(From Tammy Chin)
Our stay in Vietnam this weekend was eye-opening. Before we went, my supervisor was telling me about his stay in Ho Chih Minh for a conference. He told me how busy the streets were and how crossing the road takes audacity. When we got there, I could see exactly what he meant. Scooters occupied places where cars couldn't and stop lights were rarely seen. The cyclists had face masks to keep from breathing in the very polluted air. People buzzed by about five inches from the taxis, and the best way to cross roads, we learned, was to walk steadily and confidently, not stopping or running so that the vehicles could see us passing by. We couldn't believe that Ho Chih Minh was one of the more developed and modernized cities of Vietnam because its living conditions were not the best. The streets were more crowded, less clean, and construction went on in the middle of the roads. The place was definitely more local and had fewer tourists. I saw many cripples hobbling on the streets and the housing looked more cramped. It seemed that health care there needed to be greatly improved on. The people also frequently stared at us, not used to seeing tourists around, and when we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels where the Vietnamese troops hid during the Vietnamese War, we saw a very prejudiced video about "cruel" Americans. We definitely felt out of place. Mary and I did touristy things and visited historic buildings/tunnels. We also ate delectable Vietnamese food, of course: pho, Vietnamese pancakes, spring rolls, salad, sugar cane juice, etc. I definitely enjoyed my time there. Seeing the rural countryside on Sunday, the rice plantations, and the farmers with conical hats during the two-hour drive back to the airport really provoked a peace of mind, and it was a great end to our venture to Vietnam.
I am about to finish my work in the lab. My last day will be Tuesday. All the work that I've done will be presented to my colleagues and supervisors Monday morning during our biweekly lab meeting. I have slowly but surely learned much about researching in an infectious disease lab, and I have grasped the methods of basic lab procedures. Hopefully by Tuesday we will have two samples sequenced. This week, we were having trouble seeing the PCR products for all five fragments of the Dengue virus genome on the gels, but things are looking good now. A recently graduated Duke alumni, Joseph, came on Monday to replace me in the lab. He will be spending a year here before going to medical school. I am busy teaching/supervising Joseph and writing a protocol and template for all the work that I've done so that Joseph will have no problem sequencing the rest of the Dengue 2 viruses.
Outside of work, this week I tried stingray for the first time. It tastes a lot like fish. I also tried a uniquely Singaporean dish called Bak Kut Teh, a peppery soup with pork ribs, pig trotters, and a tropical fruit here called Rambutan. When you've finished your bowl of Bak Kut Teh, the waiters come by and pour you more, which I think is an amazing service. The look of rambutan is very strange. It's small, red, and has lots of spikes, but it tastes pretty good. It's very similar to lychee. Singapore's independence day is in the beginning of August, but people apparently begin preparing very early. Singaporean flags are draped all over the condos and tjavascript:void(0)he streets have been decorated with lights. It's very pretty here at night. Walking through another dorm on the way to/from work every day, I see students building these very elaborate wooden floats, and it's been fun seeing the progress done on them. Tomorrow, some Duke friends and I will be going up to the north of the island to wakeboard. It will be my first time wakeboarding! Later on, there will be a dinner for incoming and current Duke students that I'm attending. Hopefully I can make the incoming Dukees more excited to come in the fall!
Friday, July 11, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
A Vietnam Trip
(from Mary Bohan)
We found a very reasonable flight to Vietnam last week, so we went for a short trip overnight over the weekend. It was really interesting, it definitely made me realize a lot of the things I take for granted in Singapore but the people were all very friendly and happy. I definitely stuck out a lot more there, strangers would come up and say hello or just stare at me all the way down the road, little children would come up and wave, and I even saw the tour guide of a vietnamese tour guide speaking Vietnamese to the group and pointing to me, and they were all giggling, we still have no idea what was going on. We went to some caves that were from the Vietnam War, but what we didn't realize was that they were where the Americans had massacred a village, and the presentation was a bit biased, talking about the "brutal Americans" who murdered their innocent mothers and children, and bragging about the booby traps that killed the soldiers, it was definitely interesting to hear from their perspective. In terms of healthcare, it was clear that they didn't have the same level of care as in Singapore, there were no major modern hospitals that we saw, and even within an hour of the city everything got very rural.
This week I've been working on a powerpoint of all of the different strains of Dengue and Yellow Fever, looking into what enzymes can be used to cut the sequences to study the desired regions, which has been very tedious. My supervisor Azlinda is going to use this next week when she begins to clone the cells and the actual experiments start. Apparently I came at a bad time in terms of actual work in the wet lab, within the next month they will be running real experiments, but I definitely learned a lot from the work that I've been doing, and I've found that I'm much better at analyzing things and researching than I am at performing actual work in the lab.
In terms of my work in Singapore I'm done as of today, I'll be stopping by for a few hours tomorrow before my flight and then hopefully the Friday or Saturday when I return as well, just to say goodbye to everyone, I'm actually sad I'm leaving, everyone has been so great here! In India I'm hoping to work in Shishu Bhavan, which is an orphanage run by the MC, or Prem Dan, a convalescent facility, both of which were recommended by a friend from Duke as well as some family friends who had gone before. I was told to also try to spend a day in each of the facilities, just to get a taste of each, so I'll try to do that if I can. Apparently at the orientation on 3pm on Friday they explain everything to you and you can pretty much work wherever you want, but sometimes they will try to lead you towards working at a certain place that is understaffed that week so we'll see.
We found a very reasonable flight to Vietnam last week, so we went for a short trip overnight over the weekend. It was really interesting, it definitely made me realize a lot of the things I take for granted in Singapore but the people were all very friendly and happy. I definitely stuck out a lot more there, strangers would come up and say hello or just stare at me all the way down the road, little children would come up and wave, and I even saw the tour guide of a vietnamese tour guide speaking Vietnamese to the group and pointing to me, and they were all giggling, we still have no idea what was going on. We went to some caves that were from the Vietnam War, but what we didn't realize was that they were where the Americans had massacred a village, and the presentation was a bit biased, talking about the "brutal Americans" who murdered their innocent mothers and children, and bragging about the booby traps that killed the soldiers, it was definitely interesting to hear from their perspective. In terms of healthcare, it was clear that they didn't have the same level of care as in Singapore, there were no major modern hospitals that we saw, and even within an hour of the city everything got very rural.
This week I've been working on a powerpoint of all of the different strains of Dengue and Yellow Fever, looking into what enzymes can be used to cut the sequences to study the desired regions, which has been very tedious. My supervisor Azlinda is going to use this next week when she begins to clone the cells and the actual experiments start. Apparently I came at a bad time in terms of actual work in the wet lab, within the next month they will be running real experiments, but I definitely learned a lot from the work that I've been doing, and I've found that I'm much better at analyzing things and researching than I am at performing actual work in the lab.
In terms of my work in Singapore I'm done as of today, I'll be stopping by for a few hours tomorrow before my flight and then hopefully the Friday or Saturday when I return as well, just to say goodbye to everyone, I'm actually sad I'm leaving, everyone has been so great here! In India I'm hoping to work in Shishu Bhavan, which is an orphanage run by the MC, or Prem Dan, a convalescent facility, both of which were recommended by a friend from Duke as well as some family friends who had gone before. I was told to also try to spend a day in each of the facilities, just to get a taste of each, so I'll try to do that if I can. Apparently at the orientation on 3pm on Friday they explain everything to you and you can pretty much work wherever you want, but sometimes they will try to lead you towards working at a certain place that is understaffed that week so we'll see.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Responsibility, Simplicity, and Construction
(From Tammy Chin)
In the lab, I’ve been trying to find the right conditions for thermal cycling of the PCR reactions for the fifth fragment of the Dengue DNA. I had a meeting with my supervisor, Eng Eong, another principal investigator of our lab, Subhash, and some colleagues at the Genome Institute of Singapore Wednesday afternoon. They gave me more efficient primers and enzymes to work with and through their supplies, today I finally successfully amplified all the fragments (there are five total) of the Dengue genomes. With only about two weeks left, I will not be able to finish sequencing all the 50+ DENV 2 isolates but will certainly have a methods report done and some isolates sequenced. This entails doing as many DNA amplifications, gel electrophoreses, DNA extractions, and sequencing forms as possible before I go, all while wrapping up my work in a report that Eng Eong will guide me with next week.
Over the weekend, we went to Pulau Ubin, a nice little island to the north of Singapore. Cycling through the terrain was something I missed from childhood. Biking downhill with the wind in my hair and just letting the wind guide me, was such a relaxing feeling, and it reminded me of how places stripped of urbanity and technology are just as refreshing as bustling cities and how simplicity is still such a welcome concept. Our three hour long trek through the dirt trails and granite roads of the Singapore that used to be, of the last few “kampongs,” or villages that originally populated Singapore, was breathtaking. It was a nice piece of lived history, with its rubber plantations, durians along the road that people picked and placed in their baskets, wells for water, and noisy electrical generators. Many elderly people sat in stands alongside the road, offering “refreshing cold drinks” to us exhausted bikers. I admire these people who have lived on this seemingly deprived island and live without material luxuries that people only a 10 minute bumboat ferry ride away probably would never imagine being able to survive without. The people on the island are friendly and cater to you, whether in selling their food or their bikes or in providing you with a basket when they see you with purses (which I definitely thought was a nice gesture).
I’ve noticed that there is an enormous sense of community here in Singapore. People graciously give their seats to the elderly and to the stressed out moms with their tiny children on the MRTs and buses. From the posters of statistics plastered around construction sites, I know that the workers also believe in safety first and pride themselves on the minimal number of accidents and lost hours at the sites. MRT stations also repeatedly show clips that remind Singaporeans to keep Singapore safe by doing their part in watching out for suspicious activity on the trains. With adages such as “Low crime doesn’t mean no crime” on the walls of the MRT stations, Singapore knows that unity is essential for a prosperous country. People are actively helping make Singapore better. A sense of responsibility is well-established here, from the “act responsibly signs” on the tracks of the MRTs, the daunting ads that illustrate what could happen (a world of darkness) if we consumed all the energy/natural resources of the earth, of course the infamous fine signs for littering, chewing gum, spitting, smoking, and the list goes on. Souvenirs with the tagline, “Singapore: a fine city” and the red “no” symbols, crowd the shelves of every tourist location here.
A few nights ago, Mary and I ventured off into the city after working in the lab. We went to Lau Pa Sat, “the largest remaining Victorian filigree cast-iron structure in Southeast Asia” with stalls galore, selling from stingray to stinky tofu, all at affordable prices. Right next to it was Satay Street where meat kabobs were sold with cucumbers and onions and a peanut dipping sauce. The signature satay was delicious. We also went to see the famous Merlion, but unfortunately it was covered in green due to construction. It seems like Singapore is constantly being remodeled. Everywhere you look, you see cranes and workers in hats and boots with pedestrian walkway signs pointing to the allocated pathways. Every day, we walk past a construction site where a new MRT station will be built. It is located right next to wear we live (and we sigh at the government for not constructing it sooner). Here a new MRT station, there a new shopping mall. Here a new casino, there a new Universal Studios. It seems the country is trying hard to revamp its older buildings and attract tourists.
In other news, Mary and I will be soaking up more of the Southeast Asian culture. We're getting up before the sun rises Saturday to visit Ho Chi Minh. Exciting! I'm sure there will be many experiences/cultural similarities & differences to share.
In the lab, I’ve been trying to find the right conditions for thermal cycling of the PCR reactions for the fifth fragment of the Dengue DNA. I had a meeting with my supervisor, Eng Eong, another principal investigator of our lab, Subhash, and some colleagues at the Genome Institute of Singapore Wednesday afternoon. They gave me more efficient primers and enzymes to work with and through their supplies, today I finally successfully amplified all the fragments (there are five total) of the Dengue genomes. With only about two weeks left, I will not be able to finish sequencing all the 50+ DENV 2 isolates but will certainly have a methods report done and some isolates sequenced. This entails doing as many DNA amplifications, gel electrophoreses, DNA extractions, and sequencing forms as possible before I go, all while wrapping up my work in a report that Eng Eong will guide me with next week.
Over the weekend, we went to Pulau Ubin, a nice little island to the north of Singapore. Cycling through the terrain was something I missed from childhood. Biking downhill with the wind in my hair and just letting the wind guide me, was such a relaxing feeling, and it reminded me of how places stripped of urbanity and technology are just as refreshing as bustling cities and how simplicity is still such a welcome concept. Our three hour long trek through the dirt trails and granite roads of the Singapore that used to be, of the last few “kampongs,” or villages that originally populated Singapore, was breathtaking. It was a nice piece of lived history, with its rubber plantations, durians along the road that people picked and placed in their baskets, wells for water, and noisy electrical generators. Many elderly people sat in stands alongside the road, offering “refreshing cold drinks” to us exhausted bikers. I admire these people who have lived on this seemingly deprived island and live without material luxuries that people only a 10 minute bumboat ferry ride away probably would never imagine being able to survive without. The people on the island are friendly and cater to you, whether in selling their food or their bikes or in providing you with a basket when they see you with purses (which I definitely thought was a nice gesture).
I’ve noticed that there is an enormous sense of community here in Singapore. People graciously give their seats to the elderly and to the stressed out moms with their tiny children on the MRTs and buses. From the posters of statistics plastered around construction sites, I know that the workers also believe in safety first and pride themselves on the minimal number of accidents and lost hours at the sites. MRT stations also repeatedly show clips that remind Singaporeans to keep Singapore safe by doing their part in watching out for suspicious activity on the trains. With adages such as “Low crime doesn’t mean no crime” on the walls of the MRT stations, Singapore knows that unity is essential for a prosperous country. People are actively helping make Singapore better. A sense of responsibility is well-established here, from the “act responsibly signs” on the tracks of the MRTs, the daunting ads that illustrate what could happen (a world of darkness) if we consumed all the energy/natural resources of the earth, of course the infamous fine signs for littering, chewing gum, spitting, smoking, and the list goes on. Souvenirs with the tagline, “Singapore: a fine city” and the red “no” symbols, crowd the shelves of every tourist location here.
A few nights ago, Mary and I ventured off into the city after working in the lab. We went to Lau Pa Sat, “the largest remaining Victorian filigree cast-iron structure in Southeast Asia” with stalls galore, selling from stingray to stinky tofu, all at affordable prices. Right next to it was Satay Street where meat kabobs were sold with cucumbers and onions and a peanut dipping sauce. The signature satay was delicious. We also went to see the famous Merlion, but unfortunately it was covered in green due to construction. It seems like Singapore is constantly being remodeled. Everywhere you look, you see cranes and workers in hats and boots with pedestrian walkway signs pointing to the allocated pathways. Every day, we walk past a construction site where a new MRT station will be built. It is located right next to wear we live (and we sigh at the government for not constructing it sooner). Here a new MRT station, there a new shopping mall. Here a new casino, there a new Universal Studios. It seems the country is trying hard to revamp its older buildings and attract tourists.
In other news, Mary and I will be soaking up more of the Southeast Asian culture. We're getting up before the sun rises Saturday to visit Ho Chi Minh. Exciting! I'm sure there will be many experiences/cultural similarities & differences to share.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
The Queue and Vectors
(from Mary Bohan)
In going to quite a few doctors to try to get my malaria pills and TB test, I definitely found some differences between the Singaporean healthcare system and ours in the US. In Singapore, they have "queues" everywhere, when you walk into the clinic you get a number from an automated machine, and then wait in a waiting room until your number pops up on an electronic screen so that you can even speak with the receptionist. Then you "register" with the clinic, tell them what you need or who you need to see, and then are given another ticket with another number, and wait for that number to be called. Then you have your "consult" for under ten minutes, and then you're given another number to wait for your test or your prescription. Finally, you wait in line again to pay for the services, in cash, which turned into a problem when I didn't have over $150 cash to get my malaria pills yesterday, hopefully I'll get them today. In the clinic for the TB Test, I waited for three hours to see the doctor for about 5 minutes, and then to have an injection which took about 3 minutes. I asked the receptionist a few times whether my number had been lost or forgotten, but she insured me that it would come up, I just had to keep waiting. Everyone else seemed pretty calm about the situation, I guess that's what it's like everywhere. Since most of their services are paid for by the government, they're willing to wait in line for a few hours to get them. The two physicians that I saw were on par with doctors at home, although the one at the TB clinic admitted she knew nothing about malaria pills after I explained my situation to her, and tried to convince me to go to the emergency room, but after returning to work my boss reassured me I'd be fine.
This week I've been preparing for cloning of the Dengue and Yellow Fever samples, using the pGEM-T Easy Vector and the PBluescript II SK(+) Vector. I've been researching the places where the enzymes bind to the samples, as well as the enzymes that bind to both vectors, so that we can choose the appropriate enzymes to use in the cloning of specific regions. I've never studied anything about the subject, except for a day or two in AP Biology nearly four years ago, so I've been pretty much learning as I go along. I'm continuing to maintain and grow my cells in the wet lab, changing the media and checking the cells under the microscope to ensure that they are healthy and haven't become "contaminated," a word I've been fearing for the past few weeks, as not only my work but everyone else's would have to be thrown out.
Next week is my last week at work, except for the friday afternoon and saturday when I return from India, when I'm going to try to make it into work to say goodbye to everyone. I'm continuing to work in the wet lab on my cells, so that they can be used after I leave when the actual wet experiments start. I'm also finishing my work on determining which enzymes to use for the cloning, information that can also be used after I leave. I'm going to have to teach all of what I've been doing to Yinglin, a Singaporean girl who started working in the lab a few weeks ago and who will be taking over my work once I go and using in the next stages of the research, so just showing her where everything is, how it's organized, how I found it, and how to use it will take quite a bit of time.
In going to quite a few doctors to try to get my malaria pills and TB test, I definitely found some differences between the Singaporean healthcare system and ours in the US. In Singapore, they have "queues" everywhere, when you walk into the clinic you get a number from an automated machine, and then wait in a waiting room until your number pops up on an electronic screen so that you can even speak with the receptionist. Then you "register" with the clinic, tell them what you need or who you need to see, and then are given another ticket with another number, and wait for that number to be called. Then you have your "consult" for under ten minutes, and then you're given another number to wait for your test or your prescription. Finally, you wait in line again to pay for the services, in cash, which turned into a problem when I didn't have over $150 cash to get my malaria pills yesterday, hopefully I'll get them today. In the clinic for the TB Test, I waited for three hours to see the doctor for about 5 minutes, and then to have an injection which took about 3 minutes. I asked the receptionist a few times whether my number had been lost or forgotten, but she insured me that it would come up, I just had to keep waiting. Everyone else seemed pretty calm about the situation, I guess that's what it's like everywhere. Since most of their services are paid for by the government, they're willing to wait in line for a few hours to get them. The two physicians that I saw were on par with doctors at home, although the one at the TB clinic admitted she knew nothing about malaria pills after I explained my situation to her, and tried to convince me to go to the emergency room, but after returning to work my boss reassured me I'd be fine.
This week I've been preparing for cloning of the Dengue and Yellow Fever samples, using the pGEM-T Easy Vector and the PBluescript II SK(+) Vector. I've been researching the places where the enzymes bind to the samples, as well as the enzymes that bind to both vectors, so that we can choose the appropriate enzymes to use in the cloning of specific regions. I've never studied anything about the subject, except for a day or two in AP Biology nearly four years ago, so I've been pretty much learning as I go along. I'm continuing to maintain and grow my cells in the wet lab, changing the media and checking the cells under the microscope to ensure that they are healthy and haven't become "contaminated," a word I've been fearing for the past few weeks, as not only my work but everyone else's would have to be thrown out.
Next week is my last week at work, except for the friday afternoon and saturday when I return from India, when I'm going to try to make it into work to say goodbye to everyone. I'm continuing to work in the wet lab on my cells, so that they can be used after I leave when the actual wet experiments start. I'm also finishing my work on determining which enzymes to use for the cloning, information that can also be used after I leave. I'm going to have to teach all of what I've been doing to Yinglin, a Singaporean girl who started working in the lab a few weeks ago and who will be taking over my work once I go and using in the next stages of the research, so just showing her where everything is, how it's organized, how I found it, and how to use it will take quite a bit of time.
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