Thursday, January 26, 2006

Deja Vu

Once upon a time I went to the Southampton Oceanography Centre as I thought maybe I would like to be a Marine Biologist. I was told that it would involve lots of travelling by boat (I get terribly sea-sick) and I spent a day counting small bizarre creatures and seeing whether I could break the counter. I decided that this life was not for me. Luckily the bloke there suggested that I could do Pharmacology, and, so they say, here I am.

However, I seem to have gone back to the start. I have started having to count stuff, AGAIN. Now I hate microscopes and I don't like spending lots of time counting things. My current job seems to entail me having to do this a lot. I am not amused.
If you had to count the number of cells that looked like the top picture, and compare them to cells that looked like the bottom picture, over approximately 200 cells, with a few blank spaces in between where there is nothing, you would probably also feel like screaming gently. However, if I manage to cope with the madness, I do get a nice graph at the end. So I can kind of say yay. And hope I don't have to do it too much. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, we grow cells that have been donated from various creatures. These we then manipulate so that they will glow green (or possibly any other colour you may desire) with our protein of interest (I hope). This makes us able to cure cancer (ha ha).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Life can be a bitch. I drill holes in things currently. Not often in the right place. I've spent 2-3 hours this afternoon waiting for other people to make their minds up what we're doing, I have no idea what time I'll get home tonight... But at least my hangover-like headache (I didn't drink so I'm confused) went away with paracetemol and hasn't properly come back yet! Yay for small things.

Tone, glowing kinda red cos the aircon's screwed again...