be careful....

Don't say you haven't been warned...but there are people outside the 'clan' of the Schmeznak lab that says we're nuts. Are we? Maybe..when you look up to the 6th floor window on the North side of the Biomedical and Physical Sciences building at MSU. You'll see shadows of people frustratingly pulling out their hair. So are we really doing science here? Hmmm...maybe not. Especially when it's 3am in the morning and your bugs seem to be taking their own sweet time to grow. So why don't we just go home? Because they love creeping up behind our backs when we're asleep..and when we get back to lab, guess what!..they have grown past a few doubling time that they are no longer useful to us anymore. But, life is all about survival of the fittess..so we'll get through this but we need our window friends with us...which somehow makes us the 'crazy ones' in the department. Ahahahaha.... *wink*

Hakuna Matata

Who in the right mind would plan out three growth experiments in a row? Well..now you know one. When the week started, I was set to make my week as busy as possible so that I can avoid thinking about some upsetting stuff. At that time, the idea sounded great - I'll get lots of data by the end of the week and I'll be so busy I won't have time to think about anything else except about work. But then somewhere in the middle of the week, Ping realized that it's the week MBL application is due, that she already bought ticket for Friday night's Lion King, and most importantly, Chinese New Year is at the end of the week!!! and she have yet to finish all the CNY cards she intend to send home yet.

Consequently, it's now Friday night or to be more specific, Saturday morning and Ping is still in the lab, just at the start of the last growth experiment for the week...maybe even for the next week. But thankfully, all the sleepless nights spent in the lab allowed Ping to finish up the cards and they were sent on Thursday. Hopefully they'll reach home before CNY ends. Ping also managed to get all the paperwork done for MBL application with expected fundings from the department (yahoo!!!). Mailed it late this afternoon and it should be on its way to Woods Hole by tomorrow.

The Lion King Broadway musical play was really good but I don't think kids would appreciate it very well...definitely something unexpected. I thought it was gonna be 'cartoon-like' but it's not that at all. In fact, I think it was really amazing how they include all the South African theme into the musics and characters. I like Rafiki among all the characters but Pumba is really cute too. While the show was great, I can't help feeling homesick when I remembered that the Lion King is one of the few movies that I had went to the cinemas to watch with my parents and cousins. I can hardly remember the movies that I watched with my parents as it was so rare...and I really miss spending time with my parents doing fun stuff. That led me to thinking about the Disney World trip I took with my parents when they came here to attend my commencement in 2004. That definitely feels like a long long time ago. The picture above was taken at Animal Kingdom during one of the parade they had. I couldn't remember if they had Pumbaa but I sure took lots of pictures with Rafiki.

Quoting from the Lion King, "It's a circle of life and it moves us all through despair and hope, through faith and love, till we find our place on the path unwinding in the circle, the circle of life". I really like this phrase. Reminding me that nothing is permanent in life. Happiness is shunted when there's sadness and there'll be negativity trying to take over our optimism but we always stay in the circle by seeking happiness and making the best out of the negativity. When there's too much negativity, then we have to remember - Hakuna Matata - no worries..let us not dwell on it and move on!

But for tonight, Ping is definitely dwelling on all the good food and family occasion that Ping is missing out..grrr...sleep is definitely a way to get back on track this time. Soon...few more hours...

Sudoku

What's the best thing to past time when you have to take optical density (OD) readings every hour throughout the night? It's too short of an interval to nap, too tired to read anything scientific, there's not a whole lot to surf on the net after a while...we solve Sudoku puzzles!!! I've been trying to solve the puzzle above for the past hour and still haven't gotten any closer to finishing any cube. This is the hardest I've done so far. I know I know..some of us could finish this in a minute or so but I just got started.

What is Sudoku? It is simply a number puzzle. As seen above, it has 9 large cubes with 9 small cubes within it. The goal of the game is to fill up all the boxes with numbers, so that every row, every column and every large cube has the numbers 1-9. It became really popular sometime end of last year but I did not realize it until I went to California. I first saw it in the airport bookstore..then at the Disney store...then the bookstores..and it was everywhere after that. When class started a few weeks ago, they started adding the Sudoku puzzle in the State News. That was it for me. I just had to try one and find out what's going on with the Sudoku buzz. My first one led me to the next..and the next..now, I even finds the puzzles online. Yup, it is that addictive. Try solving one and you'll get hook. The ones published in State News are short enough to last throughout my bus ride when I have to take the bus. But on nights like tonight, the harder ones are more tempting.

And there are soooooo many of them that it's amazing how it became so popular that fast. Check out these sites if you get hook on them like me...they have new puzzles everyday.

1. Online Sudoku
2. Downloadable Sudoku
3. Sudoku in pdf format
4. If you like a little challenge...

There's tons more!!! Gotta go get my next reading...have fun!

lab phylogeny

It's been a month since Dr. Breznak officially retired. The Breznak's and Schmidt's lab have worked together since Dr. Schmidt joined MSU in 1982..the year I was born!! Dr. Breznak was one of the professor whose work had drawn me to MSU. I was always intrigue by the symbiotic relationship between eukaryotes and prokaryotes. Unfortunately, he was already planning for retirement when I joined MSU. But when I joined the Schmidt lab, I had the opportunity to interact with him and I sure was excited to have a well-known scientist critique my work and ideas. Since we work so closely with each other, we call ourselves the Schmeznaks. Wertiplasma suffocatus is the last graduate student of Dr. Breznak and he will be graduating soon. Then it'll just be the Schmidt lab.

The phylogeny shown above is drawn by Jake as a retirement gift for Dr. Breznak. Isn't it awesome? Most of the characters do resemble the real person. My immediate boss is Schmidtaceae ribosomerus. Currently, I'm the newest lab member and most of them are on close to graduation or post-docs except for Levinella methanophage who is one year my senior. If we don't get any new graduate students this year, it's gonna a lot less people by the time I'm done with my exam end of next year. Just incase some of you wonder what 'brevis' means..it means short...coz I'm the shortest in the lab AND my height is below average for the Americans.

Kelps

While walking along the beach of Santa Cruz and Carmel during my trip to California, I encounter lots of kelps lying all over the beach. At that time I didn't know what it was until I was on the plane and started to think about this extraordinary looking plant. It has a bulb filled with stuff and I was wondering what it was at that time because you could burst it but no liquid comes out.

So I search for it on Entrez Pubmed and I found tons of stuff about this algae. The bulb is actually filled with gases that allow the plant to grow upwards and float at the surface of the oceon to obtain sufficient light for photosynthesis. What is more interesting, the major gas found within the bulb is carbon monoxide!! There are life form that can tolerate such high concentration of carbon monoxide! Isn't that interesting?

The current focus on kelp is the engineering of kelp into a marine bioreactor. In early 1990s, there are lots of researchers who pursue the capability of converting kelp biomass into fuel using bacteria such as methanogens that are capable of assimilating carbon monoxide and converting it to methane gas. I wonder what happen to these studies..couldn't find anything that is more recent than 1995. But isn't it cool that an algae can provide an alternative to the current fuel shortage that we're facing today?

Besides being an interesting subject to study, kelp is also used for food - natural salt in bonito shavings, a substitute of spirulina, alginate from kelp is used as a stabilizer in ice-cream and guess what.. Gaia Research, a South African company which provides probiotics for one of the labs here at MSU, is also looking into using kelp as an adjuvant to promote maintenance of intestinal flora.

crazy week

It's the first week of class and things are starting to get crazy already. It all started on Monday when I realized that the dateline for MBL Microbial Diversity course is February 1st. That means I have less than 3 weeks to apply for funding and submit it in time. So there goes my entire Monday just preparing proposals and 'selling' myself to the department, the College of Natural Sciences and the Graduate School.

Tuesday came and it started with another crazy morning. I was the earliest in the lab and Tom came in looking for my help - to get the projector ready for class in an hour and to make copies of notes. I was glad to help but turn out that I was the last to get to class but guess what...the guy I have a crush on is in that class too! What a coincidence! Just as I was saying I haven't seen him in a long time and that it's gonna be impossible to know him any more than just his name and who's lab he works in. In fact, I saw him twice that day. After class, I got enough time to run a gel and had to go TA for an undergraduate microbiology lab. It wasn't so bad since it's just the first lab but I kinda have the feeling that it's gonna be the one and only lab that we will get to leave on time.

The entire week was spent trying to get some lab work done and editing the proposals after getting comments back from everyone who read it. But on Thursday, the weather was soooooooo nice out - it was 45F!! - that I just had to go cycle around the campus. It's like spring! I don't even need my winter coat. It's been such a strange winter this year. We haven't had many freezing cold days where your ears hurt and you can't stand being outside at all. Actually, I've been here in Michigan for 5 years and I haven't had 2 winters that are similar. Michigan weather is just so unpredictable.

Unfortunately, the scenery doesn't seem to correlate very well with the temperature. Most of the days are just gray and dull. We haven't been getting much snow either. Now I really do understand why people feel more suicidal when they don't get to see much sun...thankfully I have enough sun in my memory - got enough happy hormones - not to feel suicidal. The crappy weather is making me miss my one day trip to Carmel, CA. J brought me there when I was at San Jose.



I can just imagine myself leaning against the rock, listening to the waves smashing on the beach, feeling the breeze of the Pacific Ocean. I just love being close to water and being part of nature. But for now, I'll just treasure the rare sunny days we get here in Michigan, or at least, in Lansing.

Pears

One of the things from home that I miss most is the tropical fruits. Sometimes I get bored eating the fruits here but thankfully, my favorite fruit - oranges - are available all year round and almost everywhere.

During late winter, as spring is around the corner, peaches and plums are very popular but I don't favor plum very much because some of them tend to be sour. As the summer approach, cherries and berries are the fruits of the season. I love bing cherries but they are a tad too expensive for fruits. Strawberries then is my next choice and the best way to eat them is to dip them in chocolate. Yum yum..

When it comes to Fall, apples are all over the place in grocery stores and farms but I don't like apple. Some of them is nice when it's crunchy but they are definitely not my fruit of choice. In fact, the last time I went apple picking, I gave all of them to my lab-mates. I prefer the crunchy, juicy grapes but too much grapes make me feel bad. There are also watermelons and honey dew but I don't really feel like making a mess in my kitchen since the biggest knife I have can hardly reaches the middle of the watermelon here. They are huge!!

While all these fruits are available according to the season, oranges is what I buy all the time. But sometimes, I can't help craving for guava (especially the pink guava - jambu air - in rojak sauce), mangosteen, rambutan, ciku, star fruit and pears. There are pears here but they are the green, hard and less juicy ones. I like the yellow pears we get at home - also known as 'la ya' in Hokkien. It's so juicy and sweet that I could eat pears all day long and not have anything else. Mum used to go to Bandar Sunway market when we were staying at Sunway and buy lots of them and it'll be gone in 2 days. They usually come in a basket of 10-13 and it only cost RM3-4. It's the best fruit when you're hot and thirsty.

When I saw this Korean pear at the Korean market yesterday, I just can't help putting a few in my basket although it cost USD1.50 per pear. Can you imagine that??? But I told myself it would be a nice treat for myself since I haven't been spending much over the past week. Furthermore, that's the first time I've seen it in Michigan. Of course, if I had brought a bigger luggage to San Francisco, I would have bought back a dozen or two of it. Keke..

But I'm just so happy to be able to eat the pears (they even come in the white spongy wrap like the ones we find in the market back in M'sia) that I just don't see the ridiculous cost of it yet. It is still not as good as the yellow pear we get at home but this is close enough for now. Hehe..