Farewell

I am moving my blog. Perhaps for now, perhaps permanently. If you actually read it, ask me on MSN for the new URL.

ASL and Locustling out.

First Signs of Stress

I am getting quite Stressed. Module M6 is killing me with the amount of extra reading I have to do.

I got put in Group A for the journal club, which means I have to present this Thursday.

@#$%!!

The paper isn't easy to read either. Basically, someone developed this photoactivatable Rac1, and the whole paper including supplementary information is 44 pages long.

Gah.

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I am using the headphones my sister got me for my birthday for the first time since I flew here. The sound is a lot better than I remember.

Then again, the cabin of a 747 in flight is not exactly the best place to form an initial impression of the quality of your headphones. Especially if you're drowsy with the effect of travel sickness pills and half frozen.

The sound is real good! I'm happy about it!

Oh man, the bass is good. Really good. Funny how I really didn't detect it on the plane.

Ok, I'll shut up now.

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Scholar's Admission Ceremony today. Many of the parents were there. Mine were halfway around the world. Oh well.

The cheese sticks and smoked salmon were good though. Too good. Sheesh.

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Should I delete once and for all? Perhaps I am being a little unfair.

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Room light suddenly flickered on and off while I was doing my notes (still on cytoskeleton...grr). I quickly saved and backed up the set of notes I was typing. I guess it's a problem with the light, but it seems to be fine now.

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Past Tense

I intended to wake up early to finish up my cell motility notes. Note the past tense.

I recall fragments of dreams in which, amongst other things, CB was annoyed with me for putting my TBST in the S37 fridge and tourists were trying to sneak into the Zoology building. When I woke up, it was 9.15 (I only woke up because the bedder slammed the kitchen door). I'd set the alarm for 9.30, but didn't intend to wake up that late! (The alarm was to get me up for lessons if all else failed)

Oh shit.

I'll just have to do it all up over the weekend at this rate. I've been telling myself not to start a backlog in my first week, but I am dangerously close to doing it.

Thursday is My Free Day?!

Supposedly. I have no lectures on Thursday, BUT...

I am taking so bloody long to make my notes about cell motility by leading edge protrusion. After spending the whole day in the lab (a large proportion of which was spent discussing how to handle frozen locust brains), my brain is fried and I'm finding it hard to swallow all the jargon in the papers.

Maybe I should just go to sleep, and tackle this mess tomorrow. I've got one hell of a busy day tomorrow though, and working in the morning might just dull my edge.

At least I don't have to be in the lab tomorrow.

Speaking of the lab, I need to get the key to S37 so I can stop asking people to unlock the door for me. I also need to be able to stop borrowing people's cards to let me into the Insect Hut. I am rather lazy to get the required paperwork for that though.


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Some people change for the better, but as Dad pointed out today, that isn't always true. Some people change so much I don't recognise them anymore. It's happened to more than one person I was extremely close to (and make that clear that I trust very few people enough to be close to them). I'm praying that will not happen to my brother when he enters secondary school

All this change, this constant state of flux, is disturbing. I seem to have an inbuilt homeostatic sensor that's detecting all these deviations from the norm and trying various negative feedback loops to counter the change. It isn't really working, and maybe I should stop fighting it and just go with the flow.

I still wish I could find Neverland, and live there happily ever after with my family. And perhaps my Antisocial Locust.

College Ripoff

I've been eating in the college hall! (Clap hands please..this is a great undertaking). I've only stepped foot in it twice in my first year.

3.49 for lunch, which is a lot! Yesterday I had some sausages, this fish pie thing and vegetables. Today I had the vegetarian meal (I didn't know it was vegetarian till I paid for it). The food is a bit salty, but at least it's hot, and it's not bread.


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I'd almost forgotten what it was like to hold a locustling, to feel her tiny warm body resting on the palm of your hand (they are warm if you give them the heater), to stroke her head and have her look quizzically back at you. Pity the only time I get to do that nowadays is before I take their heads off for some experiment.

I miss my ASL. What I'd give to hold her one more time. I've made up my mind that I am not keeping any more locustlings this year, mainly because of the health risk and because it's so hard to say goodbye.

Maybe I should keep one as a lab pet. Call it Big Adult Locust or something so it'll be good if its name becomes self-fulfilling (which happened in the case of Little Nymph and Big Nymph). Problem is I am going home in December, and I don't want to leave any responsibility of mine in the care of others.

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It's over, or is it? As much as I don't like things to change, I am pretty sure that I cannot put up with this anymore.

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MYOSIN. Argh. I picked M6 over M7 because I thought cytoskeleton was a lesser evil than cell cycle regulation. This set of notes is just impossible to compile though.

Too Late

I was having great fun at home, when I noticed the date on the newspaper 'October 22'. Somehow, I realised my flight had been on October 14, and that my lectures had started 2 days ago. I had missed classes! Also, I wouldn't have noticed the date if not for the fire alarm going off (don't ask me why...the answer is in an earlier part of the dream I forgot).

I was absolutely horrified. Somehow the first thing I did was blog 'I missed the plane!'. Then I told my dad about it and showed him the dates on my booking slip.

'Write a note to your tutor and tell him you won't be able to make it to class in 5 minutes,' he replied. I have no idea whether that was supposed to be a joke.

Somehow there was this mutual, unspoken understanding that I'd get on the next plane to Heathrow. I went to take a shower. When I was done, I found that Dad had packed all my luggage for me. Although I don't like people touching my things, I felt touched that he put in that effort.

I didn't know if British Airways would give me a seat on the next flight after I'd missed mine a week ago. Maybe I'd end up in the centre (I like window seats)...who knows? What horrified me most was that I'd miss even more lectures before I could make it to Cambridge.

Proscopia Nymphs

First experiment of the new academic year worked. Sort of. I had really bad background and I am suspicious of my blocking solution.

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I am listening to Elton John's 'Daniel'.

Daniel is travelling tonight on a plane
I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain...

I'm quite sure planes do not have red tail lights. Either that or the multiple episodes of Air Crash Investigation I've been watching have got their CGI reconstructions wrong. I do know there are lights mounted on the wingtips and the fuselage, but not the tail.

Point of interest...are the lights on the port and starboard wings the same colour? I always take window seats but I only ever sit on the left.

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The Proscopia in the lab are getting huge. It's possible to sex them now, although the females aren't very much bigger than the males. The females are taking on their mottled brown colour while the males remain little green twigs. CB was cleaning the Proscopia box today, and the dustbin was just full of their exuviae.

I can't tell the instar on the Proscopia. It's a lot easier to do with locusts by looking at their wing buds. I would think they were 3rd instars by now, given their size. Then again, I don't know how many instars there are for this species.

Apparently some locusts have an extra instar. I am amusing myself letting my imagination run wild with this scenario again:

5th instar nymph moults, all excited that at the end of his moult he'll be all grown up. He knows he'll never have to go through this messy, traumatic process of moulting again. He looks forward to spreading his fine wings. He puffs himself up, all eager to take to the air, then...

WTF? I'm still a nymph?!

Sorry, forgive the indulgence.

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JR showed me how the Proscopia get all clueless when you circle a finger around their heads. They reach out and try to grab it, and do this dizzy dance flailing their forelegs around their heads. Apparently this reaching response was convergently evolved with that in stick insects. Locusts don't do it. I don't know. I didn't try. Maybe I should.


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There are new toys in S37, including a Doraemon car and several wind-up beetles that JR brought back from Taiwan. I am amused.

I am less amused by how some things have virtually been untouched since I left, including my TBS-Tween, which was left to stagnate on the table for 2 months!


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I was talking to someone, N, on MSN last night. He didn't know ASL was dead. He kept on cheerfully referring to her in the present tense and suggesting it wasn't too late for me to teach her new tricks (other than give-a-Look-when-box-is-not-clean).

I told him it was too late, because the dear girl died last spring. He said he was sorry about that.

It's okay, I am over it. I couldn't reasonably expect him to know about her anyway.

I am over it. Really am.

Am I?

Anyway, even if she wasn't dead, I doubt you could teach an old locust new tricks. Certainly not an old, fat, Antisocial Locust anyway.