Work post

Finally ordered my primers for my experiment on Monday with Invitrogen… have a feeling that it’s gonna take forever for it to arrive here. Probably cause I have chosen cartridge purification against the usual desalting and hence will take additional 2-3 days for the purification. But I highly suspect that the primers will be taking a plane from the U.S all the way to Australia, and hence the slow delivery! What ever it is, my Champion expression kit from Invitrogen has arrived, but can’t do any lab work yet, because I’m still waiting for my primers… =( On a side note, went with Rick to meet this guy called Geoff Kornfeld, who has been dealing with yeast and gel shift assay for yeast as well. Apparently he used a heparin column to enrich his protein before using it for gel shift, and he uses high salt and radioactive materials as well… Well enrichment was an option that I was willing to think about initially in the past, as it would mean that there is a chance that some novel DNA-binding protein doesn’t bind to a heparin column and hence loses the opportunity to pick these up. But… since my gel shift isn’t working at all right now, I have not much choice but to try heparin column enrichment. Even so, I wouldn’t be doing any gel shift in the near future – as I will need to enroll myself in the radioactive safety course before I’m allow to handle radioactive work. Oh..I have been using fluorescence thus far, hoping to not get into radioactivity, but fate has it that I need to put both legs into it! Just couldn’t escape!

As usual, during the meeting, I didn’t really do much talking… till I’m needed to tell Geoff the things I had done etc… Hmm… what to do? I just aren’t the vocal type, especially so when it come to communicating verbal in English with these Caucasians. If you ask me to write an English assay etc, I can do it for you – no problem about it. But when it comes to speaking with them in English somehow I just lost the confidence. =( Not that I’m not able, just that I have low self-esteem in that area. I always think that they are going to have difficulty understanding me, and so I will only voice out anything if there is really a need to… and keep my opinion as short as possible… argh… and worst of all, I always think that if I attempt to talk longer or elaborate my opinion, they will be put off by it.. lol… haiz.. like I said, low self-esteem! Don’t think I can get far with this trait of mine… I think another trait of mine that wouldn’t get me far in life is that I tend to be forgetful, or rather; I tend not to want to remember details. My mentality is that we shouldn’t be tied down with details – it is good enough to know where to look for the details. And so, sometimes when Rick asked me e.g. so which organism did Kimberly used for her gel shift? I can only remember that it’s a methanogen, but can never remember the name. But I know where to find it – it’s in my email correspondence with her! LOL… see? I think people must have a bad impression of me whenever I do that! All these bad traits about me… how to go far?? I think I should thank the heavens if I graduate with a PhD, and be able to get a job!

Anyway, I made sorta blunder with a misconception of mine. Because Rick has been asking me to look into 2C regulatory system, and I just have this misconception that it is only involve in chemotaxis! Argh… I think that is because that during the days when I was doing annotation on the regulatory system, I come across chemotaxis annotations quite often and somehow it drilled into me that the system has to do with chemotaxis! Thus, I didn’t really look into the system when Rick asked me to, cos I was thinking that it has nothing to do transcription regulation! Boy, was I wrong! And luckily I clarified with him!