Wow!

This is just for ppl who like to hear when I do stupid things, or the ppl who should be studying for exams, rather than reading my blog (Hi Lydia!)

After gym today, I took a shower with my glasses on. Yep, that's right on par with the time I did this.

Ok, I'm out for today!

There was a song I liked...

but there was a lyric in it that I couldn't figure out.

Well today, I figured it out and it has completely destroyed my enjoyment of the song because the singer has completely mispronounced the word in question.

Say it with me, the correct pronounciation of hyperbole is *hi-PER-boll-ee*, not hyper-bowl.

Can anyone guess the identity of the song?

The answer is right here (for the cheats): *These Words* by Natasha Bedingfield

Loyalty vs. Self Preservation

The person who got me thinking on this knows who he is. Hope you're working it out, but I've been pondering this situation for a few days now...and honestly, I can't come up with an answer that satisfies my need to express an opinion.

On one hand, you've got a gut instinct to stay with the ones who have supported you and support them back. On the other, if you realise that the ppl you're supporting are the ones who may bring you to you down, you're also driven by the need to minimise your chances of danger.

However, you'd think the ppl who've supported you would protect you, right? But what if the group can't see their own frailties?

But surely being on your own without your backup is more dangerous than a group who cant recognise their own flaws, if you see them, you can protect the group. One person can't protect a whole group.

Being in a group you know is better than being with a group who doesn't know you and don't have the wealth of knowledge about your own strengths and weaknesses. The new group may have better strengths and therefore have a greater likelihood of ensuring your survival.

You risk creating a danger that knows your weaknesses because they know you well. Vice-versa also applies.

Ok somewhere along the line I started thinking in pack mentality so it might sound more like a life or death situation than your own dilemma....anyway...I guess this entry really does have no point!

Eduardo Noriega

This post actually stems from a movie that I watched on tv a few weeks back. I decided to have a Saturday night home alone for dvds and other restful things. I can't remember what I was watching - probably Buffy or the like - but after I had enough of it, I switched on the telly and there was a French movie on. At the time, I couldn't figure out what it was really about because there was a lot of moving forwards and backwards in time, actors who were being called by different names (i.e. I couldn't get a hold on characters), and this fellow on the right doing a lot of running around in the nude.

Naturally, I had to keep watching (:P) and received no further enlightenment as to the plot although my perseverence was rewarded with more nudity (and in one case, nude handstands). Afterwards, I consulted the tv guide and found out I'd been watching a movie called Novo (2002) and that this handsomely nude devil is the Spanish actor, Eduardo Noriega. He is perhaps best known in the english-speaking world as the actor who played the role of Tom Cruise's character in Abre los ojos (1997), re-made as Vanilla Sky. From here on, all I can say is that he is way, way, WAY hotter than Tom Cruise, and that here's to hoping is profile in this country goes up, up up!

Just a general hi-ho!

This had been a pretty bad week for me, experiments-wise. I've never had so many things fail on me before in my life!!! Here's the list

Monday am - Rat dies too fast from anaesthetic. I have difficulty popping the eyes due to its death, taking too long to do it so the retinas detach and are useless
Monday pm - Start S100b-594/EAAT4-488 flatmount
Tuesday am - Meetings all morning
Tuesday pm - Three hours on a confocal microscope garners only 7 photos
Wednesday am - Start immunos on vertical sections
Wednesday pm - The cryostat pulls my tissue out of the block
Thursday am - Finish immunos, but the coverslip smears all the sections, wasting 2 days work
Thursday pm - go to Path to cry, Veronika stains a slide with H&E for me that confirms what the immuno would have (below).
Friday am - Nearly lose the flatmount tissue that I started on Monday! Find it in a puddle on the table and although majorly squashed when mounted, it's ok. FM turns out to be stained beautifully.
Friday pm - where we are now....trying to decide if I should start up a new FM....unsquashed.

I'm really tempted to just stop right now on a high...but on the other hand, I wont have to worry about it much next week if i start it now....

I would also like to point out that I've added another blog to my links - my sister has decided to keep one to chronicle her adventures around Aus working as an optom. It seems that she's mostly using it to complain at the moment, though.

You'll find her at http://frankly-cross-eyed.blogspot.com/
Toodles!

Finally! Some results!

Bah, I've been working like a machine in the lab lately - if you've seen me in the last day and asked me how I was going, I probably told a story about what happens when you're too...er....*enthusiastic* when doling out anaesthetic to rats.

Anyway, I finally got the photography machine to spit some data out at me! It took three hours sitting in a hot dark room, but I FINALLY got some lovely photos! Here are some!

This photo shows a vertical section of cryo-frozen retina stained for S100beta, a protein involved in calcium homeostasis and is produced by glial cells in the CNS. This slide is showing the cell bodies and processes of astrocyte cells at the bottom of the pic, Muller cell bodies and processes in the centre, and the Inner Limiting Membrane formed by MC endfeet at the top.
(1:50000, 400x mag)

Hmm....lost a bit of the fine detail when I compressed this. This is a flatmounted whole retina labelled for EAAT-4, a glutamate transporter only expressed on astrocytes in the retina. So what the bright red things are are astrocyte processes. This doesnt look as nice as it does as a .tif file. (1:100, 630x mag)

So there's the proof that I don't really spend all day at uni on msn :P

Evolution of Dance

The last few times I posted videos on my blog, people complained that it wouldn't load etc. etc. etc. But THIS video, I MUST SHARE.



And if it still won't load, this is the URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg

Enjoy!

Bon anniversaire, mon amie!

I'd just like to give a birthday shout-out to Carmencita for yesterday - awesome party! I just hope you didn't have too much trouble cleaning up :S. I remember looking at the bomb-site that was your kitchen and saying to Sarah, "Gosh....your poor Mum...."

And on that same note, I'd also like to acknowledge Amandine's (left) and Miss Pooky's (right) recognition of my own upcoming commemoration!

Open Letter

To Pink jacket/Green cargo pants on the 8:15am from Alphington,

I don't know who you think you are, but that was a really packed train around you. I mean sure, its not everyday that a primary school decides to take their students for an excursion to Richmond, but that train still regularly has people crowding around the doorways for lack of seats. This then brings up my issue with you - why did you feel your bag was more worthy of a seat than any of your fellow commuters? This is not a personal complaint - I managed to get a seat for myself and my 2 bags, so it was not as if I was standing there for the entire trip flashing you dirty looks. However, out of consideration for everyone else, I carried by bags on my lap. On the other hand, you saw fit to put your bag on a seat and spend the trip completing some personal grooming (it didn't work). I guess this means you were not paying attention to the rules that govern public transport behaviour, in fact, are you one of those people who stand on the *walking* side of the escalator or block the exits on trams? I had considered breaking out of my morning torpor to take your bag's seat and free up my former seat for other people, but then I remembered karma. Karmic retribution is not mine to deal out; one day the cosmos will visit this situation back and here's to hoping you will learn.

Regards,
Trench coat and Burberry.

Optical illusions

I don't know about everyone else, but I love a good optical illusion! It's probably got something to do with the way your senses tell you one thing that's incompatible with logic - geek! And one of the best-known artists who created optical illusions was Escher. Now Lego have paid homage to Escher with this great creation :

Awesome!

The original site for this was http://www.andrewlipson.com/lego.htm which has plenty of lego fun! Man, they make me feel so ordinary in comparison - I always just tried to make a house.
For more cool illusions, see this blog. I especially like the sand sculptures!

mmmmm.....

I'll have to re-organise my desk at uni now. Instead of having articles just piled all over the place I'm going to have to designate journal vs computer areas.

Who knows? Maybe I'll become neat.

NAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And here's a shout out to Sampson, whom I visited yesterday. Thanks for all the anime and the whole season one of Supernatural. I'll make sure they get a good viewing :P

I am truly retarded

How depressing. This is a thanks to everyone who helped/is helping me set Mally-toshi (my laptop) to the settings that will please me most. Really. If I had to do it myself, I'd probably be curled up on the floor whimpering at how to do it. Even what is the seemingly most simple thing... I can't do it! For example, given the choice between Firefox 1.5 and Firefox 1.5 (British)....whats the difference?!?! In the end I was told non-British was the way to go even though there is apparently little difference between the two *sigh*.

So I'd just like to thank the following ppl in no particular order:

Luthersmee
Roy
Ez
Martina
Yetapee
Justin
and Pooey.

There are probably more ppl than this list has and it will prob also expand...exponentially.

I did some photography today...

so I thought I'd have some photos of rat retina to post. But it turns out that due to my computer retardedness I dont have them!

In other news, I bought myself a laptop! Gee...here's to more retarded action!

Hey!

Recalling yesterday's haiku post...

Sex on the brain: it's on the nose
By Ian Sample, LondonMay 10, 2006

Sex pheromones, the chemicals some scientists believe waft off the body to help attract sexual partners, are processed differently in the brain depending on our sexuality.
Scientists have found that a potent chemical lurking in male sweat causes a rush of electrical activity in the brains of straight women and gay men, while lesbians and straight men treat it like any other odour.
Ivanka Savic, a neuroscientist at the Stockholm Brain Institute who led the study, said the finding suggested that specific brain circuits were engaged when people were exposed to chemicals they found sexually stimulating. The scans did not reveal whether sexual behaviour was learned or hard-wired.
Three groups of 12 volunteers, including lesbians, heterosexual women and straight men, were asked to sniff a variety of odours. They included odourless air, four common scents and androstadienone, a chemical abundant in male sweat and suspected of acting as a male pheromone.

GUARDIAN
(cut and pasted from www.theage.com.au)

"Untitled"

(a haiku adventure in four parts - thanks to Ez for the title!)

Intersection lights
Rain falls on groups dressed in black
Heads lowered, they cross

One passes by me
My lone head raised and turned back
Following that scent

Anonymous man
Stranger makes my senses reel
Dark wool coated one

Teasing memory
Latrobe and Elizabeth
Makes me smile all day

Chai (tea blend)

When it comes to food, I can be equal parts adventurous (checking out new places!) but also a creature of habit (and ordering the same kind of food :P). The same applies when it comes to tea. Generally, I'm a English Breakfast or Genmaicha tea in the morning kinda gal, Earl Grey in the afternoon/night. But since my short little stint at the sushi shop last year, I have started drinking chai tea (not to be confused with chai latte - afro guy at Baretto, I'm looking at you!).

I'm not sure what chai tea is made from (I assume there are some actual tea leaves in there), but what makes it different is that spices have been added to the tea which then produces a distinctive scent and flavour - kinda like the way bergamot makes Earl Grey Earl Grey. I'm not exactly certain of the combination of spices though. The ones I can pick out are cinnamon and cloves...according to wikipedia other common additions are star anise, pepper, ginger and cardamon. I prefer it with soy milk rather than cow milk and sugar although I started off drinking it with honey.

While unlikely to knock off the others as my faves, try chai at least once. Even if you decide you don't like the flavour (some ppl have said it's kinda weird), the happy scents will make it worth it!

S-Hun zodiac

Ppl at uni have been raving that this is the most accurate one ever...so I'm just gonna post my one for the week. Ppl who know me and the goings on in my life...tell me if you think it's true!

"A focus on work. You concentrate on getting things done and establishing yourself as an expert in some area. You look at work which is different because it presents a challenge. There is talk of health; yours or a workmate's. Either way it'll be a tough week. Some Geminis get a new puppy to chew up slippers or a kitten to spot the carpet. There is little happening in your intimate relationships. You try to make things happen but th etime is not right. choose the right moment and things fall into place."

Let's reconvene next week to see how accurate it is!

Oasis - Don't Look Back In Anger

From their absolutely awesome second album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, Oasis presented the world with one of the best rock (and group karaoke) songs ever, Don't Look Back In Anger. The song is notable for being the first song sung by Noel Gallagher rather than the usual lead vocalist, his brother Liam, and references John Lennon by using the opening chords from Imagine, and the lyrics "trying to start a revolution from me bed, because they said the brains I had went to my head" apparently quotes Lennon.

It is equal parts melancholic and uplifting - the chorus being especially catchy with long notes that aren't particularly challenging to sing. I'm not going to do an in depth analysis of what the song means, its key, etc., because I know that all you need to do is hear it to know what I'm talking about when I say that it's fantastic. It's a great song to be drunkenly sway along to, preferably arms linked with other ppl, and sung at the top of your lungs. I'm going to karaoke this coming Friday and I fully intend on singing it!!!

Lab update!

Wow. This has been my heaviest lab week since honours!

Monday am - General retina meeting, planning of week's exps
Monday pm - Start S100beta dilution range (+gym)
Tuesday am - Finish S100beta dilution range + lab meetings
Tuesday pm - Examine slides under microscrope, begin Desmin dilution range (+gym)
Wednesday am - Finish Desmin dilution range
Wednesday pm - kill 3 rats, examine slides under microscope
Thursday am - make 4% parafomaldehyde (+ pilates)
Thursday pm - read journal articles
Friday am - Confocal microscopy induction (+ donuts mmmm, donuts)
Friday pm - kill 20 rats (how the hell did I think there were only 9 rats?!)

I've still got an hour before the departmental seminar and thus 2 hours until departmental drinks. I've got donuts waiting for me :)

blogger's block

It's not that I have nothing to talk about. It's just that once I reach a certain point in writing it (like, end of the first sentence), I'm finding I have nothing else to say. It's like the topics that I want to talk about have decreased exponentially.

Is it possible that 2 months of PhD have already caused my arts-induced verbosity to decrease?! If so, that's a shocking state of affairs. And I still can't seem to get around to writing that Matrix movie/dvd review. I think I'll have to consign it to the bin and give it up as a lost cause, like finding a sequel to Pride and Prejudice that would satisfy all the fans - it is never going to happen.

In entertainment news, it looks like a lot of big dumb movies will be coming out in the next two months. Mission: Impossible 3 (ugh, now there's going to be a dumbass movie), X-Men 3 (actually, I might see this one), Da Vinci Code (if you know me in real life, you probably know my feelings about the book)...it's quite depressing.

If anyone wants to email me a topic I should cover, feel free!

Egg meals

(Due to my own ineptitude, I am writing this at uni. Alas, there will be no mouth watering photos).

I think it's saying something that when writing her guide on cooking basics, Delia Smith's very first chapter was on how to cook eggs. Sure, you may snort and say *gor, how hard can it be to cook an egg?* but as I have met some people who say they can't boil or fry eggs, you realise the greatness of what eggs are. They can be the simplest of meals (for example, medium-boiled eggs with soldiers) or awesome wonders like crême brulée. One of my favourite meals as a child and as an adult is a fried egg on toast with cracked pepper and soy sauce. The egg is preferably fried with a lot of oil in a very hot pan so that the white is fried quickly with the edges all crisp while the yolk is still runny. The sweetness of the yolk is then counteracted by the salty soy and the spicy pepper.

As I got older and my income and foodiness became more adventuresome, I discovered Eggs Benedict (for those who don't know, its a poached egg on ham on an english muffin covered in hollandaise sauce). Done well, Benedict can be a brilliant start to the day. Done badly and you'll be retching. My former favourite place to have it (former because it no longer exists) was a little cafe on Swanston St. called Ruby/Orange. If I had a day where classes didn't start too early or during swot vac, I'd go make myself feel better by having Benedict and sit around feeling warm inside. Variations of Eggs Benedict are Eggs Florentine (substitute spinach for ham), Eggs Fairfax (smoked salmon for ham), or having hash browns instead of (or with) the muffin.

Sometimes you may look at an egg and think about how troublesome it is - the tricky shell, the fact it might be rotten, cholesterol, the sulphur...but you know, I think they're worth it!

(And no, the Egg Board is not paying me to promote them. They should!)

Opinions

You know, sometimes I think I should make this blog more topical. I feel that I should discuss things such as the rise of fundamentalism and absolutist policies in the world and its implications. As a scientist, I should analyse the debate between Creationism/Intelligent Design and Evolution. I should rail against the injustices present in the world. I should debate politics or discuss more abstract topics other than my thesis.

I started writing a piece on the apparent paradox that is the prejudice against Christianity in the mass media (other than Fox News), despite the fact that it seems the number of worshippers who identify themselves as Christian are increasing - you know, something juicy to get people worked up. But then I started feeling depressed about all the dividing lines that put someone as either *this* or *that*. Seriously everyone, what people are or aren't shouldn't be the issue, its what they do and why they do it. To quote that absolute fount of wisdom, Homer Simpson, "Let's stop the fussin' and the feudin' and get down to the lovin'." Perhaps this is overly simplistic, but I did do a personality test that said I was a *dynamic visionary*. People, follow my lead!

Really, the world is a great place and life is beautiful. Enjoy it.
Next entry, I will talk about the wonder and simplicity that are eggs and how great egg-based meals are.