Well I haven't written on here for a while, but just thought I'd mention a couple of things that happened to me today. For those who don't know, I've started my new course so I'm with another almost completely different set of people, from all walks of life and places, people from Germany, USA, Canada, France, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Sweden, India and China of course. I'm in the lab pretty much every day, which is kinda cool as it keeps me busy and interested instead of a battering of lectures (I get that as well!). The first thing that isn't particularly exciting or funny in the comedy sense, but talk about 'it's a small world'........
It started with my flight over here, way back in August, I came over with Johanna, sat next to the window, Johanna next to me and the third person is of interest here, who was next to Johanna. Now midway through the flight, he pulls out an International Masters Degree at Uppsala booklet out, ok....I mean that by itself is very funny, just happen to get on a flight with a guy who's going to Uppsala
Oh but there's more.....I think I was in one of those moods because I couldn't be arsed to chat to him....I mean his subject is probably art or some pointless, conversation killing subject anyway right?
So I turn up after a few days to do a bar crawl in town with all the other Masters students, we are split up in to groups (as there was a few of us!) and guess who bloody turns up.....yup, Mr. fly on the same plane as me.....again, I didn't talk to him as he was in another group and I didn't see him later that night anyways.
About a week later, there I am, just finished a lab so incubating some bacterial plates and guess who is in the bloody 37 degree room......yup Mr plane man again!!! I have a small chuckle to myself and this time, we look at each other kinda like...hmmm....I so know I've seen you before. The worse thing was, it was just me and him in this room...bearing in mind is about half the size of a typical elevator.
Ahh but wait....so on this new course as I said before, you get every walk of life, which is a great way of networking and experiencing other cultures almost first hand as you don't need to fly there! Anyway....I turn up for my first lecture the other day, sitting there unpacking my bag, waiting to see who else is in my class etc....I turn around to have a quick gaze at the class and guess who the f**k was sitting there?! Yep.......
....I was sitting at lunch today with some of the guys from this course, just chatting away and getting to know one another, then this random plane man stranger pulls up and chair and sits down....ok, it's time we'd better say something to each other......Well turns out this guy is on a Biochemistry course of all things, is French (that's why......I could sense something was wrong with him...haha...just kidding) and called Ben!!
He also remembers me from the plane of all bloody things, we have a little chat, seems a nice guy....it's definitely a small world!!
The moral of this story is be nice to strangers on planes: you might be working in the same lab as them in the future, haha. I wasn't lying when I said it wasn't too interesting, but what a coincidence, that's all I can say.
The second thing, which I will keep short for the purposes of taking too much time to read involves the outcome of my lab today. We cultured some mutated E. coli strains void of a DNA damage repair mechanism...exposed it to UV light, made serial dilutions and plated these...I get the plates back and turns out every single plate has been taken over by fecking Staphylococcus aureus, so instead of nice little milky colonies on the plate there are very white little dots too....not good. Bearing in mind most labs I seem to do don't work (through no fault of my own...just a crap design) my aseptic techniques to stop contamination are not too bad, so there's me thinking I've totally cocked this up. Long story short but every ones was the same!!! turns out the PhD students and lab techs can't culture E.coli for shit and they gave us contaminated samples....so another one on the list that didn't work.....One thing in science is that patience is definitely a virtue, so if at first you don't succeed....you probably won't ever!
It started with my flight over here, way back in August, I came over with Johanna, sat next to the window, Johanna next to me and the third person is of interest here, who was next to Johanna. Now midway through the flight, he pulls out an International Masters Degree at Uppsala booklet out, ok....I mean that by itself is very funny, just happen to get on a flight with a guy who's going to Uppsala
Oh but there's more.....I think I was in one of those moods because I couldn't be arsed to chat to him....I mean his subject is probably art or some pointless, conversation killing subject anyway right?
So I turn up after a few days to do a bar crawl in town with all the other Masters students, we are split up in to groups (as there was a few of us!) and guess who bloody turns up.....yup, Mr. fly on the same plane as me.....again, I didn't talk to him as he was in another group and I didn't see him later that night anyways.
About a week later, there I am, just finished a lab so incubating some bacterial plates and guess who is in the bloody 37 degree room......yup Mr plane man again!!! I have a small chuckle to myself and this time, we look at each other kinda like...hmmm....I so know I've seen you before. The worse thing was, it was just me and him in this room...bearing in mind is about half the size of a typical elevator.
Ahh but wait....so on this new course as I said before, you get every walk of life, which is a great way of networking and experiencing other cultures almost first hand as you don't need to fly there! Anyway....I turn up for my first lecture the other day, sitting there unpacking my bag, waiting to see who else is in my class etc....I turn around to have a quick gaze at the class and guess who the f**k was sitting there?! Yep.......
....I was sitting at lunch today with some of the guys from this course, just chatting away and getting to know one another, then this random plane man stranger pulls up and chair and sits down....ok, it's time we'd better say something to each other......Well turns out this guy is on a Biochemistry course of all things, is French (that's why......I could sense something was wrong with him...haha...just kidding) and called Ben!!
He also remembers me from the plane of all bloody things, we have a little chat, seems a nice guy....it's definitely a small world!!
The moral of this story is be nice to strangers on planes: you might be working in the same lab as them in the future, haha. I wasn't lying when I said it wasn't too interesting, but what a coincidence, that's all I can say.
The second thing, which I will keep short for the purposes of taking too much time to read involves the outcome of my lab today. We cultured some mutated E. coli strains void of a DNA damage repair mechanism...exposed it to UV light, made serial dilutions and plated these...I get the plates back and turns out every single plate has been taken over by fecking Staphylococcus aureus, so instead of nice little milky colonies on the plate there are very white little dots too....not good. Bearing in mind most labs I seem to do don't work (through no fault of my own...just a crap design) my aseptic techniques to stop contamination are not too bad, so there's me thinking I've totally cocked this up. Long story short but every ones was the same!!! turns out the PhD students and lab techs can't culture E.coli for shit and they gave us contaminated samples....so another one on the list that didn't work.....One thing in science is that patience is definitely a virtue, so if at first you don't succeed....you probably won't ever!
