Monday, February 16, 2009

又下雪了

还没对它感到厌倦, 依然觉得它十分美妙!

My German friends tell me it has snowed a lot this winter compared to many years before. I like to think it's for me. hee. :p I remember my first snow in Paris. And how my French colleagues tell me that it doesn't always snow in Paris, and even if it does, it doesn't stay much. The winter of 2005, it snowed enough to cover everything in a thin, white blanket. I was so happy! :D

Very often, I am reminded of how we always prefer things we don't often have, of how true the saying (even if it's a cliche), 'the grass is always greener on the side'. A German friend, on our way to the supermarket yesterday morning, grumbled that it's too cold, and he'd much rather be in a warm place, eg. Singapore. (One of our friends is currently enjoying himself trying various local food and shopping in Singapore.) I, however, am still very happy to wrap myself in several layers and go out in the snow.

Women in Europe want to be tanned, hence they go to tanning salons and come out a yucky orangey colour. Lots of tanning products here whereas in Asia the magazines are chock-full of whitening stuff because white is beautiful.

When I was home I longed to leave, 'go out into the world', but now that I'm away, I miss home, and that comfortable, routine life before, more often than I thought I would.

Will we ever be content with what we have? It's good that the world is a globalised one now, so that occasionally, if and when we have the ability (i.e. time and money) we can go somewhere else and get a taste of what we want.

Anyhow, I should go help with the conditioning (of rats) now. More later!
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Saturday, February 14, 2009

Must, bid the Morn awake!
Sad Winter now declines,
Each bird doth choose a mate;
This day's Saint Valentine's.
For that good bishop's sake
Get up and let us see
What beauty it shall be
That Fortune us assigns.
~Michael Drayton

Happy Valentine's, my dear friends! :)
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Mein Kopf ist leer

A phrase we learnt in German class yesterday. 'My head is empty.'
Indeed what I feel today.
Been in a semi-sick mode since Mon.
Today I couldn't get myself out of bed. Was freezing even under my quilt so I emailed my bosses, asked to be excused and laid in bed almost the whole day, drank tea, and read a Terry Pratchett book and finished more than half the book.
After my friend made us crepes for dinner he went out with our group of friends for drinks in the Neckarmueller. Sensibly I've chosen to stay home. But feeling kinda lonely now. I don't know if it's just me, I tend to feel more homesick (if I'm not at home) or lonely when I'm sick. Sigh...

Anyhow, have some good news (well, sort of), we were emailed some of our exam results the past few days and although not brilliant, I passed everything (so far) and surprisingly wasn't at the bottom of the list.

And my first experiment in the lab yielded interesting results. I did some transfections (plasmid and viral) on my primary cell cultures last week. I sat quietly behind the ever-busy Prof yesterday, holding my breath while she looks into the fluorescent microscope at my slides. She's a really cool Prof, guides u along encouragingly, very enthusiastic about her work and also expects much from her lab. She made some sounds and I was so worried, unsure about what they could mean... I was really happy to know that one of my plasmid transfections worked, i.e. there was a beautiful picture! But there were some problems with the others, either the Prof didn't find any cells, or the surviving ones looked bad. So, there're plans to repeat these experiments and I've to find out what went wrong (or right for that matter so I could do it again). I'm excited to do them again.

Hmm... think I shall now go watch some TV series online or maybe continue with my Terry Pratchett book, try to take some edge off that loneliness. ha.
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Sunday, February 08, 2009

The (non-existent) life of a researcher

It's Sunday and I'm sitting at my desk in the lab (the one I am doing my lab rotation in), waiting for my boss to send me the keys to the nearby building where the animal facility is so I can do my work.

I have just started last week on a small part-time job, doing animal work for a Chinese girl I met in one of my classes. She's doing her PhD here and is a really nice person (I was rather surprised, to be honest. People who know me will know that I don't like Chinese - from China, much). Actually it's quite funny that so far, the Chinese people I've met here are nice. I've also met some Taiwanese friends who're cool. These were the people I had my Chinese New Year dinner with.

So, I've started the life (or rather, the lack of) of a 'scientist'. Have been working in both the lab and the animal facility every evening for the past week and will be for the next 2 weeks. Also was here yesterday for the whole afternoon. What a great way to spend your Sat eh? Got home to tired to cook but as usual one of my dear friends, Muki fed me with some stuff she had left from her and her boyfriend's dinner. Today will be quite the same, but at least it's only the animal facility and at least I get paid for that.

Guess what sort of animal work I am doing for my Hiwi job? (That's what they call the part-time lab jobs here.)
(My ex-colleagues, Chiu and FK, who sometimes follow this blog will recognise what I will mention next.)
Rotarod! How fun! ha. She's investigating how the motor functions of her transgenic rats (Huntington's disease) are affected. And boy the few-month old rats I just started on yesterday are sooooo FAT they can barely fit in between the rods! And a lot of them are so lazy they refuse to get on or stay on! I have to do this for this week and next week I start with her on social interaction. Then there'll be also other behavioural tests that I've had some experience with, for example, something similar to our Laboras system.

My work in my lab rotation is pretty cool. I started with primary cell cultures of spiral ganglion cells (in the cochlea). Learnt how to get the cells out (micro-dissection). SO difficult to cut things out under the microscope! Very intricate! (Even more so for surgery! I observed my supervisor operate on a mouse middle ear to insert an electrode in the tiny round window.)

Ok, my boss is here with the key. Gotta go put some rats on the wheel...
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