Ok so it has been rather a long time since I wrote in this blog. I decided that since I am so far away from pretty much everyone, I should use this to try and keep you all updated all at once. I say try because I am learly rubbish at this blog thing but I will try my best :)

So update so far:

I passed my Master's degree in Molecular Biology of Infectious Diseases and graduated from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in November 2006. I had about a month and a half off afterwards, while I was looking for work, visiting people and just general letting myself forget everything I had just been taught!

At the begining of November I officially moved in with Jeremy and I got a job with Abbott Laboratories in Dartford (just outside London on the East side), where I was a technician making the kits that hospitals use to diagnose HIV. It was a good enough job but not exactly what I envisaged myself doing for the rest of my life, so relatively quickly I started looking for something else. I began to write away to my degree tutors contacts to see if any of them had open positions.

To begin with there were an awful lot of no's but eventually Professor George Cross from Rockefeller University in New York said maybe! He had to wait to see if he was going to get money, but it was the most positive answer I had recieved so I was happy :)

A couple of months and lots of paperwork later I was offered a 1 year contract with the university and Jeremy and I decided it was an opportunity we couldn't refuse. So we booked our flights and I handed in my notice at Abbott.

On the 24th September 2007 we got on the plane to New York to start a big adventure :)

OK so it has gotten to deadline time again so naturally I am wasting my time doing anything but write my report hence the second post within the space of a week :-D

Well paper writing is going ok, still a fair bit to do but materials and methods are now complete and Intro is pretty much done!!

Jeremy and I have just booked flights for a little holiday in Florence in November, i cant wait. The tickets were really cheap on ryanair so have a look, they are doing free flights at the mo so we got ours, two returns for £50.

Cannot wait till this is handed in, almost there!

Well I realise it has been a wee while since my last post. I have had several of you complaining to me for being a lazy arse so here you go!!

Well Exams were successfully completed. Well they were completed, how successfully I still don't know cause the uni still hasn't given us our grades back :( They are being a bit poor just now too by sticking courses into all the computer rooms so we cant use them for writing up. Bit of a bugger but many letters of complaint have now been sent :)

Since the end of exams I have been back working on my project. Things are going pretty well. I have some good results and some not so good but I guess thats what happens in research. I just need to be able to write it all up. Three weeks on Friday is the deadline so I better get a shifty on :)

For those who don't know, the above pictures are trypanosomes. The first kindly borrowed from Paisley university of all places ;) and the second from MBL. These are the little blighters that I am working on at the moment. Thouroughly interesting little bugs!

Go to http://www.who.int/tdr/diseases/tryp/files/tryp-poster.pdf
if you are interested and here http://www.dpd.cdc.gov/DPDx/HTML/ImageLibrary/Trypanosomiasis
African_il.htm for pictures!

Jeremy and I went home last weekend for my cousins wedding which was fab, had a really good time. Jeremy is an expert dancer and his first attempt at a Ceildgh was very very impressive :)

This weekend my other cousins were down visiting. Had such a great weekend. We had dinner and drinks and shopping. We went to see Chicago the musical which is fantastic, and we also learnt to dance like Oompa Loompa's. We watched the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Saturday night and discovered one of the dvd extra features was a dance tutorial. We have some great pictures.




Notice will you please the size of the flat that we had four people living in. Quite impressive I thought :-D I am really looking forward to this weekend though. I have nothing to do except uni work. Will enjoy the lie in!!

Right well that will do you just now, will write anything interesting up as it happens :)

Day one of exams down, one to go!!

The exam was ok but you know how it is, can always be better :)

Anyways back to the books for the last day, cant wait till it is all done! Remind me why I decided to do a masters???

It is now 10pm. First exam is tomorrow at 10. 12 hours to go!!!

I feel like I have nothing of relevance in my head at all. On the up side we had a great dinner tonight. Home made cottage pie with salad, it was great!

We then had raspberries with home made chocolate sauce. Well the cause was actually just a bar of chocolate with some milk, all melted down in the microwave so nothing fancy but it tasted really really good.

We are going to have pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast tomorrow as a pre torture treat!

Also am worried that i will have a hard time sitting still for 3 hours after the amount of juice and stuff I have been drinking!!

Anyways, will let you all know how it goes.

Night night

LouX

It is now Sunday afternoon and I am feeling rather nervous and sick. My brain is fairly mushy and I just want to be able to go out in to the sun (it is really hot down here) and just relax. No exams to worry about and no work to do. Iwould be happy with one day!

Not going to happen though. Exams are over Tuesday and I am straight back inthe lab on Wednesday to do my project. I won't be done with that till September and summer will be over by then! Ah well, we shall see what September brings!

Enjoy your day

LouX

Well, another week down.

This week has consisted of getting up studying, eating studying eating studying watching green wing and sleeping. This unfortunatly makes for a poor story to tell.

Some interesting things however that have happened are
- I managed all by myself, well mostly, to get my web cam up and running so now those of you who have engaged in the latest Skype technology can see my beautiful mug staring back at you when we chat :)
- I went on a jolly jaunt around North West London to try and find a package full of contact lenses which my mother had put the wrong address on :-P
- Sara and I went for mango juice at the local mediterranean
- We have also drunk more than our body weights in orange squash and so are spending whatever time we are not studying in the toilet!
- We have become expert salad chefs
- We didn't leave Kentish Town all week, the most exciting trip we got was to Iceland where we had the most unbelievably rude checkout girl on the planet!

Anyway back to the books, might post some pictures in a bit.

LouX

Well folks!

here is the second part of my Blog thingy :)

Bit more on the backgroud, I'm from Aberdeen originally, Scottish all the way, although a friend of my dear Jeremy thought I was Chinese which I thought was strange but ah well :) Jeremy and I will have been together for 8 months a week on Sunday and all is great! He is in his second year of a physics PhD at Imperial College.

So at the mo I'm studying for exams, going ok but sure I dont know anything! Jeremy is now in Spain, good for the lack of distraction but not good when I want a hug! He is making me jealous cause he said it is fab weather, the place and the food are nice and he hardly has any lectures. It is just basically a holiday camp. He does have work to do though so wont be really lazy :) They also have an outdoor swimming pool which sounds fab and I think will be slightly nicer to swim in than the serpentine!!

For those who do not know the Serpentine, it is the lake in Hyde Park, and the swimming team are training in it for the supposed channel swim that we are meant to be doing in about a month. Don't think it will happen as we still have no money because we cant get organised but nevermind! The lake comes complete with a bucket and a half of algae person and who knows what else.

It is so hot down here, I have no idea what it is like back home but it is burning weather here. Feel like I'm close to melting. It is great, just a pity we need to study just now. My flatmate Sara and I tried studying in Hampstead Heath yesterday but that didn't really work. It was too hot and we ended up just staring into space.

Today we also tried the local library which was highly amusing. I have never been in one like it. They have wooden floors so whenever anyone walks over it they make a racket, also the staff were the noisiest people in there, shouting to each other and there were deliveries coming in all over the place. basically it wass a bit odd. We are going to head down first thing in the morning to see if it is any better then. Well it will be 10 o'clock cause the lazy sod's dont open till then :)

Anyways Enough for one night I think, back to the lecture notes!

Sweet Dreams

LouX