Trading blows

Ah, yet another brawl in the Taiwanese parliament. Haven't had one of those for a little while....

Old plates

Hurray! I need some antibiotic plates for a bacterial transformation later on in the day, but found out that a) the plates I have are getting on for 6-weeks old, b) I didn't have any bottles of sterile media made up, and c) there was no bacto-agar left. So I had a quick online rummage of Bitesized Bio, a site where scientists exchange technical tips and flag up new techniques, to see what the BBD (best-before date) for antibiotic plates were. My old supervisor always said 1 month, but it appears that my 6-week old veterans don't have to draw their pension just yet.

I also had a quick rummage through the plate stocks in the cold room, and there are some from last autumn, whilst several stacks are 4 months+. And those are the ones on the front shelves. I'm sure if I look hard enough I'll find some from the last millenium, maybe with weird and wonderful strains of bacteria on them.

The game has ended!

John Isner won - 70 games to 68!
Mahut looks like he's able to cry... T_T
They've been given a 'special memento', along with the (literally) long-suffering umpire. Poor Mahut has to hang around for photos, speeches, etc.

Is Isner due to play a doubles game later this afternoon?!
The people around me are following the football, apart from one person, who was listening on the radio and mentioned out loud that Isner had won, just when I was watching the final serve (TV is slightly behind the radio).

Phew....

Neverending game

I'm watching the Wimbledon, court 18 to be precise, the John Isner vs Nicholas Mahut match. It's very compelling, unbelievable how the games just keep going on and on. Currently 64 games each, and apparently they have each played enough games to theoretically win the Championship. I think practically all the tennis records have been broken too. The BBC live coverage, with the Twitter and text posts is very good.

P.S. Yes, I am sort of working, bringing my lab book up-to-date. And I didn't go to watch the football yesterday when everyone was skivving....

Work during the World Cup

My company has been quite 'understanding' about allowing us to go and watch the World Cup games. They've even opened the pavilion-bar with the wide-screen tv so that people can go and watch the games they want - as it has quite an international community a lot of the games have been shown, but for the England-Slovenia game (being played right now) my department resembles the Marie Celeste....

The office areas

The lab

Amazing given that it's only the first round, nowhere near the finals. Though it may be the 'final' game for England in the World Cup this year - let's hope that they play better than they did last week.