Look at what my dog is doing....

.... while I am at work in school! :S

CMB Marine Microbial workshop photos

Here are some of the photographs from the CMB Marine Microbial workshop. Besides the pics I took, there are contributions from friends in the workshop.Sorry...no time to edit the photos.

CMB course in Australia DAY12

Last day of the workshop. Started the day with Analysis of Network. It is an interesting but complex program to link all the microbes, environmental factors etc in a huge network. Imagine a computer network, but in this case, all the computers and hardware are replaced with bacteria, viruses and other microbes. It is a new way to look at things. And according to the presenter, this field is very new. There are only 2 presenters on microbial networks in the last ISME conference. 

Afternoon is a re-cap of the whole course, feedback and any last minutes questions. After that, there is a BBQ, and just social. Nothing too exciting. Just sitting around and chatting. People playing around with Kookaburra, being stupid etc. I was having a migraine whole day, and just couldn't stand the high pitch laughing, shouting etc. Thus, after dinner and a bit more of mingling, I found the chance to excuse myself. I thank SueHelen Egan for organising the workshop, promise to keep in contact with various other people, and quietly excuse myself to my bedroom.

Tomorrow, I am going back to Auckland. I am ready to go home. :)

CMB course in Australia DAY11

The whole day was devoted to Fluorescence In-Situ Hybridization (FISH). It is a really cool technology, and new skill to know. Nowadays, everyone is trying to use FISH in their experimental design. However, I think FISH is suitable for visualization to know where your interested bacteria and microbes are, which in my case is not my research question. Thus, as much as I am interested in learning something new, I were not so overly pushy. People were annoyed because there were not enough instruments (pipettes, kim-wipes, tubes etc), and we ended up having more people per group. And it doesn't help that the presenter wasn't ready for the chaos in the lab as well, and he was not able to keep the groups under control.Eventually, everything worked out. We saw the bacteria we stained, and everyone was happy.

Happy Valentine's Day. Hannah and I did not do anything special because we were far apart - She in New Zealand and I in Australia. However, I made a point to call her just to tell her Happy Valentine's Day, and I miss her. :)

CMB course in Australia DAY10

Chemistry may be coming back to haunt me for my PhD research. Today, we worked on Metabolomics - meta analysis of the metabolites of the samples we are interested in . I did not know whether it will be useful for my research, so after the presentation, I went to talk to the presenter. After listening to my research brief, he immediately said metabolomics IS DEFINITELY useful for me! He said knowing the chemical contents in the coral mucus layer, and relate that to health of the coral and the microbial communities will be able to help me form a much clearer picture. In this workshop, I learnt how to use the HPLC (High Pressure Liquid Chromatograpgy), UPLC (Ultra-High Pressure Liquid Chromatograpgy)and MS (Mass Spec).... Fun times.

The other students doesn't seem too enthusiastic about the prospect of metabolomics. I guess not many people like chemistry.I WILL HAVE to like it if it helps me to get a better insight.

On another note, I am really annoyed by people who are just impolite. The presenter was trying his best to give us all his knowledge, and there are people on facebook, people chatting, and just doing other stuffs. Sigh... whatever. Here I am trying to learn shit even though I have a shitting laptop that hangs, and there they are chatting on facebook with their thousand-dollar laptop! AND if I hear anyone saying "LIKE" as a conversational filler one more time, I am going to twist his head off!

CMB course in Australia DAY 9

More statistics today... Again, work, work, work... Actually I love what we learnt today. I think I really enjoy the way the statistic works with the microbial data and interpreting it in ecological sense.

At the end of the day, we had to do a quick presentation on experimental design, and graphs. One of the near-to-graduate PhD student presented her methods on one of the experiments which just got published on PlosOne journal.After she presented, the lecturer commented on her experimental design, and told her she can improve on it. The conversation got a bit heated with her trying to defend her work (since she published it!), and the lecturer trying to tell her not to just blindly accept things just because some other people said so. And she burst out in tears! Personally, I think the lecturer is right - her experimental design can be improved! However, two things that bug me more on this scenario are :

1. The refusal to accept that there is a better way, and be prepared to be better (the next time maybe?)
2. The ability to take criticism, and in this case, such a nice lecturer who actually speak very nice and polite even when he was talking about making the experimental design better.

Sign... I think very soon we need to be nursing and worrying about the feelings of PhD students 

CMB course in Australia DAY 8

Start of another week. And it is a difficult day to start with. The day was lots of experimental design and statistics. We got to work with Primer with Premanova add-ons. Work, work, work...Statisitcs, statistics, statistics... I also emailed the revised results and discussion sessions for the endolithic paper to Shan Hua.

CMB course in Australia DAY 7

Today, we went to the Sydney Aquarium. We left early morning, walked to the ferry terminal which was about 45mins away, and took the ferry to the city. The Sydney Harbor is very busy, and there are lots of ferries and boats in the harbor. Along the way, I got the chance to take a few nice photos of the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Bridge. Once we reached "The Rocks", we started to spread out, and it is hard to keep 9 people walking in a group. So, as I am, I decided to wander around by myself. I knew the group is somewhere around, so I am not too worried.  We went to the open market. It was crowded and warm. I had time to look around for a nice long hour, and found something nice for Hannah. After I got the gifts, I met the group wandering about at the market, and we decided to go for lunch. Again, moving together as a 9 people group, and deciding lunch is HARD! VERY HARD! We ended up having lunch at MacDonalds!

After lunch, we went to the Sydney Aquarium. It was quite enjoyable. The attraction was the Dugong, lots of sharks, and coral reefs. I was disappointed that there was no exhibition of the sea dragon. Instead of taking a lot of photos, I took videos instead because the camera doesn't take nice pictures with the high contrast in aquarium lighting. After the visit to the aquarium, I wanted to visit the Maritime Museum to see the battleship and the submarine. Unfortunately, the museum is closed. So I guess we (Hannah and I) will have to come back later soon! :P

And in the meantime back at home in NZ...

By the way, Happy Chinese New Year

Tired and happy dogs

Hannah super pumped after sanding the van for a week!

CMB course in Australia DAY 6

Today is Saturday, and we can do whatever we want for the weekend. Most of them were out until really late last night, so there was no one awake until nearly 12pm! I was up at 8am, and already I am writing my endolithic microbial paper. I have to give two sections of the paper to my colleagues in Taiwan by the end of this weekend. It was really nice to be the only one awake in the morning, and there are some peace and quiet. I need a quiet environment in order to think and write, and it is kinda hard with all 8 people talking at the same time!

The gang decided to head to Manly Beach for the day.I decided to stay back and work on my paper because I want to go to the aquarium tomorrow. The gang was out of the door by 2pm, catching the bus to the beach. I was glad to have the place all to myself, and the chance to chat with Hannah for a while. I also went for a walk from Chowder Bay (where we are) to the Taronga Zoo. The walk was about 3km, through the bushes, up and down the hills, along the rocky beach. There were lot of boats out in the bay, and there were plenty of people partying on the boats. After the walk, I am refreshed and back to work. Interestingly, I also gained an insight on what changes I need to do for my PhD research experimental design.

Gang is back, the place is noisy again, and people start using the word "like" as conversational fillers :(

CMB course in Australia DAY 5

Finally, we survived to the end of the week. There is a great relief in the face of everyone. It is a long week for everyone, and we are mentally drained! It is a tediously workshop with lots of new information and techniques etc. Today, Megan Huggett started off the day teaching us how to align sequences and build phylogenetic trees on the ARB software. It was a tedious process, and personally I don't think she was well prepared for the course. There are a lot of missing information, although she is nice, I am expecting a lot more from a person who have 2 post-doc! She is a perfect example of researchers who are really brilliant but are so poor in presentation! I personally think that every scientist need to learn to be effective in presentation.

It was an easier afternoon, with presentations from Justin Seymour (Oceanographer, Marine Microbiologist). It was about oceanographic marine microbial, which is related to my research. So I was looking forward to today's lecture. He was an ok presenter (reading very fast), but at least his topic is interesting to me :P

After the lecture, it is social time. I got the chance to speak to Justin Seymour about my research and get to listen to his perspective. Got around to know the other students a bit more as well. One of the student I really love to talk to is actually my room mate, Adi. He lives in Israel, research on sponges and actually knows Rosenberg personally (if you know corals in the Red Sea, you know Rosenberg!). he is trying to see if he can introduce me to him (at least over the Internet). He hope that I can visit him someday in Israel, and he will show me around. Adi is clever, and it is always fun to discuss with him about science and the application of our research.

CMB course in Australia DAY 4

Last night we went for a quick walk in Sydney city. We went to the Sydney Harbor, the "Rocks". Didn't really stop anyway, but just walk! I did not enjoy it as much because it is always difficult to do anything when there are 9 people, all have different agendas... and all wanting to go different directions! Anyway, I decided I will be coming back to the city on the weekend to do some shopping for my lovely wife :)

We came back home around 12am, and I have to pay dearly for it by struggling through the morning lectures. I have to drink 4 cups of coffee to keep myself awake. It doesn't help as well that we are working on metagenomics softwares. Today we have Torsten Thomas as our lecturer and tutor.. very knowledgeable and a very good presenter! The software we learnt today are - Mothur, FastQC, SOAP, Tetra. It is a lot of information to digest in a single day! I guess this is what the workshop is about - a brief introduction to the type of tools available for us to use in our research.

Nothing too exciting in the evening as I have to work on my manuscript while the rest of the students went to the beach. Well, I hate sand in between my toes anyway :)

P.S. Photos coming soon... I promise

CMB course in Australia DAY 3

The morning again was presentations from various students. I got to present my research today as well, which went which any huge hiccup. One of the presenters is researching on stromatolites, which personally, I think are really cool.However, after hearing so many students presenting about their research finding this new strain of Vibrio, that research finding a new lateral gene transfer etc, I asked the question that nobody want to ask "SO WHAT?" Imagine the face of the students when I ask this question. Doesn't your funding agency ask what benefits it will bring to them? Well, they couldn't answer that question because they DO NOT need to go out and source for their own research funds! Applied Science - I think this is the new direction! As much as I hate it, gone are the times we do research for the fun of it. Funding agencies are going to ask what benefits the research is going to bring, and it is important to think about it and not live in a bubble!

The afternoon workshop was intense! Metagenomics statistic analysis! This is the main core of the CMB workshop, and for the rest of the course, this will be the main focus. I learnt a lot just within these few hours of lecture and hands-on tutorial. I also learnt that as much as I hate it, I may need a new laptop, probably a Mac! Today, we learnt about TRFLP (Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism), and the software Mothur. WOW...that's the only thing I can say. I never thought that molecular stuffs can be so cool!

CMB course in Australia DAY 2

The highlight of DAY 2 was the experimental design workshop. One of the big issues with being in the field microbiology ecology is the lack of knowledge of proper experiment design. The two components of microbiology and ecology historically used very different experiment designs, and now with the two fields combine, the line starts to blur! The workshop is taught by the student of Tony Underwood. If you study ecology, the name Tony Underwood would not be unfamiliar - his name is everywhere in ecology journals, textbooks and experimental designs. I was lucky because my research was used as an example for the class work - well, I do have a complex, time series, multi-factor experimental design for my research! Thus, it seems that I am cheating as I have the help of not only one of the most brilliant ecologist with my research, but also 20 other students discussing about it.

The afternoon was presentations from students. We were to introduce ourselves and our research work.

This evening, the gang who are staying in the dorm (including me) decided that we are going out for dinner instead of cooking. One of the other students told us about this restaurant about 5 mins away via bus which has steak and salad for $7. The unique thing about that restaurant is that you cook your own steak  on the grill - so you see all the customers crowding around the huge grill cooking their delicious steak, whichever way they want it - from very raw to very well-done. :)

CMB course in Australia DAY 1

Yesterday....After some delay, Meagan turned up at around 4.30pm. She was glad to see me as well, since she had been roaming around for 15mins trying to find the place! We managed to get into the building and met the rest of the students staying here. It was a very mixed group with students from Argentina, Israel, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. There are a total of 20 students attending the workshop, but only 9 of us are staying here at SIMS. The rest of the people are locals, thus they drive here everyday. The gang - Simon (Argentina), Adi (Israel), Gadit (Israel), Emily (Australia), Meagan (Australia), Jessica (New Zealand), Zarina (Singapore), David (New Zealand), and me.

The first day was introduction to the CMB center, and an overview of the course. There was also a short review to the art of microscopy. A lot of students in this workshop are microbiologist, so the microscopy session was quite a breeze. After lunch, we got a short tour of the facilities in SIMS. BTW, lunch was great - not the usual sandwich lunch which you get at a lot of conferences and workshops. The lunch consists of nicely-done-unique-sandwich, pie, veg rolls, and even a salad. The evening ends with a welcome reception. It was great to take the opportunity to know others who were not staying with us.

CMB course in Australia

I have signed up for a 2-week Marine Microbial Ecology workshop that is organised by Center of Marine Bio-innovation. It will be held in Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS). I am really looking forward to it because the course have a few very prominent researchers who will be teaching us different aspects of Marine Microbial Ecology. The microbial/ metagenomics portion of the course will definitely help to fill in some knowledge gaps which I have in my own research.

Stayed a night at my friend, Aaron's place in order to catch the early AirBus to the airport this morning. It is always "interesting" to walk in Auckland city at night - there are drunk and loud people everywhere, shouting at the top of their voice, some lying down on the floor etc. Aaron's place is VERY small - you walk into his apartment, and there is the kitchen-dining-living room, and then there is a bed room which was obviously converted from the balcony! The three of us (Aaron, his roommate and me) squeezed in that small room. He had to share a bed with him, and let me sleep on his bed instead... Aaron is a good guy!

The 3-hr flight to Sydney was not too bad.There was in-flight movies, the seat is relatively spacious. Air NZ is indeed not too bad. Edwin, my old junior college friend came to pick me up from the airport. He had left his family back home, and came to Sydney to explore the opportunity to expand his Singapore business to Australia. Thus, he said it was great for him not only to catch up with an old friend, and also have someone to talk to on the weekend... I definitely understand his feeling. I had the same loneliness when I was in NY all alone many years ago. We had lunch at a local Malaysia restaurant, and then coffee along the beach. We talked about old memories, and new future plans - kids, family, work etc. Great catching up with him.

He send me to the Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS) at Chowder Bay, Mosman. I was really lucky that he volunteered to drive me there, because it was located in NO WHERE! There is only one bus that runs every hour, and the nearest supermarket is a 45-min walk! Anyway, I got to the place, and have no idea where to meet the rest of my classmates?!..and to make things worse, I have no way of calling any of them since I do not have an international roaming cell phone. Well, I saw the student name list on one of the building door, and saw that Meagan (one of the students) is coming in at about 4pm, and she has a mobile. I decided she would be my best bet, and thus I waited on the stairs for her.... (TO BE CONTINUED)

P.S. Photos will be coming later. No time to upload...sorry.