Die Hard

These mice are very hardy now. Its means they live longer than I expect them too. I usually can predict how long they would live after I innoculate them with my parasites depending on the how heavy the dosage is, usually about 4 days. Somehow now they can live an extra 2 or 3 days. I need to know the death date so that I could salvage their peritoneal fluid and infect other mice. It would be very inconvinient to have them die on a weekend. So I try to make sure my next innoculation would fall during the weekdays. I think due the constant exposure to the mice, bedding and feeds, I am getting allergic to it. Now I have to take extra precautions to ensure none of those touches my skin.

Canibalism

See this? That is not a wound, it is one of my mice whose brain and eyes got eaten up by other mice. I mean it happens when there is not enough food or water, but this particular cage has both and even fresh bedding. I know the mice did not die because it was sick with the parasite since it was not in the fetal position. Even my co supervisor was intrigue by this situation. Poor thing, die in my hand while contributing to the medical and veterinary world or die by other mice.

Lunch

We had a little party held outside of our labs today. Labs as in the Microbiology and Parasitology lab. It was also a surprise party for one of the RA next door. Poor girl she does not know we did this for her :D

We had spaghetti, Laksa, Popiah, Curry puff, and other things. My lab technologist made the spicy but delicious laksa, and I think my lab mate, made the spaghetti, very nicely done although there was not enough of the sauce to go around.

Fruit, carbonated drink... two completely opposites of the nutrition table meet head on.

This? Oh this is not lunch, its a stubborn mice. Cranky little tramp (its a she) could not sit still, so I decided to............................... just drugged her with ether, so she will feel very groggy, but if I placed her in the ether jar for two long she will die. According to my calculation, she will die on Monday. Just a cruel viscous cycle I had to do weekly. Somebody has to do it okay..

A Blue Day??

Is it? A blue day?? Not really, I just happened to be snapping pictures of blue objects. My blue water bottle, my gosh, last time I had a water bottle was during primary/elementary school. I got it because I was kinda worried of reusing the water bottles that we get when buying water, They say those bottles are for one time usage, not for multiple usage. So might as well get something that is made to be used many times as long as I don't put it in the autoclave :D
I absolutely love this car especially with the huge wheel well that can fit in 20 inch wheels easily. However according to my judgment this driver is using 18 inch rims on 55 series tires. Which is quite nice. The original tires was 15 inch rim on 65 series tires which look very inadequate. What car is this? That looks like a low slung hatchback? Why, its the new Honda Stream MPV. Yup a 7 seater MPV. However the deceptive shape makes you forget its an MPV, very sporty compared to rivals, suchs Wish, Grand Livina, and Citra. They redesign the whole car, so that it sit lower to the road with out sacrificing space, in fact, they managed to make the car even more spacious even though its lower and shorter. Talk about engineering marvels from Honda :). I love this car so much, and I would get it if I had the budget.
I needed to transfer my peritoneal fluid and mice carcasses from the minus 80 Celsius fridge to the the minus 40 Celsius fridge, because students will be storing their serum tomorrow in the fridge. Well its about time for me to cut open the mice and store the organs in formalin.

Chicken?? Nope just the mice carcasses :D

WHY!!!!!

Why did you die so soon.. I came to check on you yesterday and you were alive and jumping.. literally. I came back this morning only to find out that you have been buried by your cage mate... ARGH!!! Now there is only two infected mice left that was infected with a very very mild inoculation. I am worried sick to my stomach now, if the parasites dies. EEE!!! where on earth is that cryopreserve recipe....

Saturday Morning

Yes a Saturday morning, finally. I was looking forward for this particular Saturday, but alas, planned changes and I got to bite the dust. However no matter, what is done is done, I cannot do anything about it when I have no control of it, so I am looking forward for a relaxing Saturday. As luck would have it, a relaxing Saturday was not possible. I had a rude awakening by my psychotic sister because she wanted her DVD game (she was a damn fool thinking CD and DVD is the same thing). My room was a mess so I could not get it for her and she end up getting pissed off. You want to get piss of at me on a Saturday morning when I am supposed to sleep longer, I could just swear at her till she broke down and crying but I rather not. Blah sama dia..

Anyways, what to do, what to do. Today I had to visit the lab to check on my mice, my infected mice are still alive and kicking so cannot mess with that. However the cages were filthy and there have been so many mice dying (at least the mice buried their kind) also some the mice got into fights, some of them are mutilated. Also some gave birth, or got pregnant already. So its time to group them according to sex, age, and health.

Tomorrow I will have to come again and conduct a wedding ceremony for the mice because I am running low on mice so I need to conduct a wedding ceremony for the mice. If I am just lazy I will just conduct a sex orgy for them, so they can have blast with orgies (group sex). This is important because I swear I saw some male mice humping each other with the male mice below (I am guessing this one is the "wife") were screaming. It was such a weird sight, I saw my two hamster fighting with the female hamster beating the crap out of the male hamster and now gay rodents.

What does this all mean? I means I have been spending way to much time with rodents that I could witness this human like characteristic.

Sunday

Another Sunday just passed me by and another day just gone by. At least I got a lot done today so it was a day that is well used :).

My DNA extraction kit had just arrived, so now I have to really understand the operating procedure so I don't screw up all the time :p

Needle of doom or needle of life, you decide. Killing mouse so that other mammals could stay alive.

I seem to be on the bad luck side of obtaining a clear peritoneal fluid, I always seem to puncture a blood vessel so ended up the peritoneal fluid is contaminated with blood.

I took my youngest sister out to lunch today, since my eldest sister wants to sleep in and my younger brother has a gig that he is playing. Our favourite restaurant, Nandos.

My sister had her usual 1/4 chicken, Mild peri peri with 2 servings of peri chips

I loved their Chicken Caesar Salad, with 5 strips of Extra Hot Peri Peri chicken.

The soft grilled toasted port rolls is something that we always ordered. My youngest sister is so crazy about their bread.

Oh yes a serving of Peri Chips for me. Do you believe I would only have salads for lunch. You got to be kidding me.. :p

Then off to the arcade, to play table hockey. I forgot my younger sister is no longer the short girl who does not know how to play. Darn it, she has great reflexes and she beat me to a pulp :(

I been wanting to get a new sandals since last year, but only today I decided to get one. Somehow my comfort store will always be Bata. Any type of shoes I would get at Bata, from leather, sports, and sandals. Its just so much easier and I know I would like it. Probably some of you would fall off your chair hearing the thought of buying Bata shoes, but currently it fits my budget quite nicely :p

Bored

This room gets boring now.. seriously.. so mundane.

Every three days must collect these mice and kill the ones I have infected with T. gondii. These mice are going to die any moment any way. Yes any moment due to the amount of parasites already in them. Killing them used to be exciting, now its just a job. I think I am the second person who is maitaining the parasite in live mice, while other labs either don't have it or kept it frozen in liquid nitrogen.

She is not relaxing, she is sleeping forever, in this large beaker with ether.


These are the utinized mice that will be stored in the freezer.

And then there were 3...

I like my profile, profile as in the side view of your face. What? you guys don't watch American Next Top Model religiously???

He says, she says

I had lunch quite late with a colleague of mine. Well actually I came to the Golf first and the she came along just after I was finished but I still sat along with her to sembang2. We were talking about our project and such. We talked about my prof and our Master work.She was in her 3rd semester and she has finished half of her thesis. Her work is more field based while mine is molecular and very lab based. She has a supervisor who gives her all sorts of admin work to do, while all I have to do other than my thesis and class is to be the IT guy when my prof faces problems with his computer and Internet.

Right now I am getting prepared with my up coming project which is to produce recombinant protein. I am not saying that I was happy but I am not saying I am exactly annoyed but maybe its just an observation. She maybe a bit stress because it seems I don't do much work around here and just stayed in my tiny room. I mean she does not have a clue of what I am doing but she gives such comments? I think its not fair, because I never question her work in front of her. I mean I could just shot her down with the fact all she does is field work, which is great to help people, but for the future, it may be hard for her to do her PhD.
My work is molecular based which is the future of all research. No I don't have to go out and drive to all my research areas like her, while I could just stay in the lab all the time. Maybe she is stressed because she has to handle labs, and other supervisor admin work but that is how her supervisor work. Her supervisor wanted to train her to become a tutor. I still have class with my prof and doing all these molecular and genetic stuff that has never been taught during degree. Yes my personality is the type that is less stressed and laid back, which to some people it shows that I am lazy. Well that is me, like do you even know what I go through. I mean we all have issues of our own.

I was kinda annoyed that she assumed I am doing nothing much like what she is doing. Little does she know the hells gate that is about to be opened once I start producing my recombinant protein, vaccination trials, histopath slide preparation, and autopsy. I mean she and I has a completely different thesis. I know her supervisor does not agree with what my professor is doing and I know by heart my professor does not agree with what my friends thesis is about.

Well only time can tell right, whose thesis is more valuable. The race is on sistah.. we will see who does better...

(nothing like a friendly rivalry between friends right ;) )

From UPM to IMR

My master research involves parasites that can live inside white mice. White mice is a great host for T. gondii because the parasites can replicate quickly inside the mice. The problem thing is the mice died before I could transfer it to another mice. So terpaksa buat muka kesian and go back to IMR :(

I used the world most expensive longkang AKA the SMART tunnel. I can get to IMR from UPM a lot faster using this tunnel.

As you can see, I was really bummed out because my parasite died and I had to beg from IMR to give me a second sample. I also had to drive all the way to KL meredah traffic for that beloved parasites.

Parking in IMR is horrbile and there is not many of them . See how terribly I park.

Its because my car is too long for that particular parking space, argh how I wish I have the Smart Cabriolet, so what to do, parking mcm nih meh :p

Then I was happy..why???

I got these babies.. these cute white mice..:)

They are loaded with the T.gondii parasites so I can have my T.gondii collection again. I heard IMR and myself are the only people in Malaysia who has this particular strain of T.gondii.

Somemore when I returned to UPM, this truck blocked my path. If you look closely it seem this long trailer turn a bit to wide and cannot go through the corner

The day before tomorrow..

bYah today was a relatively normal day, but I had to make appointment with my lecturer to check the viability of my toxoplasma in my mice. The results were dissapointing. NO MORE PARASITE :(...

This so called "macho cute" pose was actually a diversion of the nice clouds in the background :)

The dead one.. it got infected with bacteria not parasites :(..

A funeral for the mice..... just the mice not the whole cage :D

Suprise me... there was a catfish inside the store where they stored the shovel.

Mice infected with Plasmodium brugei a rodent type malaria, used to study anti malaria medicine.

Lapor and bored and thinking about mice.

It was a nice and sunny day kat golf, so pleasant to eat. Too bad tetiba so many people came to eat. My order came quite late.

Work, blog or study.. choices I have to make each day :D

Klinik was empty today

Empty and yet I have to wait for so long.

Went out today to get my fave magazine, sunblock for CNY activity and medicine. People told me I made sounds when I breath, the doctor say my sinuses are blocked. If it does not get well I have to seen an Ear, Throat , Nose specialist..