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Jul. 24, 2006, 4:40 pm
"i'll tell you on sunday night"
of self-doubt and lab gaffes
Jul. 21, 2006, 5:37 pm
assault yourself with self-doubt, why dont you. self-doubt in the lab, self-doubt over nick, self-doubt about being in york, self-doubt about being in singapore, self-doubt about getting anywhere in biology, and the list goes on.
chethan was right. is right. i do have to change something about the way i think, the perspective from which i view things. anyway an unexpected (but frightfully expensive) dinner and coffee with that boy was very nice, and in many ways just talking to him was in some sense a sort of stock-take for me, in terms of realising how far i've come from those days (italicised because of the je-ne-sais-quoi nature of it, and not for cryptic effect) and how i'm now able to talk very candidly about everything and reflect and be grateful/ sensible/balanced about how things turned out or will turn out. thank you chethan anil, you've been wonderful company. but if you ever tell _____ that i think he's hot, i will personally carve out your liver and spleen and hang you up with your limbs splayed, for the crows to eat. on that note, though: i love you! haha.
days at the lab never feel very long, which is a good thing (i'm remembering how the shifts at P+P used to stretch for AGES) but at the end of the day i'm incredibly tired, sometimes even to the point of utter exhaustion. when you're waitressing it's obvious and expected, but i really don't see how being in a lab can wear you out so much. or rather, i didn't see how. writing out a list of all i did today really showed how much i actually do in a day, and a lot of it is actually pretty hard work. i'm also convinced that i've somehow managed to get ethidium bromide all over myself after an entire day of casting agarose gels and running electrophoresis and isolating DNA, and i'm trying not to think of my cells squealing in terror as they mutate. EB's a pretty nasty mutagen and cancer's really not the way to go. i'd like to die a much less protracted death. in any case i do try to be careful when i'm working with ethidium bromide, but the damn thing just gets EVERYWHERE! in any case the lab latex gloves are apparently not that resistant to ethidium bromide and only the blue nitrile gloves offer good protection, and considering the amount of EB-tainted stuff i handled today and the possible aerosols... ok i dont want to think about it. feeling very incompetent in the lab now because i tend to screw things up quite a bit, like letting my electrophoresis wells overflow with the sample (not my fault if the wells were shallow! i didnt cast those gels! the ones i casted had deep wells) and forgetting (actually, i didnt really know i had to) to empty the washing buffer from the nitrocellulose membranes before adding the enzyme-substrate signals. gaffe of the day: running the DNA the wrong way around for the electrophoresis. i basically ran it out of the gel instead of inside and along the gel, to separate it. thankfully i discovered the mistake just as the samples were about (and i do not exaggerate here) half a centimetre from the edge, and i switched the gel around and prayed and prayed that my samples would run back into the wells, cross the wells again, and run in the intended direction. thankfully, they did. in a further display of my biological prowess and competence, when asked to draw conclusions from the ECL i made some very sharp, original observations on how 'CB 3 has the thickest band of desired protein at 50kD and therefore has the highest content of desired protein'. translated for non-bio people, it's basically a statement that's about as astute as saying 'bobby has the greatest number of centimetres in his height, and therefore it makes him the tallest boy in his class'.
i did mention something about self-doubt at the start, did i not? *grin* all justified, i tell you. all justified. don't let me get started on elaborating on how the rest of the self-doubts can be explained and warranted. but the lab one has been a pretty decent example of that, i think. haha.
note to self!
Jul. 18, 2006, 1:03 pm
note to self:
1) remember to call sunny and ask a. if the beds have arrived and been installed b. if our house was affected by the water outage-- apparently a couple of pipes at the water mains burst c. for our house account ID so that i can transfer next month's rent
(which goes on to remind me that i'd better settle my accounts so i wont have to show dad my statements)
2) read up on monoclonal antibodies, SDS-PAGE, hybridisation etc. to avoid looking like a complete dunce at the lab
3) get started on the lemna write-up and the vitamin c practical
4) book my flight home. home home home. i miss you.
5) start looking for a birthday present for a 70-year-old bibliophile trapped in a 20-yr-old's body
6) start running. AGAIN.
7) meet up with people i really want to meet, like char and lin (woman, our meeting is ILL-FATED, i tell you. ILL-FATED. it's not going to happen.) and the rj vballers, and nikhil and sauyee
8) stop complaining about the weather
9) buy cover-toed shoes that are not pumps and do not make me look short and dumpy, or otherwise 12 years old
10) stop pining for york and a certain italian who smells of chicken rice all the time
there. now i'll remember it all!
missing
Jul. 13, 2006, 5:13 pm
landed at 9pm last night, and 24 hours later i'm still jet-lagged. the flights from manchester to dubai and dubai to singapore were horrendous, and i might elaborate more when i'm a little less tired.
so. first day in singapore was spent in the glorious company of shuen, andee and dhruv. quite disappointingly, we ended up eating at delifrance (where's my chicken rice? chye tow kuay? hokkien mee?) but it's ok i'll let it go, because shuen was flying in about 4 hours and we had to meet near her place. the heat and humidity here is oppressive and everytime i step outside it feels like i'm in a steaming hot bath. merely sitting down at the bus stop makes me perspire, and i'm perpetually sticky. ergh. did a wee bit of shopping in plaza singapura, and it was all very disappointing because i've just realised (and i dont know why i never realised this earlier) that all the clothing in singapore comes from hongkong/taiwan/japan/thailand, and i really don't know how to work my way around that look. well actually i do like the clothing from thailand, but i'm just unwilling to pay the inflated prices for them because i know how dirt cheap they are in chatuchak and mahboonkrong. was pleasantly surprised to discover a new shop, outfitters-- gorgeous stuff! and decently-priced too, may i add. so i was a happy bunny, at least on my way back from plaza singapura.
24 hours in singapore and already i yearn for york, for my little crumbly house in peel close, the flocks of geese and ducks wandering around the uni, the summer blooms and dandelions scattered along walmgate stray. but most of all i miss you, you, your presence, your smile, your being. 10 weeks, and the countdown has never felt slower. and i wont even be hearing your voice for the next three weeks. and i dont know why you asked me to wait for you when my heart's already been irretrievably given over. but ten weeks, ten weeks darling, weeks of me in france, me in singapore, you in kenya, you in rome, us apart... ten weeks and it's all over, and we've got so much to look forward to. we'll go home. ti amo, il mio tesoro.
see the pyramids around the nile
watch the sunrise from a tropic isle
just remember darling all the while
you belong to mesee the marketplace in old angier
send me photographs and souvenirs
just remember when a dream appears
you belong to meand I'll be so alone without you
maybe you'll be lonesome toofly the ocean in a silver plane
see the jungle when it's wet with rain
just remember till you're home again
you belong to me
quick pre-france update!
Jul. 04, 2006, 11:11 am
quick update! am leaving for france tomorrow, and will be soaking up the sun and immersing myself in all things french for a good five days, till monday. can i hear a yay please :) moving out of james college and into peel close was insane. was packing and moving from 11am on friday till 11am on saturday, with 4 hours' sleep in between. i exaggerate not. the new house turned out to be a bit crap because the shower doesn't work properly and the downstairs toilet doesnt flush very well, plus the place is a bit grotty, the carpets are filthy, the sofa is minging and the shed is damp and musty. nonetheless, we're all having a great time now... the xbox is on for about 12 hours, and the tv for the other 8. as you can see, not much sleeping gets done. hurhur. we've got a pretty full house as well, with the four of us in there plus natalie who's staying till graduation, and bethany (matt dated her a number of years ago) who's staying because she's apparently homeless now. so it's a big bunch of us all bumming in our tiny little home, which is already shaping up quite nicely to be a very stereotypical students' house. the first thing we had in the fridges: pizza and alcohol! 3 days later, it's pizza, alcohol and milk, at least. haha.
next update will either be when i return from france, or when i'm back in singapore :)
stupid EDA *mutter*
Jun. 29, 2006, 5:20 pm
annoyed! and i hate evolution, diversity and adaptation. everything just melds together in one big swill of latin mumbojumbo. okay, so i thought cnidaria and arthropods were deuterostomes. and i wrote 'endodermic and exodermic homeotherms' when i really meant 'endothermic and ectothermic homeotherms'. and i said the defining feature of a chordate was the presence of a jaw, even though the previous question mentioned something about tunicates also being chordates-- and tunicates obviously lack jaws. and i also said that fishes had to spend all their energy swimming and hence couldnt use it to generate body heat.
in other words, i screwed the paper up. but i dont care. i'm never touching that again. i'm a MOLECULAR CELL BIOLOGIST, thankyouverymuch. i haven't got a head for greek and latin and kingdoms and phylums and darwin and speciation. it's not that i haven't tried. i just seriously cannot get a handle on it.
grr. rrr. rrr. rrr.
singapore idol, HAH.
Jun. 28, 2006, 4:59 pm
just watched a couple of singapore idol clips on youtube and i'm about to scramble into a dark little corner and rock back and forth on my haunches. to say i'm distressed is putting it mildly. and i'm not talking about the audition clips here... i actually think the studio shows are a lot more painful than the auditions because of 1) the very bad music provided by the band 2) the in-front-of-the-camera, i-must-speak-like-an-ang-moh accents of the contestants and the judges (ken lim being the sole exception), 3) the painfully contorted faces of the singers as they try to show emotion when singing 4) the very silly, overappreciative, arm-swaying, cat-calling, tone-deaf audience and 5) the very, very off key singing. at least at the auditions the bad singing is entertaining.
singaporeans. need. to. get. a. life. and i wonder why no one has realised that the ones who are truly musically talented are usually the ones doing gigs at the (now-defunct) fat frog cafe, or (also-defunct) he-brews, wala-wala, the substation and at various other little independent events. singapore idol? give me a break.
nuanced at 4:40 pm
