppose to facillitate that increase in elevation, resulting in me completely smashing my knee against on of the corners. The scraped arm was definitely the most seredipitous discovery of all. One moment it was fine and then it was stinging the next, and so upon inspection I found enough blood for Tammy to use it to draw a smiley face on my other arm......but the funniest part was how the parents made a big deal out of it......it really was just a scrape (although admittedly it was somewhat unsightly), but they were all fussing about how i should be putting a bandaid over it (despite it being way too big for conventional bandaids).....so yes, i had to spend some time reassuring them that it was OK. There is definitely a cause for concern if it was knife wound that size, because i would have fainted already, but the fact that i was alive and well and very good-natured about it means that, despite its somewhat disturbing size, it was nothing serious (and i think the fact that I'm not dead now becuase of it means I was right =P)

But today was a lot duller than yesterday. I think I've come to the conclusion that one day of bumming around at home not doing anything is enough to drive me crazy.......I woke up at 10 (tho technically i woke up at 830. Without an alarm too, it's sad....), and by 5 i was bored out of my mind.......

However, there was one thing that completely stumped me today. It was the Shampoo Problem, one which i think is worthy to be included in the chronicles of Sherlock Holmes. But the story starts out that our household was out of shampoo, and so I was dispatched to search for an appropriate replacement. I started at the mysterious aisle of hair products at the local London Drugs, and as I scanned through the labels I realized I was faced with quite the challenge. There was shampoo with conditioner. There was shampoo for coloured hair, as was there for dandruff, and dry and damaged hair, and for increasing hair volume, and for hair fortification.......There seems to be shampoo for absolutely every possibly convuluted condition EXCEPT normal regular generic everyday shampoo!!!!!! Honestly!!! I might having more luck looking for shampoo for warm weather, shampoo for washing your car, and shampoo for cutting in the grocery line!!!

Following Other Blogs

There is one thing i really like about Bloggers, and it's the ability for me to follow on the Dashboard other blogs that are not explicitly from Bloggers. All I need to do is just to type in the blog URL and the posts just show up.....I think it's very magical =P......I can now keep an eye on the blogs that I would like to follow without having to actually go to the sites to check all of them on a regular basis (i suppose you can argue that the RSS function was there since ages ago, but i never bothered to put it into use XD......but this blogger thing is just conveniently there =P)

In other news, UBC has paid me, thos i must say i was disappointed.......I wouldnt mind having the two days at the conference not paid for, and I kinda expected them to deduct taxes from my pay (tho I explicitly put a tick in the box saying i was making less than my tax allowance, so they really shouldnt be deducting them).....but then thing that I was the most surprised about was that they are not paying me the full 8 hours a day.....DESPITE the fact that I'm there from 8:30 to 5 every day......feel kinda ripped off now, coz i thought i was going to be paid the full 8 hours so i figured i better be working for 8 hours.......I guess i should find out how many hours per day they are actually paying me for.....it better be 7.5, because if it is 7 then there's no way i'm showing up that early anymore!! >__<"

But there is one thing that is getting me very excited =P.....we are finally starting the Truth Project this Thursday night =P......there really isn't another less generic word.....I am genuinely excited =P

The 4th International Symposium on Enabling Technologies for Proteomics (ETP)

Now, this definitely isn't the first conference I've been to, but it's definitely the first one in the field of science =P So i was naturally a little uncertain of what to make of it all and had no clue what to expect of all the presenters =P.....I was hoping they'd have a prettier logo for me to put on here, but guess in the realm of science prettiness really isn't much of a virtue XD


The conference was held at the Four Seasons Hotel downtown, and basically the program was just speakers after speakers doing presentations and more presentations (with little coffee breaks and lunch breaks sprinkled here and there (although lunch was filled with more talks, this time from companies would produces the instruments and machinery for proteomics talking about their latest product)

I've definitely attended better and more worthwhile conferences XD, but for a fresh undergrad student testing the waters with my toe it wasn't too bad an experience =P.....true there was a ridiculous amount of jargons and abbreviations (things like GC-MS and SDS-PAGE i know about, but stuff like MALDI? QToF? triple Quad?MRM? Orbitrap? CAD? ETD?) I have no idea what they all mean other than they either stand for some fancy equipment or some fancy protein analysis procedures........but asides from the handicap in general proteomics knowledge and a very rudimentary knowledge of molecular biology (of which the specifics I could once recall for the animal cell final has diffused out of my mind) the whole conference wasnt too too bad =P The food and drinks were good, AND we all get a complementary cocktail drink at the end of the day (tho I chose not to take advantage of that =P)

The only complaint that I have to make is how insanely overtime we went.....we had to cut our break short by 20 minutes as well as truncate some of the presentations in order to end 40 minutes AFTER the scheduled time!.......and although there were quite a number of really good presenters (especially the first two, the last two, and the one right before lunch =P), there was this one lady that was absolutely, DISGUSTINGLY horrible........

You might have thought a presentation on protein-based diseases would have been rather interesting, but all she did, especially towards the end of that dreaded ordeal......she shoved mass spectrum after mass spectrum after graph after graph after more mass spectrum after more mass spectrum after more graphs after even more mass spectrum.......and all she did with them was talk on and on about who knows what.......she mentioned something about different residues and the random subtle difference between the stupid mass spectra.........everyone at the table just looked at each otherand rolled our eyes everytime she switch slides and it was more mass spectra on the most unisnpiring grey background............I wanted to go smack her and send her to jail and force her to take two terms of COMM before letting her back out...........

Five-day Break

So starts a five-day break.

I have been temporarily relieved from the daunting task of staring at hondybee cells under that glaring light of the microscope, hoping those hopelessly oblivious cells might catch a glimpse of my eye through the scope and be encouraged to increase in numbers. Yet being ejected from the lab for two days only equates to being ushered into the largely unexplored world of proteomic conferences. I'm certain the presenters will be able to inspire a sense of wonder provoke thought - wondering what on earth he is talking about and thinking of where to grab a bite to eat after she's done XD

on a more solemn note, I have managed to incur more charges on my credit card than I currently have available in my bank account. Definitely not the best predicament to be in the midst of, and one that I do not intend to repeat ever again, but I am fully expected to receive my first installment of payment from UBC on the 23rd......(tho i must admit, this situation is technically not true. I do have funds in my Tax-free Savings Account, but I just consider them immoveable)

Keith lied!

Keith sent us an email this morning telling us that our final marks are being held up by BCIT's student records and will not be released until 2 weeks after this Friday (he mentioned something about the other technologies ending classes this week and having their finals next week so the marks will be released the week after)......but HE LIED!!!! XD

Thanks to Chris and his trusty information it was actually already out today (despite me having checked this afternoon and it not being there =P)........but yah, nothing much to say about it......my average did drop, as expected.....but i do not know how they calculate it, because when i did it myself by hand I got a lower number than what they posted up.....but hey, i'm not going to complain about that XD.......but my marks actually fell pretty much into my expectations....microbi was my highest, plants was my lowest (tho i must say i was slightly disappointed by it.....i was hoping to have done better than what i apparently did on the final......).....the only real surprise was chem =P.....i did much better than i thought i would have =P

and in other news the BC Liberals did pretty well too =P......kinda relieved they got a third term (can't imagine what our economy would be like if the NDP came to power.....=__=").......and i'm also glad the whole STV thing didnt pass XD.........they were talking about it on the news and all i keep hearing was STD, STD, STD XD.........but yah, it's such a confusing system.....and it'll render the government so ineffective...........

so yes, a pretty good day overall =P

21 Pages into the Work Term

So, after 6 days of work, I have finished writing in the 21st pages of my lab notebook and will be starting on page 22 tmr........yes, quite the achievement, i must say, especially seeing the other co-op students are much further back in their page numbers (as of Friday there was one to be proud to be on his second page XD)

but this week will be quite interesting =P......we'll be missing Thursday and Friday because of the proteomics conference (tho i have to admit, what I'm working on really has nothing to do with proteomics XD)....so Marta said we'll go to the farm next week to get eggs (especially considering it has been raining and the bess dont like their nests being pried into when it rains)

but asides from that, a little update on my teeth =P......I'm assuming all wounds have closed by now, because i managed to get a hard piece of samosa lodged in one of the holes where a tooth used to be and had to rinse it out......and it didnt bleed (it didnt hurt either, it just felt really uncomfortable).....so i'm assuming it's healing (tho i was told to wait a month for the gum to grow back, and they grow from the inside to fill the hole, so looks like it can swallow food on its own accord for the next little while

and one final note was that i actually had the time to fiddle a bit on my piano......i must say, my piano playing has gotten very very disgusting.......my technique is sooo rusty.....I couldnt even play my broken chords evenly....that was how bad it is.......needless to say when it came to the actual pieces it was horrific.......I was very sad about how my mozarts went.......I actually used to be able to play mozart well, like actually well, with clean trills and the right articulation style and a sublte touch of pedal......not anymore.....T__T.......i completely massacred even the simplest mozart piece.........and then I moved on to some Brahms, and then Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu (which I can't really play anymore.....the right hand just kinda fused into one giant blob of notes).....and I also felt adventurous and attempted some of Lizst's la Campanella........I've actually quite completely lost that piece......I can't play it anymore.......I think I've only managed to go up to the half of the first page (and that's the simplest bit XD).......so yes, I need more practice, and get my technique back to where it was (and maybe some Czerny along with it too XD)

Third Day Concert

So, yesterday was the Third Day concert with Brandon Heath and Revive.......it was all the way down at Abbotsford tho, so driving there and back again was quite the experience XD (it's definitely the furthest I've ever driven without parental supervision =P......and i managed to clock 130km/h on the way back, which i believe is the fastest the car has gone.....yet XD)


but i must say, third day really isnt my style......they are too rock-and-roll for my liking (they actually had electric guitar solos and all that during the concert) and they don't have enough praise songs that we can sing along to.....(it was really different from Passion back in Octorber......but then they had David Crowder with them and their music is very.....alternative....).......but third day does have a couple of really good songs, so i didnt mind going =P..........(and plus, Jenn really likes Brandon Heath and she wanted to go =P)

now, the concert started at 7, and i must say the beginning 2 hours was rather painful to sit through.......I've never heard of Revive before, and then number of Brandon Heath songs I know can be counted using one hand......and to make it all worse, there was sooo much talking/introductions, and the transitioning between bands took forever......AND!.....the thing that got me really annoyed was how they were completely trying to shove World Vision in our faces (ok, fine, I'm slightly biased against them becuase of the stories I've heard about the way they spend the money).....but third day's road pastor was basically trying to guilt us all into sponsoring a child (a tactic I'm definitely not overly fond of).........so a bit of songs, a whole lot of talking and a whole lot more of waiting around took us to around 9.....when it was finaly third day's turn

THEY WERE AWESOME!!!......true, I'm not a huge fan of their style.......but they were just THAT GOOD that it didnt matter XD......they did two things that took me by surprise =P

The first was the fact that midway through the performance they relocated themselves to the back of the stadium!......they were playing a couple of songs and the lead singer disappeared for some reason. When the song was done, he was all of a sudden on this mini stage at the back of the stadium, and started the next song (at which point the rest of the band relocated too =P)


that I thought was really cool =P (and please excuse the poor quality.....it was taken from my phone).....they even did a song and made the drummer sing XD.......and to top it all off, they played the song that I went to the concert for on that ministage......(tho i think the dude forgot the lyrics or something, coz he only sang one verse of it and then sort of repeated the last line a couple of times and ended it there =P)



and the other thing that they did that I thought was really cool was the fact that they gave an encore! XD........Hillsongs never did it, and Chris Tomlin with Passion didnt do it either!......(and I dont know about Starfield coz it was Jenn's grad that night.....yes, we are both very disappointed we had to miss it XD).......so they bascially played three more songs for us after they officially ended the concert, and for one of them they got Brandon Heath and Revive to come back and sing bits and pieces of it as well =P


So I'm just generally very happy about this concert =P......true the beginning could have been better =P......but oh well, Third Day was good enough to more than make up for it =P.......but with all the encore and stuff the concert ended slightly after 10:30 XD........and by the time we were back on the highway it was already 11 =P

Micahel W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman.....same place (and now we know where to park XD......we were right outside the building =P....tho we did have to pay $10)......July 26th!!! VERY VERY excited about that!.....getting my pre-sale tickets on Wednesday =P

Day 4 (Man, i need more creative titles XD)

So, how goes the fourth day on the job? =P.....i must say i was pretty proud of myself =P

today was quite the contrary to what happened yesterday. Whereas i kept thinking I really didn't do anything at all yesterday, i found myself very oddly productive today =P.....I was done my list of things to do (like prep media, do more sterility tests) by 10:30....and was twiddling my thumb till 11:30 waiting for the pH meter to free up so i can finish the last thing on my list to do.

But really, my proudest thing has to be my aseptic techniques......I was actually rather unhappy about the fact that we were having trouble with the media and it kept getting contaminated....the first time, fine, i wasnt careful enough and was being sloppy.......the second time was like WHAT?! again?!........so when i looked at it today for the third time and saw that oh-so-familiar film of growth on the surface my heart sank, thinking i must have done something terribly stupid and contaminated the stock bottles (which would have wasted $200 worth of materials.....yes, that much for three 500mL bottles of media).....but then when i opened our other incubator to look at that plate (we use two incubators, the nice, new one with has 5%CO2....and the old one that's basically just a heated cupboard) there was no sign of contamination whatsoever......there was not even a speck of a cell to be found under the microscope!!......i was sooo relieved, and I think we can come to the conclusion that the old incubator is contaminated with some yeast kinda thing.........marta, my supervisor, told me let it sit for a while longer, coz there was no signs of growth in one of the medium (Grace's Insect Medium).......only if the last medium is also contaminated can we conclude it's the incubator (tho i cheated and looked at it under the microscope and i can see little cells floating around, just very few of them =P)

we had another scare with contamination today too XD......and again, i'm very proud that it's not my fault =P.......we were reviving the cells from cryopreservation that were cultured last summer to see how well they do in -78C liquid nitrogen.......and so i was using the hemocytometer and trypan blue as i was so used to back in the lab (i must say i'm going to come to hate counting those stupid cells......especially if they all look the way they did today)

me and hemocytometer have met.....we've decided that we really can't get along

and so the first batch was fine (the ones directly out of the cryovials).....but then the ones after dilution with media was absolutely horrific!!!!......instead of having a slide of blue liquid, it just became liquid completely overwhelmed with blue floaty thingies (i was actually going to write that description into my notebook, but then thought it wasnt quite professional)....but bascially think of dust on water, except there's a huge amount and it's all blue......and so marta just flipped and panicked (espeically when we tested the trypan blue alone and it was fine, and then with the media and it clumped)......so she freaked and thought it was very bad bacterial contamination....but she had to run for a meeting, and so she left me to do some research......but then, after some researching, i found that apparently serum (in our case the 20% fetal bovine serum we added) causes this to happen XD (apparently trypan blue has a higher affinity to serum proteins than cellular proteins =P).......and so once more, it was just another harmless scientific phenomenon........tho it does complicate things, i now have to actually test the media to make sure it's the serum's fault, and then this means from now on we'll have to first centrifuge down the cells, take the media out, and replace it with PBS (phosphate-buffered saline)

and i guess the final thing to note is that i think i've found my rhythm with the whole co-op business.....i can get to UBC by 8, do my devotions there before i start my day =P (using a computer in the SUB, coz i dont think it's quite proper to be using my lab computer to do personal stuff.....though i was using it to secretly check for my marks, which are still not out, seeing tammy sent us all an email saying joan's still hacking away at our protein papers XD)....i quite like this arrangement =P........and maybe if i can pull myself together and sleep earlier then i can actually read on the bus (and not sleep it away =P).........also hopefully once i can properly ingest again i'll bring in some granola bars for an afternoon snack in addition to the sandwich that i have grown to be fond of =P

but anyways, on other news......i now know what's causing this pulling feeling everytime i open my jaws a certain way......apparently my dentist has sewn my gum to the side of my cheeks......but hey, it's ok, it doesnt hurt, and only one more pill of antibiotics left tonight before i'm done with all these medication =P

had an orange flavoured yogurt tonight.....kinda odd =P.....but it actually tasted pretty good =P

BUMPITS and day 3

yes, you heard me, BUMPITS!......you might be wondering, where on earth would you find the bumpit....i mean, the only thing you've really ever heard of was an armpit and maybe a peach pit, where does a bumpit go?......apparently it goes in your hair......it's a little plasticy thingy that you can put inside your hair and wrap hair around to make it all big and full......thus bump-it...........honestly, i think it's some sort of practical joke.....but someone must have a lot of money to spend to put a commercial for such a thing on prime time TV (either that or someone was just seriously stupid when coming up with the name)

Just in case you are stupid, they tell you bumpits are not edible

(btw, i was so tempted to put Figure 1. and then start doing the whole sentence description and the citation thing, but i suppose this isnt COMM XD)

but well, things have definitely started to pick up for day 3. Quite honestly if you get me to list out everything I've done for the day it really wasnt much.....we found contamination in the plates and so we redid them, and found contamination again (we are thinking it may either be from the media or from the incubator.....we didnt get time today so we'll have to do that tmr.....i really hope the contamination is not from the bottle.....coz that would suck.....).....and that was bascially it, made some antibiotics (it was very very interesting trying to shove 1.5g of gentamicin into an eppendorf tube and then dissolving it in 1mL of water.......there was just sooo much solid it wouldnt even fit into the tube)......and we also went to the bee farm to try to collect some eggs........and yah, that was interesting.....coz i'm actually rather afraid of bees but it turned out ok......and i also got my keys =P


i can now access the lab without having to wait for the doors to be open, and i can also head into MSL with the electronic fob and the you're-allowed-to-be-here piece of fabric (or well, i suppose it is to put the set of keys around your neck, but i always like to pocket my keys so i dont really find them useful)

but well, i'm actually surprised at the pace of it all......i was actually very used to the whole finish-everything-quickly mentality, so performing acrobatic stunts to save the prodcuts from dripping into the water bath in a chem lab was all part of the plan.......but i suppose real science is a bit more delicate than that, and it's ok to take your time and test things out and just generally slow down to do things well.......but i dunno, i'm starting to have second thoughts on the whole Ph.D. idea......maybe i'll do something that hinges less on being completely anal about asceptic techniques.....(yes, it is rather disheartening to have to be stalled by contaminated media that starts growing things when you didnt even seed anything to begin with)

anyways, in other news, my teeth see to be doing fairly well......i was actually abel to sustain a small period of normal chewing today during dinner........but then the left side of my jaw is starting to ache.......so i dunno if that's just from overworking, from the nerves healing, or from an infection......i guess we'll have to wait and find out

Day 2

so.....how goes the second day, you ask?.....well, definitely more eventful than the first =P.....the morning was spent doing something relatively simple....aliquotting media, then plating them into 6-wells for a pH and sterility test tmr. After that came some checking out books from the library ("Insect Physiology and Biochemistry".....wonderful, i know....), and the afternoon was spent reading and researching and more article reading and more researching (it was ridiculous how difficult it was to find the pH of honeybee hemolymph.....basically honeybee blood....)

we were also going to thaw some fetal bovine serum (FBS, should sound disgustingly familiar to any biotechers reading this XD).....but then we took them out to late and so it didnt thaw in time for me to aliquot before heading home, so we put it back in the freezer until tmr........and after that checked the trypan blue (another awfully familiar term) to make sure there are no strange floaties (another concept we are very familiar with) with the hemocytometer (this word is almost obscene XD)

I did see Billy tho =P......i now know which lab he works in coz I saw him through the window as I passed by Michael Smith Labs (MSL)........speaking of which, the keys to the NCE building as well as the lab is ready for me to pick up, and i should also go get the little electronic key-tab thing to the MSL.......also for tmr we'll be reviving some previously cryopreserved cells and do a viability count (i can hear Joan say the exact same words.....)

but anyways, on a happier note, i was reunited with my trusty umbrella today =P......it was waiting to greet me at the elevator doors =P (it must have missed me very much =P)......and also in terms of my anti-starvation experiment, I was silly enough to buy a pink coloured powerade today instead of a juice. Although I think powerade serves a better function than juice, the choice of flavour was quite horrible.......I should have known better......I thought pink would be an innocent colour for strawberry lemonade, but as it turns out it's a very cleverly disguised antibiotic flavour (why, oh why did i not notice that the contents were of the same colour)......all that's missing are grainy medicine chunks.........but in terms of lunch I managed to scale up to a large soup (cream of mushroom today =P)......so i was not as light-headed coming home as i was yesterday.......

and the best part yet?!! I managed to pseudo-chew for dinner!!!! =P had little bits of of cut-up chicken and BBQ pork with my rice in steamed eggs!!!.....so proud......tho hopefully i was not too ambitious, coz afterwards my mom took a look into my mouth and apparently there's a "hole" where my teeth used to be........>__<"......that completely grossed me out......

Day 1 at Foster's Lab

The lab itself is actually a pretty big one. They have 4 new co-op students including me for the summer and they are actually in the middle of expanding into new rooms and getting things set up (or well, the full story is that all the previous people moved into the Michael Smith Labs next door and so they are now claiming all the space that they left behind).....but i must say, i dont think i'm quite used to this whole new lab environment, and i dont mean it in so much the layout, but the whole laid-back-ness of it all.....having gotten used to 12 hours a week of here's-the-lab-let's-blitz-through-it-in-1.5-hours, i find this whole we-have-four-months thing rather weird.....

but let's start at the very beginning, shall we?.....i must say, of all the other co-op students around i think i got landed the better job =P whereas everyone is kinda picking things up from the middle of an experiment that their supervisor is working on, I actually get to work with mine on something completely fresh and new =P.....yes, i know it's cell culture, but it's all from scratch......they dont have some commercially prepared cell lines we can use, so we'll actually be starting them from eggs.....and the coolest part? no one has ever succeeded in doing something like this before =P (there is apparently somethign that makes honeybee cells notoriously difficult to grow long-term, and no one has yet discovered the reason XD)......but anyways, i digress =P

the day started with a rather long lab meeting with two presentations (and Joan has managed to haunt me even more! as if cell cultures weren't enough, there was talk of the MAPKKK and mTor and phosphotyrosines...>__<").....and then an EXTREMELY long lab tour......(we spent a disgustingly long time with the autoclave, and all i could think of is that it looks eeriely similar to the old one we had in the lab.....but apparently this one actually steams the entire room if it's closed improperly XD)

yah, nothing much after that, i actually feel like i wasted an entire day doing nothing.......i was sitting at my desk on my computer reading through some papers and making some notes on what needs to be done tmr......and then reading through the same papers again and looking at the same notes........though tmr was promised to be more interesting........a trip to the UBC farm where the bees actually are (rather scared about that, not a big fan of bees, tho i was assured we won't get stung with the bee suit on).....and then a trip to the dollar store to look for something we can scoop bee eggs with......and then actually prepping the solutions and media......actual lab stuff finally!

But there is one problem that I am rather keen on solving........how not to starve............it sucks to not be able to eat properly.......i bascially lived off a bottle of juice and a small bowl of soup all day.........AND i was running low on water........as a result i was so light-headed and out of it that i managed to leave my umbrella in the washroom, missed a bus, waited for 5 minutes BEFORE realizing i don't have my umbrella, going back to the lab only to find the doors locked (and i dont yet have the building keys), and had to walk back all the way to the bus loop, hungry and miserable, only to miss a second bus.........

Finally.....term's over

Well, as well all know, April has been a completely horrific month. So as I sit here in front of the computer on the first Saturday after term, trying to enjoy the fact that I'm not writing another paper (yes, i have been writing a DIFFERENT paper every single weekend since April kicked in) and staring at the clock waiting to take my antibiotics (because there's absolutely no better way to celebrate the end of another school year by taking out all 4 wisdom teeth), I will attempt to finally, finally get this blog thing set up.

Xanga I will still keep, because it still has its use. But I will start posting here instead (hopefully more regularly)

The first thing to look forward to? Co-op on Monday! I believe I'll be working on developing an immortal cell line of honeybee embryonic stem cells, but my PI (principal investigator) has yet to contact me with the details, so I guess I'll find out what exactly I'm supposed to do come Monday (I actually have no clue when I'm supposed to show up on Monday XD.....I tried emailing my PI, but made the mistake of asking two questions. Apparently he only answered my second regarding if i need to bring anything like lab coats or lab notebooks, but he completely missed the first about when i should be there on Monday. So I'll be there at 8:30, or maybe even 8:00, and hope that I'm not late XD)

hopefully I will be able to talk properly then......HEAL, my dear wisdom teeth wounds!!! HEAL!!!! (and dont get infected...>__<")