Tuesday July 18, 2006: Happy Birthday to...

We were in the lab by 8:30am today. Our PCR finished and we discovered that the high spin doesn't work as well for these samples as the normal isolation. We ran a few more second round reactions, diluting the high spin template further and we'll see how things progress from here. Sunee treated us all to lunch at a local restaurant. We had a delicious dish of papaya salad with soft shell crab, dried mini-shrimp, and fish sauce. It was excellent! They also prepare the same dish with fried papaya and that was great too. Their soda comes in tall, thin, glass bottles and is smostly flat. It's still quite good though, especially the Fanta (orange soda)! We also had stick rice, some type of white noodles that looked like spaghetti and tasted like over-cooked spaghetti. There was fried chicken and soup with lemongrass and shrimp. Thais eat their meals with only a fork and spoon. You use the fork to anchor the food, and the spoon to tear it to bitesize pieces and deliver it to your mouth. It's a little inefficient, but I'm also learning that inefficiencyis a key element to Thai society. Thai's use 1/4 of a 2-ply napkin. Unfold a paper napkin so it's rectangular, and cut into 4 peices. A napkin that small has almost NO effect, especially if you're eating something particularly messy. Thais also don't keep toilet paper in the bathrooms. Our lab uses toilet paper (on the roll) to wipe up spilled reagents, and opposed to using the more expensive laboratory Kim Wipes. The same toilet paper appeared on our conference room table during lunch. You must also take a few squares with you to the bathroom or "water room" as it translates directly from Thai to English. Why not just leave some in the bathroom? Well, that's just too efficient. They also don't flush their t.p. A waste basket sits beside every toilet (in the lab) and you dispose of your contaminated t.p. in there. There are also waste baskets beside the toilets in the hotel. I still flush, however.
After lab, we headed back to the hotel to freshen up and decided to try the Thai restaurant down the street from us, Anna's Cafe. It appeared to be a normal place, lovely greenery outside, pleasant hostesses and waiters (all male), so we ordered a few dishes. The food was all delicious! I had salmon with a curry sauce, Todd ordered crab meat in a stir fry, and Liz had to have Pad Thai because she just can't get enough... We shared everything!
All the waiers are male, and have names, or nicknames as we've learned, like 'Boy', 'Kar', and other one syllable easy names to pronounce. They were all very polite and especially cute because they all gathered to sing "Happy Birthday" to one of the guests. They sing in English, "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, happy birthday.......(long pause)..... Happy birthday to you." It was SO cute -- the first time. We were there and hour- hour and 1/2, and we heard the happy birthday song TWELVE times!! Unfortunately for Todd, the 11th happy birthday song was sung in his honor. After the fifth and sixth songs, we decided something was up, so we just thought they went around to each table and sang to someone... I guess we won't really know, since Liz got to them before they could get to us! Liz had gone to the bathroom and discreetly mentioned it to one of our watiers. Boy was Todd surprised! I laughed so hard my stomach hurt and my mascara ran. Nice one Liz!