Ang corny ng title.. Anyway. Classes have finally started. And because of my WONDERFULLY LOVELY (read: stupidly hectic) schedule, I now have another reason to dread Mondays. I actually have only two classes on Mondays, but don't be deceived; I have Organic Chemistry from 8 am to 10 am and Molecular Genetics from 12 nn to 7 pm. Yes, you read that correctly, 7 pm. This seven-hour period is divided into three sessions: lecture, lab, and tutorial. As can be expected, I was starving by the time the tutorial session ended. Fortunately, I was able to catch a bus almost immediately after the class. I rushed back to my dorm and ate dinner at record speed (around 10 minutes). Honestly, food never tasted so good.

To be fair, today wasn't a complete loss. Despite the ugly schedule, I actually enjoyed my classes. My chemistry teacher is a really friendly Scottish guy with a tendency to digress a bit but is otherwise okay. The lecture itself was kinda boring, but I wasn't expecting much excitement from organic chemistry anyway. In my genetics subject, there are actually several teachers who divided the curriculum among themselves. Two of them gave lectures today and both of them were engaging speakers, telling jokes every now and then. And, most importantly, they had decent English despite being Singaporeans :D And since I'm fascinated with genetics, I was really interested in everything they had to say. The laboratory session was fun too. First, we had to extract genomic DNA from Escherichia coli cells. Then we made streak plates using two different strains of E. coli, one of which is resistant to the antibiotic ampicillin, and petri dishes containing different kinds of agar (two of which contained ampicillin). The work was done in pairs; I was lucky enough to get a good lab partner. His name is Amos and he said he's really into biology and lab work and medicine (but not in the geeky kind of way); he wants to be a doctor someday. Fortunately for me, he's hardworking and he really pays attention to the protocol so we managed to do the experiment properly. And he's a gentleman too :P Finally, in the tutorial session, our teacher introduced us to the legal issues when performing genetic experiments. After asking for our consent, he collected DNA samples from us in the form of our buccal (cheek) cells. He and his assistants will then process (using PCR --> polymerase chain reaction) and analyze the samples for certain genes that may be connected to asthma and other conditions. Genetics is so cool :D

Cassy and the other Filipinos are having a barbecue somewhere tonight.. But I'm too exhausted to join them.. I actually feel like going to sleep already.. I'll just wait for a little while longer..