I'm now in school, trying to get some studying done BUT nothing is going in. FANTASTIC. -.-

Just when I thought I would get a head start on preparing for my test next week.

I actually managed to complete all that I had set out to accomplish over the weekend, including genome mapping. So I'm happy because of that. What I'm not too pleased about is how my group is starting to fall behind and the deadline's about 3 weeks away. The slave driver really needs to come out now. The thing is, I really dislike being the slave driver, especially when the metaphorical slaves are all people my age. But something has to be done.

Meanwhile, there are too many things due in the coming 3 weeks I hope I won't suffocate under the sheer pressure.

I don't really have time to think about nor blog about some really remarkable things that happened in the past month or so. But just so you know what I felt was really exciting, here's a few of them.

The US Presidential race. WOW. Personally, I'm on Clinton's side.

The recent Malaysian General Elections. Always nice to see UMNO and the BN get a good whipping at the polls.

The escape of what is probably the most dangerous man in Singapore from Whitley Detention Centre, Mas Selamat, the leader of the JI network (they tried blowing up a few MRT stations and wanted to fly a plane and crash it into Changi International Airport).

Right, I'm off!

At least it doesn't LOOK that much, BUT I do have to get started on my CAs. I have one CA in Week 12, and Week 10 has just ended. Oh and 2 CAs in Week 13. So many things to do! :( At least it looks like I somewhat managed to catch up.

EDIT: I actually managed to finish all 3! Now to do my genome mapping. UGH

I had what was probably the worst practical of the semester yesterday, through no fault of mine.

Yesterday, we had to extract plasmid DNA from the bacterial cells we plated on Tuesday, with which we were on time, well to be exact, we were AHEAD of time until my TA interferred.

There was a step with required us to measure the concentration of DNA extracted(nanodrop), and there were only 3 such machines in the entire lab catering for all 150 odd students in the lab. Each student had to measure 5 samples, so there were 750 samples in total, approximately 250 samples per machine.

While the nanodrop would more or less serve as a confirmation that we had DNA, it was unnecessary for us to measure the DNA before moving onto the next step which involved digesting the DNA with enzymes over 2 hours.

But no..... my TA said we HAD to measure the DNA before moving onto the digestion. And when we asked if we could prepare our enzyme master mix beforehand, she said no! So off we went, and queued at the freaking machine for 1h40mins! By the time we had our concentrations, it was almost 4pm and the lab manager and TA actually gave us disapproving looks! Other benches had actually performed the digestion and used the 2h waiting time to queue and do the nanodropping.

Needless to say, we were really far behind by then and we still needed to run a gel elecetrophoresis which would take an hour or so. We started our digestions at 4.10pm (because we had to prepare our master mix from scratch when the other TAs prepared it for their students!). We had to disrupt the digestion process at 4.40pm to load half of the reaction volume into the gel for electrophoresis.

(and then here's where I stopped and couldn't be bothered to continue. LOL)

Here are some photos taken last week at 2 events.

The first, at a long time friend's 21st Birthday Party
At another person's birthday party whom I'm actually not close to but is a close friend of my significant other (lol)
Yes, there were plenty of balloons, and plenty of helium. And you really need to inhale A LOT of helium to get the duckish voice.
I think there were 99 roses in the bouquet. Freaking heavy. I know, I had to hoist the bouquet while this shot was taken. I hope I never have to carry such a huge bouquet.
And the party was really a surprise proposal kinda party. Need I say bling bling? I mean, that thing is HUGE.

Did much less I was supposed to

I was supposed to

a) do my Cell Biology Readings (at least finish the chapter I'm reading)
b) finish my Experimental Module readings
c) finish my statistics tutorial
d) watch the latest bioinformatics lecture on webcast


Instead I

a) finished my statistics tutorial
b) edited my project data

That leaves

a) rechecking my project data
b) my Cell biology readings
c) my Experimental module readings
d) watching my webcast

My internet was down for the past 2 days, which explains why you haven't been seeing much of me online even on MSN messenger since Tuesday. UGH.

I couldn't stay online, well I more or less couldn't connect but the strangest thing is, GMAIL worked! Well I could send emails out but for some reason, I couldn't download attachments from my emails or receive emails. And then when GMAIL no longer worked, suddenly blogger would work! At least my tagboard did. And when that failed, FACEBOOK worked! Crap. 10 minutes later, everything would go down and nothing would work. I initially planned to complete my part of the bioinformatics project on Tuesday night (and I could have if the internet connection cooperated) but it's now Thursday, I managed to pass the bucket to another groupmate and my group is now behind time. SORRY GUYS!

The guy from the Internet Service Provider came down just now and it's FINALLY FIXED. I've never been so glad to have my connection back up because I have a LOT of things that I need to do that are stored ONLINE.

Anyway I MIGHT be going on another exchange programme next year, I'm keeping my fingers crosses because while I will probably be offered a place should I apply, module mapping is starting to look like a complete nightmare.

Ok, back to work, I'm trying to finish my statistics tutorial. Cya

This doesn't come out from me IN SINGAPORE very often , but it is COLD here!

I mean the weather is cold, in fact, freezing cold for Singapore because we usually get temperatures ranging from 24-25 degrees Celsius to 32-33 degrees Celsius.

On Monday, it ranged from 24 to 30 degrees Celsius.
On Tuesday, it ranged from 23 to 29 degrees Celsius.
Yesterday, it ranged from 22 to 28 degrees Celsius and I thought that was bad.

Right now, it's raining cats and dogs and according to Google, it's between 24 and 25 degrees Celsius. Part of the reason why it's so cold is also due to the humidity in the air (it's the wet sort of cold) and the winds that accompany all the thunderstorms.

Yes, our weather's gone crazy and I'm wearing a jacket to keep myself warm, sans air conditioner, sans fan!

And for the benefit of any non-Singaporeans reading this, this is NOT NORMAL weather. I can't remember when was the last time the maximum temperature for the weather forecast dipped below 30 degrees Celsius!

1) Perform BLAST searches, extract significant hits, determine ORFs from the SixPack translations, determine the sequences of the ORFs and enter the information into the Excel File (Deadline: Next Monday)

2) Read scientific literature on Acinetobacter baumannii multidrug resistance

3) Study for Thursday's Biostatistics CA (somewhat done)

4) Do the final bit of the latest Biostatistics tutorial (by Thursday night)

5) Do my textbook readings for Cell Biology

6) Do my final touch ups for Experimental Molecular and Cell Biology's practical report (due on Wednesday)

Sigh, my brain feels overstretched. Especially when I don't really understand what the scientific articles are saying when they get to the technical aspects of drug resistance.

I finally decided on which school's offer to take up for the Teacher's Aide Programme. There were 2 schools that seemed really keen on working with me, I met with one last Thursday and the other today.

Let's call the first school A and the 2nd B.

A definitely has a major plus point being near the train station, and is probably a better school academically speaking. It seems to have more facilities and teachers. It's more focused on what it wants but I felt kind of awkward during the interview. I wasn't sure if I could do what they were looking for. I mean I can do it on my own, I'm not so sure how I'm going to prevent a bunch of adventurous and mischievous 14 year olds from trying to ingest E. coli. (o.O) Oh and did I mention that A is affiliated with a certain religion, one whose believers has made numerous attempts to belittle my beliefs? Not that I have anything against the religion and the bulk of its believers, but I'm not too sure how I'm going to take it if I keep hearing references to the religion when I'm working. I might develop some sorta personality disorder trying to keep my atheistic tendencies away from them because I don't believe that I should be telling people not to believe just as how they shouldn't have the right to tell me to believe.

B is more out of the way, takes me about 15 minutes longer to get there, nowhere near a train station, has very limited bus services plying the area. BUT it is just opposite one of the greatest hawker centres in the country (LOL!). Great food beckons just by working there. The people there are nicer, a whole lot less intimidating than the ones I met in A (well I met 2, one was ok, the other was a little scary and pushy). Moreover, B seems to need the help, the teacher was saying how it was hard to keep an eye on all 40 plus students in the lab with only one teacher around. A on the other hand, seems to have more biology teachers. Not to mention they(A) admitted to only having 2 biology classes, both of which aren't full biology classes, so they have around 30 to 40 students in a cohort taking biology. B seems to have around double that amount.

So yup, I finally chose B. Needless to say, A didn't sound too happy. =S