FAST

When it comes to things that are FAST, time of course is at the top notch but this afternoon, something FAST happened.. we held the induction of FAST officers and I mean the official group of Fil students here in Tsukuba. And indeed, time flies since last year, at about this time, we were welcomed by FAST officers and now we are the FAST officers.

It was like just a while ago that we were enjoying the Sakura in campus and right now, these trees that Japan is famous for are in bloom again. Not yet fully, but some trees have been impatient and already started giving us a foretaste of what it will be like come spring time. The real Spring Time!!! Cannot think of other things to say when I have so many personal stuff to write in this space…anyway..

Here are some of those pictures.

with my batchmates!

Mye, Fe, Fe (Sounds bad…Fe squared?) Nah, Mye, Pipot and Fe.

FAST Family or Foes, hehe.

At Matsumi PArk, our favorite park.

Ichinoya 38-413

If there is something that I know will surely be difficult for me, that will be of letting go… of bad and good memories… of people and places where I had a great time. Ichinoya 38-413 is not exactly a heaven but surprisingly it was my own haven from April 2 until September 15 of 2007. Compared with other single dorms, it is by far the best. It is relatively new, has its own kitchen and shower and new furniture. My room is in the 4th floor so I had a great view of the Sakura in spring and of the grasses and the trees after the spring time (the sakura became an ordinary tree after it shed its flowers).

The Sakura Tree

Since the room is just 13 sq. m, I basically had to re-arrange my room so that the study- cum-dining table will be facing the window to make the room seem bigger. Breakfast time is a wonderfult ime for me, trying out new food (Winner sausage is not the same as the Tender Juicy Purefoods Hotdogs we used to have in the Phils). My breakfast usually consists of wi-na, coffee, rice (the microwavable type), and fruits.

My breakfast (and company..sigh)

My room in Ichinoya Dorm

I always think about you my dear room, but I am happy where I am now…gonna let you go.

Mga Kaibigan Ko sa Bayan ng mga Kwago..Ikalawang Yugto

For all the blessings and misgivings that I received and will receive in this city or country for that matter, I only have Kuya Butch to blame (haha!). He is the reason why I am here in Tsukuba. He wrote to a colleague in AdMU and informed her about his lab’s need for free labor, este, students. My colleague forwarded his e-mail to everyone but me…and after a month, decided to send the same e-mail to me. That was the start of the Nihon thing. Kuya Butch replied and asked for resume, recommendations and other documents and after that, having finally a sensei (an unknown one) I applied for the Monbukagakusho scholarship. I have exchanged e-mails with him but mita koto ga nai. The first time I saw him was in Saizeriya during the welcome dinner with the whole Tsukuba Pinoy people. The next day, I went to the lab and saw him there and he introduced me to the lab (and the lab touban, grrr, hehe).

In front of the building where the lab is.

He gave me my lessons in mammalian cell/tissue culture and gave me (and Sonya), during a dinner in a Chinese resto, the complete and unedited version of what life in our lab is really all about. Thanks for that. Kuya Butch’s family are also dear friends and who will not love his cute little Boky…adorable and huggable kid.

Though not in Tsukuba, Ging gave me the first orientation and helpful tips regarding survival in Tsukuba.

Kuya Joel, Herb,Pipot, Benj, Romar and Raquel,Eng and Azam, Kuya Butch, Ate Ning and Kuya Joey and the rest .

My Friends in The City of Owls

I have stayed in this city for almost a year now and have met a lot of people. Some became close friends simply because we all arrived at the same time, experienced new things together and have done wonderful and silly things together. Others because they were simply wonderful and have made my life, in this city, enjoyable and meaningful. I will not talk about Karlo and Pipot in this post since they are not really new friends, but rather old friends making my Tsukuba life more ‘tolerable’. I will talk about them in my “graduation” thoughts by end of March.

My friendship with John, Reggy was the first (and special) because we came on the same day, flew to Japan in the same plane, and basically were always together (everyday!!!) in the first month. I met them during the Monbukagakusho scholars’ briefing in the Embassy of Japan in the Phils but our journey together in this city started when we travelled together from Narita Airport (after we were given our arrival allowance by JASSO people) and were cramped in a taxi, literally rubbing elbows (and legs) with these tall and handsome Pinoys. Since we just ate simple and just an ample amount of lunch in the Japan Airlines, we were really hungry and someone (was it John?) gladly shared his dried mangoes with us and that served as our snacks in that afternoon. We were met by Romar and Raqxz when we alighted from the taxi (I was in the ISC personnel’s car) and were brought to our rooms, I can still recall Romar “laboring” hard to bring my 30 kg-luggage to the 4th floor of Ichinoya 38. I was grateful…really! Without any spare time to look around our rooms, we were whisked off to Saizeriya for a dinner with the Filipino community (FAST) and it was a blur of faces that I had to memorize so as not to offend anyone. It was really cold though we were reassured that it was actually warm already….yeah right.

The week that followed was a blur of events and they are as follows (as I remember them, probably not in proper chronological order): Went to International Student Center to fill out forms for our Alien Residence Cert; Fill out forms for our bank account (Postal Bank), enrollment in Japanese Class, Monbukagakusho Scholarship matters; shopped at Kasumi (after dinner at Saizeriya??); dinner at Benj’s place….dinner at Sukiya where I tasted natto for the first time (I remember Pipot checking the bus time and the wind, and rain was verrrry cold..biting cold)… Attending the Japanese class during the first two weeks means walking every morning with Reggy…rain or shine (usually rain) since we were still disoriented at that time (actually for quite a long time) and we didn’t know that we can actually take the bus, ha ha! John always went to class in his bike while Reggy and I enjoyed our morning walks since we didn’t have a choice anyway. During those times, and in the land of high technology, it seemed at first that we cannot even send e-mail since we did not have an idea where we can use the internet and we didn’t have IDs and we only relied on Benj’s kindness to allow us to use his computer. Our world then revolved around Benj, Romar, Japanese class and a little bit about our sensei.

With Reggy and John

With Reggy in our rare porma day

Here, I was just happy to see Pipot

Sonya is my first female friend. She is from Mongolia. Kuya Butch asked me to call her room on the night that she arrived in Tsukuba so I can arrange for our going to the lab together. I can still recall how happy her voice sounded like when she heard me talk…as if I was God-send or something. Later she told me she was just happy to hear someone speak English. She said she didn’t understand anything that other people said to her (or just heard for that whole day…in Japanese of course!). I dropped by her room the next day to pick her up so we can go to the lab. I cannot remember all of it except for her laptop on her table, the red, blue and black colors in her carpet on the floor…and we were going to the lab everyday since we started Japanese class and we are still doing the same up to this time. She is now not just a friend but a really dear friend. We shared each others’ longing and loneliness for our children and spouses…our preparations for our family’s VISA documents.

With Sonya (and sensei) during our trip to Tateyama, Chiba, Japan.

In the next part of this entry, I will talk about about (not in any order) Ging, Kuya Butch, Kuya Joel, Herb,Pipot, Benj, Romar and Raquel,Eng and Azam, Kuya Butch, Ate Ning and Kuya Joey and the rest .

Holding Hands

Happy Valentines’ Day! This afternoon, while looking at the cells through the microscope, a thought came into my mind…As always, they look like they are stretching out to touch the neighboring cells. It is one of the characteristics of mammalian cells in culture, they have to be in at least within touching distance so as to enable them to have cell-to-cell communication. In some pictures, they look as if they are holding hands.

Holding hands is important for survival. Murine melanoma cells, like most cells will not survive without someone to hold hands with. When a cell’s dendrites cannot touch the dendrites of another cell, it will soon round up and float…wither away…We, too..when we have no one to hold hands with, we simply wither away. We call it love..others say it’s because we are social beings.

School children are told to hold hands when crossing the street, that means holding hands also keeps us safe. We hold the hands of those we love in times of joy and in times of not.

We hold hands because we want to be assured of what is tangible as love sometimes is not. Tomorrow, I will hold hands with my beloved ones to celebrate Valentines Day. And hold hands with God as we celebrate His love for us.

On beginnings and New Year..seminar cont.

The seminar went as expected…with good comments and suggestions from friends and not so from, ehem. Anyway, there are so many things that I am thankful for this day. First, I will be changing my cell line (hurray!!), second, I will be using a different protocol for protein isolation and for others this is bad news but for me, a real relief since the “old one” is nagai jikan de, the 2-D Quant is faster not to mention a relatively recent method. Third, I guess the imo worries will soon be over…God willing I will have an additional source.

This Chinese New Year suddenly has a meaning to me…something beyond being at the receiving end of tikoy (Chinese Rice Cake) from Chinese students. Tomorrow, I will organize my ‘new life’ by getting a new notebook, get rid of the dear old cells (gomen, three flasks full!) and revive new cells. This is New Year indeed….Out with the old and in with the new…

I pray that the results I will get will be the start of something worth writing, publication-wise!!!! Goodbye PAS…Hello Nature!!!!

Weekly Seminar

The Lab’s weekly seminar is as important as your BF or your GF’s birthday….wasurenai de kudasai! Everyone takes his or her turn in giving the talk, either a chosen paper related to your study or presenting the recent results you obtained. Giving a talk regarding a paper, I think, is the easiest as you c

riticize other people’s work and keeping in mind the blunders that you should avoid doing in your own research….Presenting your research results is a bit challenging- you get to know your research’s strengths (and weaknesses) and others get to know them as well (the challenging part…=) ). Sometimes it is better to discuss it with your own adviser, as you get the directions you desperately need when you are kind of lost..but to get them from your peers is another thing. A comment made by someone you know who is knowledgeable about the subject matter and knows “science” is a “welcome remarks”…getting them from those who believe they know better than you are triggers an emotion akin to those that the main character of the Cask of Amontillado uttered in the 1st paragraph of the story. And I wish I can do the same as he did! Sweet revenge!

Tomorrow is one of my seminars on my research’s recent results and I wonder how it would turn out to be. I am looking forward though to my adviser’s comments and guidance so I can move on to the more interesting part…proteomics!

On Mye Identity

I always have a journal…in this age, I guess I am one of those who still do not have an electronic form of this way of expressing thoughts. So in this attempt to always jot down everyday’s thoughts, this is it.

I am not sure if I am a scientist as I do not considered my papers (as if there’s a lot) as breakthroughs…nor am I a writer as I am always afraid of being criticised (grammar-wise).

Second attempt….gambare!

This is my second attempt in starting a blog. I hope this will not turn out to be another “cross-stitching” attempt (always starting a new design but never get to finish anything). I hope to be able to write as an attempt to release all thoughts and cares so as not to utter them and be tagged as ‘the constantly complaining one’.