Cora vs Security

Yeah i know, it’s been a while. I am so busy,guys, you can’t imagine.. So of course there’s the lab but that ends at 19:00 and then more stuff happens! I’ve met some really nice ppl from all over the world and we hang out and chill (we can’t go out, for certain reasons...). Since i have this awesome kitchen I have many ppl over for dinner and it’s really nice and my dorm has this AMAZING massage chair so we take turns on that. Sadly, the other day, i spent so much time on it that i actually felt Worse than before...so be careful with massage chairs! They can be evil. (but u have to Seriously exagerate, like me, we watched the openinc ceremony of london 2012 and i was on it for most of the time....but yeah, be jealous, i have a massage chair.

This weekend we went to cape cod. Sadly the weather was really grey. But we had a nice barbecue and played frisbee and soccer (thought that depressed me as i was the only girl and only got to touch the ball when it accidentally rolled in front of my feet... so depressing.) and we swam in the ocean (actually only a belgian guy and me, the others were pussys.) It was not very clean but surprisingly warm and i found a crab’s leg and i studied it intensely and all the other people thought i was very funny because i examined the joints of the leg and stuff. (they were really fascinating joints, believe me!) So that was cape cod. I’m also becoming a fan of frozen joghurt. They have that everywhere, it’s called pinkberry or berryline (why berry? Why pink? It’s joghurt. But anyway) and it’s really nice. Oh and i discovered Reeses. They are chocolate cups filled with peanut butter. Food orgasm. (many of you will know how i pronounce it: foooooooood orgasm.)

Then there’s something really scary going on. One night, i was sleeping. Then i heard the keys in the door to the appartment. Then i heard steps. And then the person left again. I was freaked out. The next night, I was having a shower. And again, i heard the keys. This time i shouted „who is this?“ and the person replied: „security. But don’t worry, i won’t come in.“ Haha great sense of humour. No but like: WTH???? I am sure this is against the law. I complained with the porter twice but he is super weird (typical MIT person i think) and he doesnt want to give me the nr of the house manager so I’m calling the MIT housing office tomorrow. Because this is NOT cool. U can’t come into people’s appartments at 12:30 when they are sleeping. Or having showers. it doesnt matter what they are doing, actually. I mean, what if i liked walking around there naked? No, it’s not cool. It needs to stop. 

More things?

Hate cinemas here. Sth like 45mins of trailers. Not ok. (was watching the new batman movie. Quite ok i guess. Closed my eyes sometimes, the normal stuff.)

Went to the museum of fine arts. Felt like in a furniture store. I’m serious. What is all that furniture doing there? Architecture oft he museum itself quite nice though.

Went shopping. Was amazing. Will definitely go more times. I have lip smackers in 8 different flavors now. Cool right? 

My nails are now pink. I know you care.

Cora vs Primers

Today I want to talk about what i do in the lab. This will probably not be as funny as some of the other posts but might interest some of my fellow nerds out there ;) (Can’t tell you details though, it’s a secret ;) ) Non-nerds: don’t read this. You will not find it interesting. (I bet you will still read it because I’ve just made you curious. Yeah,I know, great trick.)

So I start around 9 am. And end at 7pm. Sometimes also earlier, like, 18:55. I know, it’s long, but it’s great fun!!! (told you, if you’re not a nerd like me you won’t understand) So what do we do? a lot of different things! First, there’s cell culture. Our cells (=our babies. We treat them with great care) grow on plates and we give them food and we need to change that from time to time. Also, we freeze cells sometimes when we want to put them in „stand-by“. Freezing might sound cruel but trust me, we are very nice to our cells. So that’s that. Today, for example, I changed medium and froze a 24-well plate (= a plate with 24 „homes for cells“) and that took me ages but it was cool because I got to use a multi-channel and it was awesome.

Then there’s other stuff. Like PCR. My boss lets me do my own PCR without supervising me. (my boss is awesome) actually, he has now stopped completely. He just tells me what to do and I (try to) do it and if i have a question i go and ask him... like: "booohooossss... where is this ? where is that? it must be annoying... I am quite nervous about the whole thing coz I don’t want to screw it up but so far everything had been ok so that’s cool. (I’m actually running a PCR at the moment, it will be done in 10min) The other day i designed my own primers and ordered them and the next day, they were on MY desk with My name on it and I was kinda proud J (see picture) After the PCR we do Gel electrophoresis and I get to do that by myself aswell. I also handle the etBr... scary stuff. I change gloves ALL the time because i’m so scared of it...And then I also cut the bands we need (using dangerous UV... again: scary) and we extract the DNA and it’s good fun. When we have a good PCR product we ligate it into vectors and we transform bacteria with it (that’s also running at the moment, will be done in 30min) and that’s good fun aswell. Growing bacteria is cool because you can spread them on the plate using a spreading device that you make yourself by melting and bending glass tubes. I usually fail a bit. So i just call it abstract art. So, as you can see, i’m doing many cool things and if you regret having read all of this i’m sorry to have wasted your time (Actually i’m not.) By the way we also do breaks. There’s a lunch break of like 45min (around 1pm) and a coffee break (Around 16:30) of like 30min. I already told you about the amazing coffee machine we have but i just want to emphasize the amazingness again: it’s one of these italian-style machines. And it makes amazing milk froth. And i love milk froth. Aaaaaahhhh yesssssssss!!!! So yeah, life’s good at the lab!

Cora vs Suspicious Mail

Monday. 9 July

My first official day at the lab!! I went running along the charles river in the morning and it just produced a massive smile on my face. I’ll try to explain.... music in my ears... endorphins in my blood... a fantastic view on the Boston skyline...sun...it was pure happiness. (and a lot of sweat as it gets really hot really early in the morning!!) When I was done running i just stayed there, at the river, gazing at the skyline, trying to realize what was happening. I was there. In Cambridge MA, running along the Charles River with inspiring music in my ears. Life was good.

So feeling very very good I walked over to the Whitehead. (i had a shower before that, don’t worry) it’s something like 15min away. It was time for orientation. Very boring and filled with mostly boring people. There was this one german dude for example, he came, sat down, opened his book and started to read with an arrogant look on his face. When I tried to talk to him he was like „Oh, yeah, after my degree at Cambridge...“ and I was like „you don’t need to be so full of yourself, i’m there, too“ (well i didn’t exactly say that but i should have) So they told us about the Institute and IT stuff and most importantly about safety. They are quite obessed with it. Even though I have done so many things in labs i still had to attend a BL2 training (Biosafety level 2, the max is 4 but I think they don’t even have 3) and then they told us about suspicious mail which was very funny. There was like a picture of suspiciously-lookind mail and let me tell you guys, there are several features by which you can recognise it. First of all, it can be mailed from a foreign country. It can be sealed with tape. It can have too many stamps on it. It can be adressed to someone by title, rather than by name. It can have no sender.... yeah. Suspicious mail. Be careful. I posted a picture so you can familiarize yourself with the features of suspicious mail and make sure you never get a bomb or an Anthrax infection. Yeah. I might just have saved your life. Thanks cora.

Cora vs Electronics at the Table

Sunday. The goal of the day was to find plates, cutlery and a pan. Quite a challenge. It meant that we had to walk to  Sommerville. And that’s quite far away. And it was hot. And i did not like that walk. On the way we saw this really cool place where u can go and wash your clothes, you know, the ones u see in the movies and I was very fascinated as I had never seen any of them but Luis wouldn’t let me look at it. He said peope here did not like that. I did not like that. After what felt like a lifetime we finally got to Target. As we are in the US, it is a very big store. I got some really cool plates and cutlery. Everything is very colorful, I love it. The main colors are pink (my favorite color, as you know) and yellow (my second favorite color. –by the way my nails are yellow at the moment. Yeah i know u don’t care.). I also got a bialetti pan (good italian brand, made me very happy) and some other utensils. It was great!!!! To get back, we took a bus (could have taken that to get there in the first place. One is always smarter the second time.) and then we went to get lunch at this organic place and it was again very big but this time also very good and I was very fascinated by some oft he products (for example blue and purple tortilla chips. Am SO gonna buy some this week. I mean: imagine it: Blue tortilla chips with red dip and maybe cheese (=yellow). How cool is that??? So that for being fascinated. Afterwards we had planned to just chill at the charles river (memorial drive is closed on sundays so it’s very nice and not noisy as usually) and we had planned to express some of our nerd genes and read some scientific books but then Luis’ boss (Charles, he’s the boss of Crimson Bikes, an enterprise that does bike rental for Harvard students) took us on a bike trip (coz they are planning this trip to rise awareness for biking.) to this freshwater pond. It was a very disappointing pond as 1) there was a fence around it and 2) you couldn’t swim in it. So Cora wasn’t happy. But cycling was definitely cool! And it’s flat here so it wasn’t exhausting at all ;) So then we came back and met up with Kurt who comes from the cottonfields ;) (if you read this Kurt, sorry about it ;) it was just too funny) and we walked to my place and I cooked dinner (Pasta with mushroom sauce) and we chilled and talked. Now what i still haven’t gotten used to here is people checking their fones. They do it all the time. And i mean All. The. Time. Emalils, texts, What’sapp... it’s endless. So when you’re trying to have a conversation or meal or both together, it can get very, and i mean VERY irritating. Or maybe it’s just me? I grew up in a culture where there were no electronics at the table except for the toaster. And so people would talk, or chew, or operate the toaster. Here, they talk, chew and operate electronics contemporaneously!!!! And it really is getting on my nerves. Yeah. I like to complain.

Then Kurt and Luis left because they were gonna pick up a fan somewhere and I was quite jealous of that. (I definitely need to buy one btw. My room is a sauna. I don’t like saunas.) And that was yet another fascinating day in the US.