FM.102 CHAPELTHON

Just when I needed it the most. I'm gonna miss this fabulous event. July is a month of events. With the funfair and chapelthon coming up, I do feel a little sad when I'm stuck with the epi-fluorescence microscope for the next two weeks. Or maybe three..

Weekly chapel services have been such an integral part of my early life such that I took it for granted. Never really appreciating it until we left the portals of Fairfield. So I'm gonna miss a great gathering! :( I'll be there for the one in 2009.

Speaking of months, it's really scary how July is already here and the thesis is due in November. Few more months and I have yet to get any concrete data. I really hope this year would be a fruitful one (good experimental results sufficient for publication).

A story which i read:
When Lily Pinneo, a missionary nurse, was in West Africa, she contracted a deadly disease called Lassa fever. After Lily was flown to New York for medical treatment, her temperature soared to 107°F. To reduce the fever, doctors packed her in ice and fed her intravenously. The fever subsided. After 9 weeks, she had lost 28 pounds and most of her hair. Yet somehow, she survived.

In a laboratory, Dr. Casals carefully isolated and analyzed the Lassa virus. But he too fell ill from his exposure to the disease. At the time, no known treatment was effective. Fortunately, Nurse Pinneo was convalescing and had built up antibodies to the dread disease. She donated blood plasma to Dr. Casals and he recovered too. Her blood saved his life.

All of us are infected with the fatal disease of sin (Rom. 6:23). There is only one cure. It resides in the cleansing power of Jesus Christ’s shed blood. Paul wrote, “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Rom. 5:9). The righteous wrath of God against transgression has been fully satisfied through Jesus’ death in our place. All we need do is repent, recognize Him as our Savior, and receive the spiritual cure for sin. Have you made that decision?
— Dennis Fisher

Moral of the story: leave EVERYTHING to God.

Okay, time for an update about my wonderful life as a researcher-wannabe. I missed a trip to PalmyNorth since I've got immunos to perform. And I missed the privilege of riding on the bro's plane. How nice!

Mid winter saw a shift in the mice behavioural characteristics (eg latency in pregnancy) and in rachel's behavioural characteristics to the freezing wintry Dunedin weather. Rach normally wears short sleeves in the warmth of the LindoFerguson building. THat day happened to be labmeeting day and someone said: "please note that rachel is wearing long sleeves today". Hilarious as it may seem, rachy is beginning to dress for the weather. My feedforward is actually improving. The wintry weather and freezing southwesterlies have caused rachel to put on her polypropylene thermals and a scarf.

Then there was the Speights brewery tour and dinner with the lab. The dinner and company was fantastic, hardly did science came up as the topic. Not forgetting the fantastic drinks from the brewery. Dinner with the PI here is simply different from that in the ex-lab. Remember christmas lunch: the PI didnt want to sit down first because he was pretty sure that if he sat first, no one would sit beside him. And the many occassions where lots have to be drawn to see who would be taking his car. Bizzare stuff huh. I think its really good the current PI is sporty, energetic and open to ideas. To sum up the lab party: The fun, the laughter, simply fantabulous! There's more to come.

Soon after, we had a lab conference- presentations followed by a bonding session with the rest sharing TaylorWing118. Here's introducing some of the people of TaylorWing118 and members of the A. Lab.







Just a random thought: I was walking home today to the tune of baa baa black sleep this toddler boy was singing. Is there really sheep with natural black wool?

Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir,
Three bags full.

One for my master,
One for my dame,
And one for the little boy
Who lives down the lane.

Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir,
Three bags full.

One for my master,
One for my dame,
And one for the little boy
Who lives down the lane.

A simple nursery rhyme with lots of meaning - The act of others before self. Sharing wool irregardless of title (master, dame and a little boy). Beautiful rhyme indeed! Just puts simplicity back into perspective. How very often we neglect the simplicity of life during our busy mundane schedules. :)

PS: Did I get this song stuck in your head?

Running two immunos concurrently is exhausting for both my brains and the mousey's. As well as for my eyes and the spine. Because of the height of the workbench, I would usually bend down towards the desk to meddle with the sections. For a long period of time, this gets exceptionally tiring.

No wonder this is what happens to the curvature of the spine as the years go by.



Amazing huh.

SO, after mounting the sections from today's immuno.. I placed a foil over the slides to protect it from the light or in the sup's view to "over-protect". To cut the long story short, some of the sections dried off onto the surface of the alum foil. EXPERIMENTAL FAILURE and HEARTACHE! After all my hard work with days and days of immuno, the hours sacrificed from sleep. Gosh..

The feeling of my lost sections is on par to the time when I boiled my total lysate samples prior to running SDS-gel. Just like how I was only left with my IP samples to run the gel, I am now only left with a few sections from the brains that i've lost. I cannot help but remember how NY had nothing to say when I boiled the total lysate and how I couldnt enjoy lunch because of the major mistake I'd made. It was only later that NY tried his utmost best to console me, telling me how he used to for many months, run agarose gels with water instead of TAE buffer, until someone told him he was doing it the wrong way. That was pretty hilarious! The lab colleagues couldnt stop laughing.

Thinking about it, I did have lots more fun back at the apoptosis lab. Perhap it was prolly because the experience there was all for the sake of exposure, but now.. the results I attain will actually go towards my education. And there's so much competition for the scholarship. Just a paper of commitment- the pressure is on! haha

The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance - and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.
Oprah Winfrey (1954 - ), O Magazine, September 2002

This was found on the wall of the office in the Taylor Wing. Courtesy of PhD comics dot com.

We've all heard of Newton's three physical laws of motion.
1st law of inertia:
Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare.
Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed.

2nd law of resultant force:
Mutationem motus proportionalem esse vi motrici impressae, et fieri secundum lineam rectam qua vis illa imprimitur.
The rate of change of momentum of a body is proportional to the resultant force acting on the body and is in the same direction.

3rd law of reciprocal action:
Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi.
All forces occur in pairs, and these two forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. (for every force, there's an equal and opposite action)

But have you heard of Newton's three laws of graduation. I'm sure you'll find this absolutely amusing yet entertaining.





1st law of graduation:
A grad student in procrastination tend to be in procrastination until an external force is applied to it.

2nd law of graduation:
The age, a, of a doctoral process is directly proportional to the flexibility, f, given by the advisor and inversely proportional to the student's motivation, m. f=ma

3rd law of graduation:
For every action towards graduation, there's an equal and opposite distraction.



Entertaining huh! How true these three laws of graduation are. I fully respect the person that came up with this. This is truely amazing.

Here's helping a friend to advertise for carnival@Fairfield. Slots for busking are running out fast. It's a good opportunity to do something for Fairfield. To give back a little of what she's given to us.

Do support this fabulous event!

Guess what I found......

A picture of the REALLLLLLLLLLLL green hands

The empty classroom.

A place of learning, a place to educate, a place to forge friendships. I was just having a conversation with a very dear friend not too long ago about education. We've been in education for coming to 17 1/2 years. That's a really long time, more than two-thirds of my life thus far, and the number keeps growing. Even though its been 17years, there doesnt seem to be a stop to education.

Truly, the classroom has taught me heaps! Of course, now that I've left the classroom (read: no more exams!), there's still lots more to learn. Not just academic wise, but also about life. For instance, learning how to work the epi-fluorescence microscope have taught me patience and endurance. OVX have certainly taught me drive and determination while IHC have taught me precision and discipline.

Things that are taught away from the rigours and mundanity of everyday life. Yet, I must agree that the classroom can also be a place where friendships are forged. Now that we have shifted from classrooms to lecture theatres, life can still be amazing with a good bunch of friends.

Anyway, the main point I want to emphasize here is that since education makes up so much of our lives, why not make the best use of it.

Green hands I have not.
We've heard of green thumb or green fingers which simply means having the ability to make plants grow. Lucky touch or so they call it. But green hands? hmm...

I dont have green hands! heh. :)

I'm just a novice. Noob. It's prolly by sheer luck. Believe me, i dont have green hands! hahaaa...

You're not convinced eh.

There are more people in the lab on a public holiday compared to a normal weekday. Scary aint it! No wonder Jen says two-thirds of the department work afterhours.

Well, rachy had a valid reason as to why she went back during Queen's birthday weekend. - Immuno. Duh? why else would i be back afterhours. And no-no, I wont be spending the night at Lindo again. It's pretty freaky in my opinion.

Rachy shall no longer be geeky. Okay, back to the lit review for now. The more I restructure the essay, the more disorganised it gets.

This is so not good.

The semester grades are out for those at NUS and probably NTU... ... i think. Now, I am anxious to know how I have done for the 400 level Neurophysiology paper. The scripts should have been marked by now. But sadly, the grades will only be out at the end of the year. So much for a full-year paper code.

It's very rarely that I would be anxious to know how i have done for the exams. Written exams have never been my forte. This case is no different. To recap, I had a 3 hour exam where I attempted 3 questions that would contribute 15% to my overall honours class. Out of the 4 modules, I prepared for just 3. A really risky thing which I have seen me through the varsity years.

Well, I'm sure I answered the neuroprosthetics question really well and perhaps the olfactory question too. The final question however, i was writing halfway when the time was up. Mind you, I had much more to talk about since the story was a huge complicated one.

I'm anxious to know how I have done since it is worth 15% of the grade which would mean an entire class. I have never seen the importance of grades up to this year. One mark could determine if you've passed or failed and could determine also if you graduate with 1st or 2nd class.

Of course, everyone would like to do well. I sure hope that the other half of this year would go on just fine. The plans are to carry on studying but if the grades do not allow for that to happen, I have not exactly thought of what my next step would be. Now that rachy is behind time with the experiments and the next batch of ovx surgery is scheduled for next week, rachy cant blame anyone but herself and would have to work harder these coming weeks.

Fingers crossed my IHC staining would yield good results!

I choose not to be a flop.