4th of July at Woods Hole

I can’t believe how fast time past. It’s been almost a month since I came here. The environment here is so much more intense that I feel like I just gotta keep going but at the same time, there’s always opportunity to take a break here and there. Like today for example, I had to finish up some nitrate assay, check on growth, prepare media and inoculate for enrichment of a bagasse degrading/fermenting organism. All that can only be done after the morning presentation session, which ends at about 11.30am. Sometime in between, I also had to go collect sample from the Falmouth Wastewater Treatment Plant. I managed to stick to my plan as I finished all of the above. I had to miss a chemostat demonstration to collect sample from the Wastewater Treatment plant but the trip was worth it because I never really understand what is the benefit of having an activated sludge (involves a mixing and aerating cycle) or anaerobic sludge (include biogas generation and denitrification) system.

Before I go into all the fun at the plant, here’s some pics from the 4^th of July parade held here at Wood’s Hole. It is a yearly tradition they have here. Each of the summer courses here will have their own theme and costumes. The locals will participate and cheer on us. Initially, the plan was to have two spirochetes from our course but I decided to be something by myself and so did few others. Not being very creative when it comes to art, I did something really simple – I was a cyanobacteria and I called myself Anabaena brevis.

On the eve of Independence Day, Falmouth downtown played fireworks. Some of us took the course bikes to Nobska Lighthouse to see the fireworks. But I haven’t started on my costume at that time so I decided to just stay back in the lab and finish it. This is actually the first time I’ve seen a 4^th of July parade, what more participate in it. As for the fireworks, I’ve seen it a couple of times and Lansing usually plays them on some other occasions too. Besides, most of us ended up staying back after lab work to work on our costume...as you can see the mess we made in the lab. Some of us were pretty serious about it as you can see the huge squid made out of cardboard box. I just used a green shin and some colored paper. Some were also designing the costume for the directors. It has become a tradition that the directors will be dressed by the students and they won’t know about the costume until the day itself.

On the day itself, we get to sleep in till about 9am since there wasn’t any seminar session in the morning. We gathered in the lab at about 10.30am to dress up the directors, which was a tick and a deer. We also dressed up one of the faculty member who will stay with us until the end of the course as a hunter. We then walked over to a field near the School St. Marsh. That’s the starting point of the parade. It’s fun to see what other people have come up with. Among us, we had the spirochete, me as Anabaena, a streptomyces, two other cyanobacteria, an annamox bacteria, an Erlenmeyer flask, a mushroom, an ATPase, a squid, a culture of spirulla, a virus, a Corning tube, a magnetotactic bacteria, a sharps container, a flagellum, a tree of life, a square Halobacterium and a syringe.

The parade lasted only for about 15 minutes, where we walked from School St. to MBL St. Went for lunch after that and spent the rest of the day watching soccer (which was when Germany lost to Italy) and working in the lab. Also managed to relax by the beach for a while and also went for a run in the afternoon. It was simply a lovely day….