I Can't Sleep

Don't you hate when it's the middle of the night and you can't sleep because a million different things are running through your mind?

After cyber-stalking people on Facebook and checking everybody's blogs I mustered up the courage to check my grades. This past semester wasn't my greatest. Oh well. At least I passed physics- I was afraid that I would have to retake it (I got 39% on the final... you'd think I'd be too ashamed to let you all know my score). My senior year at BYU is starting to be affected by the "I-don't-shiv-a git- syndrome" that plagued me senior year at Dalat International School in Malaysia. I do want to get into graduate school so I guess I'll shape up next semester. I'm taking biochemistry... doesn't that sound delightful???? I worked with a biochemist over the summer- he said it's cool stuff and that it's different from organic chemistry. I'm still suspicious because it is chemistry after all.

I went and saw Where the Wild Things Are at the dollar movie.

I really, really wanted to like it, but it was soooo depressing (much like this post?). I also fell asleep through part of it, maybe I missed something important. I couldn't wait for it to end.

On the other hand,

Avatar was AMAZING!

My little sister's boyfriend Brandon has a good review here. He sure knows a lot about movies.

Check it out!!! I went and got a pedicure today.

Ugly toes are unacceptable-they are an abomination. Even in the middle of winter when you can't wear sandals and people don't see them. You might think my toes are pretty ugly-pedicure or not. Don't tell me though because it would offend my sensibilities and injure my vanity. This obsession with feet stems from my parents. My whole family is obsessed with feet. The first thing we look at when people step on the elevator or pass us as the grocery store is their feet- if they've got sandals on. I'm pretty sure I've posted about feet before. You don't have to get expensive pedicures but if you're going to wear sandals the least you could do is cut your nails and clean the dirt out of them.

I was hoping to see some whales while in Hawaii.

I didn't see any, but then again I didn't look very hard. I laid around like a beached whale-it's about as close as I got. I don't even know if killer whales migrate to Hawaii. I bet other whales do. I think whales are my new favorite animal... right up there with elephants.

I'm getting sleepy. Hope my rambling didn't make you sleepy.

"Laying around all day sure takes a lot out of you"

Mele Kalikimaka!

We are in beautiful Hawaii! Upon landing Sunday afternoon we were all shocked to see how much Hawaii resembles Penang. It's kind of weird to be in a tropical climate, but still in America. At times it looks like we could be in Malaysia or Singapore, but it's America. Everyone speaks English and drives orderly.


We went to Pearl Harbor yesterday. It was amazing to think of the thousands of people that lost their lives, and the hundreds still entombed in the USS Arizona. I love to travel and live in other parts of the world, but I'm proud to be an American. A lot of people have sacrificed so much so that we can enjoy the freedoms we have.



There are some amazing views and sunsets in Hawaii..


And some pretty hideous ones too. (look in the background...yes, we laughed and took photos because we Gaddis's are just like that)


Here we are boogie boarding.


I made a new friend while walking around Waikiki


Jordan looks pretty hot huh?


More to come later.

I am NOT a hoarder...

My mother has literally been begging me for permission to take pictures of my room: Please Malaina! I'm begging you!!! PLEEEAASSEE!!!

Why? You might ask...

Because she wants to send them to Oprah or Dr. Phil to get me on one of their shows about hoarders!!!

Apparently, Oprah will see my disastrous mess and send her staff out to Provo, Utah to help me get organized. My grandparents came by for a visit earlier today- my mother brought them down to my room for a freaking tour. Now, my grandma is begging me to let my mom send pictures to Oprah. She says, "They'll fly you out for the show and put you in a hotel. A really fancy hotel. Man, if I had a room like that I would send pictures in a heartbeat."

It's not that bad. At my house, we don't tidy or clean... we "de-shit-sify." Truly, we do. My mother has used that term for as long as I can remember. Well, I deshitsified my room in less than an hour. All I really had to do was wash some laundry, hang up my amazing technicolor dreamcoats, put my shoes away, and throw out garbage. A lot of garbage.

The following is directly taken from wikipedia:

There is no clear definition of compulsive hoarding in accepted diagnostic criteria (such as the current DSM), Yet, Frost and Hartl (1996) provide the following defining features:^[3]

• the acquisition of and failure to discard a large number of possessions that appear to be useless or of limited value (I get rid of stuff all the time... guitars and gold purse are not useless!)
• living spaces sufficiently cluttered so as to preclude activities for which those spaces were designed (I can sleep and get dressed in my room just fine!)
• significant distress or impairment in functioning caused by the hoarding (I'm not distressed over my room)
• reluctance or inability to return borrowed items; as boundaries blur, impulsive acquisitiveness could sometimes lead to kleptomania or stealing (I don't steal, and I return things I borrow... okay, maybe the library books racked up to a $16 fine because I was a little late getting them back... but that doesn't count).

This is a picture taken off of wikipedia of a real horder. Maybe my room was slightly reminiscent of the room pictured above and I just provided an image from the least disastrous angle. That doesn't mean I'm a hoarder- maybe a big, fat, lazy, slob- but NOT a hoarder. We are all given talents... housekeeping is not one of mine. I can play guitar and spout off a bunch of random science mumbo-jumbo, but I'm not good at keeping things tidy. I'm good at paying people to keep things tidy... my little sister gets $20 a month for cleaning the bathroom... I honestly don't remember the last time I cleaned it. Problem solved. Someday when I'm rich I can extend maid services to my room.

Switching to a whole new topic:

We went to Temple Square tonight- it was cold, but beautiful.

some yahoo in shorts...

Megan playing around

I love this picture of Megan!

Jordan was cold and cranky... and sick of all the photo-taking.

I ran into my good friends Joyce and Devonne. It was so good to see them.

Happy are we.

"It's frickin' freezing in here Mr. Bigglesworth!!!" (name that movie).

Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas, Mele Kelikimaka.

I'm going to Hawaii tomorrow so I guess I should pack. Maybe I'll blog, maybe I won't. Depends on whether or not Jordan will let me use her laptop.

Seriously though,

Merry Christmas!

Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoats#2

My amazing technicolor dream coats are becoming a pain in the ass. I switch coats so often that I forget which coat pocket I left my keys in. I'm locked out for the second time in 3 days.

I was going to wear my purple peacoat but then thought, no it's not cold enough for that, today is a pink leather jacket kind of day. Well I'm sitting on my front step in my pink jacket and my keys are in the pocket of my purple coat in my room.

I'm thinking about getting my dad's ax out of the garage and pulling a Jack Torrance on the front door.

At least it's not snowing.

Malaina and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoats

Instead of working on my semester paper for English 316 (due tomorrow), I've decided to blog about my crazy obsession with coats.

I can't seem to stop buying them. Buying a new coat is as exciting as buying a new pair of shoes or a new purse. Just when I tell myself, "OK Malaina, this is the LAST coat, you don't need any more!"- I see a one-of-a-kind, hot pink leather jacket in a shop in Buenos Aires, or a vibrant, orange pea coat that's on sale because of Black Friday. How am I supposed to pass up these opportunities? It's not like I'm going back to Buenos Aires anytime soon, or Black Friday comes more than once a year- you gotta' strike while the iron is hot!

People tell me I'm ridiculous, but the only thing ridiculous is my shockingly small amount of closet space.

Soap Box

I am taking an evolutionary biology class and lab as part of my biology major requirements at BYU. It has been one of the most interesting biology classes I've taken- it's like everything has been building up to this one class. The theory of evolution really is the "all-encompassing" theory in biology- it includes genetics, molecular biology, ecology, anatomy- everything having to do with biology. The theory of evolution and LDS doctrine are not incompatible. Though we don't know for sure how the Lord created the world and man, I think He used evolution.

The BYU College of Life Sciences is not allowed to advertise campus-wide guest lecturers or seminars dealing with evolution. It kind of irritates me that anything having to do with evolution is "stashed away" in the biology building. This means that when really big and important guest lecturers in the field come, they get stuck in some dinky little room because we're not allowed to use one of the big auditoriums on campus for discussions on evolution. BYU will, however, advertise all over campus when creation "scientists" come; creation science is not science and I think it's dumb that BYU gives it more attention than an actual scientific theory. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that we were created by God, I just don't think science can be used to prove it. Science and religion offer two very different ways for knowing things.

I'm ready to step off my soap box now.

In my evolutionary biology lab, we studied behavioral traits and evolution with betta fish (males are very aggressive and will kill each other if put in the same bowl). Don't worry, we didn't pull a Michael Vick, the fish were treated very humanely. They stayed in separate containers the whole time.

In what other class would you get to take a fish home as a "handout"? All I get in my stupid archaeology class are some lame papers I'll never look at again.

This is Trixie (it's a male but I like the name Trixie).

After class, I carried him all over school (instead of crazy cat lady, I was crazy fish lady)...

... and then transferred him to his new home when I got to my house.

I think Trixie is more purple now than when I first got him.

This here is a female betta fish:

Ladies: have you ever woken up in the morning, looked at yourself in the mirror and thought, Damn. Men don't have to mess with their hair or put on a ton of makeup to look decent.

What I'm getting at, is that males are really the fairer sex, not females. Look at the majority of species in nature- males are more flashy and beautiful- peacocks, ducks (females are the ugly brown ones), betta fish, and humans (I would argue). I finally found out why this is- it's called sexual dimorphism.

Females devote a lot of energy, resources and time to producing offspring. They have to gestate (or lay eggs instead), give birth, and then raise the offspring- a lot of times in nature males will do their thing and then run off. Males do not typically devote as much energy or resources when they reproduce. Females are really choosy when it comes to mating- they put all this work into producing offspring so they don't want any old male.

The male has to attract the female- get her to choose him... males evolved to be more beautiful for this reason. The male needs bright colors, feathers, big horns, display behaviors or whatever, to get the female to choose him. What's interesting, is that if you find a species where the male puts more energy into reproducing, the female will be more attractive than the male because she has to get him to choose her.

Hawkeye=Frontier Hotness

The Last of the Mohicans with Daniel Day-Lewis is one of my all-time favorite movies.

During a battle scene when Nathaniel "Hawkeye" ran through the battlefield to save Cora, my mom stepped out of her room to watch through the doorway. When Hawkeye obliterated the fool that tried to slit Cora's throat my mom exclaimed,

"That there is some frontier hotness!"

I totally agree...

The waterfall scene:

"Stay alive! No matter what occurs, I will find you...

No matter how long it takes, no matter how far.

I will find you..."

Sigh....

Thanks to youtube you can watch it too!

Mika-Big Girl

I'm Going to Dallas

I'm sitting in the Salt Lake airport right now. I'm going to Dallas for a research conference- I'll be presenting a poster on the research I did over the summer in Mario Capecchi's lab.

The last few days have been completely insane! I think I'm going insane. Don't ask me why but I waited until last night to re-format my poster. Could have been the midterm in advanced molecular biology and a midterm in physics that ate up my entire weekend. I thought it would take a few hours... HA! I was up until 3:00 messing around with it and frantically trying to print it out at Kinko's around 8:00 this morning.

It looks pretty good right?

I started throwing clothes into a suitcase around 3:00AM...hopefully I didn't forget anything important.

I'm excited to see the friends I made over the summer and to get away for a while.

I'm also curious to see if everything really is bigger in Texas.

In Loving Memory...

Sugar has been part of our family for nearly 11 years. She passed away tonight from pneumonia. I loved this cat. We all loved her- she was well taken care of.

Not many cats have traveled across the world and back. Everyone loved Sugar, you could tell they were amazed by her voluptuous size.

Every morning when I'd get up and start getting ready for the day Sugar would waddle over and "talk" to me. I would always talk back of course.

She's not going to be there tomorrow morning and that makes me really sad.

So I was watching the Russel Crowe, Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams movie- State of Play. Russel Crowe was a journalist, Rachel McAdams a blogger for the newspaper they worked for, and Ben Affleck was the politician they were investigating.

Russel Crowe didn't care for the story Rachel McAdams published on her blog- he said it was

"Upchuck online."

I laughed really hard. You know how some things strike you as really funny when it's really late at night and you are tired?

I decided it would be funny to make that the title of my blog. Maybe it's not funny to you but I'm kind of a dork and I'm still chuckling at it. But whatever.

Random

I haven't had official classes at BYU since last December. You could kind of count Argentina as school because I got some research credit but that's not the same.

Some times I feel like I'm ready to go back, and some times (like right now) I feel like I'm not. I'm taking 18 credit hours- the maximum amount BYU will allow you to register for. I'm working, and I'll be volunteering in a research lab- which I'm not allowed to talk about because it offends my younger sister's sensibilities. We work with mice and she is really into animal rights. That's a whole other story....

But can I just say, it's not like I'm not for animal torture (and it's certainly not what we do in the lab). Shoot, I buy free range. I've given up KFC because they are inhumane when slaughtering their chickens (even though I've been jonesing for a two-piece for like weeks now). Isn't it human nature to want what you can't have???? Not only does Colonel Sanders torture his chickens but Christina would flay my ass if she found out I went to KFC.

I haven't blogged in a while... nothing really "blog-worthy" has happened lately. I guess that's not true. We went to see Green Day a few weeks ago- it was one of the best concerts I've been to. And I've been to some good ones... Aerosmith, Kiss, AC/DC, Ozzy, Metallica... to name a few.

Say Shava Shava!

I love Indian food!  My friend and I had been talking about going to get Indian food throughout the whole program (she had never tried it before and I of course told her she MUST). 

 We sent around an email to the rest of the program to see if anyone wanted to go.  I was pleasantly surprised that so many came along.  We had a really good time (though the food wasn't as good as India Garden on Center Street in Provo).  No one really knew what to order or how much of it to get... this worked out good for me because I knew exactly what I wanted (and I got it because everyone let me take charge).

For many of my friends (from Puerto Rico, China and other various places in the U.S.), this was their first experience with Indian food- I think they liked it.

Maritza y Martha- two of my roommates I've had a great time with this summer.

Below is the FAMOUS Bollywood Actor Sharukh Khan

Click on the link above to see a special Bollywood clip- Shava Shava.  It was from the first Bollywood movie I ever saw- the first time I saw it I didn't know what to think.  Bollywoods grow on you and are a LOT of fun becuase they make you want to get up and dance.  You can picture me bouncing around my dorm room to Shava Shava.  Sharukh and Bollywood bring back memories of highschool and living in Malaysia (where there were fabulous Indian people with great food, clothes, festivals and Bollywoods with Sharukh in them).  Eating Indian food also makes me feel nostalgic for Malaysia and Penang's Little India.

Basket Case and more Science Mumbo Jumbo

Do you know that Greenday song- Basket Case?

The first verse goes:

"Do you have the time
to listen to me whine?
About nothing and
everything all at once.
I am one of those
melodramatic fools.
neurotic to the bone
no doubt about it."

I swear this verse describes my life this week; sometimes it's hard to be female. At least I'm going to see Green Day next month!

Did I mention that I am working for Nobel Laureate Mario Capecchi this summer?

Just kidding, I know it's all I can talk about and you are probably sick of hearing about it.

Anyway, Dr. Capecchi (because I'm too chicken to go up to him and say "Hey Mario, what's up?") had his Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) review last week. What happens is the PI (Principal Investigator) has 30 minutes to give a presentation/review of how their lab's work is going- they get a 10 second warning before the microphone shuts off. The PI presents in front of a review board of 25 other scientists who ultimately decide whether or not to continue funding the PI's lab.

I love listening in to people's conversations while I'm doing my thing in the lab... you hear so many interesting things. Kay (the lab manager) was talking to Matt (post-doc) about how Mario came to her at 5:00 the night before his review to ask her to change a PowerPoint slide for him if it wasn't too much trouble. He told her that he was planning on about a minute a slide (*at this time he had over 70 slides). Last thing Kay heard was that Mario had narrowed down the slides to about 35 or 40. Mario spent A LOT of time preparing- he even read the latest papers/publications of everyone on the review board (let me just tell you, scientific papers are NO easy reading- at least for me).

It was Kay (and pretty much everyone else's) opinion that after you get the Nobel Prize you can kind of "relax" when it comes to the HHMI review because they aren't going to cut funding (apparently HHMI gets certain bragging rights when one of their PI's gets the Nobel Prize). Mario didn't "relax" in his preparation- he went in knowing his stuff... I guess that's how you get to be a Nobel Laureate.

We found out later that day that his presentation went good and that the panel of 25 scientists questioned him for two and a half hours. Mario came back to Utah and we had lab meeting the next day- HHMI doesn't tell you right away if your funding is continued.

Friday afternoon we hear the news.... funding is continued for the next five years! (I really don't think anyone was shocked). Lesson to be learned: even Nobel Prize winners get nervous.

I come to find out that the "funding" is over 1,000,000 dollars a year! (imagine Dr. Evil saying one million dollars!).

We had happy hour yesterday in the lab to celebrate... I was sitting at my bench and I look over to see Dr. Capecchi wheeling a cart of beer into the cold room (there's a walk in fridge that is like 20 below). I had my BYU-student-Diet Coke.

Today I learned the hard way how lab work differs from any other job I can think of. In the blink of an eye, two days worth of work can go down the drain!

This is a gel electrophoresis chamber/power supply. For those of you not fluent in dork, allow me to explain:

You boil a powder with some buffer in a microwave and when it cools, it forms a gel- imagine you are making Jello- except the gel is a lot stiffer than Jello.

You put your DNA in the gel and then run an electrical current through the gel... it separates the DNA by size so you get this:

Can you see the different bands (is anyone still reading this? I'm rambling.)? By looking at the different bands and measuring their size you can figure a bunch of stuff out about your DNA.

I spent two days growing a bunch of yeast samples, extracting the DNA (which took forever), quantifying the DNA, calculating restriction digests, setting up the restriction digests (cutting the DNA with enzymes), and then running the gel. When I went to look at the gel, it slipped out of the damn tray and splattered all over the floor!!! We were going to do a Southern Blot (transfer the DNA from the gel onto a piece of paper to radio-label it to see how many copies of our gene were put in the yeast clones). A Southern Blot is like a two or three day process by itself! I felt like a big idiot but Matt was cool about it- he said it's happened to him and to everyone else. At least no one saw me drop the gel on the floor.

I'm going in early tomorrow to extract some more DNA and start the process all over again.

Something Fishy

So my last post was pretty angry.  What can I say? A pervert broke into my apartment, I was pissed.  We're doing better now but we're still creeped out.

On a much happier note...

Last Friday my dad and I went to Strawberry Reservoir...

We got two doubles...

...and a total of 17.

I broke in my new fishing pole real good.

Everyone around us was looking over trying to see what bait we were using; I can't describe in words how fun it is to be catching more fish than everyone else.  We were the people to hate... we would know because a week earlier we were the losers looking on while another boat was catching all the fish.