God knows you’re lonely souls

 

“Lonely Soul” by UNKLE is kind of my theme tune at the moment. I keep listening to it while I’m here.

[The fact that the album it’s from is “Psyence Fiction” is also an epically cool coincidence.]

Tune.

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Three Days… Slightly rushed

Apologies for the lack of detail and general rush. I haven’t had time to blog in the past few days really, and I need to be at the lab for 7.45am tomorrow and so I can’t realistically write a lot tonight either.

Monday 25th July 2011:

Monday was pretty rough. I woke up, went onto campus bright and early (we had been told to arrive for 9am to start practical work) and then received an email from Soeda-san re: my mosquito bites. I was getting so concerned about them. She told me she would try to get me an appointment for the dermatologist, and so to come to the OIP office in the morning. I spoke to Kubota-sensee and then headed down straight away. When I arrived, she told me that the dermatologist didn’t open until 10.30 so I had to come back later. No biggie. I went back to the lab.

However, Davis didn’t arrive until 10.30, which made it completely pointless me coming in on time. When I asked him about it, he just said “I think it’s not necessary”. So yeah, there was my morning wasted. Unless you haven’t picked up on the vibe already… we fell out on Monday a bit.

At 11am, he decided it was time for lunch. I wasn’t hungry, but he kept pushing it so we had to go to the canteen. While there, he pretty much insulted my intelligence continuously explaining how I just “didn’t understand” and how it is much harder and more worthwhile being a Chinese student in a Chinese university. So I got a bit pissed off. We then left, and he continued insulting my intelligence and started insulting my appearance to a degree. Great start to the day.

We then had a Japanese class. It was the first of the intermediary classes, and I found it much to advanced for me. The class itself was taught in Japanese and so I couldn’t understand some of the instructions, which made me feel very lost and useless. After the session, I kind of decided not to go back because the level was completely inappropriate for me. The teacher was very nice, and I’m sure she was a great teacher… I just really wasn’t at that standard yet.

After Japanese, we went back to the lab. I hung around reading for around an hour, and then had my appointment with the dermatologist. I walked to Science Building 1 to meet Soeda-san, and she walked me to the appointment. The service was very quick and efficient, and the whole appointment was over very fast: I returned to campus within the hour. While at the doctor’s, I was told that it was just mosquito bites (as I already knew, but I guess it was reassuring to be told I didn’t have some kind of horrific skin disease, after what Davis has been trying to tell me for the past week and a half) and was prescribed some strong steroid cream. I was a bit skeptical, as the stuff Rachel had lent me hadn’t done much to help. The appointment was really expensive actually, and with the prescription came to around £50. Soeda-san paid for my appointment up front as they didn’t accept cards and I didn’t have enough cash… On the condition that I paid her back later. She is a very kind lady, and I’m really glad that she is organising the program.

When I got back, I had some practical practice. We were in the labs until around 6pm working. After labs, Davis started walking to the train station with me, and despite being rude all day, asked me ‘why I was sad’. I explained that it was James’ funeral happening right that moment, and so I got a little upset. He then told me to stop being sad because it was pathetic. I got really angry at him because I felt that was completely inappropriate, and told him to go ahead without me because he’d upset me. I don’t know whether it was a language barrier thing, or whether he is just inconsiderate and as rude as hell, but I wasn’t standing for it anymore.

I was pretty fuming at this point, and on the verge of tears again. I walked to the Akamon to meet up with Kyle, who’d said that he would take me for a drink because I didn’t want to be on my own during James’ funeral. We took the train from Hongo-Sanchome back to Suitengumae and then headed through the Suitengu area to try to find somewhere to have a drink. We were both starving, and so stopped off at a Japanese restaurant. The food was really good actually, and the service was fast. It was (I guess) the equivalant of Pizza Hut in the UK. It looked like a chain, but was pretty good value for money. I had kebab sticks with fish and vegetables that had been deepfried, Edamame beans, and a Highball. I said a toast to James while there.

After the meal, we headed to the park. We sat in the park for about 2 hours drinking whiskey (It’s apparantly legal to drink in public in Japan, and pretty common, so don’t worry!) and juice, and talking. I got really upset again about missing the funeral, and talked about James a lot to Kyle. I felt a bit bad actually because it was just us so I was probably really crappy company, and I really appreciate him coming out with me for a bit to take my mind off it. At about 10 I went back to my room because the mosquitoes were biting me again.

In all, it’d been a really shitty day Really really rubbish. I’m glad it is over. But most of all, I’m just glad I didn’t have to be on my own during the funeral.

Tuesday 26th July:

Tuesday was marginally better than Monday.

I accidentally missed the morning lecture because I fell asleep again after my alarm and woke up 20 minutes late. By that point, I could have just shoved on some clothes and run to the station, but I still would have been late and then would have spent the whole day feeling rough and exhausted. It’s too hot in Tokyo to rush. I had also been to all the other lectures (except for the one Soeda-san wouldn’t let me go to) and I knew that a lot of people had missed a lot of lectures, so I didn’t stress too much.

I got dressed and headed into campus in time for the end of the lecture. I then met up with the UTRIP folk when they came out of it (it turned out only around 6 people made the lecture).  They told me that the lecturer kept heaving and was nearly sick a few times in the lecture. It sounded terrible! I hope he was okay!

We went to lunch together in 2nd Refectory and afterwards I went to Soeda-san’s office to pay her back the money for the appointment. She was still on her lunch break though so I gave up and went back to Kuroda lab. When I got back, we started our practical work for the day. It was much better than before as they had set up a separate clean bench for me and so we didn’t have to keep swapping back and forth. It was also set up for a left-hander, so I was really happy!

The practical work was a little more complicated, and took quite a long time from start to finish. We began the serum starvation process for our experiments, which involved aspirating all medium from our cell culture plates, washing repeatedly with serum-free media, and then returning to the incubator. We had to do around 26 plates each. It became much easier with practice, and although the first few plates were slow, we got into the rhythm of it, and time flew by. Because of this, I missed the fireworks that some people were planning on going to as we finished around 6.30. Instead, I met up with some people outside Science Building 1 and we went to a Ramen restaurant that Sungi liked.

The restaurant was in Ueno. It was kind of strange… instead of ordering conventionally, you paid your money into a vending machine type thing, pressed a button, and it gave you a token. Then, when seats became available in the restaurant, you handed the ticket to a waiter, and they processed the order and sent you the food.

I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu. My logic was… if it is cheap, it probably doesn’t contain meat. It’d worked well so far. However, what I ordered turned out to have pork or beef in it – It’s been so long since I’ve eaten meat that I really couldn’t tell from sight alone. But… I’d paid 850 yen for it, didn’t have time to cook dinner when I got in, or the money to buy something else, and so just ate the noodles anyway, eating around the meat. I guess I accidentally lost my beef/pork virginity again in that sense! I didn’t eat the meat, but the noodles still tasted of it. Blegh.  Not a fan.

The ramen was very salty, and I didn’t like it very much at all. As a rule, I’ve enjoyed Japanese food a lot, but that was just not good. Yucky yuck.

After the meal, I walked to the train station, while the rest of the guys walked home. I would have walked but I’m so paranoid about mosquitoes now and was wearing shorts and a strappy top.

I got home at around 9pm, had a shower, and went on facebook for a bit, and read my emails. I had a few messages from people from Book Group who went to the funeral the day before, and they had all told me similar things: It was a beautiful service, and James would have loved it, and been so proud of his family and friends’ bravery. Later, I went to bed.

Davis didn’t speak to me all day. I am annoyed that he didn’t bother apologising to me after he knew that he made me feel so rubbish, but I tried to behave like an adult and not let it get to me. I just hoped that he would remain civil.

Wednesday 27th July 2011:

I had to be in the lab for 9am today to start the practicals. I got up early, and went straight to the station. I arrived with around 15 miutes to spare, but we decided to start work a little early. We went to the cell culture room, and began the process. Today’s work involved stimulation of the cell cultures prepared yesterday, using EGF of various concentrations and incubation periods. We first tried stimulating the cells for 1 minute at a time: We pipetted the growth factor into the plates, swirled the media to ensure that it was well mixed, and then aspirated all media, before fixing using our lysis buffer that we prepared yesterday evening.

We then repeated the process but increased the time to 2 minutes. Because of the extended time period, we were able to return the plates to the incubator inbetween the treatments.

Once we felt comfortable with the process, we began to get a little more complicated. We then had to try stimulating the cells for longer time periods. Because some of the cells required 1 hour stimulation, and others required as little as 10 minutes, we organised the stimulations so that they overlapped and finished at a similar time, but so that we didn’t need to actively deal with more than one plate at once. It was a little confusing, but once I got into the rhythm of it, I experienced no problems.

It was really interesting: As soon as the cells were lysed with our buffer, the mixture became instantly sticky and gooey. Kubota-sensee explained that this was due to the the DNA being released.

We placed all the treated cells in the refrigerator, and finished up just in time for lunch.

Davis had the intermediary Japanese class, but I didn’t go as the previous one was so advanced. Instead, Kubota-sensee invited me out to lunch, and so we went along with Uda-san and Toyoshima-san. We went to a Japanese restaurant nearby, and I had the dish of the day which was a Japanese fish meal cooked in soy sauce, served with rice, miso soup and a sidedish that had tofu, vegetables, and a thick sauce. The food was really good! The restaurant was playing the weirdest music in the background though… It was a Disney theme tune CD (“Under the Sea”, “Winnie the Pooh”, “A Whole New World” etc) … played on the Xylophone. Perhaps the most surreal soundtrack to my life – ever.

After lunch, I went back to the lab, bought a coffee from the machine, and started reading for the afternoon’s practical.

When Davis arrived from his Japanese class, he needed to take a 20 minute break (it’s starting to annoy me a little that I can’t work until he’s ready), but then we started the afternoon practical. Urakubo-san was showing us how to prepare and pour a gel for SDS-PAGE, so that we could later do a Western blot. I hadn’t done this before and really enjoyed learning the process. It was a lot of fun actually, because at Uni the technicians always do this bit for us to save time. We had to mix up the solution, prepare the glass, clamp it, and pour in the mixture. Once it had set, we washed the gel, and preserved it in distilled water and saran wrap for tomorrow.

By this point, it was around 6pm. I went back to my desk, packed up, and then headed to Soeda-san’s office to pay her the money back for the appointment. This time she was available, and so I gave her 5000 yen, and had a bit of a chat. I spoke to her about the master’s program here, because I’ve started to consider it again. I’m really enjoying my time here, and although I can’t wait to see my family and friends again, and Matt especially, I am sad that I am half way through my program, and feel nowhere near ready to leave yet! However, if I came here I’d really need to work on my Japanese!

On that note, Soeda-san has been trying to arrange one-on-one lessons for me with a Japanese teacher because the intermediary class is too hard, but I have so little free time at the moment with the practicals. I’m not sure if it’s going to be possible!

After that, I went to Starbucks on campus and bought myself a Matcha Frappuccino, and a cinnamon roll. Piggy. I sat in the cafe and watched it get dark. Then I headed to Hongo-Sanchome to take the train home. On the way back, I had a bit of a piggish moment and bought myself some French Fries from McDonald’s. They were pretty rank actually, especially after unnecessary Starbucks. I’m definitely more of a fan of Japanese food than Western food at the moment… especially fast food. Blergh. Giving up on the junk food now. And not having dinner after that. Too full.

When I got back to my room, I went next door to give Rachel her mosquito bite cream back, and then started blogging and working on my presentation.

Oh yeah… Davis decided he wanted to give a presentation on himself, and so now I need to do one too. I don’t have a clue what to say really, because I have only done two years at University and so don’t have a speciality yet, and nothing to really speak about! Regardless, I’m going to try my best, and hopefully it’ll be interesting. I’m not sure if I need to make slides or anything.

I spoke to Davis a few times today, and so hopefully we will be able to be civil, but he still hasn’t apologised for his comments on Monday and so I’m finding it a bit difficult to treat him like a friend. However, I can treat him like a colleague and so I shall.

And… I think that’s everything now!

It is Sungi’s leaving party tonight but I won’t be able to go. I have too much to do and can’t stay up late, so I feel a little guilty.

Time for a bath and bed. I need to be on campus so early tomorrow and so an early night won’t go amiss.

 

 

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