Summer

I hope all is well!  I've been rather busy of late, having to work from 9 am until 4 pm during the weekdays.  It's tiring stuff, so I do apologize for not writing any sooner.  That, and blogging for ISC while working sporadically on the Insanity Workout while keeping track of my TV shows and manga, plus being hooked on Football Manager 2013...

At the moment, I'm working at the Meats Lab here in Iowa State as a lab assistant in the Food Science Research Lab, regarding food quality testing.  The majority of projects we work on are given by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is rather exciting.  Besides the professor in charge, I get to work with three other undergraduate students and a graduate student, so work isn't lonely at all.  

Granted the first week of work involved mere inventory checks and paperwork (which is a bore...), I'm beginning to get into the lab-part of things now.  Recently I've worked on testing food samples for presence of E.coli and Listeria monocytogenes, which are common foodborne pathogens.  Other notable organisms tested were Salmonella enteriditis and Yersinia entericoccus.  Although this job isn't related to my intended career path in the clinical field of Microbiology, the experience gained thus far has been very rewarding nevertheless.

Getting to use fancy equipment like selective growth media, and PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) machine, which splices and amplifies DNA, is a really rewarding experience.  I can't wait to see what other projects are in-store.  I'm super stoked!

On the other hand, I had recently bought a TV from a graduating friend of mine.  It's a super nice 42" full HD TV, and my prospective housemates are extremely happy too.  It is however, currently sitting at another friend's place as I have no space to store it.  So he gets to test it out and enjoy watching cable for a while!!

Also, I've asked Justin (who's in Malaysia at the moment) to get a full-sized Jalur Gemilang flag, with the intention of draping it over the living room in our apartment.  Hopefully we can spruce up the apartment more once he returns in the Fall.

That's it from me thus far.  Take good care, peeps!

Chocolate - The 1975