Bonjour!

Bonjour... the most frequently used word in my French vocabulary, (which, by the way, only contains Bonjour, Merci - recently realized that the correct pronunciation is Me-ci, Pardon/Excuse moi). Am hoping to be able to take a class after I find a proper place to live cos' here, one can hardly survive without knowing their language...

Work is a whole new experience... Now I know how animal studies are done... and I think it's not pleasant at all, both for the animals and me. Our experiment requires us to induce athrithis in mice and rats so that their joints become red and ridiculously swollen. Seeing the rats hug their affected legs to their bodies and limp ard on their remaining good legs/leg makes me wonder if all these animals' suffering are justifiable for the benefit of Man. We need to inject them with drugs twice a day everyday and to do so, we hafta hold them by the skin on their neck and inject subcutaneously. This is so not easy cos our rats are pretty aggressive! The rats struggle very hard, naturally, try to bite you and scream their heads off... their screams gradually fades and become pitiful cries as they realise they are not going to be let off by their screaming. It was really difficult to watch my supervisor do it the first day but im slowly getting more immune to it.

Yesterday, however, I almost cried when one of my fellow trainee tried to hold the rats using the same method we use to hold mice, which is by putting them on the wires of their cage so they cling to it and then try to get a good grip on it. This was such a wrong way cos rats are so much bigger than mice and when they struggle and she tried to catch them, they break their nails on the wires and bled. Imagine their feet red and swollen from athrithis and bleeding... It was so painful to watch. Luckily my supervisor stopped her before she could hurt another rat.

My other fellow trainee is a China man, a PHD holder, but one that seems to require others to babysit him... Sometimes I really wonder how he got his PHD... He's quite a good person, except that he talks too much and asks too many dumb questions. The least of my concerns is the stench in the animal holding labs. I seem to be allergic to the smell as my nose starts running as soon as I step into those labs. But well, I guess I'll get used to it after a while. I'll haf to, else I won't survive...

The weather's pretty cold here now and I heard it's gonna get colder... I only wish to find a good place to settle down in as I've been living out of my suitcase in a backpackers' hostel for a week now and it's not a very nice feeling. It's not easy to find a good place to rent as some are too expensive and the cheaper ones are usually in the not-so-good districts. And, the French are not easy people to deal with in a business transaction. Naturally the house owners are wary of foreigners but some of them ask for too much! So, wish me luck in finding a place soon!

I can't say I've found a friend in any of my colleagues as we usually only make polite conversations and I don't particularly click with any of them. I now know how precious my friends are and I miss them dearly... I miss Singapore food too! Bagettes are the cheapest food here and it makes up a large part of my diet. So, I know I'm gonna stay off bread for a while when I get home!

Arghh... Gotta go inject my animals... Au revoir!