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Science, Ramen and Gyoza!
Feb. 24th, 2014 12:10 amSo so so!
I've been working for two months now! Ok. Not yet... that'll be in like... 2 more weeks. But hey, I've gotten paid twice already :P. Cos pay day is in the middle of the month, so I'm paid for feb already. I probably wont notice that its pay day, if not for the fact that they actually send an email out like two days in advance. And of cos i get really happy once i see that mail. Initially i thought it was only because it was the first time. But it came this month too... well I'd know by next month i guess.
But yes, so far so good at work. Monster computer is a joy to use... ah and i mentioned last week that i got to attend the TEM training, and that was interesting. Can't wait to learn how to do the sample preparation. Though I still have no idea what kind of experiments my group plans to do with that monster of a machine. Its huge, the main column is floor to ceiling height, and it takes up a small room. Personally i like SEMs more, being able to see the surface of stuff is just so cool, but apparently TEMs are more expensive. It’s the most expensive microscope too apparently. Amazing stuff huh? I guess its because the voltage needed for TEM is higher than SEM or something? Idk... just a wild guess. Shall try and read up when I'm free... interesting stuff...!
Was talking to my friend (a chemist currently doing her PhD) and she said she just learned how to operate a NMR manually last year. Cool stuff too. Those NMRs are huge ass machines, and the god ones are really expensive too. I have no idea how much that monster TEM that we have in the lab costs, the engineer trainer who taught us has no idea either, though he heard you can by a HDB flat with that... he reakons that it costs like 2 million or so. Idk... a quick google search suggests that it doesn’t cost as much? I'm definitely curious though, I'll try and throw the question to my boss when there's a chance. But stuff in science is really expensive. Being an intern at IBN somehow made me immune to the cost of all these stuff. Not say immune, but more like... prepared for it? Yeah. I know those chemicals and equipment are god damn ex so I'm not surprised when you tell me the price. Like a qPCR machine costs 80k. And a single micropipette costs ~280 bucks in my institutes store (they bulk buy commonly used stuff and sale it to us). I withdrew 5 pipettes from the store the other day, and was so happy that i finally got my pipettes... the lab manager was like, 'why you take out so many as once? you really need to use them meh? if you lose them you'll need to pay for them one ok! do you know how much they cost?' Of course I knew how much they cost, because I checked out the price on the store list earlier. And its not really that expensive. Grant, if someone decides to prank me and steal my pipettes, i'll be missing 3/4 of my monthly take home salary (yeah, i wonder if my asking pay then was really too low but oh wells...) But there's a ton of CCTVs in the lab so i doubt anyone would want to risk their job for a bunch of pipettes - that's pretty much useless/worthless outside of labs anyway. Plus, its not like those are multi channel pipettes - about 10 years ago i saw a brochure about an offer for pipettes, $99 for the normal single channel ones (that now cost ~280), and $999 for the multi channel ones. I have no idea how expensive the multi channel ones cost right now.
Here's a pic of single channel pipettes:
and multi channels ones are for use with multi well plates - most commonly the 96 well plate, which basically has 8 x 12 wells.
Personally i prefer the eppendorf brand pipettes better. There's these other ones too. That I just found out is the Rainin classics by mettler toledo. Those ones don't have a brand on them or something so i was always wonder what brand they were...but yeah, those by MT are generally tighter - both the push button thing to suck the liquid, and the knob to adjust the volume. What's more, the volume adjustment knob is that thin thing at the top, at makes it really hard to turn when you are wearing the blue nitrile gloves that are oh so slippery - and somehow those are the ones favoured by my institute... they are supposed to be more resistant to acid which we do use quite often but... I'd prefer if they stock more of the white rubber ones as well - so that people can chose to wear those when not working with acid. I've dropped a couple of tube caps already due to the lack of grip. And gosh i struggled so much trying to open some bottle caps (again, lack of friction) that i gave up last Friday and used one of those white rubber gloves as a 'gripping mat'. I'd have put them on directly if not for the fact that L size is too large for me... I only wear M sized gloves.
But yup, that's the world of labs and science. And an expensive one at that. Me and my mentor used to prepare our own ELISA plates (ELISA stands for Enzyme Linked Immuno Sorbant Assay by the way, i learnt that from my mentor and never ever forgot since then), because it was cheaper that way. It takes a long time though, you add stuff, incubate, wash out, add in new stuff, incubate, wash out etc... there's one part that requires incubation for like... 8 hours or something really long. Basically you can just leave it overnight, which is what we do. Otherwise buying pre-made plates cost something to the tune of 3,000 bucks each. Which means that each experiment you do, you're spending more than my monthly salary. And that price was from like... 8 years ago. I think the price is about the same now still... cheaper because of inflation but still! Ah and the amount of plastics generated... especially in cell culture. All the serological pipettes.... scary stuff i tell you. When i did massive cell culture at my old work place I would fill up a whole bin each time i worked. That's one whole bin, that's about waist height, in one go. Gosh the impact on the environment. I'm definitely influenced by my old mentor - he used to lament about the wastage all the time, and he tried to reuse as much as possible - while still keeping the science safe and contamination free of course.
Ah... I get so excited when I talk about science. I've been thinking about writing the science related fanfic... but i guess it'll suffer the same problem as all my other fics. I get stuck on the story. Right now I'm totally stuck on my fics. No idea on how to develop my fics. And the so called science fic i have in mind? Its even worst. I can't even make up my mind on what roles i want the members to play, or what roles i should have at all... *shakes head*. Guess that'll take me another 2 or 3 years to write lol!
Ok back to the title! Gyoza and ramen! My dad wanted to pick up the digital to analog converter he ordered yesterday, and so the whole family went along, and after that we had dinner at ramen champion... because i wanted to. Well it was my treat so... :P But really, the ramen there is possibly the best you can get in Sg. The shops in there are supposed to be the top stores from Japan or something... but you can get a variety of different ramen there, from Hokkaido to Tokyo to wherever else... I've been there twice or thrice before, but i forget. Didn’t walk around yesterday cos my ankle was giving me grief... I loved the ramen that's supposed to be no. 1 in popularity in Tokyo. The pork + garlic taste of the soup was fantastic! And here! I remembered to take some pictures to share :P
We order a gyoza too, and I must say the gyoza was... interesting. It was basically a gyozatakoyaki. Inside were the flour used in making takoyaki... and other takoyaki ingrediants too. Interesting though i was expecting a normal gyoza.
Ah that's about it for today I guess. Guess i spent way too much time talking about the science bits as usual... ><
I've been working for two months now! Ok. Not yet... that'll be in like... 2 more weeks. But hey, I've gotten paid twice already :P. Cos pay day is in the middle of the month, so I'm paid for feb already. I probably wont notice that its pay day, if not for the fact that they actually send an email out like two days in advance. And of cos i get really happy once i see that mail. Initially i thought it was only because it was the first time. But it came this month too... well I'd know by next month i guess.
But yes, so far so good at work. Monster computer is a joy to use... ah and i mentioned last week that i got to attend the TEM training, and that was interesting. Can't wait to learn how to do the sample preparation. Though I still have no idea what kind of experiments my group plans to do with that monster of a machine. Its huge, the main column is floor to ceiling height, and it takes up a small room. Personally i like SEMs more, being able to see the surface of stuff is just so cool, but apparently TEMs are more expensive. It’s the most expensive microscope too apparently. Amazing stuff huh? I guess its because the voltage needed for TEM is higher than SEM or something? Idk... just a wild guess. Shall try and read up when I'm free... interesting stuff...!
Was talking to my friend (a chemist currently doing her PhD) and she said she just learned how to operate a NMR manually last year. Cool stuff too. Those NMRs are huge ass machines, and the god ones are really expensive too. I have no idea how much that monster TEM that we have in the lab costs, the engineer trainer who taught us has no idea either, though he heard you can by a HDB flat with that... he reakons that it costs like 2 million or so. Idk... a quick google search suggests that it doesn’t cost as much? I'm definitely curious though, I'll try and throw the question to my boss when there's a chance. But stuff in science is really expensive. Being an intern at IBN somehow made me immune to the cost of all these stuff. Not say immune, but more like... prepared for it? Yeah. I know those chemicals and equipment are god damn ex so I'm not surprised when you tell me the price. Like a qPCR machine costs 80k. And a single micropipette costs ~280 bucks in my institutes store (they bulk buy commonly used stuff and sale it to us). I withdrew 5 pipettes from the store the other day, and was so happy that i finally got my pipettes... the lab manager was like, 'why you take out so many as once? you really need to use them meh? if you lose them you'll need to pay for them one ok! do you know how much they cost?' Of course I knew how much they cost, because I checked out the price on the store list earlier. And its not really that expensive. Grant, if someone decides to prank me and steal my pipettes, i'll be missing 3/4 of my monthly take home salary (yeah, i wonder if my asking pay then was really too low but oh wells...) But there's a ton of CCTVs in the lab so i doubt anyone would want to risk their job for a bunch of pipettes - that's pretty much useless/worthless outside of labs anyway. Plus, its not like those are multi channel pipettes - about 10 years ago i saw a brochure about an offer for pipettes, $99 for the normal single channel ones (that now cost ~280), and $999 for the multi channel ones. I have no idea how expensive the multi channel ones cost right now.
Here's a pic of single channel pipettes:
and multi channels ones are for use with multi well plates - most commonly the 96 well plate, which basically has 8 x 12 wells.
Personally i prefer the eppendorf brand pipettes better. There's these other ones too. That I just found out is the Rainin classics by mettler toledo. Those ones don't have a brand on them or something so i was always wonder what brand they were...but yeah, those by MT are generally tighter - both the push button thing to suck the liquid, and the knob to adjust the volume. What's more, the volume adjustment knob is that thin thing at the top, at makes it really hard to turn when you are wearing the blue nitrile gloves that are oh so slippery - and somehow those are the ones favoured by my institute... they are supposed to be more resistant to acid which we do use quite often but... I'd prefer if they stock more of the white rubber ones as well - so that people can chose to wear those when not working with acid. I've dropped a couple of tube caps already due to the lack of grip. And gosh i struggled so much trying to open some bottle caps (again, lack of friction) that i gave up last Friday and used one of those white rubber gloves as a 'gripping mat'. I'd have put them on directly if not for the fact that L size is too large for me... I only wear M sized gloves.
But yup, that's the world of labs and science. And an expensive one at that. Me and my mentor used to prepare our own ELISA plates (ELISA stands for Enzyme Linked Immuno Sorbant Assay by the way, i learnt that from my mentor and never ever forgot since then), because it was cheaper that way. It takes a long time though, you add stuff, incubate, wash out, add in new stuff, incubate, wash out etc... there's one part that requires incubation for like... 8 hours or something really long. Basically you can just leave it overnight, which is what we do. Otherwise buying pre-made plates cost something to the tune of 3,000 bucks each. Which means that each experiment you do, you're spending more than my monthly salary. And that price was from like... 8 years ago. I think the price is about the same now still... cheaper because of inflation but still! Ah and the amount of plastics generated... especially in cell culture. All the serological pipettes.... scary stuff i tell you. When i did massive cell culture at my old work place I would fill up a whole bin each time i worked. That's one whole bin, that's about waist height, in one go. Gosh the impact on the environment. I'm definitely influenced by my old mentor - he used to lament about the wastage all the time, and he tried to reuse as much as possible - while still keeping the science safe and contamination free of course.
Ah... I get so excited when I talk about science. I've been thinking about writing the science related fanfic... but i guess it'll suffer the same problem as all my other fics. I get stuck on the story. Right now I'm totally stuck on my fics. No idea on how to develop my fics. And the so called science fic i have in mind? Its even worst. I can't even make up my mind on what roles i want the members to play, or what roles i should have at all... *shakes head*. Guess that'll take me another 2 or 3 years to write lol!
Ok back to the title! Gyoza and ramen! My dad wanted to pick up the digital to analog converter he ordered yesterday, and so the whole family went along, and after that we had dinner at ramen champion... because i wanted to. Well it was my treat so... :P But really, the ramen there is possibly the best you can get in Sg. The shops in there are supposed to be the top stores from Japan or something... but you can get a variety of different ramen there, from Hokkaido to Tokyo to wherever else... I've been there twice or thrice before, but i forget. Didn’t walk around yesterday cos my ankle was giving me grief... I loved the ramen that's supposed to be no. 1 in popularity in Tokyo. The pork + garlic taste of the soup was fantastic! And here! I remembered to take some pictures to share :P
We order a gyoza too, and I must say the gyoza was... interesting. It was basically a gyozatakoyaki. Inside were the flour used in making takoyaki... and other takoyaki ingrediants too. Interesting though i was expecting a normal gyoza.
Ah that's about it for today I guess. Guess i spent way too much time talking about the science bits as usual... ><
