frazer vs. banting&best...

during my undergrad at uoft, we heard endlessly about insulin and how it was discovered at uoft by Sir Frederick Banting and Charles Best. every human biology course mentioned this remarkable feat at least once during the course of the semester.
---all you life sci grads from uoft know what i'm talking about!

here at UQ there is something that they are even MORE proud of. if you've been keeping up with your medical journals, you'll know what i'm talking about.
i'm talking about Dr. Ian Frazer and his discovery of the cervical cancer vaccine. for a little backgroung info: cervical cancer is the second most common cause of death from cancer in women worldwide. the human papillomavirus (HPV) is believed to be the cause of virtually all cervical cancers. SO... just like the rubella vaccine that you get as a baby, there is now a vaccine that protects against cerival cancer (usually given around 11 or 12 years of age).

and we hear about this vaccine (Gardasil) / Ian Frazer / HPV / cervical cancer on what seems like an average of once per week. i kid you not. i swear! if i've learned just one thing this year, it's that Ian Frazer is the 2006 Australian of the Year, and he invented a vaccine for cervical cancer. that is all i know.

peeping tom.

we've had an unwanted guest for the past few days.
a gecko has been living in our bathroom. at first i just let him be, thinking that he'd leave soon enough. but nope, he's stuck around.


today i decided that it was rude of him to watch me shower and brush my teeth so i took him out and released him into a nearby bush.

i have no idea what kind of gecko he is and am even more clueless about the type of habitat he lives in. hopefully, he isn't easy prey for the birds or turkeys that roam around the backyard.

ekka...???

what's that?
today is the start of the royal queensland show. it was originally called the brisbane exhibition. and that's where it's nickname of ekka comes from. apparently for aussies, the short form of exhibition is "ekka". isn't the short form of exhibition, "the EX"?

basically it's a mix of agricultural fair/cne. it runs for 10 days in august. they have a bunch of carnival stuff, some farm animals as well as some rides of questionable safety. just like the CNE!

apparently it's quite a big deal. i'm told that for brisbane, it's a cash infusion of $100million! and it's such a significant event that next wednesday is a public holiday. it's meant for everyone to have the day off in order to go to the fair. how sweet is that! so, will i be going to the ekka next wednesday then? hm... probably not. i think i'll just catch up on some sleep and some studying. i'm looking forward to it.

a bit of a let-down...

we had our first dissection today. before the lab, i was a little anxious and excited - mostly excited, but now that i've gotten my first incision out of the way, it seems a little anti-climactic.
it was no-where near as exhilarating as i had hoped or as nerve-racking as i had feared.

maybe it's because we've spent the last 6 months or so looking at these cadavers.
or maybe it's because we focused just on the upper limbs today.
or maybe... maybe i just expected too much.

book it!

a group of us took part in this race put on by the campus christian movement (ccm) called the "amazing g-race". get it? amazing GRace?
it was a good time. basically just like the show amazing race, we had to run all over the city of brisbane completing tasks at various stations along the way. it was a whole lot of running, some being silly and some more running.

unfortunately i don't have too many pictures of us doing the tasks at each of the stations. after all, it was a race! no time for posers! but at one of the stations we had to convince random strangers to strike a superhero pose.

susan, random person #1, random person #2, alan.


photo courtesy of sean.

some more silly pictures...

C-A-N-A-D-A!
I would actually like to state that this was not an activity that needed to be completed at one of the stations. we did this completely voluntarily! buncha goofs!

first prize was 200 smackaroos! not bad... and we were so darn close! we ended up finishing second. we settled for a basket filled with "gourmet" cooking ingredients instead. :(

us with our prize. matt is hiding behind the pastor. you can see his hat though.

as part of our win, we ended up singing "Oh Canada". Rumour has it that there is a video floating around the internet of us singing the anthem. if you do find this video, don't laugh. and don't ask why i'm being so patriotic and holding my arm to my chest! hahaha.