Sunday, October 23, 2005
Yoz.. here's one of those irritating little update about my life.
Serious contamination in my experiments in the lab. sigh. i think my poor pipetting skill caused a DNA contaminations. Psychoboy and I got really warped results for the REal time pCR. It was friday evening, 7pm...
I just walked out of BOss' office and saw psychoboy checking his real time results. So i went to help him intepret the graphs. As I clicked on the graphs, both our jaws dropped at the bombastically awful readings.
" So how did it go?"
Uh oh. The boss was standing behind both of us. As she gazed at the resutls on the computer, she frowned.
" it's a really bad contamination>"
ARGH>!! THe death sentence to any experimnet! The HUGE road block.. Squueze the breaks on everything!
She started listing ways to trouble shoot. Psychoboy was jumping from foot to foot, itching to go for his hot date. I urged my rusty, tired brain into first gear, tryign to keep up with the rationales for the trouble shooting.
It's so frustrating sometimes. You can't see the contamination. Everything looks spanking clean. It's quite amazing and infuriating how a miserly 62 nucleotide long strand can wreck utter havoc. Anyway, i've to Re-RT pCR 8 patient samples. and then re run the real times.. Poor psychoboy was tasked with the mammoth task of troubleshooting. Because of the elusiveness of the nature of the contamination, it's almost impossible to pinpoint where it took place. It could be anything!!!
So psychoboy summoned me back to the lab on the nice sunny Sunday morning to troubleshoot. I was bloody late. As I zoomed towards the traffice light at the junction , the lights turned amber. I was going way to fast to stop so I ended up pulling a James bond like manoveur with my car, juz has the red light contemptiously lit up as my car passed the white strips on the road.
AAAAAAAARRRRRRGH>
I rung my dad.
" That is the very same place I got slapped with a 300 dollar fine!" My dad said disapprovingly. " That camera there is very very active."
uh oh.
" ... Well, when i get the bill. i'll just pass it to you."
UH OH>
" .. you're on probation . you shoudl have known better."
UUUUUUHHH OOOOOHHHH
It just hit me that i could get my license revoked. What was even worst was that when i reached the hospital this nice , bright Sunny sunday morning.. my h/p beeped with an sms.
" Sorrree. woke up late. gonna be 40 min late." - psychoboy
AAAAAAAAARRRRRGH.
" Do you have the key to the lab? run a gel first"
no. i don't have the key to the lab. wat freaking time are you gonna get your butt in here????
So I sat there, one miserable figure outside the locked lab, hammering away frantically at the computer, tryign to check the penalties for rogue probie drivers, until da geh found me and let me into the lab.
Psychoboy showed up a couple of minutes later, groggy and half asleep, but highly apologetic. He outlined his plan for the battle against the big bad DNA contaminants. It was raining, so we had lunch at the kopitiam, and i got my sneakers drenched.. hai. came back and continued running PCRs.
Next day. :
I ran the gel and we awaited the restuls with bated breath. Then as I popped another set of samples into the pcr machine, I suddenly froze.
I ran to the tissue culture hood and found psychoboy.
" J! Did we put in polymerase yesterday??"
Psychoboy looked at me . blur.
" polymerase???"
CRAP. my heart sank. the whole sunday's work was wasted. We put in everythign into teh experiments except teh most crucial ingrediant.. haha. i was running a gel with nothing in it. Wat the. a potential 300 buck fine, a potential license revokee... i had to miss sunday service and youth service at BFyouth, and all that for nothing.
Well, on the bright side.. attend Ajahn Brahms talks on sat and sunday nights.. It was soooooooo GOOOD. he was sooo amusing ;) yay . happy happy.
Week wise.. still hoping, they pinpoint the prob soon> i feel quite bad coz i think the contamination was caused by me. And psychoboy is up to his neck with work and so i'm still waiting for him to trouble shoot. Quite frustrating that i can't help, so i'm jsut sitting not-so-pretty in my lab coat and waiting for help. .
. Quite quiet now, coz M and Psychoboy have moved to teh downstairs lab to work. So i usually juz listen to bSh and his dirty jokes and Da geh's swearing.. " Ta MA de." ( like al says.. it must be said in person for the effect" They fixed the sink on thursday, so al, PY , psycho boy and Me pon tanged and ended up at Bugis for lunch. Then we landed up in teh arcade.. I played Time crisis with al. i haven't stepped into an arcade to play since sec. school days. I still remember wasting lotsa coins on the jurassic park machine shooting game. Well, i still can shoot. haha.. i was staring at the House of dead III ( it was house of dead II in my school days) . Al cajoled me into playing one game with him. gosh, do i feel old. it seems sooo long ago since me and XY would run into the arcades after exams ( like once a semester.. nerdy me) and eagerly shoot all the dinos on teh screen. haha. quite a wast e of money, come to think of it.
Friday: still nothing done. spring cleaning. SEriously, the stuff we dump down the sink will put anyone off newater. If there are reports of mutatnt fish in our reservouirs.. you know where to look for the source.
just updated my info into teh computers. talked to the boss aobut the artilce, talked crap with M and psychoboy. Al gave me a stress ball. i wonder if i looked like i need ed one.
Journal club was fascinating. the artilce was something about computational genomics. I remember just scratchign my head when i first got it. Totatlly zero understanding. I approached Dr. G for help and she kindly explained some of teh basics. SHe laughed and said she knew was the lost feeling was like. Uz. medical pple thrown into an alien world of research terminology and technology. JB and her did their best to help me understand the topic. I googled up most of the other definetions. And the beauty of it all, is i understood the article! It felt really good not to be utterly lost during the discussion. I foudn that i could ask questions, make comments.. just like the rest. it was qiute fun. :) and Caroline was really nice to offer to go throught the artilce with me and teach me how to glean points from it.
Jazz and gal hiphop.. fun fun fun :) still quite lost, but getting slightly better at jazz. i love ryan heh :)
Cocktail with the melbourne chancellor on friday. Yummy food. too tired to socialised tho'. It's a bit weird having a slice of my life in melbourne back here. juz listening to the aussie accents, and mentions of brunettis' and lygon street... sigh. so funny. you keep missing the places you're not in.
Sat: blading. haha. the most accident laden blading session i think so far. I landed in some stupid position on the bridge, strained my elbow. hurts a bit now. but thank goodness, nothing serious. I can go down hills now.. yez. not on my butt anymore tho'. still super slow tho'. my poor frens have to keep waiting for me. hope Calv is feeling better.
Psychoboy set up an RNA work bench.
point number 8 on his notice on the table
" If the person does not abide by the above rules ( of cleaning the bench), he shall be thrown into the UV hood, and given an icy cold drink of DEPC water."
--- on Bs grimacing as PY crumples a piece of paper into a ball---
Bs: argh.. don't crumple up my balls
Me; er... i think that model is an overrepresentation.
Serious contamination in my experiments in the lab. sigh. i think my poor pipetting skill caused a DNA contaminations. Psychoboy and I got really warped results for the REal time pCR. It was friday evening, 7pm...
I just walked out of BOss' office and saw psychoboy checking his real time results. So i went to help him intepret the graphs. As I clicked on the graphs, both our jaws dropped at the bombastically awful readings.
" So how did it go?"
Uh oh. The boss was standing behind both of us. As she gazed at the resutls on the computer, she frowned.
" it's a really bad contamination>"
ARGH>!! THe death sentence to any experimnet! The HUGE road block.. Squueze the breaks on everything!
She started listing ways to trouble shoot. Psychoboy was jumping from foot to foot, itching to go for his hot date. I urged my rusty, tired brain into first gear, tryign to keep up with the rationales for the trouble shooting.
It's so frustrating sometimes. You can't see the contamination. Everything looks spanking clean. It's quite amazing and infuriating how a miserly 62 nucleotide long strand can wreck utter havoc. Anyway, i've to Re-RT pCR 8 patient samples. and then re run the real times.. Poor psychoboy was tasked with the mammoth task of troubleshooting. Because of the elusiveness of the nature of the contamination, it's almost impossible to pinpoint where it took place. It could be anything!!!
So psychoboy summoned me back to the lab on the nice sunny Sunday morning to troubleshoot. I was bloody late. As I zoomed towards the traffice light at the junction , the lights turned amber. I was going way to fast to stop so I ended up pulling a James bond like manoveur with my car, juz has the red light contemptiously lit up as my car passed the white strips on the road.
AAAAAAAARRRRRRGH>
I rung my dad.
" That is the very same place I got slapped with a 300 dollar fine!" My dad said disapprovingly. " That camera there is very very active."
uh oh.
" ... Well, when i get the bill. i'll just pass it to you."
UH OH>
" .. you're on probation . you shoudl have known better."
UUUUUUHHH OOOOOHHHH
It just hit me that i could get my license revoked. What was even worst was that when i reached the hospital this nice , bright Sunny sunday morning.. my h/p beeped with an sms.
" Sorrree. woke up late. gonna be 40 min late." - psychoboy
AAAAAAAAARRRRRGH.
" Do you have the key to the lab? run a gel first"
no. i don't have the key to the lab. wat freaking time are you gonna get your butt in here????
So I sat there, one miserable figure outside the locked lab, hammering away frantically at the computer, tryign to check the penalties for rogue probie drivers, until da geh found me and let me into the lab.
Psychoboy showed up a couple of minutes later, groggy and half asleep, but highly apologetic. He outlined his plan for the battle against the big bad DNA contaminants. It was raining, so we had lunch at the kopitiam, and i got my sneakers drenched.. hai. came back and continued running PCRs.
Next day. :
I ran the gel and we awaited the restuls with bated breath. Then as I popped another set of samples into the pcr machine, I suddenly froze.
I ran to the tissue culture hood and found psychoboy.
" J! Did we put in polymerase yesterday??"
Psychoboy looked at me . blur.
" polymerase???"
CRAP. my heart sank. the whole sunday's work was wasted. We put in everythign into teh experiments except teh most crucial ingrediant.. haha. i was running a gel with nothing in it. Wat the. a potential 300 buck fine, a potential license revokee... i had to miss sunday service and youth service at BFyouth, and all that for nothing.
Well, on the bright side.. attend Ajahn Brahms talks on sat and sunday nights.. It was soooooooo GOOOD. he was sooo amusing ;) yay . happy happy.
Week wise.. still hoping, they pinpoint the prob soon> i feel quite bad coz i think the contamination was caused by me. And psychoboy is up to his neck with work and so i'm still waiting for him to trouble shoot. Quite frustrating that i can't help, so i'm jsut sitting not-so-pretty in my lab coat and waiting for help. .
. Quite quiet now, coz M and Psychoboy have moved to teh downstairs lab to work. So i usually juz listen to bSh and his dirty jokes and Da geh's swearing.. " Ta MA de." ( like al says.. it must be said in person for the effect" They fixed the sink on thursday, so al, PY , psycho boy and Me pon tanged and ended up at Bugis for lunch. Then we landed up in teh arcade.. I played Time crisis with al. i haven't stepped into an arcade to play since sec. school days. I still remember wasting lotsa coins on the jurassic park machine shooting game. Well, i still can shoot. haha.. i was staring at the House of dead III ( it was house of dead II in my school days) . Al cajoled me into playing one game with him. gosh, do i feel old. it seems sooo long ago since me and XY would run into the arcades after exams ( like once a semester.. nerdy me) and eagerly shoot all the dinos on teh screen. haha. quite a wast e of money, come to think of it.
Friday: still nothing done. spring cleaning. SEriously, the stuff we dump down the sink will put anyone off newater. If there are reports of mutatnt fish in our reservouirs.. you know where to look for the source.
just updated my info into teh computers. talked to the boss aobut the artilce, talked crap with M and psychoboy. Al gave me a stress ball. i wonder if i looked like i need ed one.
Journal club was fascinating. the artilce was something about computational genomics. I remember just scratchign my head when i first got it. Totatlly zero understanding. I approached Dr. G for help and she kindly explained some of teh basics. SHe laughed and said she knew was the lost feeling was like. Uz. medical pple thrown into an alien world of research terminology and technology. JB and her did their best to help me understand the topic. I googled up most of the other definetions. And the beauty of it all, is i understood the article! It felt really good not to be utterly lost during the discussion. I foudn that i could ask questions, make comments.. just like the rest. it was qiute fun. :) and Caroline was really nice to offer to go throught the artilce with me and teach me how to glean points from it.
Jazz and gal hiphop.. fun fun fun :) still quite lost, but getting slightly better at jazz. i love ryan heh :)
Cocktail with the melbourne chancellor on friday. Yummy food. too tired to socialised tho'. It's a bit weird having a slice of my life in melbourne back here. juz listening to the aussie accents, and mentions of brunettis' and lygon street... sigh. so funny. you keep missing the places you're not in.
Sat: blading. haha. the most accident laden blading session i think so far. I landed in some stupid position on the bridge, strained my elbow. hurts a bit now. but thank goodness, nothing serious. I can go down hills now.. yez. not on my butt anymore tho'. still super slow tho'. my poor frens have to keep waiting for me. hope Calv is feeling better.
Psychoboy set up an RNA work bench.
point number 8 on his notice on the table
" If the person does not abide by the above rules ( of cleaning the bench), he shall be thrown into the UV hood, and given an icy cold drink of DEPC water."
--- on Bs grimacing as PY crumples a piece of paper into a ball---
Bs: argh.. don't crumple up my balls
Me; er... i think that model is an overrepresentation.
( M, me and Psychoboy talking about self defence for gals against guys)
Me: easy, we juz kick you in the balls if we need self defence
M: i think that' would keep most guys down.
Psychoboy: yeah, most guys except mebbe superman.He's the man of steel
Me: i wouldn't be so sure about that. Man of steel doesn't equate to little man of steel.
Psychoboy: mebbe that's why he wears his underwear outside.
Me; i think that's coz he's always in a rush to get dressed when he's on call.
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