had a biochemistry practical just this afternoon. long story cut short, one of the steps in doing a western blot was to add blocking buffer into a small dish and put it on a shaker for 1 hour, so that it will block non-specific binding to the nitrocellulose filter.. and my lab partner and i didn't notice it when we added normal buffer instead of blocking buffer until 1 hour was up.

when i eventually made the discovery, we immediately told the lab demonstrator. instead of reprimanding us or demanding us to repeat the step, we were told to proceed normally and see what comes out of it.

i was rather taken aback - i was already feeling guilty as hell for making such a stupid mistake, but now i'm being told that it's not just ok, "it would be interesting, wouldn't it?". we all learnt, theoretically, why the blocking buffer is required, but i haven't really seen what would happen if it wasn't added.. so yep in a sense it is interesting haha.

fast forward another 1.5 hours, instead of seeing a smear of black colour over the entire blot, we saw faint blobs corresponding to the lanes with proteins in it (in non-biologist speak: it's weird lah cos it doesn't correspond with theory). even the demonstrator admitted it was weird, and said maybe the blocking buffer wasn't that important after all. haha.

anyway, today was one of the more enjoyable biochem practs i had, cos we were forced to think through lots of stuff that the demonstrator threw at us instead of blindly following a "recipe" and getting the expected finished products. failure isn't that bad after all! =P

today was a 迟到 day.

woke up late (actually my alarm rang at 8:30am, but i lazed until 8:50am haha).

reached the lecture hall 10 minutes late.

didn't expect my chemistry lab report (due for marking in the chemistry practical later) to be that complicated, so turned up 30 minutes late for chemistry practical.

nonetheless, still managed to finish the experiment by 3:45pm. but unluckily for me i could only get my lab report marked at 5:30pm! had to wait so long, sian. thank goodness i got a good mark for my lab report, which i don't think i fully deserve haha.

rushed back home to do work, and only finished it 2.5 hours past the deadline. popped it into my supervisor's pigeon hole, noticed that he hasn't cleared it, so technically i wasn't late lor cos he wouldn't know when i handed my work up =)

was late in reaching lion dance practice by 1 hour because of the work. but oh well, not many people came anyway.

argh, this must be bcos of sixth-week (not fifth-week) blues that seem to hit me every term..

another performance, another dinner =P

we're somewhat making it a habit to not start off on the right foot - we felt that our first performance wasn't as ideal as what we hoped (maybe we set our bar too high? =), so we did a second performance in the restaurant, and everyone liked it! we then had our well-deserved dinner, which was fantastic! if not for lion dance, i would really have not been able to feel the cny atmosphere in camb (as well as stuffing myself with good food, of course).

that's the fourth consecutive performance i had in four days, time for me to straighten my back for a week haha.


ps as usual, kudos to shawn for the great pics!

yesterday was the first time we actually performed for a hotel, so needless to say we were hoping that it would proceed smoothly according to plan.. the first hiccup to our plans was the transport arrangement - originally slated to arrive at 1:30pm, they eventually turned up at.. 4:45pm. ><

eating lunch while waiting for the elusive transport. lunch was kindly provided by a *cough* nice member of the troupe =) the sandwiches disappeared quickly, to the nice member's relief, as he recalled that the cucumbers used weren't the freshest available =P

after reaching the hotel (the journey took abt 1.5 hrs), we quickly discovered how constricted the performance area was. sam was quick in changing our performance plans, even to the extent of scrapping one of the scheduled performances (out of 4) as we were unable to get a table.. i was getting bad vibes from some of the hotel employees there, as i was worried that they might have had expected a very high standard of performance from us.

i was kinda nervous for my first performance, but we did pretty well and we were heartily congratulated by the staff there.. from then on we were treated pretty well - after we performed our three performances, we were treated to a fireworks show and great food (peking duck, sweet & sour prawns and dumplings). each of us received a red packet from the hotel management too, whee =)

the 11 of us after all three performances - a job well done by everyone =)

by the time we reached back home, it was already about 1am. after lugging back our lion dance equipment back to our store, everyone departed feeling tired but happy!

to those reading till this far, a happy chinese new year to u!


ps: credits goes to shawn for the fantastic pics =)

.. for 11 pple =)

hope they find it edible tmr =D

mainly cos of the tons of performances coming up - four performances in four consecutive days!

thurs: performance at two playschemes
fri: performance at aru (anglia ruskin uni)
sat: performance at a hotel
sun: performance at a restaurant in camb

and in all of them i'm gonna be the lion back, which is a tiring job indeed.. hopefully i don't burn out before sat or sun haha.

today was the first time i experienced thick snow in camb during term time.. it's interesting how heavy snow during term time is quite different from heavy snow over christmas =)

vacation: snow = too cold outside = spend more time in bed and under thick thick duvet
term time: 9am chemistry lecture = die die must wake up and brave the cold to go for lectures (see how studious i am =)

vacation: walk in the snow? siao.
term time: have to CYCLE against the wind to go for lectures. irritating when the small snowflakes uncannily find a way to go past my specs and into my eyes. had to squint while cycling, grr.

vacation: view outside window = an undisturbed blanket of white snow

term time: view outside window = paths warming themselves up to reveal their presence; mysterious footprints appearing all over the place.


vacation: snowmen take christmas break to seek cooler pastures.
term time: snowmen appear after heavy snow, grinning away as broadly as their organic dentures would allow. (i found 4 snowmen just by walking from the entrance of the college to my room. reports from other colleges indicate that this phenomenon of emerging snowmen is no way confined to magdalene only)

vacation: snowball fight? with who? zzz sleep more important.
term time: fought with neighbour and a friend of hers haha.

vacation: msn nicks of msian/sporean friends would, more often than not, be "HOME!!" or "CHAR KOAY TEOW!!" or "CHAR SIU PAO!!" etc (haha ok i made the last two up. but you get the idea lah)
term time: everyone shamelessly uses the same four-letter f-s-word in their nicks: "SNOW!!". variants include "下雪" and "snowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww".

vacation: blog about snow? lazy lah *switches on computer game*
term time: blogs about snow in between supervisions out of boredom, sacrifices revision time to take pictures and write about frozen water.

performed in the chinese new year ball yesterday in the guildhall - there were like 200 people there, and i daresay we arrested the attention of most of the people in the hall =P



if you had the patience (and bandwidth) to watch till the end, i was the lion back =) this 6-min performance sucked up at least 10+ worth of practice time, but the rapturous applause we received made it all worthwhile =) go culdt!