🍎🧬📚 queenofthegods' "I passed N2 now what?" Study Log

[queenofthegods]

@silly_webster

He tries to ask, “may I sit?” (すわるもいですか) but accidentally asks “may I touch?” (さわるもいですか).

Oh I’ve absolutely made that mistake before. Even the simple words can be very similar which causes a lot of confusion. There’s also a lot of words in Japanese that sound the same but have different meanings based on context so sometimes I get confused as hell sometimes because I only know one meaning. Like at the vet the guy kept talking about しょくどう and the only definition of those sounds I knew was 食堂, cafeteria, so I was rather confused what that had to do with my cat lol. Turns out the same sounds also mean 食道, which is esophagus, which makes a lot more sense in the vet office context.

Also, welcome to WaniKani!

[queenofthegods]

May 5th, 6th, and 7th

20ish + 52 reviews
stayed on top of it somehow
lecture x1

The last days of Golden Week have passed, so now it’s back to regular life. Rather unfortunate.

Anyhow, Mr. Engineer and I spent the last couple days walking around a (strangely empty) Niigata city. Many cities in Japan have a random really tall tower you can go up to see the whole city from. Niigata’s tower is Toki Messe, which is right on the coast so you can see all of Niigata city as well as Sado Island and even Awashima on clear days. I’ve been there a couple times, the first time being in 2017 on my first trip to Niigata and most recently in December 2023 I believe. It was nicer than I remembered, especially during golden hour. Maybe I just appreciate it more now that I live in the city. It was fun to try to spot the places I go to frequently, like my university, my apartment building, and the local grocery store.

As of late I’ve been really uninspired when it comes to cooking. After so many years of eating mostly Japanese food because that is what is most easily available you get kinda tired of it and want some home food. Recently trying to get back into bread making which almost always fails somehow, so now I want to explore other recipes. The recipe I have is meant for a frying pan but it’s so easy to burn the bottom before anything else is even done or the yeast just doesn’t rise, either to there being something wrong with it or Japanese houses are just too cold. Now I want to try another recipe but I swear to god if one more gluten free recipe calls for “1 to 1 gluten free flour” I’m going to scream. 1 to 1 substitute flour is a recent invention and also something I don’t have access to in Japan. Like please give me a list of flours like all the old recipes I used in high school. Also every 1 to 1 gluten free flour is different, so the flour that works for one recipe might not work for another. In my opinion this isn’t even truly gluten free baking (gasp, I know, hot take). If you can just use a 1 to 1 flour in a regular bread recipe that takes out all the skill and nuance that comes with trying to bake something gluten free. This also runs the risk of knowledge loss about what flours can be used to make gluten free baked goods. Different flours have different properties you have to balance and can change the percentages of depending on what you want/the problems you have. Like if all we do is use premade flours, what happens if the companies stop making the flours? Or start charging exorbitant prices? We are losing skills and putting ourselves at the mercy of companies. Hot take aside, I have used a 1 to 1 gluten free flour before and was happy with the results. I think there’s space in gluten free baking for both. The other solution to my problem is to just search for recipes in Japanese, but all the recipes limit themselves to rice flour only. Rice flour is good, but it gets wet and sticky very easily so ideally you want some other flours to balance out those qualities. Gluten intolerance is low in Japan so there’s few resources and little motivation to really explore how to make stuff without wheat. That said I did stumble across a whole cookbook about using rice flour meant for gluten free people, but I’ve had a lot of problems with the recipes . When the bread does work it is fantastic though.

Monday’s shopping adventure wasn’t just a quest for Nescafe Ice Blend Coffee canisters but also a quest to get an air fryer. So far it is best at cooking chicken breast for Mr. Engineer and roasting potatoes for me, but I really want to make more things with it. Supposedly you can make bread in it but idk if that is going to be possible. Another problem is I quite literally have one cutting board worth of counter space in my kitchen. I wish I was joking lol. I have a cabinet that I keep my cooking stuff in and appliances on top of, but I am very much out of space (and outlets, even with an extension cord). Still optimizing the limited space I have.

My experiments are continuing to fail, in weirder and weirder ways. My mentor is also stumped and starting to feel bad for me I think. To be honest the repetitive failures don’t do much mental damage to me, but the more concerning thing is I have to make a presentation in two weeks about my research progress and something along the lines of 8 failed experiments isn’t a good look. The work itself doesn’t stress me out, it’s the expectations of others. I knew what I was getting into when I chose this career path at 17 but now that I’m older people are going to be a lot harsher on me about expecting results. Also have never had this many fails except for with bomb calorimetry back in undergrad. Spent 10 hours in one day trying to get my spreadsheet to work with the data and had to leave class to go cry in the bathroom for a bit, the single time I did that in all of college. Interestingly, after weeks of “this is the easy part” from my mentor, he said “mutagenesis is hard.” Like sir which one is it XD. Anyway, waiting for my gels to run is a good time to do Wanikani, even if my typing accuracy on the phone is worse. Good to get something done while waiting for the result of multiple hours of work.

My first round of homework is due in a few days and I’ve done less than half the assignments . Probably should be doing that instead of watching Futurama…

[mitrac]

@queenofthegods

In my opinion this isn’t even truly gluten free baking (gasp, I know, hot take). If you can just use a 1 to 1 flour in a regular bread recipe that takes out all the skill and nuance that comes with trying to bake something gluten free. This also runs the risk of knowledge loss about what flours can be used to make gluten free baked goods. Different flours have different properties you have to balance and can change the percentages of depending on what you want/the problems you have.

I love this, flour expertise doesn’t get enough love
you would get along with my SO great. He spent years perfecting his GF pizza crust (in the UK), and it’s exactly as you say. If you have to switch brands because something is sold out or no longer offered, etc, there is a lot of skill in reworking the recipe. He got really good at it, so when we moved to Germany and he had to completely rework it, it took him much less time. I think it’s pretty impressive, but no one else we know has tried so I always feel bad for him when it gets taken for granted. And I’m like, no you don’t understand, this is homemade GF pizza crust does that mean nothing to you so I will tell him about your post and he will feel warm and fuzzy

I hope your gels start working

[NihongoLearner19]

I’ve only been GF for two years, so I’m still learning. I’ve mainly been using 1:1 flour now that I’m back from Japan, but I had to experiment with rice flour and find ways to make things I wanted to eat without an oven, which was quite tricky. I do want to expand my expertise, though. Would your SO be willing to share his recipe for the GF crowd? Also, @queenofthegods feel free to share any tips and tricks for flour experimentation and any favorite recipes

[mitrac]

@NihongoLearner19

Would your SO be willing to share his recipe for the GF crowd?

yeah, he will be flattered to share it! I just have to convince him to write it down since he does it by memory.

Don’t get me wrong, the 1:1 flour is great. It wasn’t around when I first went GF so we made do without it for so long and now prefer our own house blend

[Dadung]

Well, this is a bit late, but I just read the last couple of weeks

I believe it actually extremely uncommon to be trained in doing research. In fact, in general (in europe at least), doing a PhD is seen as the training for doing research. You might be trained in some method in lab classes, but actually doing research (generating hypothesis, designing experiments, running experiments, evaluating data) is not properly trained.

While the idea of having someone train you for a couple of weeks sounds a lot more practical than this “self learning” system, the reason this does not happen is quite easy - funding sucks

In general, most more senior academics (postdocs+) are funded through specific grants, which require them to generate results. Furthermore, their future career depends on generating enough output (publish or perish), so there is little incentive for teaching someone a lot. Additionally, most places (expect really well funded elite universities) have a massive PhD student to Postdoc imbalance. (E.g. my group has 1 professor, ~15 PhD students (which is very well funded!) and only a single postdoc, who has a lot of other responsibilities). So it’s virtually impossible for those to train the junior researchers. I know this is different for top univiersities in the UK/US and the like, but the postdocs there have even more of an incentive to prioritize their research, because they are very likely to build their career on this postdoc position. Historically there were actually many more “mid-level” positions, which were more training oriented, but (at least in europe), they were cut for cost reasons.

Anyway, enough of the ramble
Just wanted to say I am thoroughly impressed by how you manage to work through those scientific lectures in Japanese! And best of luck with your experiments! (Don’t worry too much about failing experiments, honestly that is expected in my opinion )

[queenofthegods]

@mitrac

I love this, flour expertise doesn’t get enough love

The only non-wheat flours available in the average grocery store here are rice flour, corn starch, and potato starch. It looks like they also sell kinako, which is ground roasted soybeans, so maybe that could be used as well? Back in the US you have access to stuff like flax seed, sorghum flour, Xanthan gum, brown rice flour, coconut flour, and a whole host of other ingredients. You can actually buy almond flour at Costco in Japan and that is my preferred flour for baked goods. Gives a nice density and flavor. But, not great for bread.

Thanks to learning to cook in a pre-1 to 1 flour era, I have a somewhat better understanding of what flours do. Almond is heavy and wet, coconut sticks together better but needs so much liquid, rice is good but can easily turn into a sticky wet mess, potato helps things get sticky but on its own falls apart, corn is good for thickening but also explodes everywhere when you try to use it, etc etc. Actually THE Bob’s Red Mill is near my hometown, so their endless supply of flours was readily available in local stores or you could just go to the shop store. It saved our butts when my mom was trying to make stuff for her gluten free toddlers back in 2002 before all the gluten free brands popped up.

Your husband’s story reminds me of one time in college I went to a friend’s house and one of her kids is gluten free so she just casually made the most delicious gluten free crepes (THAT ACTUALLY STAYED TOGETHER) that I’d ever tried. I was so wildly impressed I made my friend ask her for the recipe. Like how the heck is this genius just casually in our midst? Myself and my sister had tried so many recipes for crepes over the years and they never worked. It was our White Whale . My friend definitely didn’t appreciate that he had such a cool and smart mom. I made sure she knew how good her cooking and knitting was and decided she is my cooking role model. Not fancy cooking or fancy techniques, but an absolutely incredible home cook who can take any limitations or ingredients and make them amazing.

So uh, would that wizard of a husband you have care to share his recipe?

[queenofthegods]

@NihongoLearner19

Also, @queenofthegods feel free to share any tips and tricks for flour experimentation and any favorite recipes

Well, interestingly, most of my baking knowledge is about grain free baking because my family was grain free in my teens (so prime learning cooking/baking time). I have a particular affinity for almond flour recipes (get bags at Costco if you can, it’s cheaper). In my opinion Elena Amsterdam (who passed away from breast cancer recently, rest in peace queen) has some of the best recipes. She has several cookbooks that we had in the house but her website has a bunch for free. This is my favorite chocolate cookie recipe that I modified a bit and usually make into bars, not by Elena Amsterdam but still almond flour. As far as regular gluten free baking, I like the Bob’s Red Mill gluten free flour and the mixture of rice flour and potato starch works shockingly well. The key point with gluten free baking is you can’t just use one flour like you could with all purpose flour. The mix could be a premade mix or a house blend/ratio you use. Many Japanese recipes try to use only rice flour which works in some applications but the mix of rice flour and potato starch gives a mix that doesn’t just turn to mochi immediately. When my sister bakes pies back home I think she uses a tapioca starch base for her pie crusts. It really depends on your recipes and what you want.

[queenofthegods]

@Dadung

I believe it actually extremely uncommon to be trained in doing research

That’s still insane to me. I was luck to receive at least some training at my first lab and a lot of training at my second lab. A lot of it was just “hey I’m doing this thing, want to come watch?” but it was important nonetheless. What happened at the second lab is the PI said “hey, PhD student, she’s yours for the summer. Teach her something. I’ll be writing a grant proposal” and I only saw her at lab meeting XD. It sounded like he didn’t get a lot of training either and thought it was difficult so he wanted to give me a different experience. His methods were really thorough too. First I would watch him do it, then I would help him, then we would do half and half, then he would help me, then he would watch me, then I could do it myself. At my first lab and current lab we watch or do it together once then I’m on my own but can go find my mentor if I have questions. The first week my current mentor told me I should be finding protocols by myself (while giving me translated print outs, which he is still doing lol). He seems to have softened his view on me a lot and now is like “why didn’t you come ask me? I wasn’t busy!” (he says as he runs 4 experiments at once). My undergrad school was very heavy on student research and lab classes so I feel pretty set up to be thrown into a lab setting, but the other students that started with me are all medical doctors by training so even something like opening a 1.5mL tube is hard for them. There’s a lot of value in getting random tips from other people in the lab so I try to help them when I can or help them with all the words because our lab language is English and I’m the only native speaker, so it’s 10x easier for me.

As for how it went with that PhD student, he taught me how to do qPCR and genotyping myself well enough that he could just bring me samples and say “hey, run this” and I was running up to three qPCR plates a day to get him all the data he needed for his PhD. Generally speaking all the people who took the time to teach me, so this PhD student, an older undergrad intern, and some lab techs, were all on the younger side (4-10 years older than me) so I hope the research climate is changing a little. I unquestioningly wouldn’t be in the position I am now without their help and guidance. I am fully aware I got extremely lucky at both my labs so far. Not only did they take the time to explain many types of experiments to me, those lab techs in particular explained to me in great detail what I would be getting myself into if I really wanted to be a researcher (I was 17 at the time and deciding what I wanted to study in college). So far pretty much everyone I’ve encountered held the belief that they need to sacrifice some research efficiency to train and share the love of research with the next generation. Part of that is I found these labs through educational programs trying to get students into research labs for the first time, so it would track that labs who offer up spots for brand new students would be more willing to train their students. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from friends and coworkers so I know labs can be absolutely horrible if you end up in a bad one.

[queenofthegods]

May 8th and 9th

2 lessons and 60 reviews
appeased the owl:
lecture x1

All reviews done while sitting in a lab room waiting for my gels to run. And yes we literally mix everything on parafilm which is WILD to me but apparently this is common outside of the US? Can you see that I struggled to get the drops lol. These are 1 and 2 microliter drops. For reference, your average drop of water is 10 microliters. The dye likes to run back up the pipette tip and it’s annoying af.

After two weeks and 9 failed attempts, I finally got proper bands on my gel. Thank god XD. Even my mentor ran out of ideas and asked another professor, who ended up having the winning combination. Back in undergrad we only ever used preset PCR protocols so I was unfamiliar with the struggle that is figuring out the correct temps and times for everything. It’s like extreme baking.

Speaking of baking, I have stumbled across a new dough recipe that has NO BUSINESS working as well as it does. Did some research about gluten free flour mixes (shoutout to Gluten Free on a Shoestring for the detailed page) and armed with a desire for bread, a scale, all gluten free flours available at the local Aeon, and the insanity of a researcher, I set out to make my own recipe. The most basic recipe on the Gluten Free on a Shoestring website uses rice flour, potato starch, and tapioca starch, so I just replaced the tapioca starch with corn starch (which also has the binding but exploding qualities). These days a lot of recipes use psyllium husk as a binding agent but I don’t have access to that, but I did see recipes with pectin so I thought hey maybe gelatin would work. That said, I also don’t have gelatin, but I do have collagen powder, and if you heat that enough it does melt into gelatin. Literally mixed all my wets in my (rinsed) coffee cup and guesstimate/quick calculated weights on the flours. The bread actually rose and came together way better than it should have. Slight problem with baking in the air fryer is the outside gets very hard before the inside cooks so it was a little underbaked.

Had a stroke of brilliance the following day and realized I could solve some of my underbaking issues by just making bagels, since that means there’s no thick spot in the center to worry about. Again, worked better than it has any business doing.

It was vet day for Obaachan and it looks like she is recovering pretty well. The vet also asked me how my symptoms are, which is kinda funny if you think about it. In the waiting room there was a dog glaring and barking at me. Not sure if this dog just hates everyone or especially hates foreigners. My neighbor’s dog absolutely hated me, presumably in part because I am foreign (the neighbors seemed surprised how much she hated me lol). The owner seemed embarrassed but for one Obaachan is mostly deaf so she didn’t care and this is far from my first time having animals hate me for being foreign XD. I’ve also gotten a lot of confused looks from babies and even had one cry. In the words of my friend about this situation, “he said you a ghost”

Obaachan was a good baby at the vet and I was planning to deep clean today anyway so I let her into my room. However she does want to sleep in my usual spot which is next to my pillow. Guess that answers the question of how I got ringworm on my face . Both of our infections are clearing up nicely, though . Never a boring day with a pet in your life.

[Dadung]

@queenofthegods

That’s still insane to me.

To be fair, it actually is Also, probably, just hiring a number of “research teaching” people would in the long term be a massive win with much more efficient researchers and a lot less time spent wasted just trying to get going
I feel in europe the idea is that you learn methods during lab classes and then researching during your Bachelor’s/Masters’s thesis. So once you start getting into funded positions for your PhD the only thing you need to learn is independent research, but honestly that’s just not realistic
I am purely computational, so it probably is a bit different, but still what you describe sounds much better and if I ever manage to set up my research group I would love to try and get something like that running!

@queenofthegods

As for how it went with that PhD student, he taught me how to do qPCR and genotyping myself well enough that he could just bring me samples and say “hey, run this” and I was running up to three qPCR plates a day to get him all the data he needed for his PhD.

Honestly, that sounds like a dream scenario from both sides! You get to work independently and the PhD student actually gained a lot from that initial time spent on training you!
Given this, your professors bragging about your papers is likely quite a bit more well founded than you might believe! Because you actually contributed research level experiments! It’s actually not uncommon for students (e.g. during their thesis) to just not work at the level of quality required for moving a project forward. (Maybe again due to the fact, that they are not trained, which then reinforces the notion that spending time on supervision is not worth it, but that does not sound like a problem I want to think about right now )
Honestly, the expectation is still (and rightfully so), that at the point where you start your PhD, you have not finished a single research project to publication standards, so anything beyond that is actually quite something to be proud of! Even, if you feel like you did only contribute some part, but the best research is done collaboratively, where everyone only contributes the things they excel at.

@queenofthegods

Part of that is I found these labs through educational programs trying to get students into research labs for the first time, so it would track that labs who offer up spots for brand new students would be more willing to train their students. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from friends and coworkers so I know labs can be absolutely horrible if you end up in a bad one.

Those programs sound great! I feel like horror stories are so common in academic research, so your story is inspiring in that regard!

@queenofthegods

That said, I also don’t have gelatin, but I do have collagen powder, and if you heat that enough it does melt into gelatin.

Love that!

[Shannon-8]

LoL
So fun to see your exploits over on golybidoof’s thread

Definitely chaotic good

[queenofthegods]

@Shannon-8

So fun to see your exploits over on golybidoof’s thread

Definitely chaotic good

Well, I also arrived 20min late, it took me around 10min to figure out how to unlock the rental car, and only managed to get to one of the three places I planned to go, so pretty much was just winging everything and failing miserably at some things. Planning is not a strong suit of mine and my idea of a fun time is generally not what the average person finds fun, so I come across as rather odd if my planning falls through XD.

[queenofthegods]

May 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th

30 reviews? 50 reviews? Don’t remember exactly
achieved 365 day streak
lecture x2
人体と細胞 in an attempt to understand my homework

Sorry for being MIA. Research is picking up and I’m so tired . Also stayed up until 3am watching Heated Rivalry one of the days, but shhhhhhh .

After ten failed attempts and a few failed attempts by my mentor, we may just need to completely start over and remake the primers. That means two weeks of waiting around for them to arrive, during which time I think I may STILL have to try to make the old primers work. Since I did get a success last week, I am moving forward with growing my e.coli with Alzheimer’s which means I have two experiments running at once on any given day. That itself isn’t too bad but it means I am pretty much doing something or watching the clock at all times. This means I have less time to do my homework for the classes I have every day and have to work on it at home as well. Well, doing homework at home should be normal, but I want to do different stuff at home XD.

Observations and struggles of Obaachan's various health issues, somewhat gross

Speaking of which, we may or may not be making progress on Obaachan’s health. I changed her food to a grain free one and low ingredient wet food and it seems to help. That said, it seems that her vomiting may be caused by having an empty stomach? While having a full food bowl of course lol. She will wake me up by meowing in my face anytime between 5:30am and 7am to request wet food and if I do not oblige, the next time I wake up it is not squeaky meows I am waking up to . The second vet at the clinic also suggested I slow down on one of the medications to help her skin clear up, and she seems better those days? The other weird thing I noticed is she seems to vomit in reaction to being touched. As in, she looks cute, you pet her, about 5min later she vomits. This seems weird as heck but my hypothesis is when you scratch her butt she licks the air which causes her to swallow air which triggers vomiting. The idea of her not being able to handle pets is really sad but if that’s what I need to do, that’s what I need to do. She likes pets too, like she will roll over for belly rubs and starts purring like a motorboat when I pet her. I’m hoping gentle chin scratches and “brain muncher” pets are still acceptable. Her hair is growing back in the ringworm patch but she’s itching the other side now so maybe we have another few weeks of treatment . Mine seem to be healing well, no longer angry and red anymore. Now I just have to keep changing out pillowcases and towels and hope Obaachan doesn’t reinfect me. She does love my bed after all.

Normally Obaachan isn’t a cuddler but she is getting more and more comfortable with me holding her. She doesn’t like it per se but she doesn’t immediately jump away like before. This is helpful for when she wants to investigate the greebles in my closet but I don’t want her getting lost in there or when we are at the vet and she tries to exit the exam table. Also woke up to her sleeping on my butt pretty much the whole night the other day. That’s a first.

Did you know that Japan has cash back for bottle recycling? Well, only sometimes. It’s quite rare to be honest. Luckily for me, the 7-11 near my apartment has one of the recycling machines like they have outside of grocery stores back in the US. Brought back memories of recycling with my dad as a kid. So, mostly out of curiosity (and a large bag of accumulated bottles), I set out to use it. Can you guess how much this bag is worth?

If you guessed 4 yen, you would be correct. In my home state of Oregon it would be worth $2 hahahaha.

As most of you saw, GolyBidoof made the stop in the flyover prefecture of Niigata and spent the day bopping around the northern part of the prefecture with me. She took much better pictures than I did so you can check out her study log for that. Despite living 1km from the beach for 4.5 years I have never found sea glass before, only lots of trash that the school kids would pick up once a year. The reason we have the sea glass is most of the coastline and beaches are actually rock beaches not sand, and all the beaches have a lot of rocks right beyond the water line. How do I know this? Because one time I went swimming without shoes and when I stepped out of the water my feet were completely torn up and bleeding. I now own water shoes with full foot coverage and can swim around on the beautiful mostly private beaches as much as I want.

I really want to make something from the sea glass I collected. Either tiny glass bottle or make something with UV resin.

Obaachan is back in her favorite spot, the foot of my futon. She also likes to politely remind me that it is chuuru time by sitting in front of the chuuru spot and staring at me.

[queenofthegods]

May 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th

204 reviews
appeased the owl
lecture x2
The Fifth Elephant audiobook

Decided to wake up early and try to get an experiment started before class to see if that would be a good set up for the future. Let me tell you it is not lol. I nearly got in trouble because in the 15min it took for me to prepare my samples someone took the one free machine so I took out someone’s samples and found out it could have been the boss’s which would be BAD (it wasn’t thankfully, but a stressful few hours waiting to figure out whose they were). There’s also so many kids out at that hour and 30min is still a bit tight for preparing a whole experiment, even with minimal samples. Anyhow, not worth the stress and lack of sleep. Will not be doing that again unless strictly necessary.

My experiments are still not going great. Something like 10 fails and counting. New protocol got us some weak lines so at least I can move beyond step one for once. My presentation is this week though so a bit nerve wracking.

This weekend was filled with shopping, bread baking, and a new hobby: resin. Already have a hobbies shelf and reasonably no use for a bunch of little resin cat paw prints but why is it so fun lol.

It was my turn again with the Terry Pratchett novel from the library and after somewhat losing interest I am right back in and riveted by the story. Apparently this is one of the weaker Night Watch novels but if you know the characters it is at least pretty funny and a good mystery. At this point I am more than half way through the series and thinking about which series I want to read next. Probably back to the witches. As much as I love the Night Watch, I still like the Tiffany Aching series better. Maybe I’ll relisten to it.

I love scientists lol. The beautiful thing about scientists is they are often huge nerds about a lot of things so you end up with some very funnily named things. I also was recently reading some school blog posts from my old department and saw a girl wearing a sweater pattern I recognized, meaning she’s a knitter. Idk about the current generation of 20 year old girls who learned how to crochet first because of Tik Tok but when I was a teen on the internet looking for knitting content and going to events, everyone was a huge nerd. Guess it makes sense this girl is a knitter as the article was about her spending 5 months in Antarctica studying krill. Not a lot to do there. My question is did she bring the yarn when she went to her placement or did she order online? Do they even have online delivery to Antarctica? Or any sort of delivery? When I worked on a trail crew out in the woods we could get mail every 1-2 weeks, so maybe for them it’s once a month? Wonder how fast the internet is out there. Like you aren’t completing with anyone for a DSL or fiber optic connection on the line but reasonably they have satellite, which was REALLY slow when I had it as a kid but my parents have Starlink now and that’s pretty fast (yes boo Elon Musk but it does truly help those in rural areas, we need more smart people who are less terrible making these).

Why do I have to get up every day and look acceptable? I just want to hang out in my pajamas eating bread. Adult life feels like a million little fires all at once, and whenever that happens I want to do anything but the thing I actually need to do. Like I feel very creatively inspired right now because I have so much research stuff, homework assignments, and paperwork to do in my regular life . What do you mean I have to go to city hall not design a sweater inspired by my old district? What do you mean I have 8 homework assignments to do and can’t just make cat themed key chains all evening?

[Dadung]

@queenofthegods

New protocol got us some weak lines so at least I can move beyond step one for once. My presentation is this week though so a bit nerve wracking

Best of luck with that! Hopefully you will have some results from that soon! However, don’t worry too much about the presentation, any scientist knows that sometimes things just don’t work - you are exploring the unexplored afterall!

@queenofthegods

30min is still a bit tight for preparing a whole experiment, even with minimal samples.

That does sound super stressfull I think rather staying a bit longer later seems more worthwile than trying to forcefully cram something into that kind of short time window.

@queenofthegods

This weekend was filled with shopping, bread baking, and a new hobby: resin. Already have a hobbies shelf and reasonably no use for a bunch of little resin cat paw prints but why is it so fun lol.

Who cares about having a use for something, if it was fun! But honestly, if it’s fun just go for it, relaxation is essential after all.

@queenofthegods

I love scientists lol. The beautiful thing about scientists is they are often huge nerds about a lot of things

Can confirm, scientist tend to really obsess about things (necessary for science), which means whatever their hobby is gets similarly unreasonable attention

[Shannon-8]

LoLoLoL

Please write your knit designs out for “when you have time”, with suggested color combos…
Nb. I’m 60 now, and can say “there is never enough time”
There is a special place on my shelf in heaven for animal footprints–so cute!!

[GolyBidoof]

@queenofthegods

This weekend was filled with shopping, bread baking, and a new hobby: resin. Already have a hobbies shelf and reasonably no use for a bunch of little resin cat paw prints but why is it so fun lol.

uuuu, sweet C:
how are you getting into resin? i see from the pics it’s nothing that precise, but do you have an access to a makerspace or a printer or something? resin really smells as far as i’m aware, so it can be a tricky hobby ^^

@queenofthegods

Idk about the current generation of 20 year old girls who learned how to crochet first because of Tik Tok but when I was a teen on the internet looking for knitting content and going to events, everyone was a huge nerd.

Kinda one of the things of when people call those things performative and done just for attention, they forget that there is a certain percentage of people that stick and that they become the new trailblazers for the Gen Z generation xddd

@queenofthegods

Do they even have online delivery to Antarctica?

I imagine there’s gotta be a base somewhere off the coast where there’s one person with a local boat or a plane and they are delivering things they find elsewhere in the world once a month or something, and you can probably request for them to bring you an Amazon item, but if it’s going to be this slow to get it, just get the manga from Bookwalker instead

@queenofthegods

Wonder how fast the internet is out there.

I imagine extremely fast, like with Artemis 2 people: when you do research, for some reason people assume that you need the cuttingest edgiest technology that you find, so I wouldn’t be surprised about double digit amount of gigabits

@queenofthegods

What do you mean I have to go to city hall not design a sweater inspired by my old district?

Sometimes I look at pictures of people that used to go to work in 1970s in their blazers and elegant dresses and im like “nnnope”, at least one big thing about the pandemic is that wearing sweatshirts to work is not that big of deal right now? maybe? probably?

[queenofthegods]

@Dadung

Best of luck with that! Hopefully you will have some results from that soon! However, don’t worry too much about the presentation, any scientist knows that sometimes things just don’t work - you are exploring the unexplored afterall!

Personally I don’t mind, but my mentor basically told me to completely leave out all of that in my presentation to avoid getting eaten alive by the other staff so that’s a little scary.

@GolyBidoof

how are you getting into resin? i see from the pics it’s nothing that precise, but do you have an access to a makerspace or a printer or something? resin really smells as far as i’m aware, so it can be a tricky hobby ^^

It’s UV resin and most 100 shops these days have everything you need. The vast majority of what I’m using is from 100 yen shops. There is a jewelry materials shop in Bandai mall where we went that has a lot of resin stuff too, but that’s more geared to people who know what they are doing lol. It is where I got the cute cat molds though. You can load up at 100 yen shops before you leave. I find Daiso and Can Do have the best options in my opinion. It doesn’t smell or anything, but I should be using gloves hahahaha.

@GolyBidoof

Kinda one of the things of when people call those things performative and done just for attention, they forget that there is a certain percentage of people that stick and that they become the new trailblazers for the Gen Z generation xddd

While I am being a little elitist with my 20 years of knitting experience, I am just genuinely curious. Like in “my generation” of knitters/crocheters/spinners (millennials mostly), everyone is a massive nerd about Dr. Who and Harry Potter and stuff like that. Those aren’t as popular with Gen Z but I wonder if this new generation of people are also massive nerds and what about, like is this crossover of massive nerds and knitters/crocheters consistent across generations. Honestly I really love the breath of fresh air these younger designers are bringing to the space. The creative clothing patterns are fantastic and I want to make them too. Most people find crocheting easier and start with that and learn knitting later I’ve noticed. This is probably because these people are teaching themselves, vs I learned knitting first because I’m from an unbroken chain of intergenerational knitting likely stretching back for many, many generations. Always had my mom around to ask questions and help me. It’s a bit harder to get into knitting without that constant help because it’s easier to make mistakes and takes longer to make things than with crochet.

@GolyBidoof

for some reason people assume that you need the cuttingest edgiest technology that you find, so I wouldn’t be surprised about double digit amount of gigabits

Sorry to break the illusion, but I have yet to find a computer running anything more recent than Windows 7 in a lab . Pretty sure the computer I use every day to image my gels is running Windows Vista. My first task as an intern back in 2016 was sorting manuals for all the equipment we had and more than half was pre-2000’s. One of the manuals was so old it was written on a typewriter or at least looked like it. We still used the equipment.

@GolyBidoof

Sometimes I look at pictures of people that used to go to work in 1970s in their blazers and elegant dresses and im like “nnnope”, at least one big thing about the pandemic is that wearing sweatshirts to work is not that big of deal right now? maybe? probably?

When I worked at the school the guys basically wore either a suit or a track suit every day. I got tired of button ups and switched to sweaters only in the winters, a few of which I made myself. The lab office and labs in general are a lot more casual but I can’t break the habit of wearing slacks most days.

[queenofthegods]

May 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st

4 lessons and 35 reviews
appeased the owl mostly
lectures x4
The Fifth Elephant
Prisoner of Azkaban

The past few days have been a roller coaster, mostly due to the fact that my first presentation was coming up in this week’s lab meeting and research hasn’t exactly been going well. However, turns out for the sake of not being eaten alive by other staff, it was actually advisable to show as little of my experiments as possible. This meant I had to completely rework my presentation starting after class the day before I had to present it, all while doing another experiment likely needed for the presentation that didn’t have one of the numerous problems my other gels have had (that one also had a problem, but a new problem, my ladder fell right out of the well lol). Presentation went pretty well actually, survived all the questions, and don’t have to do this again for a bit. This is mostly thanks to my mentor of course. People praised me for the presentation being clear and simple. Like yes it is but that’s because I am not great at understanding this stuff so I have to write it in the most clear way possible or else it makes no sense to me. This ends up benefiting those around me, even though it is totally not on purpose hahaha.

Speaking of my research presentation, the research plan my professor gave me turns out to have been at least partially if not mostly written by AI. While I am starting to appreciate AI in the scientific space, this seems like a kind of inappropriate use of AI. Like is someone’s life for the next 2 years really not worth spending your time on? Additionally, the reason I found this out is my mentor looked at my presentation and pointed out missing information as well as the proposed research plan using cells that DO NOT EXIST. That ending up in the presentation because I don’t know any better would be a problem. The professor would probably call me out on it, just like my mentor did, but not sure how to tell him that is in fact what his research plan for me says. If you are going to use AI, at least proofread CAREFULLY to make sure you aren’t sending people on a wild goose chase to do research with made up cell lines. I essentially had to rework my presentation to make sure all parts mentioned actually exist and are accurate, scary stuff.

What also bothered me a bit is I had to be somewhat dishonest about my research here so far. Like everyone I talk to seems to be very open about the fact that a lot of experiments fail and that it’s normal, and yet I had to hide that fact in my presentation. Only two pictures from my experiments were used, one from April 20th and another from May 20th. I’ve done at least one experiment a day in that timeframe. I also had to make it look like I have only made it through the entire experiment sequence once, when in fact I have made it all the way through twice. This does make me look better obviously, but it’s sad to me that I can’t be honest about all the problems I’m having and ask for help.

As a result of all this presentation preparation and finishing April’s reports late, I’ve only done one of my May homework assignments so far. Pray for me guys .

Interestingly, one of the professors this week walked in and saw the handful of foreigners in our small class and asked if we would be okay with Japanese. I told her we would try our best, and this lady starts speaking Chinese to my friend then GIVES THE ENTIRE LECTURE IN ENGLISH. Her slides were all in Japanese, so I kind of get the impression she didn’t intend to teach in English that day, but I guess she had a “well, the foreign students are struggling every day let’s make the domestic students ganbare for 90 minutes.” She works in a rather international field (influenza outbreaks) and talked about working and collaborating abroad. Truly a cool lady. Despite the general lack of English ability even among English teachers and the general disdain for the gaikoku among Japanese people, many researchers are truly open minded and wonderful. Research can be weirdly aggressive environment but among that there are a lot of people out there who just want to spread the word of research and collaborate around the world to find the answers to life’s questions.

Speaking of weirdly aggressive, some of the other new students are getting scolded quite a bit these days. It once again makes me question why the system of mostly teaching yourself is still the dominant one. My previous research was through school programs matching students with labs to get students into labs earlier. This is so current researchers can spread the love of research as well as train and inspire the next generation. It does slow down the research a bit of course, but those programs have been hugely helpful in my future. The lab I am currently in took a keen interest in me because I already have research publications from those programs and not needing much training here has allowed me to hit the ground running and make fast progress. The time my previous mentors took to train me one on one for many hours means I now get good results with fewer attempts no matter what I do, it’s just overall the way to go I think.

Recently I received an email asking for testimonials and survey information because one of those research programs I talked about just lost their funding. They need to look for new funding and having data about how their program has truly made a difference in people’s futures will help them prove that. It definitely helped me, both in lab skills/theory but also by giving me the opportunity to do enough research to get published before graduate school. These results are less a testimonial to how good of a researcher I am but to how important these teaching programs are. It takes investment up front but the investment in funding these lecture series, summer internship programs, and the lab staff willing to train confused students pays off for the rest of those students’ careers. It’s not something the labs get any sort of direct monetary or research benefit from, in fact it is often the opposite, but it’s researchers who believe a core part of research is paying it forward to training the next generation of researchers. I hope someday I can pay it forward too and have my own little shadow for a summer to teach stuff.

I can’t believe I’m saying this but I have an update on the insurance situation. I got a book of payment slips from 国民年金保険 and considering it was quite easy to apply for the pension (年金) exemption and the insurance (保険) was giving me endless problems and the two offices are the same window in city hall, I assumed that the city hall had forgotten to register my student payment recalculation paperwork and these were my insurance bills. I took the bills to the fees department and the guy looked at me like I was crazy and eventually told me that one, the payment slips are in fact not for insurance but for pension (which again, I already submitted the paperwork for an exemption) and two I was not enrolled in national insurance. Like sir what do you mean I came here 4 times with all my paperwork 7 weeks ago, how can I not be registered?!? Went back to the registration window and told them the day I applied (April 2nd) and when they looked at my paperwork, turns out they had it all but forgot to submit it. Anyway they got me a temporary insurance card within 15 minutes but I will have to come back again to renegotiate payments. Very frustrating but at least I finally have an insurance card.

In talking to all these city hall people I realized that my Japanese is starting to suffer. The primary language of my lab is English so I’m not really speaking Japanese these days outside of greetings. Need to figure out what to do about that.

Obligatory Obaachan (and bread) pics. It’s getting warmer so she’s sprawling more than making herself bagel/shrimp shaped. In her previous life she used to love sprawling upside down on the roof of my neighbor’s car port. Recently she likes to meow right next to my head at 1am. Like girl I get you want me to clean your litter box, but I’m not doing that in the middle of the night lol

Despite the 180 person waiting list, the library has something like 63 copies so it wasn’t as long of a wait as I thought. Still waiting for my turn with the library’s copy of Night Watch (next Terry Pratchett book in the series, will finish this series pretty soon) and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (I start cell experiments soon so I want to understand the mother of all cell lines in the world). Also really feeling like listening to Un Lun Dun again. That book is so whimsical and fun. Barely read any books so far this year but getting really into the wonderful world of books again.