Tn5 is the devil

Question: What is 31 pages long?
Answer: My stupid microbiology ab report.

It was due at 5:00pm, so have no fear, I handed it in at 4:58 and then had a lovely chat with my professor who came to pick them up. It was a little sad because I actually had to pull the allnighter, so I was in recovery for a bit of last night.

Today, I'm going to go to the the Fahmah's mahkit again because strawberries are still in season, and then apparently I'm supposed to go to this "Legendary Keg Race" beginning at 12 noon. Apparently you have to put the Kegs on wagons and drink at all these legendary places in Dunedin, in teams, in costume. My team is going as 1980s aerobics instructors, so I'll just wear some running tights and rugby socks scrunched down... and then of course the side-ponytail.

On Sunday is my friend Tim's 21st birthday party: Part II. We're meeting in the botanical gardens and having a lovely afternoon of: (directly quoted from the fancy invite):

"Petanque, Croquet, Pink Champagne and Cucumber Sandwicheds".
Ladies: summer frocks
Gentlemen: if its not tweed, its not a jacket.

Isn't that hysterical? I don't think I've worn a summer frock in my life. It sounds frilly and pink.
And tweed? All I can think of is Mr. Ross... and his tweed jackets.

Pictures: Botanical gardens- and the aviary.

More pictures and pompous profs.

Yes. I do take many pictures of myself! But I really was here... Not adept enough at photo shop to have edited myself into here. Besides... look at the waves... soooo shiny, and soooo beautiful... we wants them, precious.

Ok and this IS exciting. The guy who discovered Two-Component Systems is my "Topics in Microbial Genetics" prof! That's pretty sweet, eh? For those of you who don't know or care what I'm talking about he is very famous and internationally renowned and I knew the name Clive Ronson was ringing a bell for some reason. He's definitely the typical self-absorbed pompous high-class ivory-tower type with very distinguished facial hair, but it somehow makes it that much more awesome. His belly precedes him into class and he goes on something like:

"Well today we AHH going to TaHHk about my little contribution to science. For those of you who didn't know this (as if it was 2+2 = 4) I discovAHHH-ed the 2-component system. And at that time, of course, we didn't know we were naming an entire paradigm of science..." *smug smile*

We actually learned more about his time at Harvard discovering the genetic sequences involved than about 2-component systems themselves. Good thing I already learned about them sufficiently in Genetics 304 back at the U of A.

Pictures have anyone convinced yet?

Mary, I haven't figured out yet if I can bring back sand, but I think probably not if they count as soil- if so then I'll have to bake them into cakes... or something more sneaky. Maybe Alias could give me some ideas...

3 days... 3 beaches

Friday, I only had one hour of classes, so I was off to the beach ASAP afterwards as the weather was beautiful. I took along the camera and did a bit of a photo shoot. Friday night was Laura (my flattmate)'s 21st- the big birthday here- so we had half of Dunedin over for cake and then we went out to a concert at a bar, which was a lot of fun. The band was like funky big brass music so there were trombones, trumpets, as well as general band instruments.

Saturday a bunch of my friends and I went out to the Farmer's Market (thuh FAH-muhs MAH-kit) and bought some nice fruits (Strawberries are cheap and in season here!) Then I attempted to do homework for about 6.5 minutes but gave up when they all came by and yelled "BECKs we're going to the beach... get in the CAHH now!" We went to boulder beach on the Otago peninsula - which was amazing because it was really secluded. The only problem was that we had to bushwack for about 30 minutes and scale 2 cliffs to get there. Once we were there it was pretty awesome though. Later we went and met up with some friends at good ole St. Clair beach and went swimming, briefly. Later we played touch and tackle rugby, soccer, beach volleyball, and finally cricket. Cricket is crazy because there's a bowler and two batters! And you run with the bat! I got a pretty decent hit and was so excited that I chucked the bat and almost started running in a circle. That's another difference- you run straight in cricket! Finally I got home on Saturday night, and fell asleep right away.

Sunday, which was today, I had a field trip to Allen's beach for Marine Ecology! We did quadrant sampling of the eulittoral, littoral, and sublittoral zones! This mostly included counting and identifying barnacles, but it was a lot of fun- and kelp is so huge here! On the way out we all played in the beautiful waves and some of the guys brought out their surfboards. We also saw a beached seal, which was a little sad, but the tide was coming in so our profs though he'd be OK. Like everything else here, the Rocky Shore lab was extreme and involved 15 minutes of rock climbing over steep edges. I don't think we could have done the same thing with Bio 208 last year- the athletic skills of Kiwi's far surpass anything else I've seen.

For the rest of today I've almost considered doing something productive, basically just doing a lab report for microbiology.

I seem to have developed a cold, which is ironic, because I've never been so warm and content in my life.

North Island: prepare yourself.

After much antici- pation, the plan is in action, and the tickets have been purchased for the North Island trip of 2007. We have a break from April 6-16 and so on the evening of April 5 Laura, Nanette, and I will be out of here! We're going to fly to Wellington via Christchurch stay there for a few days, and then travel from Wellington to Palmerston North (via train and some friends) and then from P.N. we will make it up the North Island hopefully hitting Napier, Taupo, Rotarua, the bay of Pleanty and the Auckland peninsula (I really should know its proper name!) We'll stay in Auckland for a couple of days and then fly back to Christchurch, hopefully meet up with some friends there and then travel back down the south Island stopping in Timaru (middle of nowhere, NZ) with my friend Alex to see his parents farm. Yes we can do it all! And we will! Its still pretty hot in the north, as I've been told and they also have Black beaches! Can you imagine beaches where the sand is almost black? There are also glow-worm caves we want to see! And gysers! And extremophilic archaea. Well I guess any type of archaea...

In the last few days, I actually have done homework. I wrote something for my philosophy of bioethics class and I'm writing 3 lab reports at the moment. They're going very slowly.

Unfortunately there's not a lot of news to report! I hung out in the library for a few hours today and felt like I sometimes do at home (like a nerd!) but of course in a much more modern pretty library with lots of Kiwi's who Longboard (like skateboarding- except the board is longer!) all through campus.

Again, to make this less tedious, I'll put up some more pictures of random things around Dunedin: a) is the North Ground- which is actually is the Alhambra Rugby pitches- I walk through it every day to go to school. b) the building they put all the biotech spin-off companies from the University. c) Knox Pres. Church on George Street. We sometimes call it the House Of God (English accent required) d) the clocktower building in the centre of campus and e) St. Clair beach!

Have a nice night/day!

St. Patty's Day!

Why yes, Kiwi's generally are of Scottish, not Irish descent, but this fact is largely ignored when it comes to St. Patty's day. Any chance to drink will be taken advantage of. In the society of alcoholics I live in it doesn't matter what your nationality is- as long as some ethnic group is celebrating something, we all celebrate (by drinking Speights, of course)! What a sophisticated multinational place we are.

In other news, it seems that school has actually started. Yesterday I wrote the first draft of a critique of Singer's "The moral status of the embryo" for bioethics and I need to write a lab report for Marine Ecology and another one for Microbiology, neither of which I have really started yet, so I guess I'd best be getting a move on. Oh and get this, I was the first person to map my the Ampicillin resistance gene on transposon Tn5:lambda and where it inserted into the plasmid pBR322 when treated with a suicide vector by restriction with HindIII and SalI in my entire class and so my prof gave me a chocolate fish! At the same time I wondered how old we were, but then didn't complain. Chocolate fish are fish-shaped candies with caramel and marshmallow clearly covered with chocolate.

Oh and in Marine Ecology, we were supposed to go and collect plankton, but there was a red tide bloom in the last few days! This is horrible ecologically but also very interesting. In certain conditions the Dinoflagellates go crazy and produce neurotoxins in vast quantities and the sea actually turns red! Anyway the Marine science department needed our boats for more sampling. (Isn't it awesome that there is a Marine Ecology department here and they have boats!) I guess its not too often that your lab gets cancelled for a Red Tide! I was sad though about not being able to go and see it until my prof said that they needed help on the boats with all the sampling they're doing, so I will be going out researching next week!

Last night I went to a pot-luck and met a bunch of my friend Alex's friends friends. If you followed that then you'll get that he brought me because he only knew a few of them. The guy who's flat it was teaches Sorock- which I think is just fancy jiving- to old school music, and apparently its huge here. So a few bottles of wine later and food gone next thing I know the entire flat is cleared and he's paired us all up and is giving lessons! The most random things happen here, let me tell you.

I'm a little sad that I didn't go on either the kayak trip to Wanaka or on the tramping trip to the Fjordlands this weekend, but I have to do a somewhat "manditory" rugby thing on Sunday- when they'll decide for sure which position I'll play, and with the homework I think it'll be good to you know, maybe do it.

Alright that's the last few days in a nutshell. I hope you enjoyed. Did you know? You can comment by clicking the comment button and then writing something that is witty and PG in response to this!!

And these are random pictures are of myself! a) in a church tower in Dunedin b) with a lot of sunburn and c) out on the Otago Peninsula.

Wait!

I should at least tell you what's in the below pictures, although I know its apparent that there are mountains, etc.

The first is of myself and Merilynn (my American neighbour) not too far from the summit of Mt. John, taken on Saturday. Lake Tekapo is actually that blue due to glacial silt that remains in it.

Then there is me with the lake looking overly tired.

Then there is Laura (my American flattmate--> yes there are a lot of Americans here- they're everywhere) and myself in front of Mt. Cook. Aka Mordor. I just had to reference that, sorry.

Kayak trip #1

So this weekend was the Kayak trip out to Lake Tekapo, in the shadow of Mt. Cook, which is the tallest mountain in NZ. The area is located in the province of Otago although much closer to the western coast and farther north than Dunedin. Given this, the weather was really warm and sunny, and the scenery was fantastic!

On Friday night we headed out from the "Clubs & Socs" building of campus. There were probably 20 people in total from the Kayak club on the trip- we travelled in a white van pulling the world's ghetto-est trailer containing 20 boats, paddles, helmets etc. and some assorted cars. Laura, my flatmate and I went with Mike and Phil, (pronounced Myke and Phull), two lovely Kiwi specimins! Both were tres built- Phil was ex-military, and Mike has been nationally competitive in surfing and swimming for years.

Moving on, it took us more than four hours to get to the campground and lets just say that coordination is a bit of a problem when you're this laid back. In the end we pitched our tents in the darkness, had a bit of a group chat session where the Kiwi's blamed the Americans for the world's problems (I didn't object. In hindsight, this was probably very wise) and then we collapsed to sleep on the nice soft ground (!).

Saturday morning we got up, set up some ghetto gas cookers, made some greasies, and got into gear for kayaking, which was to start at 11am. Why that arbitrary time? Well, folks, we live in a day and age where Lake Tekapo is dammed up and they open the river that leads out of it for 5-8 hours per day depending on electricity needs. So get this: at 11am they opened the river to 30 cubic meters of water/second and the river connecting the two lakes began. Rapids formed quite... rapidly, and we were off. I should also mention that like everything else including driving, kayaking in NZ is an extreme sport. Beginner means that you are OK with Grade 3 rapids, upwellings and generally being upside down in the river stuck inside your kayak, literally panicing. I love the feeling of no control so I was generally down with this- however I don't think Krystle and Laura felt the same way. On the first trip down the river I flipped a couple of times but only swam when practicing it. The best rescue so far for me is the T-rescue. If I get pushed under by a current then I reach up and bang my hands on the side of the boat so that they'll hear me. Then I begin to run my hands along the side of the boat so that another boat will come up and make a T with my boat. At this point I'm supposed to grab the bow and then pull myself up for air and flip my hips over in the correct direction. This is pretty good in practice and works very well in theory. However there was a time or two when nobody was near enough to me to flip me over in time... and after about 30 seconds of floating through rocks and rapids upside down I just bailed out and swam with the kayak.

The weather was absolutely incredible however, and there was a really nice swimming hole on the river by our campsite. We were dropped off for kayaking at the start of the river and basically went downstream until we hit the camp (this took between 2 and 4 hours) when we bailed and just went home. All in all it was pretty fantastic. On Saturday and Sunday later afternoon's little groups of us went on tramps in the area and I scaled Mt. John to have the birds-eye view of Lake Tekapo.

The weekend was really fun too because I've made a lot more Kiwi friends and they all seem pretty swayetaseuhbro! More Speight's Pride of the South! was consumed and good times were had by all. On the way back we stopped to take some photos of Mt. Cook and we also saw some really neat Maiori drawings on some rocks. By Sunday night I was in pain from the sunburn I somehow got on my back. Its not really that pretty. At all. I also have a WETSUIT tan from the kayaking. Nothing says sophisticated like a line halfway down your arms and legs... its the farmer tan to the max!

Today was good and fairly productive- learned about the lac operon. It may have to do with E. coli and catobolites or something. I think it has to do with glucose and lactose. I'm not too sure because I have never learned about the lac operon before. With the obvious exceptions I guess of every microbiologically, genetically, cellular or biochemically based class I've ever taken. In Ethics, we talked about the Environment and who/what really matters ethically, or realistically what should matter ethically and why we don't prioritize the way we should.

Tuesday, tomorrow, is my day of catch up, Microbiology Lab, and Rugby practice. Then after- at about 7pm, Krystle's parents (who have come on vacation here from N. Carolina!) are taking the flat out for dinner, which is very very nice of them. Maybe somebody could come and visit ME!? It does get a little lonely, you know. Nobody here appreciates what continental means and understands that the ocean is very very far away.

Ummm Hi, can I play too?

So, just yesterday, I found out that there are no less than three girls on my club rugby team that are also on the Black Ferns. The Black Ferns are the National Women's Rugby team of NZ. They are the women All Blacks. They won the world cup in 2006, in Edmonton of all places- how is it even possible that we are on the same team? I mean, of course I knew they were good, but I didn't realize just how good they were. Thinking back, their passes are always right on- meaning I can take the ball and pour on the gas, which is probably all I'm good for anyway.

Following my astonishment that you can read all about them on the All Blacks website, I suppose I'll get ready for school.

This weekend the Kayak club (including some flattmates and myself) is going to kayak near Mt. Cook. All weekend there is supposed to be nice weather. I'm very excited, and will update this sometime once I'm back. Don't worry, I do actually have good experience kayaking (unlike rugby!) and there are lots of instructors and lifeguards (hah!) on the trip.

Jessica, hope you're doing good after the peanuts! Evil creatures those Type I hypersensitivity reactions. What has happened is a mass degranulation of mast cells and eosinophils throughout your body at approximately the same time causing massive inflamation of everything, selective vasodilation and other things which I can't remember anymore. My brain is now mush. I think interferon was involved. Help?

Part 2: Pictures!

Here are a few of the pictures that we got on the Pukerangi to Middlemarch trip last weekend. They take forever to upload because wireless here is just not the same. Neither is the ozone layer. Yes kids, all those stories you've heard about the ozone hole are true. Most of me is fine, but i missed sunscreaning a bit of my front and it is brutally purple and it really really hurts. I never ever get burns like this, I'm too yellow! But not here. Here the sun is king and all that polution is starting to really hurt. In the first picture- what is to the best of our knowledge and references is a rock that is used in the Two Towers (!) There were lots of sheep around it, but I guess they just edited them out or cleared the fields. The next two are of what we could see leaning out of the train on the way here. The scenery changes pretty rapidly. At first there were very high moutains (like in BC, not the Rockys) and they were covered with pines and palm trees! Then it evens out and becomes more arid and populated by sheep. The next morning on our trek out to the train again we of course had to take a picture beside the one billboard in Middlemarch. What else but Speights! Pride of the South! We love the Southern Man.

Tramping from Pukerangi to Middlemarch, Otago

As we were told, we ended up in the middle of the wop-wops. It was wonderful.

Saturday morning, we woke up a little groggy from the night before and walked to the train station, which happens to be the second most photographed building in NZ. We walked there via the farmer's market and bought breakfast- my apricot thing was good. We got tickets found the correct train (!) and left the station at about 9:30am. On the trip we marvelled at the great views from the 1920s vintage train along the Taieri Gorge Railway. We stood on the platforms between cars and then found the back of the train. We could see mountain chains and forests and rivers from the train- and also its pretty marvelous that they even built the railroad at all. About 2.513 hours later we arrived at Pukerangi population unknown but <10. style="font-style: italic;">nowhere. Rigor mortis was setting in at 8km for some of us, but I was on my 4th wind by then. I think everyone else may hate me. Approximately 4, 123, 114 sheep were seen (exactly the population of NZ) vs. 5 houses, and 6 cars.

We reached the real highway SH87 and found out that the next 8km were along the main highway. It also should be considered that "main highway" is not really what it sounds like. Immensley proud of the 12km walked so far in high heat and humidity (note I took off my shirt (!)) we trudged for quite some time to see that according to the next sign we had gone only one more km. K, L, and N's spirits dropped. So we did something "down-rayght bahrbaric" (that's Krystle's NC accent) and had peanut butter on a stick. When we got up, I accidently left my camera there. And so it sat, in the middle of the wop-wops making friends with the sheep.

Now because we were beside the highway there actually were occasional cars who honked and waved- I guess we really were coming in from the mountains. Apparently the word spread in the village (pop. 250) that we were approaching. We hobbled into town and stopped for ice cream at the one store aka the General Store where they looked at us suspiciously. The teenage boys (all 3 of them) played loud music from their car. It seemed pretty typical. We wandered around and found 3 places that were full. Finally there was found refuge at Blind Billy's Holiday Resort, which was funnily enough owned by blind Billy. Check-in consisted of handing over very little money and one of us writing down her name on the sheet. His wife was very kind when shortly later we discovered that my camera was missing! If you can believe Blind Billy's wife drove us all 5km back down the road to recover the camera and all is well. It was a close call but I almost left my camera in the middle of the Taieri Gorge in Otago.

So in Middlemarch there is always this "Single's Ball" that is widely attended by people all over the province, such that the town increases in size by about 1000%. We thought this was hilarious and asked Blind Billy's wife about it. She said "Girls. If you saw the bachelors in this town you'd be sick! They're all these dirty sheep shearers and you can't get a hooker in Dunedin that night cause they all come up here!" We then went to the pub for dinner where we ate everything but the kitchen sink, drank some Speight's Pride of the South, and watched some Rugby with the local middleaged sheepshearers, one of whom seemed interested in Nanette. Afterwards, we went back to our bunks and slept a lot.

On Sunday morning we got up to the dull roar of Laura's alarm clock (the girl packed a friggen drug store!) , I went on a run and everyone else limped out of bed. I'm pretty sure they despise me, but I can't help but be awesome (!). We kind of washed ourselves. This is great: the bathrooms at the camp have "Rams" and "Ewes"on the doors. Classy.

Then we had breakfast at the Kissing Gate Cafe where we saw the same people working there as at the bar the night before. It was pretty great! We walked around a bit more, got more ice cream (!) and then took the train back to Dunedin where we passed the 21.5km tramp (up many many mountainous hills!) we did the previous day (in 6.5 hours) in about 20 minutes, which was a little depressing. At that point the conductor pointed out the road we tramped and said "That's the road you take to hike from Pukerangi to MM- its awfully hard. Don't do it." The rest of the trip was the day before's trip in reverse although no less awesome.

We got home after failed attempts at hitchhiking, I made everyone dinner (it was my turn) and yes, they are all still alive. Later, I went to Mass and read a little Microbiology for tomorrow, and am now going to bed. This was quite the adventure and I can't wait for the next one- maybe to the Fiordlands!

Today's lesson.

Last week was my first week of school here in Dunedin. (What? School?). There was major pain and agony, but I survived and prospered in the end. I am taking three papers here, all at the 300 level. They are Marine Ecology, Biomedical Ethics, and Advanced Regulation of Microbial Gene Expression (!). Both the Marine Ecology and The Microbiology have lab components which I am looking forward to (go Team Nerd!). In M.E. we will visit various harbours, fiords, soft shores and hard shores during the labs and even go on a few field trips! It helps that Dunedin is on the ocean, as is most of NZ (or so it seems anyway). The university campus is wonderful and beautiful. It is complete with really old buildings, a quaint river, many bars, and people with funny accents. I'm making some friends in classes pretty quickly as the accent factor has proven to be a point of interest. The classes are all pretty small compared to what I'm used to: 20-50 students, rather than 100+ per class. The profs also baby the students more and give nice handouts before each lecture. This is good because it will ensure maximum slacking capacity.

This week I sampled more of Dunedin bars, hung out with a few more locals, bought some pretty flashy children's size rugby boots and almost (!) learned to surf. High tides and very rough seas prevailed, but Markus says we will not give up and if he has to swim beside me and hold the board steady he will!

On another note, Krystle and I have decided that boys (especially Kiwi boys) are like their cars. We know a kid named Sam- and like his car he is very nice to look at and is intreguing because the handle is broken. However it is not very reliable and neither is he: we cannot find our vodka and suspect him and his antics. On the other hand we have Markus, another friend who is a bit less flaky and much more reliable: he took me to get rugby boots, to random parties, rugby practice and almost surfing at the beach. However, like his car, he is not quite as special to see as is the first case. We almost have a theory here.

And that is today's lesson.

Rugby game!

On Saturday, last weekend, we went to see the Highlanders play the Stormers (South Africa) in the big stadium in Dunedin. It was a good game with the Stormers going down to the Highlanders 24-35. The game was of course sponsored by Speights! Beer of the South. And so there was a lot of it consumed. And also after the game. On Sunday last weekend we went to the beach with a bunch of our Kiwi friends and played some touch Rugby, Cricket and swam in the (very cold) waves. I wore the wetsuit and was glad that I did.