Encoding data is hard work. Even if you are using software created to make your life easier. I do not like doing this. I dislike doing tasks that are repetitive and boring but needing utmost focus. Not that I dislike titrating; maybe doing it 20 times would be boring but at least the thrill of finding the end point would support me, in encoding you just have to copy and type, copy and type. I know its part of the job of a researcher and I should try to get used to it now before I become one. Still getting used to something does not prevent you from disliking it.

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We were able to hone our microscopy skills this week. I particularly liked the challenged offered by the TB-positive sputum smear, wherein we need to find these tiny specks of pink in a huge sea of yellow and every time you move the slide it becomes slightly out of focus. I think I just got a bit lucky when I found the TB bacillus. Still, it did took me more than 10 minutes of back-breaking searching. Hopefully, there is a much easier way of determining if a sputum smear is positive for TB or not. Well, I think there is, I just do not know about it.
Speaking of microscopes, we used them in our biochem class just this morning. It was fun; I was finding stuff that are not related to what I was really looking for. Heh! The instructor was actually laughing at the things I was able to find. Still, I managed to find another tiny object in a sea of white and bigger particles.

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Another bomb threat. Another prank. This time, it was our college's main building(aka Lara Hall) that was the victim. It's weird. Nobody took it seriously. We just evacuated the building but no one was seriously expecting a bomb to go off. Why? Because, we couldn't think of a possible motive. Why would someone even want to destroy that building? You wouldn't be able to kill many people. Very few is inside at any time. Of course, I feared for the very old books, the very old microscopes and the live microorganisms inside the building. Blowing it up would not cause too much damage to UPM, infrastructure-wise, not unlike if you blow up the college of pharmacy or the college of arts and sciences buildings. They do store very volatile, very flammable and/or very toxic chemicals in there. Good thing though was our class just finished when the evacuation was started.