work safely - at mrt construction site

Work safely because you may not get another chance to work safely. However, if you work dangerously, you may get many more chances to do it again.

Who am I?

Identity crisis!

Burnin'

Some idiot put this plastic bottle of toothpics into the 150C oven to dry and ended up melting the whole thing. The interesting thing is that there is this glass container directly under it to contain all the dripping waste. Is is some kind of sinister plot?

Pariss Lunch

Dr. Li's treat. Pariss seafood buffet at Marina Square. Oysters and mussels!!!



The people:


Teran the terror:


Jas doing open surgery on a crab claw:


Kuai Ling Gou, marshmallows with choc, some Taiwan jelly thing, and cakes:


Dr. Chu demonstrating the fine art of getting every morsel of meat out of a crab.



Yummy lamb chop to the right:


Crocodile soup on left and scallop in steamed egg on the right. Bottom; fish, prawn and baked scallops:


Chomp chomp:


Satay, scallops with garlic, braised fish, fried fish, seafood pasta, etc. etc.


Scallops, oyster, mussels, crayfish, crab, cold meat, abalone, octopus:



lets go back again soon!!!

Happy new year

Happy New Year everybody!!
May your cultures grow well and may your work published in Science/Nature/Cell!!!

Christmas Lunch

Lab's annual event, sponsored by the boss.
We went to a local buffet at the Grand Hyatt at Orchard Road. 12 people, one table, lots of food.

Here are some pictures for you to oogle over.



There's this wall just stacked full of wine bottles. Quite a sight to behold. Very nice.


Amazing roasted chicken and duck. and the pastries are not bad at all.


Fresh fish, oyster omelette, etc etc etc...


Small talk while waiting for some others to arrive.


Someone found a worm in the cheng t'ng. We showed it to the waiter and all he said was thanks for pointing that out, I will go remove the whole pot of cheng t'ng. We were hoping for a 10% discount or a free cake or something.


After the worm thing, I found an ant on a piece of papadum. Makes you wonder actually how clean the place really is.


A toast; to remember a good 2005 and to usher in a hopefully equally amazing (if not more amazing) 2006.


Group shot. Taken with the cam's autotimer. Asked a waiter before this to take a shot but it came out blur.


The entry to Straits Kitchen. Very good ambience and deco.


A round fixture on a square wall. The whole place very nice deco. Quite overwhelmed by it.

Cool tap

Don't know what else to call it. The sink fixture like thingy at the hospital food court. You press the black thing on the floor and water like a waterfall comes out of the glass thing. The waste water drains out at the back of the 'sink' by the slit there. Thus, please dont throw anything bigger than 1.26cm x 2.04cm into the sink as it will get stuck.

bohliauness

Was 'free' the other day, no, more like bored the other day while sectioning some blocks, so had some fun:


After a few days, was 'free', no, 'bored' again. Behold, all you earthlings, kau-tau now to The Supreme Lord Boh-Liau Flaviguy, henceforth shall be refered to as Revereed Boh-Liau.


Hey, and you there, stop gigging in front of your monitor.

Fumigation

No idea why they call it such but this is the first time I've seen people doing a safety check for the biosafety cabinet. So, this is what you need to do.
1. Come with lots of sticky tape and big plastic bags.
2. Stick the plastic bags over the hood, wrap it up like you are Santa Claws.
3. Use lots of tapes, use as if your father owns the factory.

4. Please remember to forget to put in the smelly ammonium thingy into the hood so you can (after using lots of tape to secure the plastic bags in place) make a mess out of the whole thing by trying to put this tupperware of thing into the hood right after you sealed it moments ago.

5. Do also stick platic bags and sticky tape on the top of the cabinet. But remember that you forgot to put the ammonia thingy till just now? Enjoy the whiffs of scented air now.

6. Leave the lab to the rightful owners overnight. Dont hog the ammonia for yourself.

7. Come back the next morning with a smell-o-sensor and a big vacuum cleaner.

8. Take readings (or at least act like you are taking readings) from the sensor like thing (you forgot the batteries right?)
9. You can also take readings while the vacuum cleaner is on. If pentiums can multitask, so can you! I'm sure the air suction thing will NOT influence the readings of your dead sensor. How stupid of me to ill judge your skills.
10. Oh yeah, forgot to tell you to wear gloves when working in the lab.

Real?

The one on top, is it real? Got bleached by the washing machine? Don't know. Folded it up and bought chicken rice with it.

Pokemon causes cancer

Nature 438, 897 (15 December 2005) doi:10.1038/438897a
Pokémon blocks gene name
Tom Simonite

Moniker proves too much for games company.
A cancer research institute has been threatened with legal action by the US branch of Japanese video-game franchise Pokémon, after one of its researchers borrowed the company's trademark to name an oncogene.

Pier Paolo Pandolfi of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, first called the new member of the POK family of genes Pokemon at a conference in 2001, claiming it was an acronym for POK erythroid myeloid ontogenic. But when Pandolfi and his colleagues described the gene's role in the development of human cancer in Nature last January, the discovery attracted headlines such as 'Pokemon's cancer role revealed' (T. Maeda et al. Nature 433, 278–285; 2005). Message boards and blogs picked up the story, unable to resist using the phrase 'Pokemon causes cancer'.
That led Pokémon USA to exert its legal right to the trademark, Nature has learned. "They threatened to sue us if we did not stop calling the gene Pokemon," says Pandolfi, "but the name and the gene have nothing to do with the cartoon." A spokeswoman for Pokémon USA told Nature that its image was at risk. "We don't want our image undermined by associating Pokémon with cancer," she said.
This is not the first case of trademark law interfering with a researcher's attempt to name a gene. In 1993, Alfonso Martinez Arias of the University of Cambridge, UK, was told to find an alternative name for his new fly gene Velcro, after the Velcro Corporation wrote to the journal that was publishing his paper to say that "such usage invariably dilutes the value of our name and mark".
Perhaps the best-known quirkily titled gene, the fly-development gene Sonic hedgehog, has so far escaped legal threats, despite sharing a name with the spiky electric-blue star owned by that other Japanese video-game giant Sega. Bob Riddle came up with the name in 1993 while working at Harvard University Medical School, but says he doesn't think Sega's image is threatened. "I don't think a development gene harms them," he explains.
Martinez Arias says he has been more careful since his experience with Velcro, but that trademark infringements will continue if geneticists keep looking for catchy names. "They name genes as if they are claiming a new continent," he says. Safe, if boring, systematic names such as those of the Human Genome Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) should be used instead, says Martinez Arias. The Sloan-Kettering centre seems to agree, and is now calling Pandolfi's gene by the HGNC-recognized moniker Zbtb7.

The Pond part III

One week ago, the lotus plant at the new NUH pond was in full bloom, in great splendor and glory.

The beautiful close up of the flower.

One week later, it's dead. A new plant viurs? Who knows.

Teren the terror

Teren the terror broke a pipettor!
Welding his superhuman strength, he trust forth his power onto the tiny pipettor shaft, breaking its neck and leaving it stuck in the pipette tip; mortified, fractured, dead.
*shudder*

This is what a 'normal' pipettor should look like.



This is what Teren did to the one of the P2 we have, rather, had. ouch.


Closeup of the broken shaft. Much like decapitation.


The end of the shaft still stuck in the white tip.



You can see the little hole in the middle of the shaft.

But fear not, fret not, cry not!
Gilson sells replacement parts! Hurrah, a new lease of life will come soon for this unfortunate soul.
http://www.gilson.com/Products/prodInfo.asp?pID=67&ttID=3

If you would like pipettors like P2 to enjoy a new lease of lab life, contribute now to the Help-Get-New-Stuff-For-My-Lab program. Just call 1800-NEW-STUFF or 1800-639-78833 NOW to donate $100.00!

Seminar

Some EM seminar on the TEM cryo technique. The lady is from some small country between Sweeden and Switzerland I think. Population about 32,000. Guess that if you got fired or married, the whole country will know. The old-technique new-technique photo difference is really something. And the processing steps were made to sound so easy... "just put the sample in here in some solution and you can view it already."
Oh yeah, there was refreshments after the talk. yummy.

ice cold

A white Christmas? Not quite.

Cleared the -20C chest freezer with Dr.Li. Got out a whole bucket of ice from it, and we only did half the fridge! The problem was the accumulated ice at the bottom of the fridge caused the racks to be unable to get stacked into the fridge without poking out and thus the fridge door could not be closed. Nobody bothered to clean it up so we did it. Spent 5 minutes hacking, another few minutes scouping and then half an hour of frostbite. Intended to do the other half before we started but at the end of it, after the cold finger thingy, erm... another day maybe.