enough!

Got a paper due on Streptococcus agalactiae in newborn invasive disease tomorrow at 1pm but I'm sitting here in front of the PC reading people's blog. Why? Distraction is the answer. I started out surfing on Web of Science to look for articles that discuss about the evolution of the Type III antigen strain of S. agalactiae, which is commonly found associated with newborn invasive disease. Then I got to PubMed to extract these articles and click the print button to print the articles. While I was waiting for the article to be printed, my hands flew across the keyboard typing penangfaces.chanlilian.net. Why? My mind was hungry for something close to home. This frequently happens when I'm stuck with a thousand things on my to-do-list and yet still have to think about what to cook for lunch because I am against eating out all the time. Guess what I saw when I first get to the page? Cream crackers!!! The first thing that came to my mind is cream crackers top with bak hu (chicken floss). That's my grandma's favourite food but at this time, I'm craving for it. So what's for my lunch? Sambal hae be with saltines. That's the closest to home for now. By the way, proud to say that my sambal hae be is brought all the way from my ahmah's kitchen in Batu Feringghi. It was brought here in a huge empty Greenfield Organic bottle and now there's only a little left but it shall be savored to the very last speck.

As of now, I have enough of papers to deal with. I can't wait till the last paper is hand-in next week and then it'll be free of papers to write for the next few months!!

~tired~

nyah gong ba sala

I was having steamed corn on the cob for breakfast this morning and an old story from my childhood came to mind. It was often told by my grandfather whenever my brother and me were arguing over something really silly. The original story is in Hokkien and since I can hardly make sense when typing in Hokkien, I'll relate it in English.

There once was a couple who was arguing without actually listening to each other. Then a man selling 'jagung' and 'buah sala' in a cart came by the street shouting, "Jagung!! Buah Sala!!". However, this couple heard it as "Nyah gong!! Ba Sala!!" and stopped arguing. Infact, they actually reconcile to each other. So what is with that phrase that made them stopped arguing? The wife thought she heard "nyah gong", which means that the lady is stupid in Hokkien. While the husband thought he heard "ba sala", which means that the man is wrong in Hokkien (ba) and Malay (salah). So the "jagung and buah sala" seller actually did a good deed by shouting the phrase out in a way that made this couple heard it wrongly.

By the way, for those who don't know, "jagung" is corn while "buah sala" is a type of Indonesian fruit, which I've actually never seen although according to my mum, they sell lots of them along the North-South highway at the rest stops.

It is still nice to be able to remember stories from childhood, especially those that are told by my grandparents because they can never be found in books or anywhere at all. The best part was that when my grandfather tells the story, he would always open his leg wide so that his "sarong" makes like a swing between his legs and we would take turn swinging on it, like sitting on a swing. I wish that he can still be around to tell us stories like that.

~sweet sadness~

defects in fucK?

Notice anything that seems to be out of place here? Read line one of paragraph 2. This is an excerpt from a biological article discussing the influence of various carbon sources on the colonization of E. coli in the mouse intestine.
Chang, D. E., D. J. Smalley, D. L. Tucker, M. P. Leatham, W. E. Norris, S. J. Stevenson, A. B. Anderson, J. E. Grissom, D. C. Laux, P. S. Cohen, and T. Conway. 2004. Carbon nutrition of Escherichia coli in the mouse intestine. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 101:7427-32.
Recognize one word that does not seem to be a suitable scientifically ethical word in the article? While some of us uses it unintentionally or intentionally to describe an activity or to express the feeling of being pissed off, here, the word is used to describe a gene. It also has a style with it that it ends with a uppercase K. The paper describe a whole group of genes but for various reasons, the fucK gene, among few others, plays a significant role in the maintenance of E. coli in the intestinal habitat.

This is probably the only time one would see this word published in a very prestigious scientific journal..wonder if the scientist who gave the name realize what was he up to or if he named it after a 'wonderful' night of celebration for the discovery of the gene.

~interesting~

finalized

The decision has been made at 1.40pm on Monday. Within 10 minutes of conversation with Dr. Schmidt, I decided to go for Microbial Ecology. I still don't know what I can do with it after graduation but since it's five years away from now, I shall not worry about it for now. He's also very excited about us working together and the question now is does he has sufficient funding for the project?

Informed Dr. Young at 5pm on Monday while I was working on ELISA. I was trying to tell him ever since I got back to the lab at 2.30pm but he was not back from meeting with Sparrow Hospital, then he was busy talking to Jason, then to Heather and Alicia and I wanted to tell him in private. So I waited until everyone left at 5pm and the moment he came in to ask me for updates, I told him about it and he said it's okay. I wanted to ask if he's still going to fund for the ASM General meeting and before I got a chance to, he asked me if I have already booked the flights for ASM, which I have not at that time. But that was good news because it meant that he's still cool with funding me. Yay!!! The flight ticket was just booked today, which means that everything is settled!!

So it will be microbial ecology for me for the next five years.

decisions

It’s time to make the second most important decision in my life. The first one was to choose between getting a job or pursuing a higher degree, which was followed by which grad school to go to after I decided to pursue a higher education. It was a dilemma that haunted me for two whole months as I had to weigh the consequences that I would be apart from home for another 5 years and having to go through a long-distance relationship with my boyfriend at that time. Then I had to think about which school would be better for me and where do I actually want to be for the next 5 years. The choices were narrowed down to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Michigan State University. They are both really good school and have respected ranking for their Microbiology program. After two months of pondering and drinking advice from parents, professors and friends, I end up where I am now – Michigan State University. No regrets so far except for a moment during the breakup with my boyfriend that I could have gone to Singapore or Malaysia instead of here but after being here for almost 9 months, I realize that I’ve learned so much more in terms of research and being independent there’s nothing to regret and given a second chance, I would still come here. There’s always the question that I ask myself when I’m out in the freezing cold “Why in the world do I choose to come back to white, icy, cold, dull Michigan instead of going to warm, sunny, colorful, radiant, full of hot guys Florida or California?” But that’s only when I’m sick of the cold weather here, which I say that all the time since I’m not a big fan of the cold.

Today, or to be exact, tomorrow at 1.30pm would be the second time I have to finalize a major decision. What do I want to do for my PhD thesis? I am down to two choices right now –

a) Microbial Ecology with Dr. Schmidt. To look at the different growth characteristics of bacteria with multiple 16S rRNA operon and few 16S rRNA operon and how the ratio of these strains changes in the bacterial population of environmental samples, particularly aquatic environment. Also on why the population changes and the influence of nutrient flux. In long term, this might be useful for me to get into an environmental research group, and since Malaysia is surrounded by aquatic environment, there is a possibility to do sampling there but will there be any groups studying stuff like this in Malaysia? In my mind, I can think of people back home giving me the ‘why-should-I-care-about-this’ look when talking about microbial ecology. So I don’t think I can earn a lot of money with experience in this line in the future.

b) Microbial Pathogenesis with Dr. Young. To look at the effect of bile on Helicobacter hepaticus, the putative etiological agent of inflammatory bowel disease and possibly hepatic cancer. From there, to determine the genes involve and mechanism H. hepaticus uses to resist killing by bile. It will involve lots of in vitro experiments initially but will eventually have to go to in vivo using mouse model. This would be a very useful work especially as a contribution to the medical world but if I am determined to save the world, I would have applied for an MD-PhD program instead of a PhD program in Microbiology. Furthermore, I would have to kill more mice!! Which leads to me creating more bad karma and all the nightmares to be anticipated. It has been fun working on the in vitro side of the project so far and there are so much more to be studied and so many ways to explore but I just don’t like the thought of killing more mice at all.

So do I do something that I really enjoy and can be passionate about it but might face difficulty of getting a job when I go back home or do I do something that I like and will be very helpful for future job application but will have to go through a few periods of being a murderer?

I have an appointment with Dr. Schmidt tomorrow and my thoughts right now – if we can come up with a research proposal that interest both of us and there are sufficient funding, I am going for it. Hopefully the thoughts stay till tomorrow’s appointment.

Sigh, it’s times like this when I wish I am back to being the kid when the only time decision is required is choosing between Twisties, Mamee or Cheezels.

Chicken

Here's the 'char kay bak' that I mentioned. I don't think it's any special kind of food but something that is common in a Hokkien home cook recipes. Ahmah used to make it a lot since we don't like to eat the chicken in the soup. They are tasteless and very dry. So she has to add the sauces to make it tasty again. There's two kind that she usually cook. There's the dry one like this and there's the other that has more sauce and is sweeter. I prefer this because I can use it to make chicken sandwich with the leftovers. I think that leftovers are the best food ever!

dinner

I'm back to being motivated. Finished reading two papers and managed to relate it to my hypothesis for the final paper, which will be about "Bile Resistance in Gram-Negative Bacteria". Since I was in such a good mood when I finished it, I decided to cook my favorite food and enjoy my dinner instead of the usual fruit bowl and carrots. Cooked two dishes:

1. Spinach belacan with frozen shrimp..since I can't find kangkung around here and of course there are no fresh shrimp either unless I want to get a lobster or something huge. Not as good as kangkung but that will do since I do need my daily greens and the belacan from home still smells good.

2. Char kay bak = stir-fry chicken meat. I had left over of the 'lak bee thng' from two days ago and there was still lots of chicken left so I decided to peel out the meat, mince it slightly and stir-fry with some 'or tau eu' (thick soya sauce) and normal "tau eu" (regular soya sauce). Then add two small red chillies (if only we have cabai burung here) and fry them with a few splash of water. It does not taste as good as the ones ahmah cook but it's good enough since I don't have the patience to stand in front of the stove for hours like ahmah does just to make the aroma of the chicken comes out before adding the sauce. Especially not when I'm trying not to lose this motivation to keep reading and churn my brain.

There's nothing better than a good home cook meal, considering the choices that I have here = Wendy's, Burger King, and three pizza chains.

motivation

Just came back from a jog around the neighborhood. Have been having a mental block for the past two days. I seem to be getting this quite often recently. I have papers due every other Thursday and the mental block happens the moment I hand in the paper. The weekend before the paper is due, I’ll be very organized and plan for the week, feel really psyched with all the experiments and work that I get done early of the week, pia¹ really hard on Wednesday to get the paper to be as best as I could, hand it in on Thursday and what happen to my plans for the rest of the week? Simply a scribble in my organizer. Have not managed to read a single paper since Thursday and the huge pile of papers on my desk is not looking any appealing at all. But at least, I still have the heart to keep my experiments going.

Thankfully, now that I just had a boost of energy from the jog, I actually do feel better and more motivated to start reading again. If everything goes right, I might actually be able to finish 3 papers tonight and finish meaning not merely reading but critically review the paper too. But I still can’t suppress the feeling that I need to do something fun, something crazy, something risky or just something besides reviewing people’s articles. It’s been such a long time since I do something unplanned and completely out of my schedule. Furthermore, the weather is warming up and all the better reason to get some fun out of it.

pia = I don't really know what it means but it's a Hokkien word that is commonly used to describe "hardworking at the last moment". There might be a proper meaning for this but at least that's how I use it. :P

losing it...

Woke up early this morning full of plans to get lots of work done. Arrived lab at 10am and managed to get a lot more done than I had anticipated I would in two hours. That was because the autoclave is working!! Came home hungry and decided to cook lunch since it was already 1pm. Looked through the pantry and decided to cook fried maggi with brussel sprouts and artificial crabsticks. After lunch, started hunting for articles on Porphyromonas gingivalis, a bacteria causing periodontal diseases. It causes the gums to turn black (since it's black in color) and some even lose their tooth from the infection. Unfortunately, not much work has been done on it, which means that I would have to change my topic and all the P. gingivalis articles that I have been reading is a waste of effort. Do I have time to read more articles on something else and write the paper in time for Thursday? If I don't have to do anything else, maybe but I have ELISAs, MIC Assays and necropsy planned for early this week = no time to do anything else except at night, which would not give me enough time to finish reading the articles critically. So I'm stuck with this P. gingivalis that doesn't seem to be interesting enough to attract researchers to work on it.

After logging off, I wanted to start reading on the remaining P. gingivalis articles that I have but somehow a dark aura came over me and stole all my motivation to do anything for the day. So I went to read a short novel. Now that I'm done, I'm still not motivated. Will my Sunday go wasted just like that? Argh..who knows.

it shall be VW

After a whole night of pondering on the car buying issue and talking to dad, who's on his way to Kabul (again!), I was still undecided. But I eventually fell asleep and woke up at 11am!!! The moment I saw the clock I was like..shucks..there goes my plan to start something early in the lab today. So decide to just stay home and get my thoughts organized about getting a car.

Nok woke up at 1pm and we had shrimp porridge (sigh..I miss the fish porridge at New Lane!!). I decided to tell her the truth about my hesitation to buy the car. So we talked about the two cars we saw yesterday and all of a sudden, she said, "Stop. What is your favourite car?" Err...M'sian made Kancil? *grins*

Nok: Here, girl! We're talking about cars you can get here.
Me: okay okay.. (thinks about it for a moment). I know! Volkswagon Jetta or Golf!
Nok: Good. Now just look for that car that is within your budget. Don't distract yourself with other cars even if they're cheaper.
Me: Hmm..that's a good idea. I actually have seen quite a few but they are all from dealers.
Nok: So what's wrong with dealers?
Me: All my guy friends say that it's really expensive to get from dealers.
Nok: But have they been chipping in to help you out with this? Have they been telling you about where to look or how to look?
*shakes my head*
Nok: Now just start looking everywhere for these two cars. Even if it's from a dealer, we can go look at it. Furthermore, buying from a dealer can be quite safe too since they provide insurance for at least a year. It can be a little more expensive but we can bargain and you'll get more benefits.

*Phew* That felt like the most comforting advice I've had on this car issue since early of the year when I started looking. It just seems to so hard because I have yet to make any big decision in life and I'm not a very decisive person. I've had the path to my life laid out for me all this while and I did not had to make a lot of decisions. But I guess there's always a first in everything. Let this be my first...I shall get a VW Jetta or Golf.

too old?

I've been trying to look for a car since I moved out from campus to Trappers Cove. It takes about 15 minutes to campus by car but by bus, it takes almost an hour and the bus only comes every hour. It is especially inconvenient when I have to work late nights and weekends and missing the bus is a disaster because I'll have an extra hour in my hands with nothing to do. Recently I've managed to arrange my work schedule around the bus schedule but it is still takes up too much time. I always like to be early when waiting for something or else I'll get paranoid like I keep thinking that I'll miss the bus by a few seconds or something like that. So I'll always get to the bus stop 5 minutes before the bus is scheduled to be there. Then they are usually late by a few minutes but I would never take the chance to get to the bus stop late because of that due to my tendency to get paranoid. So I really do need a car.

I was looking through online classifieds and the Lansing State Journal classifieds every day and today I found one Zimbabwean guy who is selling two cars.

1) 1996 Geo Prism with Toyota Corolla engine, 120k miles, first owner, manual windows and sidescreens, no cd player, very clean in the inside, a few spots of rust on the bonnet, test drive resulted in a good condition engine (guyz of car expert might have different view) ---> USD 2500

2) 1992 Toyota Corolla, 165k miles, manual windows and sidescreens, very clean in the inside, test drive resulted in good on normal road but shaky on highway ---> USD 1700 (yet to be bargained)

Now I'm in a dilemma. I kinda prefer the size of 2) but then the mileage is keeping me away from buying it. 1) is great except for the size. I'm kinda small built and I feel more comfortable with a smaller car. However, that should not be a problem because I can eventually get used to the car after driving it for a bit. But after consulting dad (good at buying old cars), he recommended me to get cars that have less than 100k miles. On the other hand, this will be my first car and I'm still not entirely a good driver. So I shouldn't get a car that's too nice and new first right? Furthermore, I'll only be needing it to drive from home to school and back and maybe groceries once or twice a month.

Argh! Dilemmas dilemmas. I'm also afraid that if I buy it now, I might find something that's better or cheaper. If I don't buy it now, I might not be able to find something like it anymore. Sigh, I didn't realize looking for a car is such a tedious task.

we're in!

While the guys lost the Final Four, the women's team scored a place for the finals!! It was such a close game that it was the last two minutes that brought them 4 points ahead of Tennessee. Unfortunately I did not get to watch the game as I could hardly keep my eyes open and I went straight to bed at 9pm.

We set up an aquarium last week and bought some plants. The plants starting deteriorating after a few days and on Sat. night, we realized that if we don't do anything about it, we're gonna lose all the plants. So we went to Meijer intending to buy some carbon source for the plants as we suspect it is due to lack of carbon dioxide, causing the plants to be incapable of performing photosynthesis. But they did not carry anything more than food and nutrients for the fish. We hang around for a while buying some junk food..Haagen Daaz ice-cream..that's not really junk though..hehe. By time we came home, it was already 2am and it's time for daylight savings. Went to bed around 4am, woke up at 9am as I had to go check on my 'babies'. After work, went to the pet store to get the carbon dioxide supplement and came home around 5pm. Get some essential work done and 'konked' off around 9am until early this morning.

Checked on the plants today and I felt that they look greener. Does the supplement work overnight? or maybe it's just my psychological view that the supplement works. It's like giving a tablespoon of syrup to a sick kid and telling them that it'll make them feel better. Even if they are still not entirely cured, they do feel better. But I really do think that the carbon supplement helps..especially since I do not want to lose all that plants. We chosed the nicest ones they have and we've arranged it really nice too.

lost..

It's the end of basketball season..we lost to North Carolina 87-71. They were really good during the first half and second half started with a really close fight and Spartans began to slack somehow. I could hardly watch it when the score was 60-75. If there was anyone around me, I would have start strangling them out of frustration (not literally ler). Sigh, should have stayed in the room and read my articles instead. It is such a disappointment.

Oh well, there's still the women's game tomorrow.

Wonder if there's a riot happening on campus right now. We've been getting e-mails everyday asking us to 'Celebrate with Class' but if you're one of those basketball-craze students, would you even care? I doubt so..especially for the undergrads.

It's also the end of daylight savings today, which means that we'll be losing one hour tonight. Not that it really feels a different after sleeping through it but it kinds sucks to wake up and having to turn the clock one hour later.

fooled!

It's not even 10am and I've already been fooled. April Fool's day hasn't been any more exciting than any other days since high school when we used to play jokes on our teachers and friends. Even then, I was more the victim than the one who pulls the prank, especially since my expression usually gives me out way before I even establish the prank. My 'blurness' also made me a very easy-to-fool victim, which seems to be very entertaining for the guys.

Before I start telling about how I was fooled, I have to say the Spartans have managed to get into the Final Four Championship this year..both our men and women teams!! This is probably the first time in history that both teams from the same uni will be playing in the same conference. The men's team will be playing against North Carolina this weekend at St. Louis while the women's team will be playing against Tennessee. I am not a die-hard fan of basketball but being in a uni that is really big on sports, I do tend to keep up with the scores. Since the last I read about the game, I was very sure that they will only be playing this weekend and I knew that I'm not gonna be missing out on this championship since it's the biggest ever with both our teams playing.

I got into the lab at 8am this morning and Heather told me that we've won the game.. I was like..really? But I just kept quiet because I did not see the news this morning yet and I didn't hear anything last night either..especially not last night since I was so dead tired I was just slacking in front of my pc watching "Before Sunset". Then Heather told Inna the same thing when Inna came in. Dr. Young came in at about the same time and we had this conversation...

Dr. Young: Oh yeah, didn't you guyz watch the game last night? We'll be in NCAA finals! There will be a victory celebration today at noon.
Inna: No!!! I couldn't have missed it at all..omg, no!
Heather: Yeah..I think I heard it on the news this morning. I was just telling Z about it and am wondering why there's no riot going on.
Dr. Young: Yup! We won..log on and check..we've beat them by 1 point.

Inna proceded to log on to the computer to check the updates. Dr. Young looked at me and I gave him a sceptical look but I was completely willing to believe what he just said since I did not hear any news of the day yet and the last I heard about the game was Wednesday.

So I went to check at the NCAA website myself..and boy! I was surely fooled. He was laughing his head off when he found me at the back computer looking at the NCAA front page saying we'll be playing this weekend.

Heather had no idea that he was trying to pull a prank on us either..she only thought she heard it on the radio but wasn't sure what game was she listening to..so she was fooled too. So much for trusting my boss to be the serious one.