A take-home message for today - bullseye

"The curse of this age of microspecialization and proliferation of 'omics' is to separate the ridiculome from the relevantome."

                                                                                                 George Johnson: The Cancer Chronicles

Off-peak time

Working between Christmas and New Year is not typical here. Certainly, if your cell lines have to be maintained you don't have many options... One can enter the building but there is no heating (ie you can leave the enzyme on the bench...hehe). The canteen is not really busy in these days...

Xmas

For the first time, we spent the Christmas time without our parents and relatives. I managed to buy a 2.5-metre tree in wind storm and carry home on a double decker. (Fortunately, the driver allowed me to get on the bus...I was quite a bit worried.) It proved to be too high but the skylight helped (see below)...The English decorate the trees on December 1st so there is plenty of time to enjoy it. Giving Christmas cards personally, not sending via post, is another interesting tradition around here. (huge business for card factories I'm sure...) 

Our tree

Drinking coffee wearing mummy's jumper

Taking a bath (this unusual way is not an everyday practice of course :-) ) 

Cards from my colleagues

Due to extreme weather, water started dripping from the ceiling at 1am on Christmas Eve. perfect timing.

 Our neighbour's Christmas cards.

Christmas present.

Data analysis

If next-generation sequencing is included in your project, the bioinformatic data processing and analysis are absolutely the bottleneck of the study. Especially, if you are a wet-lab scientist and need to collaborate with a bioinformatician. After waiting 3 months for my data, I can start the analysis today. It's like looking for needles in a haystack and discriminate them from tones of junk.