work and 2 nights on the town!

note: there where pics to go with this but its being futzy so just check out my albums on facebook until I can get them to work

Whew first day at work was a real doozy! There was some real mental exercise going on. Monday was the first day I report to GIS (Genome Inst. Singapore) but all I did was go through the safety orientation then go home since I didn’t have my white card on me since I wasn’t told I needed it. Oh course I had every other piece of paper work which I was told to bring, which as it turns out I didn’t need. :P Anyway that worked out since I spent the evening with Claire having a blast! More on that after work though.

DR. Liu lead me into the lab and deposited me with these 3 nice ladies (2 of whom are also interns) who have to deal with me until I leave because it appears no one else will take me. It rapidly became apparent to me that I am not prepared to be here. Everyone else is getting their masters or PHD; I have yet to take upper division bio classes….

I felt a lot like when I got into wind ensemble: inadequate and unworthy. However wind ensemble taught me that while I may be woefully under-skilled for an undertaking I learn A LOT by fumbling through. This made me feel excited at the prospects of getting that kind of expansive schooling in lab. They handed me the paper they were using to base their project on and told me to go read it. Looking at the paper I was terrified remembering the last time I had tried to puzzle one of these out. Turns out being in ochem gave me the know how that got me through with about 80% comprehension. A few Wikipedia checks later and I’d be willing to up that to 86%. And more importantly I was already learning! Little things here and there I’ll snatch them up as they go by and before long I will have a mountain of new info!

Then things got boring. They were having problems with their gels giving them smears instead of blocks. And while I was familiar with PCR and running electrophoresis, I have no idea how to optimize one. So while they tried to work things out, I tried to understand what they were doing and why, with a low amount of success. Still I think there were tidbits that I gleaned without realizing. But still this took the majority of the day as I puttered about rereading the paper and doing ochem things to it (ie trying to figure out the synthesis of the hydrocarbon we were working on and drawing the structures of everything in the paper or looking up what I didn’t know).

Then lunch time with the two interns that I met yesterday, yes friends from school you are right I will always be surrounded by people spare me the I told you so’s.  They are both Singaporeans who went/go to school in America. The girl Vithya went to UCLA. And Shawn will be a sophomore at Johns Hopkins next year. I actually caught dinner with him and his friends from JH. It was a lot of fun! I liked all of them and they seemed to like me. It’s nice to have people to hang with J We spent more money than I wanted to and stayed out later than I should have but given the choice I would have gone again! They invited me to go dancing with them but on a Wednesday so I don’t know if I will go. 

Anyway the later part of my day was spent try to get a handle on cloning (it’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow) which believe or not actually has taken me a few hours to learn(or try to) the protocol and try to understand what’s happening. I am trying to supplement the knowledge that most people here have from classes and experience with the internet during the empty time I have when they’re working on things that are way too over my head (ie what mix of primers they should use). Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers are my new best friends.

 Random Notes: I miss gum. They call bathrooms washrooms, and take-out is take-away 0.o

So last night Claire and I went out for our first night on the town! The two of us look like a comedy duo! She is tall and blonde towering over most the people here. I’m short enough to still be short even in Asia (but not as short; instead or staring at peoples elbows and arms I stare at their shoulders) with my Latin figure, and my curly, curly hair. Oh yes we do not belong ahhahahaha! We meet up at Raffle’s Place one of the few spots that connects both our mrt lines. It was right in down town and the totally chic (not sheek), lots of money trading hands work place type of place.

 We asked a local for directions to good food and headed out. We wound up on this lovely but pricey strip on the riverbank.

We sat in one of the many waterfront restaurants and paid way more for food than I have paid anywhere else in Singapore. But the food was great!

And the view was totally worth it.

We ran around taking pics and just sorta hanging out as the sun went down and it got late.

 I was really excited because I figured out where we were based on a bridge and took her to Merlion Park where the majority of the picture snapping happened.

We wandered into a mall right as everything was closing which was a shame since its Great Singapore Sales time which means for 2 months everything is on sale 10-90% off! Perfect timing right?

Any way that’s all for now! I’ll blog again when I have something more to say! Or if people wanna know the details of the project I’m working on (it’s not exactly bio fuel) let me know and I’ll send ya what I got.