2 of 4 innoculums are growing

Campylobacter is exactly a sort of "difficult cultures". Not all of them are growing even innoculate on freshly-made and supplement-added agar plate. Seem I have to optimise their incubating condition such as temperature (37˚C -> 42˚C) and atmosphere (CO2 7.5% -> 10% or even 20%). You fastidious bugs...!!

Grow grow grow grow grow....

...not growing. It's very "clean" on the CSA (Campylobacter Selection Agar) plates. Not even a tiny colony. :( 2 days after incubation...

Growing...or not?

Those charcoal agar plates seem to be growing when I looked at them this morning, but somehow not all of them are growing. I cultured 4 strains of Campylobacter on both agar plates with/without supplement, and the result shows that the one with supplement seems to be more or less easier to survive. As the agar plates with supplement were made 1 year ago (which is quite old), I made another batch of charcoal agar plates with supplement, then subcultured those surviving colonies and also culture another 4 new Campylobacter beads on the new plates. Hopefully they'll grow better than last week...or will they?

My Campylobacter are not growing

...of course. They don't grow that fast....

Is this a joke ?!

Caught on camera but they got away - "A murderer and serial burglar escaped from Arohata Prison in Wellington despite being caught in the act by surveillance cameras – because guards did not know how to view the video". (on Waikato Times)

Campylobacter (and some others)

It seems like not many researches are done about Campylobacter due to its difficulty of culturization. Even if they do, there isn't too much information about the sensitivity of Campylobacter on honey. Since this is a multi-resistant bacteria, I think it is worth to try to examine its MIC thoroughly. Professor as well says that Campylobacter is in fact one of the most important entero-pathogens in NZ. Hence this may be my first material in near future. As a pre-test, I'm going to pick this difficult-culture up tomorrow. It'll be inoculated on CSM (Campylobacter Selective Media) which is in fact a kind of charcoal agar, and it is literally black (due to the charcoal). It looks yuck! Its stock cultures, unlike other normal bactria, should be stored in -70 ºC freezer. Its incubation also has to be carried out not in the normal incubator but in the CO2 one (also the gas condition may need some more modifications). It's somewhat troublesome. On the other hand, I found there are some "minor" bacteria classified into Enterobacteriacea family yet not be reported too often. For example, an opportunistic organism Kluyvera genus (Kluyvera ascorbata sp. and Kluyvera cryocrescens sp.) produce β-lactamase which also means they would resist to β-lactam antibiotics such as penicillins and cephalothins. Would it be worth to examine these kinds of minor bacteria as well? Maybe some more literature reviews are required.

Opera 8.50 released

According to Opera's press releases "Feel Free: Opera Eliminates Ad Banner and Licensing Fee", the add banner and license fee have been removed in this new version. Also some vulnerabilities have been fixed as well. I wonder why the company can achieve that. Could it be because they've got big profit on mobile browser's market?

Blizzard

A snow storm has hit South Island in NZ. Icy blanket swathes Canterbury (on NZ Herald) City of Gales rugs up (on NZ Herald) Snow moves north and shuts roads (on NZ Herald) Chill hits central NI (on Waikato Times) Waikato feels nature's lash (on Waikato Times) According to news, this week is fairly freezing. No wonder it was unexpectedly chilly yesterday although the blizzard is actually in South Island. (and the heavy shower makes the weather much more icy...!!)

H. influenza

Unlike what we've felt about influenza (say, hard to cure), this bacteria seems to be quite vulnerable - no bacteria was growing even if no honey was added into the agar ...

Another bacteria

Besides Clostridium difficile, we handled another microorganism today. Its name is ..... Haemophilus influenza. Did I say any respiratory diseases? :P

Election results

Labour 50 seats, National 49 seats. It's amazingly 50-50. That's definitely a neck and neck competition; and good on them, there's no protest or lawsuit after that. (Those from TW must know what I mean eh?)

NZ election

Today is NZ's voting day. Marivic and Andrew went to vote at a school near our house this morning. It looks like Marivic Charito and Alan support Labour party, and Andrew follows them (though actually he doesn't like both Labor and National party). Me? I say, "who cares!" :P

Ohoooo~~~ finally...

Finally my passport comes back today, and that also means my student permit is renewed as well. (more than 1 month...where have you been??) However, there is no label placed in my passport...? Somehow, NZIS leaves a note with the passport and it says: "Please note that NO student permit label has been placed in your passport. Your permit is recorded electronically and will have exactly the same conditions as your student visa label." ...I really can't understand NZIS eh... (-.-);;

Racism in NZ

Asians in NZ subjected to racism, study finds (on NZ Herald) Agree. Although many NZers I've met are normally friendly, but some others exactly have given me that sort of feeling...

Big mistake

Today Kerry and me both made a stupid mistake, and that made all of what we'd done today should be re-done tomorrow. When I was serial-diluting honey and Kerry was preparing bacteria, she shouted suddenly. We BOTH forgot to dilute the honey previously, hence its concentration was too high and it's impossible to get any result the next day if we kept doing today. Strictly speaking this should be my fault as I'm serial-diluting the honey and should have noticed something wrong before this had happened...Sorry Kerry... T_T

Rediculously large file

Last night I noticed that the loading time of Opera was oddly long. It kept accessing harddisk for a while, which is unusual. So I checked my harddisk and guess what... This is just weird !! Almost no more space in my harddisk ?! Searching any possible large files in the drive, I found the reason. It's in the folder of Folding@Home: Cracking me!! A text log over 20GB?! The Fahlog-Prev.txt had eaten up all space in my harddisk. Hmm...I wonder why. Normally a text file couldn't grow up to such a huge size. Furthermore, like UD, I've been using Folding@Home for awhile and this never happened before. Surfing on the forum, found that this rarely occured before (and not knowing why. could be some sort of bug). Luckly this huge thing can be deleted without causing any problems. What's in this text file? Who knows. It's nearly impossible to open it with GUI editor coz' of the size. I should be able to open it with command line such as type Fahlog-prev.txt | more or more < Fahlog-prev.txt ...it's been too late when these method came up to my mind as I'd already deleted it. Never mind. I'll try it next time I come accross with it again.

This really drives me nuts

Having acquired the so-called "offer of place from Uni" and faxed it to the Immigration and confirm with them if they'd received it, now they said IT'S NOT WHAT THEY WANTED !! Rather than that, they said they wanted "evidence of tuition payment" ?! The thing is getting crazy now! So now I get to apply another document at finance and FAX again ! I'm pretty sure I've also submitted the payment evidence along with my passport!! I really would blame at the Immigration - why didn't you SAY THAT CLEARLY in the email, you stupid NZIS !!!! ...and WHAT HAVE YOU DONE with my passport in this 1 month !!!!

So, what's this time?!

There was a phone call for me when I was still at school. Although the voice from the answering machine was so POOR that we hardly could tell who that call was made from. At last we got the idea - the IMMIGRATION, and they're asking me to call them back. Why the Immigration?? I had a bad feeling. I've handed my passport to the Immigration for about 1 month, and there's still no response from them. Does the phone call mean there're some problem with my application? How could it be!! It seems the Immigration also sent an email to me and ...ask me to submit "offer of place" something from Waikato University?! All documents are supposed to have been submitted, I think? ...Anyway, I'll apply another one copy at Uni and FAX them. PS: Somehow the email from the Immigration had been dumped into rubbish bin when I found it. Hehehe, apparantly my email box as well dislikes them... XD

Blood agar n pipette

As the cultures (Cl. difficile) show some strange result, we redo what we did yesterday. We also make some more sheep blood agar. Basically just adding a certain amount of sheep blood into autoclaved agar and pour into petri-dishes. What really surprised me is that all pipetmans were never released after used. After the work I tried to release them and found some of which seem to had been under the condition of reform fatigue for a long time. I might be wrong but as far as I know, all pipetemans must be released after using. I personally reckon any equipments require maintainance; no matter it's gadget, computer, or even laboratory things. After all, in this case, a pipetman to a reseacher is like a firearm to a soldier. I'm also wondering if the O-rings, seals and pistons have rusted or been damaged...

Autoclave

The autoclave here is automated. There is not handle or bar on it; instead, we press the buttons on LCD monitor. It's touchscreen. We can attach trolly (?) onto the autoclave so that materials can be sent into or pull out from the clave (imagine train on rail). The only thing I feel odd is the FLOPPY DRIVE attached on it. Even Kerry can't figure out why it is burried into the autoclave. It really doesn't make sense. ================================================ Today's culture: Clostridium difficile Today's agar: Sheep Blood Agar

Everything different

I have to say almost everything here is different from my ex-lab. I mean the facilities. 1. Lab There're 2 labs in Honey Research Unit (shortly "HRU"). Biological lab and chemical lab is separated. In biological lab there's another small room for manipulating non-NZ honey so that NZ and non-NZ honey wouldn't contaminate each other. 2. Cabinet Unlike my "laminar-flow-desk" in my ex-lab, this is the real biosafety cabinet. Clean air blows up from its surface so that no bacterial would flow out of the cabinet. As safety functions, its pane would fix on certain location that it prevents bacteria from leakage yet wouldn't be too difficult for operators to manipulate their microorganisms. As there is air flow, we can't use bunsen burner to sterilize our inoculating loop and needles. Instead, we use disposible ones. They are made of coloured plastic (blue for loop and orange for needle) and look like lollies more than experimental instruments! How cute!! 3. Storage Chemicals, agars, NZ honey and non-NZ honey are all stored in separated place. 4. Safety The biggest difference between my ex-lab and HRU. As we have seen in Cabinet and Storage, they have placed much attention on their safety. Lab coat, glove, gas handles, extinguishers and water hose, eye wash and body shower, etc etc etc. I used to sit at an old laminar-flow-desk located beside a noisy dry oven and containers of HPLC (or whatsoever) solvent waste in a small over-crowded room... 5. Documents Kerry has collected lots of useful documents and those were sorted in several folders, namely MSDS (Mechanicals Safety Data Sheet). I knew before that there're compatability issue between chemicals and gloves, but now I can find all these information in MSDS anytime. 6. Many other things There must be some more undiscovered things here. Now I wonder if my ex-lab can really be called a lab. ============================================== Anyway, I'll be practicing (and revising) some techniques in the following weeks. Today's task is serial dilution of manuka honey and bacteria culture. Here we use E. coli and S. aureus (not MRSA, by the way) as our "sacrice" and culture them on chocolate agar (they've got a sweet tooth eh?). The UMF of the manuka honey we use is 10+. The whole processes, including serial dilution, culturing and streaking, were not that difficult; except... (1) Picking (or alternatively, "fishing") the culture beads from small vials (2) Weighting the manuka honey - I never know that the "real" honey is so sticky that it's just like peanut jam!!

Portfolios ≠ real looks

Today I finally met Dr. Cursons - another supervisor of mine. I'd read his introductions and seen his portfolio before, but frankly speaking, I was amazed when I just met him. The feeling of his appearance looks so different from that of in the portfolio and I wonder if they were not the same person...

Something unusual after dinner

We met a guy who was quite mad this evening. It was when we finished our dinner and was going to walk our from Burger King. A guy opened the door with his two arms. Actually, somehow this guy also said hello to Andrew when we're enjoying our meal. I asked Andrew if they knew each other. Andrew said no (?!) I just say thank you to the young guy when he opened the door, but it seems he didn't hear that. Rather, he started banging the door violently. Now we realized what the matter was, and kept walking and tried not to bother what happened behind us It's drug...

The lab

Getting familiar with the new environment is, needless to say, my first task before I start everything. Yetsterday, I was handed two booklets about safety from Lisa - a staff in the department office - and was told to sign by next week to show that I've exactly read them. According to the booklets, I noticed that many rules - actually almost all - are rather different and also strict than what I've ever learned. After asking Kerry some questions on the booklets, she oriented me some facilities in our lab briefly. To ensure that I could familiar with the environment, she assigned a small game and let me identify some facilities by myself (namely "treasure hunting game"). Including the mini-game and some documents reading, I would have to return back them within 2 weeks. That shouldn't be any problem. To sum up what I've learnt from and told by prof. and Kerry so far: 1. Security is extremely essential. Unauthorized persons and visitors are not allowed to come into the department building. Watchout strangers. There used to be thieves and have stolen a couple of equipments from the building. 2. Lab should be locked as long as there's no authorized person in the lab. Similar to the point 1. There're 3 rooms in our lab, and even students are in one of the rooms, the other 2 rooms still should be locked. 3. Chemicals will be purchased by technician. This is different from my MSc era. We had to order from chemical company by ourselves. 4. Materials such as bacteria and honey will be sent to the lab, hence we don't have to carry them from hospitals or suppliers. Also these will be contacted to suppliers by technician. We had to do all of these by ourselves in TW before... 5. There's no so-called group meeting every week. Can't agree more. According to professor, as everyone is working on different topic, it is no sence to spend extra time to show each other's result and discuss on them. Since discussion can be done anytime anywhere privately, and also it's hard to find time for everyone to get together, why waste extra time on preparing slides or powerpoint and meeting? Frequent meeting is totally waste of time and efficiency. 6. Attending seminars or presentations is not necessary. Basically similar to point 5, but also traffic is a reason. Moving from one city to another would spend lots of time and money, yet the school wouldn't support the expense. Besides, car is not a good choice since petrolium is getting rediculously expensive. 7. Submitting our works to academic journals is encouraged but not compulsory. That is, it is not necessary to submit to journals in order to graduate (although the submitting itself is a chance of reviewing our works, which is not a bad idea). 8. It's possible that we would see each other only for once a long time. As everyone has got their things to do, some of them wouldn't come to the lab every day (many of them are part-time students). 9. As there has been too many visitors and tasks, prof. Molan would stay at home so that he may keep away from those visitors and concentrate on his tasks. However, don't feel hesitate to call him if I get problem with my research; that is, my research is prior to anything else. Too many visitors and phone calls...poor professor...

Orientation

Finally my course at the University of Waikato starts today. Where should I go and what should I do first? Nobody knows. -.-;; Unlike those Bachelor or Master course, there's no orientation for PhD course. I even didn't know where my lab was. I walked in the department building and looked around for awhile. Those staff in this building might have noticed there's a stranger mucking around, eh? Afterall, there're some noticeboard says - "AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY". Apparently unauthorized person, or visitors, are not allowed in this building. It's quite understandable since there're microbiology lab, isotope lab and that sort of things that security concern is extremely essential. Not knowing what to do, I went to the office of the department and asked for help. Fortunately, this was the way to go. There I filled some documents, got a key for my lab, led to the lap, met a technician (Kerry) and then received a security card. Came back to the lab, I was privided a desk. Frankly speaking, I was so impressed when I got my own desk - finally I have my own desk in the lab!! PS: I didn't have my own one during my Master course in TW. Instead, an old laminar flow cabinet was my "desk". I could turn on the fan when it getting hot, turn on the light when dark, and turn on the UV light if I get injured and need to sterilize the cut...(hey, of course the last one is a joke!!) I had a short introduction and chatting with Kerry and Haylie - a MSc student - and a Japanese girl Yuko who is merely staying in this lab temporary. But where's prof. Molan anyway? He's really a busy gentleman. He was having a meeting in the Waikato Hospital and didn't showup until afternoon. Prof just came back to our lab when I and Yuko came back from tea time. After that, we had a not-too-short talk in the lab. What really surprised (or I would say, amazed) me was that prof. Molan just pulled a chair and sit beside me rather than told me to move to his office!! This is absolutely unimaginable in my MSc (Master of Science) lab in TW!! Oh, professor, I really admire you and love you~~~!!