CNY

It used to be that I looked forward to Chinese New Year in Cambridge, and this year especially I was looking forward to the celebrations without the stress and intense practising for lion-dancing. I've had some great times with the lion dance troupe, and made good friends with the members, both past and present. When I decided to leave last year, I was afraid at first that I wouldn't see any of them much anymore and I would have missed them. So I was really very happy to find myself socialising and getting to know my friends better outside of practices.

Lately though, I've been hearing a bit too much about lion-dancing. As far as I can tell, it boils down to insufficient communication between the committee members, and the feeling that some are taking the bulk of the work and stress that comes with CNY more than others. After trying to listen patiently for several weeks (yes, weeks), and resisting the urge to butt in, all I can say is 'why can't you guys sit down and talk about it and sort it out amongst yourselves?!!!'. As a friend, I'm happy to listen about problems they might have, and sympathesize. As an ex-coach/ex-president/ex-almost everything I'm also willing to give my advice when asked. But I keep finding myself being placed in the most difficult of situations, being asked for advice in a friend capacity. Frankly, I know them too well to be impartial, nor can I step in and help because, even if I had the time, it would be rude and stepping on people's toes. It is not my responsibility nor my inclination.

I'm starting to find myself avoiding social events where I might see more than a certain number of lion-dancers together in the same place. An impossible situation as I spend a lot of my time with Malaysians. I'm also starting to feel resentful, because I can't seem to look forward to Chinese New Year, nor can I relax when the subject of lion-dancing is brought up. Most of the lion-dancers don't discuss lion dancing with me, other than inviting me to watch their performances or making light talk, but I feel myself tensing up whenever I hear 'lion' and 'dance' in the same sentence, even if it's 'lion cubs' and 'dancing with wolves'. Perhaps when I hear about 'leona lewis dancing in a new mtv' I will find my shoulder muscles bunching up.

Anyway, perhaps it's my fault for getting too involved. There's no particular reason why I should feel responsible. I might just hide under my bedclothes and avoid them all this weekend. Wake me up in the New Year please.

Cousin network

Over recent years the family Cousin network has been getting quieter and quieter, but when needed, it can spring into action with surprising speed.

My mum rang me on Saturday morning, asking if I knew my cousin's (let's call him cousin J) phone number. His parents' house in Stockport had been broken into on Friday night, and the car and my auntie's phone had been stolen, along with their only record of J's mobile number. I only had an old number for him, so I rang cousin S, who said she would sms it to me if she had it. S had a DIFFERENT old number for J, so she rang her sisters, M and Y. Y had mobile number 3 for J, again out of use, so their brother L gets a phone call. L was at his parents' house so they had to tell his mum what had happened. His mum promptly rang my auntie. Meanwhile my parents were at my auntie's house waiting for the police. In the end we failed to get hold of J on the phone, but he still turned up at my auntie's after all. Facebook can be amazingly useful.

My auntie and uncle are fine by the way, though a bit shaken, they were sleeping upstairs whilst burglars were rummaging around downstairs. They also had their little toddler grandson in the room next to them upstairs, and somehow that makes it even scarier.

When it comes to gossip, the cousin network can be remarkably efficient as well, especially when our mums help out with the spreading of news.

blended creme eggs

The January Sales are still on-going, but the Easter merchandise is already on the shop shelves. Seems like a good time to mention chocolate and creme eggs in a blog entry. For fellow procrastinators and professional time-wasters, please go to www.cremeegg.co.uk for silly clips.

(my favourite)

People of a highly impressionable and depressive nature should not be allowed to watch these unless supervised by a sane (and therefore abnormal) person supplied with emergency boxes on non-creme-egg chocolate.

We must eat chocolate

From an article in the Times Higher Education supplement (19-26 December 2008) on examples of illogical logic -

'It is imperative that we do not do bad things. Eating chocolate, broadly speaking, is a good thing. Therefore not eating chocolate is a bad thing. We should not not eat chocolate. Conclusion; we must eat chocolate.'

I can think of several people who use that 'logic' already.

Another one I like is 'last year, approximately 6000 deaths were direct consequences of drinking. Nearly 5000 deaths were direct consequences of driving. There were 500 reported cases of death by drink-drinking. Therefore drink-driving is safer than drinking or driving alone.'

Hmm.

P.S. Although I use quotation marks, I'm only quoting from memory, so these may not be the exact words used, but as near enough as I can remember.

P.P.S. Yes I'm aware this is a flagrant misuse of quotation marks.

Bright-field leaf sections

I've been trying to get good clean cross-sections of tobacco and Nicotiana benthamiana leaves, and having a few problems with the tobacco cell walls, which have a tendency to rip and tear apart. Following up the suggestions made by a few colleagues I've found that using a different brand of the embedding media, and also sectioning at a lower temperature, makes a significant difference. The section below is 5 microns thick (that's 5 thousandths of a millimetre).

Ironically, I can't get the microtome lab cold enough - these sections were cut at a room temperature of 19 degrees Celsius. I'm planning on moving the microtome to a room with ambient temperature of 12 degrees and trying there.

The cell architecture of N. benthamiana appears to be much more robust and has stayed intact during sectioning, even at a thickness of only 4 microns.

My next stage is to stain the sections.

scissors that leave no visible rend

When people say that they feel their heart break
what their hearts are really doing is experiencing intense feeling
For how can a broken heart feel?

When there is but an emptiness
where your heart used to be
And a sense of something missing in the tiniest events of your everyday life
as if there someone has exited with help from scissors that leave no visible edge
Then there is your broken heart.

The question is, how does it learn to pick up the pieces of itself and carry on?
Or maybe it never does
but the body learns how to carry on, a shell to protect the precious fragments left behind.