Chromosomes

I hated Genetics with a passion. I tended to dislike any kind of biology that is too small for me to see with the naked eye (which rules out genetics, cell, molecular bio, etc.) Staring into microscopes all day make me dizzy. This class sucked twice as much because it was during the dreaded winter quarter at SPU...January through March is not a pleasant time to live in Seattle. Only one word can explain it: BLAH. To make matters even worse, the class was at 8am. Which means, I had to walk to class everyday in the dark, cold, and rainy Seattle winter mornings.

Right after I graduated the hard drive of my laptop melted. I lost everything - all my hard work from college. Tonight I was scouring my room looking for a flash drive and I found an old 256mb stick. To my surprise, it contained some of my work from SPU! This is a chromosome that I took a picture with with a ridiculously expensive microscope/machine:



Because I was all too eager to throw out all my notes after my Genetics class ended, I don't know where this chromosome is from or how I got it. All I vaguely remember is that those red bands on them mean something, and mine didn't turn out nearly as pretty as everyone elses. My chromosomes were all tangled up while the others were nice and straight.

One of my worst classes in college was my last quarter of my senior year (same as Genetics, lucky me!) - Chemical Equilibrium and Analysis. A class all about equations and measuring things. It was as fun as it sounds. I have no tolerance when it comes to labs in general, but especially Chemistry labs. I have no 'technique'. Every good chemistry/biology major knows his/her way around the lab and is very cautious and keeps a steady hand. Most of them, after all, will be surgeons some day. I, on the other hand, am completely sloppy and careless. No matter how hard I tried, I never did anything right. I always poured a little too much in the beaker, heated it a little too fast, or blew something up. I made a beaker full of hazardous materials explode one time....my super genius lab partner wasn't too thrilled about that.

This is one of my lab write-ups that I found on my memory stick. This is proof that, at one point, I knew what the word 'spectrophotometric' meant. Check out those formulas. And those numbers, rounded to the nearest thousandth of a milliliter. Wondering what #DIV/0! means? It means MALFUNCTION! OVERLOAD! CRITICAL ERROR! The equations themselves are mocking me.

Spectrophotometric Determination of an Equilibrium Constant

Mixture Volume (mL) A Total volume (mL) [Fe3+]I [SCN-] [Fe3+]I[SCN-] A([Fe3+]+[SCN-]) A/[Fe3+]I[SCN-] A([Fe3+]+[SCN-])/[Fe3+]I[SCN-]
1 1.00 0.119 101 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
2 2.00 0.216 102 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
3 3.00 0.292 103 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
4 4.00 0.355 104 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
5 5.00 0.408 105 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
6 6.00 0.453 106 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
7 7.00 0.488 107 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
8 8.00 0.518 108 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
9 9.00 0.543 109 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
10 10.00 0.564 110 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!

I look at things like this and think: WHY AM I GOING BACK TO SCHOOL!!!? I have to reassure myself that I never have to look at a chromosome again if I don't want to. Nor do I have to remember what element Fe stands for. IRON!! It's ingrained in me, I can't help it.

Addendum

So now that Michael Jackson is dead, I feel bad for writing that last post. How was I supposed to know that his heart had already stopped when he got to the hospital? Farrah Faucett, Michael Jackson, Billy Hayes...which celebrity is going to go down next?

One of my friends posted this on her facebook status update:

"Since this has happened, I have not seen any news about the brutal post-election violence in Iran, the intense bombings in Baghdad or the Taliban's resurgence in Afghanistan. Thank you Michael Jackson, for finally bringing peace to the Mideast."

It's what MJ would have wanted.

News

I was checking up on the news online at news.bbc.co.uk just a minute ago and these are the top 5 most popular stories of the moment:

MOST READ STORIES NOW

* Michael Jackson taken to hospital
* Screen star Fawcett dies aged 62
* Michael Jackson: Highs and lows
* 'Stoned wallabies make crop circles'
* Strip-search of US girl illegal

Seriously, people? Is this really all we care about? I don't claim to know much, but I'm sure there's a whole lot more going on in the world than crop-circle-creating wallabies and Michael Jackson.

A Malaysian experience in Yakima

I met my new best friends tonight. Ok so maybe they won't be my 'best' friends, but they're probably going to be my favorite people in Yakima this summer. A few weeks ago I heard about a group of Burmese refugees that recently moved to Yakima to work for the fruit season (or as one man put it, he works in an 'apple garden'). My church is sort of 'adopting' them. My parents have been spear-heading most of the efforts: bringing them to church (they are from the Karen and Chin tribes, which are Christian), taking them to Wal-Mart, etc., and I'm so happy to see how excited they are about helping them. Since I've been gone in Phoenix for the last 2 1/2 weeks, I just met them for the first time tonight. It just so happens that most of them had lived in Malaysia before being resettled, so we had a lot to chat about. I never thought I'd get the chance to practice my Malay in Yakima!! It was a joyous sight to see men in wraparound skirts, to take my shoes off at the front door and have a seat on the floor. One does not do such things in Yakima.

While in Malaysia I visited a lot of different Burmese refugee groups - those living (hiding) in the jungle, on plantations, and in urban areas. I never met a refugee I didn't like. They all have a story to tell - mostly heart-breaking ones, but you can tell in their eyes that the struggle has made them stronger. They speak of children they've left behind, the human-traffickers they had to give their whole life savings to just to bring them across the border, the danger of the journey from Burma to Malaysia (often by FOOT), and the dangers of living in Malaysia - a country which sadly refuses to acknowledge them as refugees. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, they are arrested and find themselves in detention camps, where they can be held indefinitely or be deported to the Thai border. Through an unjust agreement between the Malaysian and Thai immigration officers and Thai fishermen, the refugees are commonly sold to Thai fishing boats and forced to work at sea. When they decide they are done with them, the Thai fisherman throw the refugees overboard. Or perhaps you heard the story of the Thai navy forcing hundreds of refugees out to sea in boats without engines. They were found near the Andaman Islands, more than 2 weeks later.

But these guys are the lucky ones!! I haven't had the chance to hear their stories yet. But I'm sure that they are equally tragic and compelling, because even if they didn't get sold into slavery or stranded out in sea, the life of a refugee is full of grief, injustice and pain.

Refugees have three realistic options: repatriation, integration, and resettlement. Of course, most refugees would prefer return back to their homeland and back to their families they have left behind (repatriation). Integration isn't an option in a place like Malaysia where they have no rights, or Thailand where there are few jobs for them. I'm interested to know if they are happy with their resettlement and how they feel about America. So many questions I want to ask!!

Starting this weekend, I will begin ESL classes with them Saturday and Sunday evenings. I'm giddy with excitement!!

Long lost photos

So my camera decided to break down the week I left Penang. I left it there in the hopes of getting it fixed for cheaper than here, but it turns out that it won't be fixed at all. I'm still trying to decide what camera I want to get next, so in the mean time I am stuck without a camera and have had to resort to my crappy camera phone. I have pictures on my phone from forever ago, and I always forget to take them off - plus the quality is so crappy that I usually don't even bother taking pictures with my phone in the first place. Here are some random shots of my life in the past 2 years.

One time I was took a trip from my itty bitty town of Mbita, Kenya to Kisumu. I should have known never to take the ferry on a Wednesday, because that also happened to be market day, which means all the cattle sellers turned the passenger/car ferry into a cow ferry.


Kenya is not known for its turkeys - they're unheard of, actually. So when we found these baby turkeys in town, we had to buy them and fatten them up for Thanksgiving. We had to hold them on our laps on the drive home.



Running is one of my favorite things to do in Africa. On the dusty roads winding from fishing village to fishing village, it's like an obstacle course of goats, cows, goat and cow poo, potholes, and trucks. Every morning about 20 children on their way to school would jog with me, at least as far as their skinny little legs would allow....only two of them usually made it all the way with me. Sometimes I would stop and wait for the little ones to catch up. Even the women balancing laundry, dishes, and fish on their heads would run with me. Have you ever heard of lake flies? Let me just tell you that you don't want to run straight into a swarm of them like I did. There was never a dull moment.




I tagged along with some friends of mine to Kibera, the largest slum in Africa. I didn't feel like doing poverty tourism that day, so I ditched the gigantic camera in favor of the much more discreet cell phone.



People love these pictures, as you can tell.

He speaks!

Today I heard the president of the United States speak for the very first time. I know, I know. I must be living under a rock. How could I never have heard the voice of my president and the most powerful man in the world, after a tedious year of campaigning and 4 months in office?

I've read about his eloquence and his powerfully delivered speeches, and his presence and cool demeanor. I READ about them. And I did read almost all his speeches, too. The presidential debates, the inauguration speech...I tried to keep up with American politics last year, even though I don't understand it.

But all I had was the internet. My news media of choice is bbc.com. It was on this website that I read his beautifully written words and his well delivered (so it was suggested) speeches.

Since I've been home I have been avoiding the television. My parents just got a super huge flat screen HD TV for the family room and I barely can even figure out how to turn it on. The only thing I've watched is one (ok maybe two) episodes of Oprah.

I turned on the TV today and there he was, in all his High Definition presidential glory. President Obama speaking about credit card interest rates. He made it sound fascinating. I couldn't stop looking at him. Even thought I don't care about credit card interest rates, it sounded important because it was coming from HIM. It was just a 30 second or so clip, but that was all I needed to be convinced.

I feel like I'm way back at the beginning of the presidental campaign. THIS is what the hype was about.

WA Run

I went for my first 'Back in WA' run on Friday. At first, I was wary about whether I could fare the 60 degree weather (brr!), and if I could brave the outdoors. I'm such a pansy. Having just arrived the afternoon before, I hadn't yet stepped foot out of my house. The idea of 'out there' was rather frightening.

It's amazing how CLEAN AIR makes so much of a difference! No suffocating humidity, or smog from motorbikes or cars. No smoke from burning trash or burning incense from the neighborhood Hindu temple. The air was crisp and clear and smelled like orchard. The cherry trees and the wildflowers in the desert are in full bloom. No mangy stray dogs to leap over, and no traffic to fear. Cars here actually go AROUND you. I could actually run in the day time...I didn't have to go out in the wee hours of the morning or eveningtime to escape the sweltering heat. I didn't have to bring my good morning towel, and I hardly perspired at all, in fact. No long and uncomfortable stares from the migrant workers. Strangers wave and say hello. The lawns are lush and green, and everyone seemed to be working (or paying someone to work) in their yards (including my mother). There's no trash, anywhere. The perfection of it all makes it a little bit creepy, like Wisteria Lane. But the long, open roads are refreshing. So THIS is what running feels like.

It'll never be the same as my rainforest runs. Reuben my faithful training partner/coach is not here to motivate me. We'll see how I adjust.

[Note: my sunday run was on the treadmill]