This is My Life......

YueN at 5:19 PM

Sunday, January 27, 2008

After 3 weeks into my IA, I'm finally getting a hang of wat's going on in my lab... hehe... wat a slow learner... haha...

Most of the time, i get to help out with the PCR, Luminex and gel work. All thanks to my 2 dearest colleagues, Bao Yue and Hui Yi. They are indeed very brave to let me try out their lab work. Well, for most results they obtained after i try out, they seems a little funny or nothing came out... I'm super worried that my lousy lab techniques will cause contamination to their work and causing the generation of results. My boss isnt very forgiving abt such lousy techniques... In the end, they are the ones who get "scolded" by boss eventhough i could be the culprit... my boss demands "professionalism"

Enough of complaining... hehe.. i also had lots of fun with my colleagues... maybe we are pretty much the same age... 21 and 22.. haha.. last wed, we "played around" or "experimented" with dried ice. We filled a glove with water and placed it inside a bucket of dry ice... with minutes, the water in the glove starts to freeze. Wanting to speed up the reaction, Hui Yi pour ethanol into the bucket.... Wohooo... Result: Ethanol speeds up the freezing process..

Then me and Hui Yi went to top up the nitrogen tank and here's my "professional" suit.

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an update abt my beloved partner... aka my LG chocolate HP..

After 1 yr plus of our close relationship, he decided to give up on me.. haiz... Every time, when i tried to sms or call, he complained that there is no battery.... No matter how my brother bad mouthed him, telling how useless he is, I never give up on him... My dearest LG has been the love of my gadgets... His lovable look and smooth touch screen will all be gone....

My beloved LG chocolate phone

My new partner, Motorola razor V3x

No choice, i got to forget him and adapt to a new partner.. which is a Motorola razor V3x.. As compared to my LG chocolate, he's much bulky, less understanding towards me, a slow adaptor. Again, I have to understand all his features and all his user-unfriendly areas. But i think he will onli be mine for a couple of months more.. Once my contract is due in Oct, I'll definitely look for a better partner with similar quality as my beloved LG chocolate...

maybe a LG KU990 Viewty:

Will u be my faithful partner??

Yuen signing off.... blue blue morning..

YueN at 5:00 PM

Sunday, January 20, 2008

I can't really remember when was the last time I went about chasing those stars who were here in spore... BUT.. yesterday, I became a little fan again... screaming their names.. and squeezing myself into the crowd just to have a look at the TVB stars and to take some shots of them...

Hehe... Met Suling at causeway point yesterday evening to catch a glimpse of the HK TVB artistes Kevin Cheng, Wang Xi, Bobby Au-Yeung, Charmaine Sheh, Myolie Wu and Bosco Wong... 男的帅，女的美。。。and they're talented too...

They were there to promote their drama series like 賭場風雲，爸爸閉翳，歲月風雲，舞動全城，東方之珠，寫意人生 etc... of which i've already watched the first two shows... currently, watching the third show..

The HK stars tried their best to speak in chinese, but when they got a little high among themselves, they started a whole string of Canto conversation.. lucky me, i've mastered my canto from watching all those TVB drama.. so who says watching tv is not good.. i'll definitely say that it is a good source of learning another language....

Here are some of the pics I took at the roadshow.. hope u guys dont mind the heads of other fans and their cameras...

Enjoy.

Wang xi

Kevin Cheng

帅帅Bosco and smart Kevin and same old funny Bobby

HK stars getting high over the game played.

美美Charmaine

I had a weird dream last night... it is actually a sequel of the dream I had 2 nights ago. Yinru, Kelvin and a guy were in my dream... it was like a RSP Elders orientation thingy and we were all taking photos together.. then, dun how, it switched to a outing with the 4 of us.... Weird.. and the other guy is some one i have not seen before... Weird...

maybe tonite, i'll dream of the third sequel again.. hahhaa... then maybe i can ask that guy who he is.... oppss... hahaha... *o*

YueN signing off.... cloudy afternoon...

YueN at 4:59 PM

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Having to handle the PCR machine for 2 weeks in IMCB... never know that there is actually a song for it... till my colleague, bao yue shared it with me the day b4.... Very funny video clip... we were laughing off our heads when I watched it with my colleagues in the office... Heard that this song was sang by the scientists...

For those who are unsure what a PCR machine is and what it does, check out this song:

PCR Song
------------

There was a time when to amplify DNA,
You had to grow tons and tons of tiny cells.
Then along came a guy named Dr. Kary Mullis,
Said you can amplify in vitro just as well.
Just mix your template with a buffer and some primers,
Nucleotides and polymerases, too.

Denaturing, annealing, and extending.
Well it's amazing what heating and cooling and heating will do.

PCR, when you need to detect mutations.
PCR, when you need to recombine.
PCR, when you need to find out who the daddy is.
PCR, when you need to solve a crime.
(repeat chorus)

http://bio-rad.cnpg.com/lsca/videos/ScientistsForBetterPCR/

YueN signing off.... Sunny morning..

YueN at 5:50 PM

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Angry....... felt so 委屈

I cant believe that a simple feedback email will take me 5 hrs to get it type out.....

Yesterday, my boss found some errors with the results generated by multiple alignment program provided by NCBI(Influenza Virus Resource). Me being a cheap labour of the lab, my boss told me to write a feedback email (on behalf of him) to the NCBI in-charge regarding this problem. He even told me to write it in such a way that it will sound positive and "i'm not blaming you" kind of tone. OK ... fine... Being a Biz Manager for a year, i've written hundreds of such letters or email b4.. thinking that, this will be a chance for me to "show off" my writing skills....

It took me less then half and hour to get everything done. and this was what i've written....

my 1st version:

Then, my boss, being a very "careful" person wanted to double check my work. whatever, fine.... Then he edit abit(1 single paragraph and he took half an hr to edit..) and told me to continue the rest for him. Telling the person, the specific nucleotides positions that had errors... poor me had to spent another half an hour to spot-the-difference in that mess of "A-T-C-G"..

a mess of A-T-C-G

Then I showed him my 2nd version:

Dear Dr. Yiming,

I'm currently working in Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology (IMCB) under Mr. Masafumi. As our research project involves Influenza, we have been using your Influenza Virus Resource database for a considerable period of time. Indeed, your influenza database is very valuable and aids in our project in many aspects.

Recently, when we were using the multiple alignment function installed in the influenza database website, we found some discrepancies between the results done by two different ways.

The two ways compared are one that uses the sequences obtained inside the web page directly and the other method that uses “Add your own sequences” and FASTA for the alignment, so called indirectly. For the indirect method, we create the text file first and then it is sent to your server according to your web page instruction.

It appears to us that the results that came from these two methods are different. We have arranged the set of nucleotide sequences in the same order for both methods. As seen in the attached file, there are a handful of differences generated from the results. For instance, in H1N1, after inputting its nucleotide sequence into the FASTA, the result generated reflects a different beginning sequence (GTAGA…) as compared to the input sequence (AGCAA…).Furthermore, in the same sequence of H1N1, for nucleotide no.165, the indirect method’s result shows a point mutation of nucleotide G, despite the input sequence having nucleotide A. We will also like to draw your attention to nucleotide no. 82 of H3N2. For the indirect method, the result shows a point mutation of A despite the input sequence having nucleotide C for that position.

I have attached a figure on the results we obtained by the above methods and also the FASTA format file which we used for the indirect methods for your reference.

As frequent users of the Influenza Virus Resource database, we like to give a positive feedback of this situation to NCBI. We hope that NCBI can clear this discrepancy for the benefits of the future users of the database.

Best regards,
Wee Sue Yuen

This is when he really pissed me off.... he said that i was too long-winded and "smart" ppl dont have time to read them... i'm was totally speechless... he was the one who told me to be specific then now he said that i'm long-winded.... and the worst thing is that he commented that my english is very lousy(i quoted his exact words)... No choice, i have to sit beside him while he edit my work.. or should i say, typing his own email... finally, he finished "editing" and he told me to read to see if it's ok.. i'm like 'can i say it's not ok...??' Eventually, this is the final version:

Dear Dr. Yiming,

I'm currently working in Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology (IMCB) under Mr. Masafumi. As our research project involves Influenza, we have been using your Influenza Virus Resource database for a considerable period of time. Indeed, your influenza database is very valuable and aids in our project in many aspects.

Recently, we are encountering a problem in the alignment work using your alignment program installed in the influenza database website. We found some discrepancies between the results done by two different ways.

The two ways tested were one that uses the sequences obtained inside the web page and align directly and the other method is to send our text file to your server through “Add your own sequences” for the alignment indirectly.

It appears to us that the results that came from these two methods are different. We have arranged the set of nucleotide sequences in the same order for alignment work to show the differences easily.

As seen in the attached file, there are a handful of differences generated from the results. For instance, in H1N1 (AB286002, AY790268 and CY020278)and H3N2 (AB281194, CY002907 and CY017926) shows strange results, such that the beginning of these sequences are truncated and wrong nucleotides are created even though the input sequences are same as that of consensus sequences (refer to the red box in the attached file). Those are indicated by the red boxes in the attached file.

I also attached the text format file which we used for the indirect methods for your reference just in case if you need to see.

We hope that you can clear this discrepancy for us.

Best regards,
Wee Sue Yuen

My dear readers.. pls tell me if this final version fits the "positive and 'i dont blame u tone"

Then, i thought that my boss might want to send this letter via his own email, since it is his writing plus i dont have an IMCB email account. he told me to send it using my NTU email account.. i'm like wth... you are the one who typed this email and u want to use my name for it... i'm onli an attachment student in your lab... if the person for some reason, becomes pissed off with "my" email.. he will definitely shot back at me and not my boss(who is the actual author of this email)....

Haiz... life is terrible with my current boss... shall end my complaining now and get back to work b4 my boss comes to the office...

20.5 weeks to go....

YueN signing off... sunny morning...

YueN at 4:51 PM

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Yeah... finally made it through my first week in A*-Institute of Molecular Cell Biology(IMCB) as an attachee....

my entry pass to biopolis(IMCB)-- without this, the security uncle will not let me into IMCB...

My colleagues are super nice... always very willing to teach me all the theories and different lab techniques for PCR and gel electrophoresis.... In addition, they also shared their working experience in this lab with our Japanese boss... The dos and donts that I should do in front of our boss...

My trusty notebook which i jot down all the impt info and lab procedures.. hahaha... my horrible handwriting..

For the first 4 days, i've been observing and learning all the steps to run all the tests... then yesterday, my colleagues had to rush some tests due to our boss having to do some presentation at TTSH on monday... Then my very nice colleague, bao yue let me do her PCR job on a patient sample for her... she trusted me and had confidence in me... she didnt even stand behind me to ensure that i do every step correctly... i was super scare that i'll screw up the sample as there is only one patient sample... if i contaminate it... then it's all gone.... luckily, i had another colleague that supervise me during the whole process... i'm so grateful to have such wonderful colleagues...

as for my boss, he's a traditional Japanese man, who is very meticulous... and likes to talk alot.. which most of the time, i dun understand half of his sentences.... hahaha... just nod and laugh whenever required(learn from my colleagues)... after 1 week, i find that he's ok except that he likes to order us to perform some lab test when it's abt lunch time or 6pm.... so we will either have late lunch or go home late....

21 weeks more to go....

YueN signing off... stary stary nitez....

YueN at 5:36 AM

Monday, January 07, 2008

scary... excited.... eager..... a mixed feeling was bottled in my stomach on my first day of attachment.... However, it turned out pretty good for my first day...

Reached biopolis at 9am, then went for a pretty short briefing by the admin ppl.. then a colleague, vannan brought me up to our lab... he was pretty ok.. taught me abt the theory of all the instruments that they were using... all those freaking short terms they used, like M169, HA195 for the RNA of flu virus... luckily, i could still retrieve those bio stuff taught in sec, jc and those taught by our beloved Prof Tim tan... hahaha...

Then during lunch time, my 2 other colleagues brought me to this cafe in Biopols that serve western food.. i had al fungi and devil's brew(just coffee...)... onli one word to describe: yummy... While we were having lunch, they shared lots of juicy stuff abt my supervisor....

Spent the whole day, listening and watching... indeed i learnt alot abt the lab work and what they do most of their time... they also have a gym named synapse.... that we could use... great... maybe now i have no excuse to not exercise le....

YueN signing off.... cooling morning...

YueN at 4:53 PM