Lab is... Fun :)

Differences in lab.

Everyone wears face masks in lab. They're a lot more concerned about being clean and neat than us Western folk... but then again that just might be a generalization.

I'm picking up Japanese little by little... w/ some of the younger guys teaching me things I shouldn't... or so I'm told.

I can communicate on a basic level with almost everyone in the lab due to their having taken English at some point in their life.

I'm on my 5th cup of tea. Boy I hope it's not caffeinated.

I crammed a lot of knowledge into my head in one day. Feels good to be back in lab.

Shahein and I talked on aim about crazy science topics for a while... if only the Shahein and Tim of pre-college could have seen us now. We've come a long way. In a lot of ways, suffering through Bio 141 paid off. Kinda.

They're very efficient here, which is probably why they can get consistent results. They have one person who's sole job is working with gene chips, which, yes, does make her job probably seemingly tiring repeating the same thing day after day... but at the same time, she's very skilled at what she does--meaning whenever someone needs gene chip work, they go to her because they know the risk of error in procedure or methodological errors is minimal.

8 weeks is so long yet long enough. So long to be away from everyone but not long enough to get substantial work done in this amazing lab.

My goal, in short, is just to assist in any way I can on other projects and learn about their techniques (and how they differ from our own) and hopefully be able to replicate it in the states. Needless to say, I'm documenting like crazy.

Unfortunately, no more pictures since I've been at work and from here on out the posts may become much more science-filled when I publish at work... but I'm having fun.

Oh and there are three of us who are relatively new to the lab. The entire lab is going out on Wednesday.

As an update to the lunch service I ordered, Yum. 420 yen (roughly 4 bucks) for a box of rice (maybe about a bowl and some), grilled chicken (Japanese style of course), pickled radishes (they were orange... but good), some other vegetable thing (I forget what the name of it is), the same fried veggie/carb thing I had in my bento box from before, a little bit of pasta thing that tasted remarkably like beefaroni, a mini hot-dog like thing, and some kim-chi like thing (that was probably my favorite). Sorry I can't be more descriptive... I'll take a picture later.

This post is going backwards through my day... oh well.

I worked with Reiji and Hire (yes, Hire!) on an RNeasy extraction and Hashimoto-san on the gene chip work. And by work I mean watch. Not yet situated enough to begin my own experiments.

The main things I need to figure out is just the location of everything in the lab. Once I know that, I think I'm good to go.

And I had some extended conversations with people in lab today. They're all very friendly. Well, the ones who talk to me are friendly :). I still haven't met everyone but I fear some may be less social. Ah well, I can fix that.

Checks have been retired. I ran out of interesting things to say. :)

Hasta ato de (yes I just combined two languages)

Tim Soo