Incorrect Snapple fact!

The random fact on my Snapple cap today: "Honeybees are the only insects that make food for humans."

At first, I was amused by the wording of this..."make food" could also be interpreted as "serve as food" for humans. Chocolate-covered ants, anyone? Around the world, people also eat crickets, locusts, grasshoppers, etc. Thus, the random fact is incorrect in that interpretation.

If you want to be even more picky about the semantics, you could say that there are other insects that "make" food for humans. By that, I mean their larvae. Again, not exactly to American tastes, but there are plenty of cultures where grubs and such are an important source of protein.

Perhaps some of the TD-ers would agree =P

"Umbrella"

Bizarre moment this morning: washing my face in the bathroom and hearing a couple girls pass by singing Rihanna's Umbrella. It wasn't even raining out!

In other news, the alarm clock movement was a failure - my bed is set at normal height this year, so it was all too easy to get up, hit the snooze, then flop back into bed and doze off again -_- Maybe next time if I turn on the light the first time, that'll make my body think it's more morning...

Neither a night owl nor a morning glory

I don't know what happened this summer, but somehow my sleeping pattern has drastically rearranged itself from what I remember doing last year. I used to be able to push myself to stay awake until 3 AM to finish work if necessary (which it sometimes was, taking 6 credits -_-) yet get up at 8:30 to get breakfast before class or even at 7:30 to get to YNHH by 8 for volunteering. Obviously, I couldn't survive on 4 hours of sleep a night, but I was ok getting 6-7 hours/night, on average.

Now, I find myself yawning by midnight (if not earlier) yet I can barely get myself up by 9 to get dressed and rush to a 9:25 class. I've tried sleeping with the curtain open, but that doesn't work so well because my side of Silliman doesn't get much ambient light in the morning, even when it's sunny out. On the days that I don't have class, I wanted to get up and stretch or something, but unfortunately the dance studio has also been out of commission for a while (and may be again, after the heavy rain this weekend caused some basement flooding). I've also tried setting my alarm clock earlier than I need to get up, but it's at the head of my bed so it's entirely too easy to turn over and flop a hand out to hit the snooze button.

Solution attempt #1: Move my alarm clock to where I would actually have to get up to hit the snooze button or turn it off. I figure once I physically get up, I'll be awake enough to just keep moving and get ready for the day. If this doesn't work, I might have to try something more drastic like keeping a damp towel in my room to wash my face as soon as the alarm clock rings =P

What family is for

As I've grown up, I've come to redefine family as not just the people who are related to you by blood or marriage, but the people who will always care about and support you. Actually, I guess this is something that's always been part of my psyche, e.g. calling my parents' friends "Aunt" and "Uncle" (which is a very Asian thing to do anyway).

Semi-inspired by recent personal experience, a list of things that only "family" would do:
- give you an honest opinion about...anything, really
- initially try to keep a straight face, then laugh with you (not at you) when you make ridiculous statements or do silly things
- tuck a blanket around you when you're sleeping
- pick up the phone after midnight when you're calling for help or advice, even the most random questions
- stop at an intersection to roll down the window and wave
- provide a willing-to-listen ear or a solid shoulder
- organize birthday parties (surprise or otherwise)
- cook or bake for you
- worry about you so much that they can't sleep
- forgive anything you do wrong, no matter what

So as much as we may disagree sometimes, I'd just like to say that I'm constantly amazed by and grateful for all the love I've been fortunate enough to receive from the many members of my "family." Perhaps most important, thank you for showing me how to pass on that love. Spreading love and goodwill by helping others can only help the world as a whole.

Phew.

Moments that almost ended Movie Night prematurely:
1) Realizing this afternoon that there was no laptop-projector connection cable...good thing I'm a Sillilflicks coordinator, so I grabbed the cable from there.
2) The screen wasn't inflating properly...Jack was passing by and remembered there's a vent near the bottom that has to be zippered shut.
3) Realizing during set up that there was no power cord for the projector...Efan went to look for one in the computer cluster but thankfully we also found one in the sound cables box.
4) Trying to figure out how to turn the projector on...Val saw there was a switch AND a button (we had been trying just the button)!
5) The kettle corn cart was too wide to get through the College St. Gate, so we tried the Grove St. side...luckily the padlocks were undone, so we managed to open the other side of the gate extra-wide to bring the cart in (this also took some creative climbing on my part =P)

Conclusion: You can prepare as much as you want, but in the end it's up to God to provide all the things you hadn't taken into account. Thankfully, he's a loving one.

"Mass failure"

For the past couple weeks in nucleic acids lab, we've purified RNA from mouse brain slices, converted it to cDNA, then ran a PCR to amplify and isolate specific genes, with each student having a different gene. Today was supposed to be the moment of truth: run an agarose gel and visualize the DNA bands in UV light to see if everything else had worked properly.

My bench was the first group in the dark room...nothing. We had smears (contamination?) in a couple lanes and one very faint band near the top of the gel, but it was clearly too large to be what we were looking for. This seemed strange: you would think that maybe one person would have messed up, or a pair working together, but not all 4 (this is supposed to be an advanced bio lab, after all).

On to the next group...nothing. Group 3...nothing.
And so on and so forth, until all the groups had gone to the dark room and returned with disappointing photos of our gels.

The obvious conclusion: Something was wrong with everyone's procedure, so not a technique mess-up, but perhaps an incorrect buffer, using the wrong temperature during PCR, etc. Now the question is what went wrong, aka do we have to start all over again, and if not, where do we start again?

While we were all happy to get out of lab relatively early, we all still felt bad for Professor Nelson: "I've never had a mass failure like this before..." Just goes to show the "real" truth of science: Nothing ever goes quite as you expect it to =P

Schadenfreude...

Observation: People need to pay more attention to their surroundings.

Exhibit A: Boy (not looking where he's going) crashes into girl with full tray, spilling the water/juice she was carrying. A dining hall worker rushes over with a mop to wipe up the mess.

Exhibit B: Just after the floor has been cleaned, the dining hall manager walks over, looking off to the side, then slips on the wet floor, falls, and slides into the "Caution: Wet Floor!" sign, breaking it at the hinges.

I rest my case.

9/18/08 update: I overheard a conversation this morning in which someone was furious with her spouse for crashing his Jaguar into the rear end of someone else's car. What was he doing, you may ask? Surprisingly, not talking on a cell phone, or even fiddling with the radio...he was counting his money. No need for further exhibits, people - I'd rather that you not get hurt!