Transformations: 

1. King/CJ

Bcl2 - pCTCON2
Neg Control

2. Tina/Brandon

ZipRR - pCTCON2
Neg Control

3. Sami/Julia

ZipEE - pCTCON2
Neg Control 

We tried to make it for the 3:00pm cookie sale in the afternoon with Eric, but there wasn’t any cookies today! We learned that the cookie availability depends on which chef is in the back! Now we know… :\

9:40am

Happy Independence Day! (in Canada!) :D 

Kingsley is so stupid. He forgot his password for Tumblr and he can’t even send it to himself. -_-

I can’t wait for the three day weekend! Going to Reno tomorrow morning. Should be a good weekend. I think we all really need this, after the first official week of work. The weather should be pretty awesome too, all around. 

Currently, we’re all sitting in the Cave on the Macs trying to update our blogs. I forgot to finish the ones from the first two weeks and now I forgot what happened. I guess I could look back on the agenda from the itinerary but it’s not the same. 

Brandon has a good story to tell us later about a certain little jerk. I can’t wait. :) 

9:53am

Take note of these things in the future:

1) Labeling - be more careful! 
2) Work Flow - keep track; Tumblr, notebooks, etc
3) Ice Boxes - more than one? for buffers/enzymes, etc

4) Colony PCR
5) Individual Meetings - Where to go from here

Only ZipEE + pCTCON2 got colonies from the transformations yesterday. We are now planning to troubleshoot individually with Veronica and see where we should go from here. I guess the first time is always hard, but we must learn to take failure well! I should have known better than to label the colonies incorrectly. I thought I was good at multitasking but I guess not. Must be more careful in the future! 

Crystal is being really creepy. :) 

Yay, we’re getting started in the lab today :D 

HAI CRYSTAL. :D

Alas! Bootcamp is over. It was horrific sometimes, but I must say I have definitely learned a lot. I won’t lie and say I enjoyed waking up so early during the summer, even if it was to learn some awesome things. I already aligned my sleep cycles to ‘early’ so I guess it’s inevitable that I shall be showing up early in the lab starting Monday. I am very excited for lab work, even though we still have to order primers and such. As of now, that sounds like a formidable task, but I think in time we will be able to handle it well. 

Since I am still sick and my head is still kind of light-headed, I don’t think I did the maximum amount of work that I could possibly do. I’m not really sure that sentence made sense. I hope I haven’t been passing my germs around, because Sami has been sneezing and coughing a bit. Cross your fingers, everyone! 

Anyhow, we all did some specified research today, on PubMed, google, etc. to find some information of specific things we need to start working on to help this project take off for real. Right now it seems like we’re out of gas before we’ve even taken off, but we just have to hit runway speed and we’ll fly up, up, and away! Here we go! 

I was awfully hungry today, even though I had lunch, and a Chai Latte from the Cafe in the morning (because I showed up at the Cave at 9:20 and no one was there!). The Latte was delicious though, but not quite enough Chai flavor. I think I’ve made better ones at ‘work’ a while back. 

The printer refused to work for me today, and I wanted to throw it out the window, but seeing as it is not mine, and I don’t even technically work at UCSF, I would probably get…deported (or exported, as Veronica says). Well anyways, it just wouldn’t be the best idea. Though it was tempting… 

Everything went by pretty quickly for today, except the afternoon, waiting for 5PM to slowly arrive, tick by tick. I guess things won’t be as tedious-feeling when the lab work starts.

OMG! I forgot to mention, the huge box of lab notebooks + binders has arrived. We are so happy. Or at least I am. I think I just love getting new office supplies. Perhaps it’s related to the feeling of going “back-to-school” shopping, which I love! It’s the best thing in the world, at least when I liked going back to school. Now it’s just…eh…

Well I guess I should take advantage of the weekend and get some good nights of sleep in. Don’t want to be contaminating the lab with my nasty sick germs! Cheers to a good summer! 

Sunday, June 19th, 2011

Monday, June 20th, 2011

It was an unbelievable short weekend. I don’t mind going back to UCSF bright and early, but rest is always nice too. I was kind of afraid of what was to come towards the end of the week, but I think it will turn out okay because I’m not alone. :) I have a wonderful team of bright and creative minds that will work together and think of something superb. Whoa that was cheesy. Oh well. 

It was a nice day out, as always, so Sami, Julia, and I brought the paper we had to read outside and did our work there. I was trying to even out my awful tan while trying to avoid further burning. It didn’t really work too well. 

I actually did bring lunch today; Sushi! But we actually beat the line at Publico for once, so we ran over there and ordered away! I got a Agua Fresca (Cantaloupe Flav!) and Carmen’s Nachos. Best nachos I’ve ever had in my life. There is like, EVERYTHING on it. I gobbled down everything in a flash. Then we headed back up and got back to work. Tomorrow we start brainstorming for ideas! AHhHH! 

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

I was actually in a terrible mood today. I woke up with a sore throat and a sore body, basically. I guess I like being sore, because it means my workout was good! But a sore throat is just irritating. I was feeling extremely crabby, and no one was home, I couldn’t find any food for breakfast and I was VERY HUNGRY. I found whatever I could for lunch; ended up packing a sandwich and a microwavable soup thing. My mom came home from dropping off my sister and then took me to Parnassus. I was pretty darn irritated still and didn’t even want to acknowledge people at the shuttle stop. Sorry guys! Sat quietly and fell asleep a bit on the ride there. 

Today was a pretty hectic day as well. We spent all of last night researching feasibility and possibilities of our ideas brainstormed previously, and then presented them in the morning to each other. We narrowed the ideas down even further and then investigated more possibilities with a few of our buddies. They were really helpful in providing us with their perspectives and sparking new paths for the ideas we already had. Afterwards, each group had a couple hours to investigate their idea even more and then we reported back to Veronica afterwards. 

I think I could have contributed more to the discussions and maybe even sell my idea with the UV detection sunscreen made from yeast,etc. better if I wasn’t sick. I just didn’t feel like doing anything today, but at lunch I got a little better. I just wanted to avoid everyone because I didn’t want to bite anyone’s face off. If I’m crabby, I am really crabby. I just wanted to be alone so I could get rid of my throbbing headache. I don’t even understand how I got sick! No one in iGem is sick, and it’s definitely not the weather. Perhaps something from Jujitsu, maybe? 

Well at lunch, I was sitting there sipping my soup with music blasting, not really sure what to do, and then Sami, Julia, and Hannah sat down on the couch after getting Julia’s lunch. I was pretty irritated still because they were talking a lot and I could hear them over my music. I tried to sleep on the table with my head down, but my face kept going numb. They offered me the couch, but I didn’t really feel like it. They offered again later on and I finally said sure because the chair really wasn’t doing me any good. We all sat side by side on the couch, with me on the end so I could rest my head on the end. Then I tried sleeping again but then my arm went numb after a while, and then these sweetie pies offered me the whole couch. Very nice of them. I could finally nap properly and they could watch their Myth Busters in peace. I took a good…30 minutes I believe. Maybe longer. It was lovely. I felt much better when I woke up and we all got back to work. 

Then Veronica announced some WONDERFUL NEWS! We were able to get our badges down at the Police Station of the Mission Bay Campus! Yay! Our crushed dreams from yesterday were now revived! Although I looked like crap today due to being ill and just waking up, I didn’t really care. It was just awesome to get our badges. I look terrible in my picture, but oh well. :) I still feel like a boss. 

After presenting our ideas to Veronica in the afternoon, we actually had to rewire our whole…idea? To be honest, the whole fertilizer thing didn’t really get me psyched enough. I didn’t want to be a party pooper though, and I guess it’s not too bad. But we spent a good 10-20 minutes trying to figure out what else we could do, and we came up with something pretty awesome! It’s related to all the things we did spend hours looking up this afternoon, and something different too. Hydroponics! That’s all I can say for now, because we haven’t done a whole lot of research on it yet, but that’s what I should be doing now instead of blogging! :) 

Sigh, so sore from class, but I guess I’ll have to get to work now so we have something to present tomorrow morning. Good news is burritos afterwards! Yay! Food always makes me happy. Plus my ID Badge.

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

Presenting was not actually as bad as I thought it would be. Although I would have to say that I was slightly (okay, more than slightly) sleepy while doing research the previous night, we were somewhat prepared for our proposal of projects presentation. 

The burritos for lunch was the best part! ;) Just kidding. Getting feedback from everyone was actually really helpful, especially in preparation of the project for the rest of the summer and moving on from where we are now. 

Work in progress…

Work in progress…

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

Felt some jitters. Kind of knew what to expect because I have been to UCSF Mission Bay several times, including the lunch meeting/orientation day for iGem, but it still felt…different…I packed a few things here and there such as all the papers we’ve read so far, and a bottle of water, keys, money, etc. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t dreading the loss of my summer, but I guess this will be an experience of a lifetime, so that cancels out some of the sadness. :(

Monday, June 13th, 2011

Ahhh, this long awaited day has at last arrived. I woke up really early. Even before my alarm went off. I was probably feeling too anxious for my own good. Not exactly nervous. Just a weird feeling. After getting dressed and everything was set, I started just pacing back and forth in the living room. My mother thought I had gone crazy. I left the house at 8:00am and took the N to Parnassus. I didn’t know how to get to the UCSF shuttle stop from there so I asked this nice looking lady. She led me there because she was heading that way too. I was worried about being late so I just took the Blue shuttle instead of the direct Grey shuttle. The Blue went to General Hospital, and then Mission Bay, but I was pretty sure I would be okay. It was probably better than waiting for the next Grey since I just missed one. I felt a little sick on the bus ride…kind of like my breakfast didn’t process correctly.. and the bus driver kept telling bad jokes. Oh well. When I got there, I easily found my way to the usual entrance at Genentech Hall, and bumped into Julia. We got our visitors passes and then sat in the lobby/waiting room area, thinking no one was there yet. Then Brandon texted me and said they were all upstairs so Julia and I went up to S271. Unfortunately the projector in that room wasn’t agreeing with Veronica’s laptop, so we had to move to S261, which is all fine and dandy.

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

We met up at the cave at 10am and went through some slides. We ended around 11:40am and then headed to Safeway near the CalTrain station on King and 4th. I got a pasta salad from Safeway, as well as deviled eggs/potato salad. We all sat down at the CalTrain station to eat after we bought our tickets. Time went by pretty fast and before you know it we were on the CalTrain on our way to Stanford. It was a fairly fast trip, but I still took a short nap. Sami and I attempted to edit our video from the day before but we didn’t really get anything done before I fell asleep. 

The weather at Stanford was really nice! We took the shuttle near the CalTrain station to building where the mini-conference between Bay Area iGem teams was held. I believe it was called the “Y2E2” because of the people that the building was named after. We hid in the shade for a while when we waited for the conference to start. The tables in the back courtyard type place were really nice. I really like the campus at Stanford. :( I wish I could be there. We sat around for a while and then went upstairs. Then the fun began! We all got our name tags and then they told us that it was tradition to doodle a bit on them, so we doodled away! We didn’t get much done before the meeting started though. Each team did a little introduction/bio on themselves and their project for this year’s iGem competition, and then Veronica introduced us as the special group of high school students that were part of the UCSF team. We did a little bio of our experience with biotechnology at ALHS and the techniques we were more than familiar with. I think some of the people there were still skeptical about our abilities, but there was also this one  guy who was like “WHAT? High School?! I’m jealous!” 

After formal introductions and whatnot, the Stanford/Brown team that was missing for the beginning of the meeting showed up and they introduced their project. I was really interested in their particular project because I have always had an interest in outer space and the possibilities! They had a powerpoint presentation prepared for us, which was pretty impressive despite the awful paint drawings. 

Friday, June 17th, 2011

Saturday, June 18th, 2011

Sunday, June 19th, 2011