Thursday, May 24, 2007

Summer, Micropipette Holder, and Mercury Poisoning







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In elementary school, there was this small dialog in our text book:
"How does spring arrive? Does he take a car, or he walks?" asked the kid.
"When flowers blossom, and the birds sing, you know he's here." answered the mom.
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When 80% of girls are in skirts, and .5% of guys are wearing (almost) nothing, you know it's summer. So I guess it's really summer now.

On the first day of summer (declared by me, apparently), I broke the electrode of the micropipette holder. It's not something that my PI will kill me upon (it's worth 36USD -- about 3 Chirashis from Toraya), but if the order does not arrive tomorrow, I will have a *very* free memorial day weekend, and my time towards graduating will be delayed for 3 days. Of course, I did not want to stick around to suffer from the complexion of guilt/sadness/happiness -- I enjoyed a walk home, made some fried eggs and immerse myself in the Rhenish Symphony, one of the most popular pieces by Robert Schumann -- he wrote it before he was terminal ill, which can be attributed to Mercury poisoning.

Time for a bike ride back to the lab -- I think I have like 20 mice to dissect tonight -- probably not going to make it before the sun sets, but hopefully before the moon does so!

Game Log: Squash

Tonight I saw my winning streak ended at 12 games. I was a bit sick (lame excuse #1), didn't really have the feeling for my serves (lame excuse #2), and basically got tired towards the end (lame excuse #3). I played 5 games tonight -- I got the first one fairly easily, yet the second one my serves were horrible and soon I found myself trailing 1 to 7. I wanted to win so badly so I started speeding the game up, and charging for every single ball. At the end I won 9 to 7. I took the third game I think 9 to 3. Then I lost the last two, 8:10 (deuce) and 7:9. And there went my winning streak during a 3 weeks span. O well...

This is all after a day during which I broke the micropipettes for 3 times and the suction stopped working half way through my experiment. Anyway I think my nasal mucosa is not very cooperating at this point, and I should go to bed.

What a way to start my blogging!

Friday, May 18, 2007

First post!

on a rainy, chilly, and sleepy Friday evening