of dublin, food-poisoning and a successful failure

This is something that I wrote but didn't feel like showing anyone; in current context, it's appropriate since some other stuff happened. It's written slightly more than a week ago.




When I was in Ireland, I travelled around on my own with a Lonely Planet.

According to Lonely Planet: "The most famous Irish bread, and one of the signature tastes of Ireland, is soda bread. Irish flour is so soft and doesn't take well to yeast as a raising agent, so Irish bakers of the 19th century began to leavened their bread with soda. Combined with buttermilk, it makes a superbly light-textured and tasty bread."

Well, I don't like to travel to countries and eat stupid food like american fast food. Therefore, when given a choice (yes, I admit that i was eating 2 Mac hamburgers for lunch everyday when I was in Switzerland 3 years back, but that's because it's Switzerland. i couldn't even afford to go to the bathroom man), I would prefer to eat the local food.

So when I was on my way to The Cliffs of Moher, I went through Doolin and needed lunch. Unfortunately, the famous Irish bar there was selling lunch at a ridiculous price and I don't tink the typical irish fried potatoes and sausages dish is exactly authentic, so I ended up at an irish bakery which sold irish bread! yay!

The only catch: all the bread was in large open baskets on the ground. I thought, heck it, if the irish can eat it, so can I.

That lunch, I had an irish bread (90p) and a cereal bar and a pack of gummy bears (all brought over from america). The bread was good, honestly. Had quite a unique texture and softness.





By the time I took the bus to Galway (Ireland's third largest city), I was running a fever, had multiple diarrhoea attacks, a whole body ache and a splitting headache. Yes, thanks to the infamous irish bread, I had food-poisoning for 3 days straight. It started with the normal diarrhoea and before I knew it, I couldn't even pass motion normally. I was passing out green smell-less liquids straight and high-school biology tells you that it has to be bile straightout of the stomach. By the time I got to Galway, I was having silly thoughts of myself dying ALONE in ireland and being buried at the Cliffs of Moher, or worse still, Limerick (what a joke it would be then). Ok, I know this sounds silly but remember, Dublin was my base in Ireland. Dublin was where my student hostel was for those few days and I was travelling alone on the trains and buses that ran across the whole Ireland. I honestly thought I wouldn't make it back even though that was just plain dumb on hind-sight.
So after I got to Galway by bus, I had 1hour before my train left for Dublin for the night. I ran to the bathroom, relieved myself, and then bought a 2 liter bottle of orange juice and had it for dinner (not so much to save money but because I needed to hydrate myself severely and vit c would be helpful). Then, I went down quickly to the famous St. Nicholas Cathedral, snapped a shot, and then hopped on the 3plus hour train ride back to Dublin.

I think I have learned my lesson. While I think backpacking alone is wonderful (esp. the moments of quiet you enjoy and the time for reflection and the freedom of choices), I now have second thoughts of doing south america alone. I have this recurring nightmare of me choking on enchellidas filled with mexican poison and colored pesto-green while I die a horrible death.

Ok, the above is completely out of point and doesn't reflect my thoughts of the trip at all. More on that in my livejournal travelogue soon i promise.

XXX

I reached St. Louis in the late evening on a Sunday. On Monday afternoon, I found out that my boss was angry that I couldn't turn up to present for the lab meeting (it was my turn). I knew that she was just being an unreasonable bitch cause trip or no trip (she was sore that I went to Europe during my one week holiday because I didn't apply leave and that doesn't make sense to me at all cos harlow, it's a sch holiday! who applies for leave during school holidays?) I had classes on Monday morning and wouldn't be able to make it anyway (and she knew about that beforehand but she said she was too busy to give me a reply).

Anyway, my mentor called to say that my professor (i.e. my boss) decided that I would present on Wed instead. Emotions aside, I realized that I was in for trouble because every single experiment I had done since my last presentation failed. Also, my last presentation was a bad one (cos it was my first time presenting in front of all these doctors) but at least there was a small nice result for my experiments. I was nervous and stammered and occassionally even forgot my slides-order. It was such a mediocre performance that at the end, everyone just left right after my presentation and my professor had to come up and say "good job" to me as a consolation because she worked with me for the presentation and knew the hard work that I put in.

This time, the monster was gonna be my professor cos of the trip I took without "her permission". So I decided that I needed some other arsenal (since all the experiments failed). On Wednesday, I went to the conference room earlier and arranged 3 boxes of irish chocolates (irish whiskey, irish cream and leprachaun-shaped chocolates). I took my highly professional laser pointer and adjusted all the lightings in the room to perfection. I added a hilarious picture of a t-shirt I took in london ("good girls go to heaven, bad girls go to london") in my presentation and added lotsa st patrick's day ditzy pictures along side some of my western blot pictures. Finally, I modeled my presentation to make it look like in spite of all the disappointing results, I was a highly resourceful scientist who made many great improvisations to current existing protocols.

It turns out that both Judy and Erin had irish blood and were enjoying the presentation very much (at one point, judy even interrupted me and began to talk about some serpent-lore in ireland and my professor had to stop her!) and Erin even gave me some pointers for my protein-transfer and even affirmed that my protocols were good. Bo and Qiuling kept saying the chocolates were great. Angie just kept eating and smiling at me. Even the new MD PhD student said the presentation was great. By the end of the presentation, everyone was laughing and the weirdest thing was: pple came up to CONGRATULATE me on an "absolutely fantastic" presentation, which left me extremely baffled (remember, I had absolutely no results since my past presentation and all my experiments failed!).

Finally, my professor (who was still nursing a grudge against my period of leave) just gave me a lousy smile and left the room. (i guess she couldn't do anything cos everyone just made it sound like I gave the best presentation for all lab meetings in a long time!)

So, from feeling despair and being worried about how it would go, my moods just went straight up through cloud nine from this unexpected response.

Unfortunately, life teaches you a lesson whenever you don't stand on sturdy ground.

While I was whistling to a tune while doing RNA extraction, my boss called me into her room. Turns out that the department of medicine was calling for a end of financial year performance evaluation of research staff. She gave me that lousy smile that she wore at the presentation and then started telling me my grading. ( 1 to 4, 1 being the worst, 4 being the best) At that point of time, I was wondering if you would give me bad gradings for the lack of leave application. Well, she gave me 3 for most aspects and so I felt good (i mean, can't expect too much right? She's a harvard bitch leh). Then she gave me a 4 for "Working relationships" and almost sarcastically, said that EVERYONE, yes, EVERYONE in the lab liked me.

And then she added, in the most casual of tones, "Oh, lastly, I gave you a 2 for dependability and work habits. I would like to know of all your absences more in advance in future."

Yeah, what goes around comes around. Sigh, no amount of trickery could fool that jewish woman. She handed me the evaluation form and told me to write my comments and countersign it before returing it to her.

I took it and felt a little dejected (which i know is plain-dumb but just couldn't get over the feeling of being blamed for something you ought not to be). And then out of no where, I decided to be a little mean back. So I sat down and under employee's comments, i wrote, "I have learned a lot at the lab... blah blah blah... I will pay attention to applying for leave in future, even if it's a school holiday such as spring break." Signature.

Haha, i gave my boss the widest smile I could muster when I returned her the form. She said "Thank you" and I replied, "No, thank YOU. Really, thank YOU." =) =) =)

XXX

We all have to learn how to cope with failures in life and on second thoughts, the best way is really to shit out all the crap and then take a photo in front of St Nicholas Cathedral with your best smile as if it was ur best day ever.

Ciao