For my virology class, I had to infect a couple of chicken eggs that are in the embryo stage with flu and chicken pox virus. Having the virus inside the egg is a way to allow the viruses to grow. These viruses are animal viruses and need a suitable host for growth, hence the chicken enbryo. We had to carefully insert the virus into a particular part of the egg called the allantoic cavity using a syringe, incubate them for 24 hours and then extract the virus.
Once all these were done, we obviously had to kill the chicken embryo. How? Just cut the head off with a scalpel. I'm still abit disgusted by it.... Here's the embryo cracked onto a petri dish. You can see the embryo with its super huge eyes, the egg yolk and also some blood vessels stuck onto it. The dark blue areas is a dye we inserted into the egg during practice insertions called methylene blue. It is about 11 days old. A chicken egg needs 22 days to hatch.
Last week was a BUSY BUSY week for me. Not because of study work, but because of my job. My camera was older by over 1000 shutter cycles by the time the week was over. Plus, I tormented more than a 100 people with my camera!
So my first assignment this quarter was to take photos of the labs in Building 4 for the lighted sign on a wall of the building. This is still on-going and I have yet to finish. I have been like a stowaway during the labs of CHM121L and BIO121L. Both basic chemistry and biology. Thankfully the lecturers were friendly enough to allow me to shoot during their labs. The student's were surprisingly cooperative too!
These are students pipetting some water into test tubes.
I had to weed out tons of photos so that they portray GLP's (good lab practices) too! Here are two guys carrying out a titration.
Apart from the labs, the Department of Biological Sciences has asked me to take photos of ALL their faculty. About 40 or so people. So far I've only done about 13. A HUGE HUGE task which is troublesome because I have to track down so many people. Walking around with all the heavy equipment really tired me out. Here's Dr. Frank Ewers, the head of the Biological Science Department.
My favourite portrait thus far is a portrait of Dr. Kageyama.
Anyway, some time last week, there was an emergency in Building 8, the old science building. The fire alarm went off so the building was evacuated (and so I had no class). For an hour, we all waited outside in the quad hearing the alarm go on and on and saw about 8 firetrucks arrive. After the whole scene, it was determined that debris from the renovation of Building 3 which is next to Building 8 set off the alarm. This is a picture of Carolyn Forrester, someone who got to work instantly when the alarms went off. She's the safety officer for both science buildings. When no alarms are sounding, she works in the Chemistry stockroom.
Typical of students, any form of class cancellation is most likely to be good news. Which explains Badri's happy face!
Another huge project that was completed within a day and TOTALLY put me out of commission for the entire night (and pretty much the next day too) was a tiring 8 hour shoot of various graduate classes in the Math and Stats Department. I also took photos of some grad students under their mentor. These photos are for use in a poster for the graduate program as well as a brochure. The next two photos are my favourites.
This is Dr. Jenny Switkes (centre) and her two graduate students. She could never stop laughing because she was so nervous! In the end things settled down and I got nicer photos.
I went into Dr. Randy Swift's class and spent time taking all the photos I needed. I love this photo I shot of him.
This third photo certainly won't make it onto the poster or the brochure, but the expression on Dr. Green's face is priceless!
Finally, I helped Mr. Quek shoot some photos for his company's promotional cum survey event in Santa Monica. I took tons of nice photos that day of the public trying out the products and answering a survey.
This week I'll still be busy, but due to some quizzes this week, I slowed down on my work. The good news is that in the near future I'll be following one of the math lecturers out to an elementary school where she works because she's part of a special program. Even BETTER news is what Mary Jo (the Director of Development in the Dean's office, which I communicate with often) told me today! She said she MIGHT take me to NASA's JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) because they need some pictures of students working there. My face just lit up when she said that! Can't wait! I hope it comes soon!!
