Lachesis' Asylum

Graduated with distinction :)

Yesterday my little sister graduated with distinction! All grown up now ;)

Today I'm going on a three day Lab retreat/brainstorm :) curious what that will give...
Saterday we are leaving for a one-week holiday in Sweden on a the island of gräsö...

credits Course /20
5 Bacteriologie 15
3 Mycol., parasitologie & virolo 7
7 Biotechnologie & geïntegr.proj 16
3 Beroeps. wetgev.tarificatie 11
5 Galenica, cosmetica & proefdk 6
3 Kwaliteitscontrole van farmaca 8
3 Toxicologie 15
3 Studium Generale 14
8 scriptie 17
20 Onderzoeksstage 17

In response to thesis-induced stress, frustration levels are upregulated as assessed by cursing frequency, desk-associated head-banging, cigarette count and generating silly writings like this...

Oh yes, I'm focused...

สวัสดีปีใหม

Wish I was in Thailand right now, splashing water on my cute little nieces :)




http://www.2bangkok.com/

http://www.songkran.net/en/
http://www.thaiworldview.com/feast/songkran.htm

= science + people + party = fun²

For the past month I have been trying to find my way in the fields of real live practical work. I must admit I was absolutely not looking forward to it since I had no idea of what to expect. The first week was very hard with all the new things you have to absorb. Long, exhausting days. And there’s always the question of how to fit in.
Now I have already been to my first seminar. It’s an annual meeting of the institute where people present research project they have been working on. It’s interesting to see what else is going on and besides plenary sessions you could shift between a few rooms with different themes, such as signal transduction and gene regulation or developmental biology, genetics, cancer biology and cell death, etc. I kind of tagged along, not knowing what would be most interesting for me and for my work. Now we first ended up in a presentation about ‘a distance difference matrix approach to the identification of transcription factors…’Totally incomprehensible…
It was a two day event, so dinner yesterday and the party afterwards were a great opportunity to get the know everybody a bit. I’m happy to say I feel totally accepted.
It’s going great :)

/20

biotechnologie 16
bacteriologie 15
proefdierkunde / galenica en cosmetica 6
kwaliteitscontrole farmaca 8
virologie / parasitologie en mycologie 7
toxicologie 15

Against all odds...it actually went okay...I'm guessing 14 or 15
Altogether this pretty much has been the lousiest examperiod of the last three years with concentration levels close to zero. Glad it's over. For now.

Next step: write a paper.

Music!

31,5/50 (cluster with myco/para)

I will never rise above the level of mediocrity...

on request

/20

Biotechnology 13
Animal experiments Pro Forma
Bacteriology 13
Qualitycontrole of Pharmaca 5 (failed that one big time)
Galenica (today) Pro Forma
Virology (wednesday) working on it
Mycology/Parasitology (Friday) Pro Forma
Toxicology (Monday 29th) still need to get started

7 Year Existence


I raise my glass

‘A Toast’, I say
Clamour stills
‘To Life!’, I shout
‘To Life!’, they cheer

10 000 pills later

I pour my wine out on the ground

Once upon a time in a land where the sun would gloriously rise above the sea a child named Ijouna was born and raised between cherry blossoms and snowwhite fields. She was very shy and often you could catch her on her own, blowing wrinkles in the water of an icecold lake, or drawing pictures with a stick in the snow. But she also liked to watch the other children play when they danced over the fire or to run after them as they lifted flyers in the air. She had this fair skin but very dark eyes and as she grew up, she didn’t pass by unnoticed. Especially not by Jijitsu who had let his eyes fall onto her. But when he suddenly stood in front of her, she ran away.
One day Ijouna and her maiden friends where playing hide and seek and while she was trying to figure out where she could go, where no one could find her, she was lifted up in the air by Jijitsu and taken to a dark cave where he tied her up and left her.
While the village was looking for her, Ijouna was alone and scared. “They will find me”, she bravely said to herself, “they will find me and take me home…” But after days still no one had come except for Jijitsu to bring her food and water. And her hope sank deeper every day and she thought “They will never find me here.. Never…” And after weeks Jijitsu would hardly bring her food. After months he didn’t show up anymore, as he and the world had forgotten about her.
She cried and cried from the hunger and thirst, from the cold, from the pain, from the desolation she felt in her heart. Her cries didn’t reach the village, no one heard her. But in a crystal palace on a mountain high up in the clouds, the walls trembled with every yell that came out of her. The spirits who lived there were getting agitated as they constantly had to cover their ears. And when the last vase shattered into a thousand pieces, Kishou’s mood went from her usual icecold to boiling point. “Enough!”, she shouted, “Who is this girl screaming in such agony? Make it stop!” In her fury she send a typhoon across the land that destroyed everything it crossed.



(to be continued)

Wake

Bij jou hou ik mijn wake
Doorheen de schaduw van de nacht
Tot de dag
al duurt die maar even

Bij jou kniel ik neer
Tot je weer glimlacht
In de speeltuin van dit leven
Hang je aan me vast

Geborgenheid ligt in de bas van een hart

Merry Christmas!

I never told you of the nightmares that haunted me and made me lie awake, watching over you during many nights. There was this melody you used to hum on moments we were sitting in the car. A refrain associated with ‘going somewhere’. Popping up out of nowhere and I always tried to figure out the words you kept in your mind, but didn’t vocalize.
In those dreams I saw you sneaking out of bed. You didn’t even bother to slip into your shoes as you tiptoed down the stairs to go outside to the summer house. And always you found it. Always I saw you walking down the road, barefoot in your nighties, dragging the shovel behind you. Dreadfully you sang your words out loud, the words you kept to yourself. Take me into the woods and bury me. In my heart I belong in the ground. Erase my remnants from your memory. When you wake up I will no longer be around…
I woke up. Night after night after night. And I had to touch you to believe you were still lying next to me. That you had not gone down that road. I got rid of the shovel too. You asked me where it went and I lied to you. But two weeks later we had a new one hanging that you picked up from a garden store sale.

"Laat me gaan", smeekte je en je vingers verloren kracht.
Ik hield je hand nog steviger vast terwijl paniek mijn hart overspoelde. Kan je niet laten gaan, wetend dat je voor altijd verloren zou zijn.
Maar je was reeds verdwenen. De ziel in je ogen gedoofd. Je keek me niet langer aan, je huilde niet meer, je wendde je hoofd af.

Jij, was niet meer.

En ik liet los.

My sister asked me yesterday for a blazer she might need for a photoshoot for her schoolproject. So I dressed her up in buisness outfit, white shirt with stripes (yes, I have a white shirt, used it when I applied for a job some years ago, trying not to scare people away with my all-black dresscode), black pencilskirt and a blazer. But they went for a more romantic setting, and here's the result. :)




Nice hé! :)

Once up on a time in a land far away, a boy was about to turn fifteen. Now it was custom in this land, that everyone older than fifteen wore a beautiful mask. So as a rite of passage, children received a mask on their fifteenth birthday, which would mark them as adults rather than the children they once were.
This boy wasn’t known to be very bright since he’d always asked question about things he didn’t understood. Even as a little boy he harassed his parents asking them ‘why this…’ or ‘why that…’ His mother usually lost her patience with him, so when the question ‘why does every adult wears a mask?’ came to his mind, he was a bit of reluctant to go ask her. But he saw his father sitting and enjoying a beer that day, so he figured he might give it a try.
So he went to his father en asked him why everyone older than fifteen would were a mask. ‘Ah,’ said his father ‘that is because we are civilized. Behind the northern woods lies a country were people do not wear masks. And they are always at war. They rape their women, they beat their children, they kill each other… Always at war…dreadful boy, you are lucky to be born here.’ And the boy gazed at his fathers masks, still not totally satisfied. ‘So we wear it because we are civilized?’ ‘Yes’, answered his father, but not the Northern Witch’, he said, ‘she not civilized at al. Never go there boy…’ and he took an other sip from his glass, nodding his head.
The Northern Witch. The boy has heard tales about her, ever since he was little. She was ugly as hell and every child was warned never to go into the Northern Woods, because the witch might curse them and their families. It was hard to believe she once lived among them civilized people. So now the boy was considering going into the Northern Woods in search for an answer.


He slipped away after lunch and hours later he found himself lost between sky high trees, tripping over rotten wood and crawling thorns. And he sat down on a tree trunk, sighing and feeling like a real imbecile. Even more when his eyes spread wide open, staring into the black pools of a horrible creature in rags with snakes swirling around it. He realized, there it was, the most hideous thing ever created. The twisted face of the witch, covered with traces of death and decay, and sucking every molecule of oxygen out of him. She moved in circles round him, gazing at him with those flaming eyes and he turned and turned and turned, to scared to stand with his back at her. Suddenly she held still, lifted her chin up in the air and pointed at him. “You…”, she whispered coldly, sending a shiver right down his spine. “What brings you here…They never warned you…?” And in a solemn moment of bravery the boy uttered his question. “Why do you wear that ugly mask?” She started laughing and her voice shaked the trees and ground he stood on. “To keep stupid boys like you away!” But the boy wasn’t satisfied and in another brave moment (ah yes, the first one wasn’t the only one) he asked “Why do people wear masks?” “To protect the children”, she hissed at him, “Now get lost!” And the boy didn’t hang around for a better explanation, especially since one of her snakes had glided down and moved rapidly in his direction. He lifted his feet and found a source of energy he never even knew he had.
For some reason the gods took pity on him and within half an hour he stood at the border of his village, the sun already gone and the lights behind the windows welcomed him back. His mother wasn’t too happy but spared him in the spirit of his coming birthday. But during dinnertime, the boy again had been quiet and thinking and he chewed on his question and on the answers given. Still, he did not understand.
And when his father send him to sleep, he didn’t go to bed but instead he slipped out of the house en kneeled at the neighbors house, peeking trough the window. Cause before sleeping, he knew, people took their masks off….

They had always been very kind to him, inviting him in after school for tea and cake, so he felt a bit ashamed when he secretly gazed into their well known kitchen through a small opening next to the curtain. He saw his neighbor taking of his mask, laying it down next to the sink, before he poured himself a glass of water. The boy frowned his forehead as he saw the man’s beard and wrinkled face. ‘There’s nothing to see’, he thought and contemplating about that, he wandered further down the road to the next house where a couple had moved in. He could already hear them, before he climbed into the nearest tree. The man just moved his head at the right time for a whiskey bottle to hit the hall mirror behind him. And the boy jumped down after he saw the hatred on the woman’s face. He went to his friend’s house only to be seized by the grieve the mother carried for the baby she lost last winter. His favorite teacher seemed more dead than alive, showed no expression at all, so very much unlike his inspiring class. The old lady from the sweetshop had ulcerations all over her face that made his stomach turn upside down.

He went from house to house to house. But every time he moved slower, hesitating with every footstep, forcing himself to it. So when he reached the little house near the village stream where the new girl in his class lived with her aunt, he couldn’t help but smile, thinking about her golden hair she always carried in a ponytail, and her tiny hands holding her pencil when she wrote in her notebook, her angels’ voice lifting up the church during Sunday morning sermons and her laughter on the playground…
She wasn’t there and he was in the difficult process of deciding what he should do, when she stormed into the room and crawled onto her bed, jerking of the mask that hide her beautifully bruised, scarred face, blood dripping nose and the burning red cheek that would eventually turn blue, yellow and brown…

When the sun rose over the village and marked the beginning of the day, the boy woke up and found his wrapped birthday gift on his bedside table. From that day on, he would never be seen again without his mask on.
His birthday was celebrated by the whole village and the festivities lasted even after nightfall. But the boy was glad when the day was over and he wished his parents goodnight and went up to his room.

Deep in the Northern Woods, by the light of many candles, the witch was reading in an ancient book of wisdom with one of her cats in her lap, when she remembered the strange boy she encountered in her sanctuary. Out of curiosity she pulled the purple veil off her crystal globe and searched through space until she found the boy sitting on his bed with his mask on the sheets next to him, staring out of the window. His eyes were wide open and filled with sorrow and sadness. His grim face reflecting all the horror in the world….

The Northern Witch decided she too should go to bed. And she placed her ugly mask in it’s special box and combed her long black hair, while she sang to the forest. Her green eyes sparkled when she wished her cats goodnight and the crystal globe mirrored her fair face when she fell asleep. Her cats watched over her as she traveled trough a world of dreams.

And they lived happily ever after…

no sleep
lack of sleep
tired
energy
no energy
lack of energy
life
no life
lack of life
...

Lead in my schoes