To which the answer is Yes.

no. seriously. why the fuck am i still here?

Daniel Come back.
Nikki Come back.
Zingi Come back.
Melanie Go back!

to less serious matters:

work at the lab has been going well. i'm running a second set of experiments now. before this, i was experimenting on the effect of temperature on urchin larval development by subjecting them to various temperatures. now, i'm going one up: experimenting on the response of adult urchins to various temperatures.

haha.

yes...i subject urchins to a form of ancient heat torture.

see, this is how i do it: first, i place the urchins in varying degrees of temperatures ranging from that of their normal environment (~22degsC) down to 17degsC and up to 30degsC. i place them in the respective temperatures for 30mins before i proceed to cut them open in half ALIVE and remove their gonads (in layman terms: eggs and sperm) to test for the synthesis of a certain protein that is produced when an animal experiences extreme heat a.k.a. heat-shock proteins.

fuh. did you read all of that? good.

anyway, i discovered something interesting about urchins the day before. apparently, they're capable of making noises. especially when they are heat-stressed. 15 minutes in to the urchins being submerged in 30degsC waters, i started hearing funny sounds i.e. babies crying.

now...i'm not generally superstitious or afraid of things that go bump in the night (fingers crossed), but those sounds gave me the shivers, especially since when i pointed it out to my lab partner and she told me that she couldn't hear anything. well, i was working in the building for the faculty of medicine, for crying out loud: you know, where they store dead bodies and all...so i wouldn't be too surprised if the sound of babies crying that i heard were that of the little foetuses stored in jars on display in the anatomy museum below us.

haha.

being a brave soul, i went out of the room to figure out what unholy spectre awaited me. and to my horror, i discovered that the sounds were actually coming from the urchins submerged in the 30degsC waterbath!

oh my fucking Polo suitcase what the fuck!?

and now, i'm emotionally scarred. i say a little prayer each time before i plunge the edge of my scissors into the interior of the urchin. sigh...how many more innocent urchins must die before we get to the bottom of the enigma that is climate change?!

n.b. incidentally...i've been out in the field twice this week collecting yet more urchins...and each time a local on the beach asks us what we're collecting, we'll say Urchins! to which they'll follow up with the next question Well, what do you do with them? Eat them?! to which we retort in a mighty fine voice No. We don't eat them. They're for research purposes. We're doing something on climate change!

oohs and aahs ensues. scientist i am. but do i feel remorse?