A Dry Run

My curiosity got the best of me. Soy is supposedly better than processed white grains, and I've been interested to know how baked goods would taste like with Soy Flour. The only way to find out -- create one.

The first batch of muffins I made I used blueberries. Lesson learned: Do not use frozen blueberries when baking (it all sank at the bottom of the muffin cups making the bottom half mushy). Despite that, it tasted OK, soy flour and all.

Today I decided to try the alternate flavor -- using poppy seeds and lemon juice (see picture). I discovered I don't have any lemon juice around but I had some frozen (again??!) kalamansi juice. Which worked fine although this could have been yummier with more lemony zest.

The recipe suggested: eat warm with butter, or cold with cream cheese. Now tell me, what won't taste good with butter or cream cheese?

Delayed Entry: Bench Work II, etc.

My T1 wireless internet line failed me. I was in the middle of putting this all together last night and just when I was going to hit the Publish Post button, I see the little icon on my lower right corner of my desktop of the internet connection with a red "x". So I just saved the file and here it is.
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Friday night, before the T1 shutdown:

My plates did grow and were ready by Tuesday for the susceptibility run -- using the CLSI (formerly NCCLS)-recommended reference agar dilution method for anaerobes. The process took me the whole day in the lab, resulting in almost 100 blood agar plates to be incubated for 48 hours. Yesterday was the susceptibility reading, and after my mentor confirmed my interpretation, the plates were tossed out (in the red hazardous material garbage cans, of course). I need to retrieve two extra isolates for my next run – one which didn’t grow in the original pass, the other had a peculiar MICs in our run (on further inspection of the plate where the bug came from, it seemed like there’s mixed species, which could explain the discrepancy). I had a sigh of relief after all the plates had been tossed and I’ve entered the raw data in an Excel file. No major mistakes. Not bad for a novice microbiologist. Half of my lab work is done. Another week needs to be appropriated for the rest of the 50+ bugs to complete my work.

Let me digress. This morning while browsing the Tribune (I say browse because I never really read the paper until the evening), an international piece headline caught my eye: Arroyo declares State of Emergency. Thinking it was meant for the Leyte disaster, I skipped it and by tonight, I was surprised to find out it was a preemptive move to thwart an alleged coup plot. I am in general not fond nor can I be eloquent enough to argue any political situations (and I hate debating about anything as well, reason why I never had the urge to follow my dad’s footsteps to be a lawyer), but this one’s got bad written all over it.
I’m uncertain why but two memories flashed back: (1) A statement to my sister prior to the presidential election of 1998: “I am definitely leaving if Erap wins”, which was a guise, since I’ve taken initial steps to eventually leave anyway but it sounded like a more climactic consequence for me and (2) I had called home unaware that EDSA II was literally on-going in Manila and my mom had said that both my siblings were in the rally.

Despite being uninvolved, perhaps I know enough of Philippine politics to ask -- if Arroyo gets ousted, who will be president? An Erap clone? Feeling not too uninvolved, I’m saying a little prayer for my home country: Please let this settle without any bloodshed.

Bench Work

It was 13 degrees below zero when I got out around 6:30am, and I wished I was on-call since this isn't a day I would want to leave the house anyway and a weather I wouldn't mind being on-call. But I wasn't.

Today I spent a little over two hours in the lab to streak out the bacteria that is part of my MIC (Minimum Inhibitory Concentration) study. Last Thursday, I had streaked out 68 distinct Clostridium difficile clinical isolates, which I now have to pass to new agar petri dishes for the susceptibility testing run planned for Tuesday.

What I'm doing is something that's not standard in most labs around (my mentor has one of the few NIH sponsored anaerobic labs in IL), and I'm testing 5 antibiotics that, to my knowledge had not been tested before. I had tried to explain the process to my friend Gerry sometime ago, and he exclaimed: "I don't even know what an anaerobic chamber is". Well, here's a picture. It's pretty much an enclosed space with mixed gases, so that the anaerobic bacteria like C. diff can grow.

The entire process I just learned several days ago, and this is the second time I was doing the some hands-on. I was rehersing the steps in my head:
(1) take the blood-agar plates out of the fridge and let it air-dry
(2) label all the plates
(3) retrieve the Thursday plates from the anaerobic chamber -- don't forget the settings so that the environment doesn't get altered
(4) Streak out the bugs from the old to the new plates
(5) Place the plates (new and old) into the chamber

I thought the process would only take me about an hour. I had overestimated my speed. I was perhaps being extremely careful, knowing what this bug can cause.

In the end, before leaving the lab, I whispered in the chamber: Please grow.

I then spent the rest of the day reading, then leaving a message for Angela, whose birthday is today (HBD Anj! See you soon!).

Finding Nemo

While digging through my picture files from my last visit to the Shedd Aquarium for the previous post I chanced on this shot. I had found Nemo! With his dad, Marlin. Wonder where Dory is? Seems like her relatives are just around the corner.

Underwater

The other night, I was underwater enjoying the coral reefs, swimming with a variety of fishes, a couple of sting rays and occasional white sharks. It was dark but with just enough light going through that gives everything around me enough lucency. It was magnificent, and calming. Oddly enough, I wasn't scared. I was laughing while chasing a frisky bright-colored marine life and then I realize -- wait! I'm breathing underwater, I can see clearly without goggles to protect my contacts -- this can't be real. That's when I woke up, armed with a vivid memory of a dream.

My overall mood had pervaded my subconscious, and although I take dream interpretations nonchalantly, the on-line analysis was not unexpected:

To dream that you are underwater, suggests that you are feeling overcome with emotions and are in need of greater control in your life. You may be in over your head regarding some situation.

To dream that you are breathing underwater represents a retreat back into the womb. You want to return to a state where you were dependent and free from responsibilities. Perhaps you are feeling helpless, unable to fulfill your own needs and caring for yourself. You may be submerged in your emotions.

Or alternatively:

• A dream in which you're swimming underwater may symbolize exploring or processing your emotions.
• Being underwater in the ocean may denote communing with your soul or the spirit world

I particularly liked the alternate, especially the last one. Afterall, that night I had the dream, I slept like a baby -- something that had eluded me for the past few weeks. If the spirit world exists, then I would gladly welcome the dream any night (perhaps this was the moment I've been wishing for to be with my mom one last time?).

Rest in peace, Mom. See you in the next life.