Monday, October 05, 2009
|11:57 AM|

Anyway, tomorrow, it will mark 1month here in vietnam for my SIP. damn, times flies really quickly. it seem liked it was yesterday that i just arrived here. (sounds so cliche!)

Starting on things, its october, i.e. Start of project

For those that still don't know what i'm doing over here.

I'm working in tandem with Chia Keng and his project is focused on isolation of the cancer stem cells from the MCF-7 cell line. MCF-7 cell line is an american derived Breast cancer cell line from ATCC. Meaning to say, my project doesn't really start until he successfully isolates the cancer stem cells from the cell line. theoretically, it sounds simple. just culturing the cells and harvesting them, sorting them and then culturing again.

WHAM BAM DAMN SLAM simple.

but hell, its damn difficult. Try it once and we find out that trying to culture something you can't even see is like trying to thread a needle in the dark. So much for isolating the bountiful CD44+/CD24+ cells, when we observed under the microscope, there was none to be found.

If harvesting 10000 cells was hard enough, what about that elusive SINGLE CD44+/CD24- Cell.

its just mind boggling thinking about it when you spend approx the whole day fixing up the machine only to end up in nothing. really morale breaking.

not so much on me, but more on ck. he was pretty taken by the blow.

in any case, its been a rather normal week, considering that i still sleep in on sundays

(my room is like a jail cell, with only a tiny glassed up window to let in any light)

Much on theory is still being absorbed, small details such as culture techniques, operation of machines etc. but i think it should be going fine.

on another note, i can't wait to go search for a guitar (acoustic & electric), sisters been pestering me to go find one for her. i'm interested in learning how to play the guitar, but as you all know, i'm a music illiterate apart from o2jam and djmax portable. also, i wanna see if i can get that blackberry at a reasonable price :)

apart from that, expenditure is minimal compared to sg.

i spend $3 eating chicken rice. 1 meal in sg, 3 in VN.

thats how much food costs; $1.20 approx, even pizza hut for 4 people was about $10 total.

(the portions were minuscule by my standards though)

probably gotta make a trip to the mart soon. (pure random)

and i wish for...