Journal 12-14-2010

Journal 12-14-2010

I am going to lump Journals from Dec 9^th to 13^th all into this one also.

Thursday and Friday last week were devoted to getting the extractions and PCR to work. We succeeded on Friday afternoon! Kucherani, Krishnamoorti and I had all tried doing both the PCR and the extractions and it hadn’t worked for any of us. So Dr. Pradeep put on some gloves and did it himself. Haha! He was able to get it to work by altering the protocol for the column extraction. He added an extra pelleting step before adding the Mosquito lysate to the DNA binding columns. This must have helped to prevent the column from clogging. On Friday night I did more extractions using his modified method of extracting DNA. On Monday I did the PCR and ran it out and it worked beautifully.

Mmmmm isn’t that nice (this image isn’t labeled yet I added it instead of the labeled one because a pchop version of the image is a much larger size.)

Over the weekend I spent most of my time working on my paper. But I only managed to finish the introduction.

Anyway my last day at work was Monday the 13^th. At the end of the day they had a “High Tea” for me and gave me a little present and some cake with the usual chai”. I am sad to leave; despite the communication difficulties everyone was really nice! It is strange to leave a place knowing that you will probably never see those people again.

I have become really comfortable traveling alone. At times I really didn’t like it. But now I think it has made me a much more confident traveler and person. It has taught me a lot about myself and about how to travel. It sounds corny, but ultimately this has been a very maturing experience. I don’t know that I would decide to do it again if I could go back in time. I think it would have been more fun to have stayed with friends in a town that has more to offer. However, I do really appreciate this experience for what it has taught me.

Today is Tuesday I am done with work and I am just waiting for John and Shosh to arrive! I am really excited to see some friends! Being alone for several weeks really makes you appreciate having other people around! It is so nice to sit and have a easy conversation other people! (sometimes conversations with people from India are not easy) haha. If you have been here you know what I mean.

Journal 12-8-2010

Journal 12-8-2010

Wed was pretty much the same old stuff. I have been working on this PCR trying to get some results from it… We have tried everything related to the PCR and now I am convinced that DNA extractions are bad. Which is terrible news. That means that I will have to start the whole project over…  but all is not lost, I will still be able to write a good paper about this project.

I am counting down the days until our flight leaves.

12-7-2010

Journal 12-7-2010

Tuesday was filled with work. I was working on redoing a PCR that had come back all negative but that also did not include a positive control because I had been denied access to one. I had to go to the PI to get him to tell the tech to let me use the positive control. I did several PCR reactions on Tuesday and stayed late again. When I got back I ate dinner and went to sleep.

I enjoy the way the days fly by when they are filled with work. Working all day and into the evening makes traveling alone much more bearable. If I keep myself busy being by myself really isn’t bad at all.

Journal 12-6-2010

Journal 12-6-2010

On Monday I got back to Kottayam about an hour late, then I went back to Homestead hotel where they gave me my same room. The bell boy still tried to show me where everything was hahaha... he even held up the TV remote and gestured toward the TV to explain what it was.

            I took a shower and then hurried to work. Where I stayed until 7:30 doing extractions and PCR. My project has taken a turn for the worse. None of the extractions seem to be working. At this point we thought I was the PCR though because the technician hadn’t allowed me to include a positive control.

            This was a long day.

Journal 12-5-2010

Journal 12-5-2010

Today John came to meet us in the morning at the awesome Internet café. We decided that we wanted to see Harry Potter in the afternoon. We spent most of the morning at the coffee shop and then went out to find a theater. We found a theatre in a mall about a kilometer away. The mall was really nice and probably 7 stories high. The theatre was also really nice, as Indian theatres always are.

John and I walked around to kill time before the movie. The girls went shopping. Unfortunately during this time I figured out that I was going to have to leave half way through the movie to make it to my train on time.

Harry Potter started off really well and I really want to see the end but I had to dip out right after the Intermission (ughhh Indian movies…) hahah. I took my backpack and found an auto. The drive finally figured out where to go, which was actually a really long distance away. So I ended up having to pay him 200 rupees. He demanded 300 when we got there and I said NO! but gave him an extra 30. I shouldn’t have done that though, and it bothers me that I did. Rickshaw drivers in Bangalore are constantly ripping us off. We got ripped off by all but one of the drivers we used. Even when we ask them to put it on the meter they will go way out of the way to charge us for the extra kilometers. It is really frusturating.

I waited around at the station for quite a while. Then got into a nice AC car, climbed into my upper, side bunk and read War and Peace until I fell asleep.

AC train cars are definitely nicer than sleeper cars. But there is no reason to have the AC turned on! It was freezing in there, all I had for warmth was a light sweatshirt and some socks.

Journal 12-4-2010

Journal 12-4-2010

Saturday was a blast!

Things we did:

-Went to a VERY nice Internet café for breakfast!

-Went to visit Matt and John at the Tata Institute.

-Played Frisbee in front of one of their main buildings that had a dirt/gravel courtyard. That was so much fun! I can’t wait to go home and be able to exercise and play sports again! That is something that I really miss a lot. It is going to be so hard to get back in shape. This trip involves so much sitting, waiting and sedentary travel that I feel like I am wasting away. I haven’t been able to run around or move for 4 months! I want to exercise!

-We went to the hard rock café for dinner where I had an expensive but ABSOLUTELY AMAZING burger! It was SO good! I was in heaven. It was kind of an America night. We drank beer and ate American food at the Hard Rock café! There were a lot of other Americans there too, mostly middle aged businessmen and a couple of families. The rest of the crowd was wealthy young Indians in their mid to late twenties.

After dinner I said goodbye to Matt, the next time I see him will be at St. Olaf. He is flying home a day earlier than the rest of us and on Sunday he is taking the bus to Mudamalai (spelling???) to pick up a cooler of elephant Poop. So we don’t get to see him tomorrow.

After dinner Katie, Stephanie and I walked back to the hotel and crashed. We were all exhausted.

Journal 12-3-2010

 

Journal 12-3-2010

I haven’t wrote any journal entries for quite a while so I am not sure where to start… Ill give a little background on Thursday then go to Friday.

Yesterday (Thursday),  I went to work at the usual time but was able to leave a bit early around 3:30 so that I could make it to the train station in time to catch my train to Bangalore. Of course the train was several hours late so I had to sit around at the station for a while. The day was relatively uneventful. I listened to music and read War and Peace on the train until about 1 when I finally fell asleep. I had a pack of cookies for dinner.

It is always really interesting to be alone at a train station. Everyone looks at me because I stick out, but I definitely don’t attract the same kind of attention we get when we all go to a train station together. It is also pretty gross/interesting that train stations, tracks and cars seem to be synonymous for bathroom. People are spitting, shiting, urinating everywhere in and around train tracks and stations. It is something I just haven’t been able to get used to. The bathrooms in the train cars also empty right onto the tracks. So whenever you stop you get a nice wiff of human waste. Again I just can’t get used to this… it is gross.

On Friday I arrived in the Bangalore central train station at about 7:00 am. I called Matt who had just got done with swim practice (crazy kid) and asked him where to go. I escaped from several rickshaw drivers before one finally convinced me to come with him. He ripped me off charging twice the appropriate fare. But I didn’t realize this until later. I should have taken a pre paid auto. Anyway I made it to the “Tata Institute” or Indian Institute of Science where John and Matt were staying. The campus is enormous and I had a hard time finding them but I finally went to the building where they work and meet up with them there.

It was great to see Matt and John again! You don’t realize how nice it is to be with other people until you meet up with friends after being alone for a couple of weeks. We had some breakfast/lunch at an outdoor cafeteria and talked about our projects.

Katie and Stephanie showed up around 2 or 3. Eventually we all went into a more downtown area of Bangalore where Katie Stephanie and I got a hotel room. John and Matt’s hostel room is disgusting and tiny.

It is so great to be around friends again! You really do forget how nice it is just to talk with other people! When you are alone you miss out on all the little jokes and fun things that people notice and say when they are together. I would love to stay here in Bangalore for the rest of the trip with these guys.