Day 19: Solo Gel Pipetting (So Science-y I can hardly hold in my excitement!)

I have officially given in. I could no longer resist. The urge was too great and my self control too low. So Thursday, the tenth of March two thousand and eleven, the third Thursday I have experienced in Sydney: I had Starbucks. In case you're wondering Sydney Starbucks is (surprise surprise) more expensive than Starbucks in the states. But, the craziest thing - they don't have iced coffee. Yes, I repeat, there is no such thing as an iced coffee. When I ordered a grande hazelnut iced coffee the barista looked at me as though I'd gone insane. He asked me if I meant a hazelnut coffee, and I said, 'no, a hazelnut iced coffee' to which he replied only by gesturing to the hot coffee pots and giving me a confused look. I then looked on the board and found an iced latte option (i guess that's the way to get your iced coffee) and ordered a hazelnut iced latte. Also, after getting my drink I went to grab one of the coffee sleeves. Yes, I understand that they're supposed to be used for hot drinks so you don't burn your hands, but I have also found they do wonders for not freezing your hand off with cold beverages. Second weird thing about Sydney starbucks: the sleeves DON'T FIT the cold drink cups. Ridiculous. I know that they're not what they're primarily used for, but I was so sad when I went to slip it on and it didn't fit (awkward that's what she said joke inserted here? nOOO thank you, this is a family blog people!) Anyway, after getting over my shock and sadness I walked the rest of the way to the museum. Luckily, I arrived to a very pleasant surprise. It was to be another day of working in the lab doing PCRs and Gels (ie. more pipeting and working with cool lab equiptment for Sarah) - WOOT! This time we ran two PCRs simultaneously and worked with a few different primers to try and produce the best barcoding result. After the PCRs are done we run a gel to check and see that we actually got dna material from the samples. This time, Andrew let me do pipeting onto the gel which is actually really difficult. Basically you pipet the sample into a really small well that has been created on the gel. It's difficult to get the sample into the well and even more difficult to stick the pipet in far enough, but not so far as to get it stuck. After a few kind of failed attempts I got into a groove and sailed through the rest of the samples. The result of the gel? We got useful DNA material!! YAY! Operation PCR: Success :) After the PCR and gel I organized old samples in the office and did a little more photo editing work. I wasn't going to come into the office on Friday so I tried to get everything as complete as possible for when I next come in. Thursday night and guess what?! More thinking about laundry but not doing it, more surfing the web, and more relaxing. I made some delicious egg, red pepper, and soy sauce rice dish that perfectly hit the spot, watched a TV movie with my flatmate (bonding time! hahaa) and called it a night.