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marginalia, The English Patient, p. 146:

there is no spring here where i am, but i am laughing in this desert, the way flowers laugh—slow fireworks under the wet poetry of rain. March is here and i remember. i count the smallness of years. i count the grandness of moments.

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i’m such a “look at the sky” “look at the sunset” “look at the moon” stay in the car to listen to the rest of the song typa person

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180316 Metro Entertainment’s Tweet

Wrestling legend @JohnCena tells us all about his love for @bts_twt and J-Hope as he pledges allegiance to the #ARMY

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“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.”

— Guy de Maupassant (featured in our 15-book giveaway)

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180315 Dicon’s Tweet

‘디아이콘’ 11번 질문에 대한 답입니다. 방탄소년단이 '아미'에게 전하는 말입니다.

“'아미'들이 보고 싶을 때 언제든 와도 되고. 또 가야 될 때, 혹은 가고 싶을 때, 언제든 떠나도 괜찮아요. 그런데 이것만은 기억해 주세요. 저는 항상 이 자리에 있다는 걸요.” (정국)

#BTS #정국  #D아이콘

‘Dicon’ The answer to the 11th question. The message BTS wants to convey to ‘ARMY’.

“When ‘ARMYs’ miss us they can come see us whenever. And when you have to leave or want to leave, it’s okay to leave whenever. But  please remember this. I will always be here.” (Jungkook)

#BTS #Jungkook #Dicon

Trans cr: Bem @ allforbts © Please credit when taking out 

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Don’t question your worth, question those who made you feel worthless.

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“Es ist nicht unsere Aufgabe, einander näherzukommen, sowenig wie Sonne und Mond zueinander kommen oder Meer und Land. Wir zwei, lieber Freund, sind Sonne und Mond, sind Meer und Land. Unser Ziel ist nicht, ineinander überzugehen, sondern einander zu erkennen und einer im andern das sehen und ehren zu lernen, was er ist: des andern Gegenstück und Ergänzung.”

—

It is not our task to get closer to each other, as little as sun and moon can get to each other, or sea and land. We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other’s opposite and complement.

–  Hermann Hesse (1877 – 1962), German-Swiss writer, poet, and painter

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Lisbon, Portugal

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Icy Caparthian Mountains, Ukraine

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Labour day @ London (Brunch > The British Museum > Soho Square)

Guess who come to visit (well, technically not me, but since I am in England as well...)!? So on Labour Day I went to London to meet with... Wennie! Rare guest! It’s good enough that we got to hang out when I went back to Malaysia for CNY, and now she actually come to England and we just have to spend a couple of days together!

Before she comes to Bristol for a weekend stay-over, we decided to meet in London, mainly because there are much more things to do / eat in London, and partly because she wanted me to meet her bf. Strange enough, it felt like I had already met him and knew the kind of person he is, through stories that Wennie told me. Her point was that afterall, her bestie (me) and boyfie (him) were both in town, so why not! Seemed legit, and I couldn’t possibly refuse. So my Labour Day day-trip to London ended up being a catch-up with an old friend and her bf.

First off, we planned to have brunch before we headed to The British Museum. I gave her a list (not exactly, only four restaurants ;p) of brunch places to choose from. She couldn’t decide and I guess she asked for her bf’s opinion, cause’ when we were talking on phone after she arrived, the first thing she told me when I asked for her decision was that her bf & her bf’s friend thought that the food at those places were all too pricey. C’mon, we’re talking about having brunch in London right now, and honestly I did take into account of budget so I picked those that serve good food with nice ambience at a reasonable price. If you think that ~£8 per meal is too expensive then sorray, I guess there’s not many places for you to choose from in London. *roll eyes*

After realising that there’s no table available for reservation at the restaurant Wennie chose (suggested by her bf’s friend), we decided to go to Caravan, which was my top choice that I hoped Wennie would pick cause’ the food they serve seem pretty special, not the usual Eggs and Big breakkie.

Avocado dressed with lemon & chilli flakes on sour dough toast. Not bad! I actually like the sour-y taste of lemon, I think it goes well with the butter-y avocado. 

Grilled ham with fried duck egg & sweet potato crisps, glazed with chilli tamarind. This one is actually quite nice! Despite the too-salty-to-my-liking ham, I actually like the sweet chilli glaze! It kinda balance off the saltiness of the ham, although we both agreed that it tasted best to have the ham with the avocado toast. 

Overall good food, nice service, great ambience and man, just imagine a warehouse full of people - it’s that busy! Would probably come for the second time, although I don’t normally do solo-brunch when I go to London. Hopefully I will be able to stay longer in London next time and then I’ll explore all the nice brunch places!

After brunch we went to St. Pancras to take train to the museum. Saw this statue (which I didn’t remember being there... well I probably just didn’t notice) and Wennie wanted to take a photo. So I followed suit. 

 Well actually before visiting the museum I wanted to try Yolkin (a stall that sells macaron ice-cream sandwiches that look so. damn. good) and we went there but duh it sold out! It opened at 12pm and sold out at 1pm! Crazily popular! I must stay over next time and wake up early to queue I definitely wanna try and see just how great the sandwiches taste to be able to attract so many buyers :<

On the way to the museum we somehow walked past Palace Theatre and saw this! How exciting! See you in July! #HPfansforlife

One of the two photos of us at the museum. The museum is so big it’s impossible to tour all galleries in one day. And we were a bit tight on the schedule (cause’ I had a coach to catch at 8pm) so we visited some of the highlights of the museum’s collection, including Samurai armour, Easter Island statue, Rosetta Stone, and Parthenon sculptures. I also took her to see some of my favourite collection, including (pic above) Assyrian winged bull, statues of Amenhotep III, and the Roman and Greek sculptures. 

This (I think it’s some sort of wall / relief) is one of my fav collection too.

We decided to take a break from all the walking and headed to Soho square to chill before meeting with her bf for dinner. My shoes may look nice but it’s hella pain to walk on! I got two nail-size skin scrubbed off and two bruise. Clothing companies should defo improve on the practicality of their shoes - please make shoes that both look nice and comfortable to walk on!

At around 7pm we met with her bf at Waterloo station and had GBK for dinner instead (the restaurant that we planned to go was closed). It was a swift dinner (cause’ I gotta leave at 7.20pm to take the bus) but it was nice meeting him. We might have some major argument over the best cities in England / nice food / practically everything, but I can tell that he is a good person. If Wennie was to stuck with this guy for the rest of her life, it might not be a bad idea. 

Although I was knackered (due to waking up early in the morning + walking all day in the damn shoes) it was no doubt a fun day trip, especially that I got to meet with a loved one from Malaysia. It somehow made me felt like I was not that far away from home ;’)

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Lab Project Week 2

My supervisor is gonna be away for a few weeks, starting from 25/4 - my second week in the lab! I imagined things were gonna be chaotic, because 1. I don’t have that much experience in doing the things that I’m supposed to do; 2. The people who are more experienced are in the holiday mood too (one is enjoying life in Portugal and another left early daily and starts to enjoy her life in Paris right now); 3. My Thai colleague is only a lil’ bit less clueless than I am and most of the time we need to rely on our supervisor’s guidance; and 4. My supervisor was gonna attend a conference in Indonesia which is 6 hours ahead - meaning that if we have anything urgent to report / ask for help we can’t get reply in time!

Luckily, the first week without my supervisor’s supervision went ok. Shit happened (which is something that happens in the lab anyway) and I got to fix them / at least made them less worse. There came to a point where I had to improvise stuff and did it before getting a green light from my supervisor (he’s known for being a lil’ bit slow in responding to emails, apparently. And who can blame him for the late replies - he’s in a different time zone anyway!) and I was so glad to receive an email from him afterwards saying that what I did was correct! #BornToBeScientist

Just to summarise what went wrong during week 2:

1. My cells grow really slow - can’t say that it’s something that gone wrong cause’ as long as the cells are healthy and are not infected *touch wood* then I’ll be fine. 

It’s just that since they are growing so slow that I have to wait for them to reach a certain confluence, I can’t harvest them (for SDS-PAGE) and seed them on coverslips (for IFA) yet. Which slows down my progress altogether urgh.

Lesson learned: I can be quite impatient when it comes to lab work - I need to see results and I need to keep my head and hands busy all the time. But because lab works are usually continuous ie you have to complete the previous step in order to carry out the later step, the former can easily affect downstream works. There are also incredibly lots of protocols with waiting times - some 5 mins, some 1 hour, some overnight - which have both their pros and cons. Pros: If you plan it carefully you only have to work half-day (only to carry on the downstream work the day after). Cons: If you screw up a crucial step (let’s hope it doesn’t ever happen to whoever works in a lab) you might need to start it all over again and it might take up a whole freaking day. And this leads to...

2. I screwed up my second gel by staining it with Coomassie Blue. And I only realised it when I got back home. While talking with my parents. As I was about to record my lab book and started to refer to protocols. And I read the protocols listed under Western blot. And it came across to me like a super bright meteor shower rains upon Earth, that I FREAKING SHOULDN’T STAIN THE GEL IF I WERE TO PERFORM WESTERN BLOT. Idiot. I was too confident after the gel done running. It felt so natural to pour the blue staining solution into the plastic container with my gel in. Only to realise (after placing the gel on a rocker to let it stain overnight) after a couple of hours later that I’D DONE SOMETHING SO TERRIBLY WRONG I felt like apologising to the gel for mistreating it. 

Lesson learned: If you accidentally stain your gel that you were supposed to do Western blot with, just destain it completely (it’s a trick - you’d have to change the destain solution every hour until you can’t see the bands [or something along that line]). When Lisa told me that I thought “Thank God, I don’t need to re-do my gel afterall. But guess what - it took ages for the gel to be completely destained that I decided to just run a new gel instead. It only took me less than 2 hours to run a new gel and get the transparent (as it’s supposed to be before staining) baby. But before running the gel, I faced some problems...

3. Those freaking chipped glass plates made my gel (before it settled) leaked. Damn I made 3 gels and ALL OF THEM LEAKED. D: I was so frustrated that in the end I couldn’t be bothered to make a new gel anymore I used the one with the least leak. And it run ok, so I guess the leak didn’t affect the running much. But I won’t know if it does have any effect on protein separation until the X-ray film (which the membrane is exposed to) is developed. Let’s hope my first Western blot attempt is a success *fingers crossed*!

4. The doxycycline that I added to my NS1 cultures was in the wrong concentration! My Thai colleague aliquoted the solution for me which is really sweet of her, but she wrote the wrong concentration on the tube. And both of us added one tenth of the required concentration to our cell culture. She realised it after checking with the stock and emailed our supervisor about this, and thank god he said that it was fine, as long as we stick to the required concentration the next time we split them. Phew!

5. Apparently I can split the NS1 and Rep cells at 1:2 or 1:3, instead of the 1:12 and 1:24 that I’ve been doing. No wonder my Thai colleague’s cells are growing at a much faster rate than mine (she was splitting the cells at 1:3)! I didn’t know that we can increase the cell ratio until this morning (my supervisor emailed us) and I immediately split my cells according to my judgement afterwards - some I need them to grow faster, and some slower (to accommodate the long weekend). If only I knew it earlier, I could have harvested and seeded my cells already! :<

I’m a person who saves the best for last. That said, I received a lot of compliments from my supervisor and colleagues. My first gel turned out to be really good, the bands were well-defined and I didn’t break it. That gave me confidence in running gels (I need confidence as I’ll be doing electrophoresis for god knows how many times for my project zzz). I did my first gel-membrane transfer and it went well (without supervision and guidance!)! At least at the end of the transfer my gel turned transparent, indicating that all proteins had been transferred onto the membrane (although whether or not it is a good transfer depends on the protein detection, which [hopefully] I will be able to perform next week).

My supervisor also likes it when I update him on my progress and my plans. I guess being active in reporting progress leaves a good impression as supervisors don’t have to ask students for their progress. Otherwise it would seem as if the supervisors are nannies and students the babies, which doesn’t really sound good - we are graduate students and/or adults, for whatever sake! 

Although I didn’t get to achieve Stage 1 of my project (as suggested by my supervisor) by week 2, I guess I did pretty alright / didn’t screw up that much. My supervisor mentioned that it’s fine to take things slowly - I guess he can sense the impatience in me - so long as I have some decent results to show to him when he comes back, instead of rushing things and get none done with. Which I kinda agree. After all, lab work is (mostly) result-oriented. No one really cares how much work you did / how much effort you put into, so long as you have (hypothesised) results to show. 

I really enjoy doing lab works. I am much more convinced that I’ll survive the years working in the lab when I start doing my PhD. And I really love the idea of me spending time working towards achieving something that I’ve been dreaming about. 

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Lab Project Week 1

After having nothing to do (except for two assignments which were not that bad) for 10 weeks (it doesn’t seem like a very long time but trust me, time pass really slowly if you’ve got nothing better to do than watching shows. And eating, of course), I FINALLY STARTED MY LAB PROJECT ON APR 18TH!

:D

First impression

What a joyous moment it was when I stepped into the lab with one of the technician fellows who was gonna conduct my lab induction. Although the lab is just situated in our own Biomedical Science building (not as fancy as my cousin’s project cause’ she got to do her project in liaison with NHS as she had to obtain patient samples, thus she got to receive another access card with NHS logo on it which I was so jealous of), I was thrilled cause’ it was my first time entering an ACGM Level 2 lab - a restricted lab that only permitted workers can enter. How cool does that sound!?  

First tries

Of course, working with cell culture (stably expressing viral replicon) means that I’ve got some forms to fill up and training to go through, but that’s ok, cause’ really, I’ve always wanted to do cell culture! I remember that when we had lectures on cell culture I thought that it’s going to be difficult to perform, plus the red DMEM (media) and the uniquely-shaped T75 flask aren’t common materials that you’d see in a normal lab. Turns out, performing cell culture (or cell passaging) is easy enough! On my third attempt I can already perform it without referring to the protocol! *self pat-on-shoulder* Cell culture was the first technique I learn in this lab, and it is the basic of my lab project, really, cause’ I’ll be growing my own cell line samples and all downstream works are based on the cells that I grow. 

Another technique that I’ve always wanted to learn is IFA, and I finally got to try it out on Fri (Apr 22th). Honestly, it’s not as fancy and as cool as I’d imagine it to be - cause’ really, it’s just seeding the cells on coverslip > fixing > permeabilising > blocking unspecific protein interactions > incubating with primary antibodies > incubating with secondary antibodies > immunostaining > examining under IF microscope. Every reagent is colourless (except for the sec. antibodies & staining reagent) and it does not have a single magical moment. AT ALL. Which kinda disappoints me, really, cause’ you’d think that for such a cool visualising technique the method behind must be really amazing, But nah. It’s just as ordinary as the methods used in other techniques. :/

First acquaintances 

In our lab, there’s currently a post-doc (really friendly and helpful, knowledgeable; basically the ‘nanny’ of our lab. A really kind one), 5 PhD students (2 are in the process of writing up their papers; 1 is kind and helpful as well, but seems to be a lil’ bit awkward / shy; 1 is really unfriendly, doesn’t speak much (doesn’t even greet me, let alone talk to me zzz), seems to only minding her own business; 1 is very helpful, especially because the kind of stuff that we are working on are roughly the same for the time being, so she’s been guiding me and providing useful information related to lab works - she’s like my mentor and I’m grateful that I have a senior to refer to whenever I have doubt in any aspect of the work that I’ll be doing, cause’ if not I think I’d still be very blur and unsure of what I was gonna do). Next week or the week after there’ll be another PhD student joining us, making our lab a 10-member (plus 2 supervisors) happy family (well maybe not the PhD student who is always pulling a long face but... I’m just talking about the majority here). 

Side-notes 

Although I won’t actually be dealing with infectious agents (I’ll just be using DENV replicon, which is non-infectious) but the thought of me finally advancing into virology is really exciting. With all the shadowing and practices that I’ve been doing during the first week, I’m sure that I’ve slowly gotten the hang of it. Mistakes were made but I’ve learned and gained experience. I won’t be defeated by what I did wrong or did not so well because it’s from those imperfections that I learn to improve my skills. Be it cell culture, SDS-PAGE, WB, or IFA, I’m sure with practice and patience I would be able to perform the experiments with confidence and hopefully that’ll lead to obtaining the optimum results for my project. I really hope that the results of my project would contribute, no matter how insignificant, to constructing a larger, clearer, and better picture of the scientific world. 

At least my passion ignites a spark within my heart that is gonna burn brighter. A spark that is fuelled by my thirst for knowledge. A spark that acts as a guide in my future undertakings. 

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Done reading The Martian by Andy Weir this morning (at 2am!) and I absolutely love it! I know that it’s been published for quite a while now (it’s published in 2011) but I only know of it when the movie came out. The movie was awesome, plus (according to NASA) it’s scientifically accurate, which makes a space nerd like me fell real hard for it.

I didn’t know that the movie’s based on a book! When I saw the displayed book at The Works I was like ‘meh, people wrote the movie script and plot and published it’ but OH BOY HOW WRONG WAS I! After 5 secs of googling and finding out that the movie was based on the book I felt ashamed and I immediately grabbed the book and headed towards the till. And within 8 hours’ time I’ve already done reading it. 

I’m glad that my first reading of 2016 was The Martian coz I absolutely love it. 

Next on the reading list: Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder 

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:3

New tumblr page, another distraction. At least I won’t feel so bored before my project starts (which is after 14th Apr).

Was thinking of updating my recent trip to Newcastle but nah, there’s not much to talk about. All I did with Vonne was having decent (really, really decent) meals. Totally worth the ‎£200+ that I’ve spent (which is waaaaay more than what I budgeted) *thumbs up*

The highlight was the short trip to the beach (Tynemouth) and I enjoyed it ttm! On that night my feet were really sore, idk if it’s from soaking in the icy cold seawater for too long or it’s from running around at the beach like a madman #I’mcrazyandIdon’tcare I just love the beach too much I crown myself ‘the daughter of the sea’. Haha *awkward*

Oh, and I think I’ve reached my book-purchasing quota for spring 2016 - I’ve bought 5 books during my Newcastle trip! Thanks to my dearest cousin who encouraged me (A LOT) to spend money like tap water keep flowing *awkward* but still, I love reading, so every penny spent on books are worth-spending! 

Current read: The Martian by Andy Weir. I’m hooked! It’s a really nice book and I can really relate to the movie. Can’t wait to finish reading it :D

Well I’m gonna end my first post here. Abruptly. Till next time :3

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Feet soaked in icy cold seawater. Feet are sore right now from the chilliness but I have no regret. I love the sea.