Friday. I got up this morning at around 730. Last night I went to bed with a mask on and slept through the night with it on. Air quality is unbearable right now. Hopefully there will be a reprieve soon. I went and got a bun thing from the bakery. This time I made another mistake and got a leek filled one instead of the butter filled one again. It was very disappointing.
Yulan and I gathered samples from the tobacco and then spent the morning extracting DNA. We used a larger glass BB to put into the machine this morning and it worked a lot better then the tiny ones that we used yesterday. Faith showed up after gathering samples, and we were put in charge of a group of samples that had not ground well, and therefore, had to sit longer then the others for a particular step. We extracted this DNA with much more success the yesterday's. I told Yulan this morning that next week we will have to do a bunch of staged photos. I also blew (as with air not explosives) my gloves up and made a turkey out of the balloon that it made. After lunch I made some other animals the chicken I am particularly proud of. Yes, I am a man - boy of many talents.
Lunch was not very good. It took 2.5 hours for the people to get finished. (Another fancy going away meal for coworker Leo) Wendy ordered all of the food and they brought it out and put it on the turn table. Then it started turning. The first dishes that were brought out were cold goat stomach (really bad), some type of cold turnip dish (really bad), cold fish (very fishy), and then cold cabbage that was rather tough and not well seasoned. That was the first course. The second things that they brought were much better: the Peking duck, peanuts; shelled, a tomato and a semi tofu soup and a few other things. This was the course that I could actually eat. Wendy, of course, got the soup that I had seen before with all of the unsavories in it (chicken skin, seaweed, blood, bologna, and some other unidentifiable things) as well. The last thing that was brought out was a fish that was entirely covered by a soup. There were also two baskets of chip-like things that were apparently supposed to be dumped out into the soup. Wendy demonstrated very well by not thinking about displacement and pouring all of the chips right in and causing a massive overflow. As I have said before, he is a "rammy" guy. He also seems to be a control freak. Though this may have taken a short time for you to read, it was a long a** meal, and it was one of the most agonizing that I have ever sat through as there was no English conversations. Faith translated a few thing for me but most of it was too complex to be translated at the rate that they were speaking. One of the few things that was translated was (at least after translation a very bad theory) by Wendy about why pregnant women throw up some things. He thinks that it is because the baby is a parasite, and therefore, the mother and the child fight for the food. This causes the mother to throw up. I do not know the true cause of morning sickness, but I am sure that it is not that. Then again it may have been just a bad translation - but I would never refer to an unborn child as a parasite.
I do not like the fancy Chinese food. It is more expensive and not as good as the cheap places that I go to. This was also a opinion shared by Silvio when I went and talked to him. I need to make sure the lab understands this so they don't "treat" me to this for my last meal.
After lunch while we were walking back, the girls were talking about how "white" skin is desirable. I again said that it looks unhealthy. Yulan told me that my stomach is what would be considered as a good looking skin color. This is crazy to me. (There is nothing appealing about pasty white skin. Shows that you stay inside way too much!)
After lunch, there was not break as it was already 200 so we all went back to the lab where, guess what, I had nothing to do for an hour and a half as: 1. most of them were asleep, and 2. we had to make primers to do the PCR with. During this time I made the awesome chicken and the other animals out of the gloves. Wendy realized that "Wendy", even the way he spells it, "Windy", is a girl's name (at least in America it is), and I drank a ton of water (I know, a very random set of info in that sentence, but it is what happened)
At about 330 I was given some medium to heat up (Faith helped) as Yulan had woken up, and she wanted to transfer some lines to start the first generation of fungus. While doing this, the primers showed up and we had the stuff to do PCR. I got to set up another PCR, Faith did 12, I did 12, and then I made a gel. During the PCR creation I dropped my well plate. Thankfully most of the PCR tubes were pushed down enough that they did not come out of the respective wells as I had not numbered them yet. Three of them did come out though so I go to do them again. Bummer.
These samples we got into the PCR machine and then we went to plate the cooled medium. While plating the medium I asked if they wanted to go swimming on Sunday. Yulan said that she could not, and then volunteered the information that she would be on her period at that time, through Faith as a translator. This was the second time that this has come up while talking to Yulan. The first was when I asked her why she drank so much hot water as opposed to room temperature or cool water, She said that the hot water helps her get through her monthly period. She was surprised when she realized that I knew what she was talking about and today asked me how I knew about it. Faith was also surprised and wanted to know as well. I told them about my girl cousins and school. This surprised them. They also wanted to know if girls in America swam while they were on their period. I told then that I thought so as the girls on the swim team did not seem to be gone once a month for a few days consistently at the same time of month. Faith asked how they did this... I was not able to provide an answer. (I know all you females who are reading this are now thoroughly amused that I don't know this.)
After this I went back into the lab to grab some stuff and said goodbye to Leo for the final time. Then I went back to the small fume hood room. Faith left, and I told her to email me plans for the weekend. I was taking a container of tubes back to the lab from the fume hood room, and I waved at someone. And woefully neglecting the fact that container had no lid, I spilled everything everywhere. It was rather funny.
Today I was really tired for the entire day. I think that it was because I did not eat enough in the morn or at lunch. As a result, I went to dinner without going to Frisbee this afternoon and had rice and skewers at the sesh wan place before going to another place and eating more food with an African guy (I'm like a hobbit and had second dinner). Silvio had a lot of work to do so I did not go to frisbee. I will talk to him tomorrow about it and possible plans for the weekend.
Good night and God bless.
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