Ang tao

When asked what I will miss most about the Philippines, I always know my answer. Ang tao (the people). My work experience over the last  8 weeks has been fantastic. I got to see what rice actually looks like before you eat it and familiarize myself with a few genes. I have enjoyed every second …

Mayroon po ba kayong wifi?

Finally, I have learned the most important sentence. Do you have wifi? Actually, I spent most of the weekend completely unplugged. This weekend, 4 interns from IRRI took a trip to El Nido, Palawan. It's so beautiful there. I got to go swimming and snorkeling amd take some awesome pictures. (Coming soon). I also met …

Western blot

I started working on my first Western blot last Monday and started a new set of samples this week. It is probably the most difficult thing I've had to implement in my research. It's just so easy to do one thing wrong and mess the entire thing up. Today, I left my lab after 7 …

So much to see in Laguna

Saturday was a bit of a wild goose chase for adventure. Dr, Suchit drove Ojaswee and I around all over the place looking for activities. We didn't really do much, but it was all in nice company. Today, I went with Ojaswee, Sampurna, and Joan to Bukal Falls in Majayjay. The hike wasn't the easiest …

Trabaho at Fiesta!

I'm not sure how grammatically correct this title is, but I promise I'm learning a lot of Tagalog. It's work hard, play hard here in C4. Since starting my internship, I have gone to videoke 3 times, all with my fantastic labmates. Tonight, we threw a party at Ate Nane's house. I got to meet …

Pancit, balut, and gossip

Today, Ate Jane hosted a small C4 get-together at her house. We ate homemade pancit and enjoyed time together as the OJTs prepare to go home. She had her husband bring some balut from town, which Ina insisted was "masarap." Well, I disagree. This famous Filipino street food is a chicken egg boiled with a …

The Greenhouse

Well, I had made it this fall without going to the greenhouse, but I guess I couldn't avoid it any longer. I joined a group of my labmates today to sample plants for PCR and Western blot. I thought it was hot here in general, but it's nothing compared to a greenhouse. We were there …

Vortex, centrifuge, and cuvettes; oh my!

I am continuing my work on Hsiang's thesis using UV-Vis to detect sugars in transgenic plants. Unfortunately, the many hours of work I did last week were for not because we can't actually identify the samples I ran. I can tell you the sugar concentrations accurate to the micromole, but I have no idea which …

Fourth of July

It's Independence Day back home, but here in the Philippines it's Filipino-American Friendship Day. And I got to celebrate by running UV-Vis and eating in the cafeteria. This obviously beats barbecues and fireworks. I also had a Brit take over the machine that I was using. Today. On this day that my country declared independence …

Meryenda marami

This morning, Ate Jane brought in some homemade snacks (no pictures because we ate them all so quickly). It was delicious (masarap!). She told me that she and her mother woken upm at 3 am to start cooking! I could never. My favorite was the lumpia, but she also made sticky rice rolls and floating …