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)

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