I may or may not have take an extended weekend to escape from the brutality of the KLCC and more importantly, work on my paper. You know… priorities.
Fortunately, in the time of this extended weekend, I managed to get all the background research finally done! Hooray!
…for only completing step 1…
…sigh.
As a consolation, my other project was progressing! Yay for sequencing! Yay for science! Yay for the nerd life!
You may be facepalming by this point but this life comes with fried chicken so like yeah.
Clearly, I’m winning in the weight-gaining department if not the Nature-published-researcher life.
The rest of the week was spent on teaching myself tons of Korean that wasn’t taught well in class. Study abroad isn’t always rainbows and unicorns sadly.
Hey! We didn’t talk about Korean culture and affairs in a while. Well, lucky for you reads, my lab mates are the Himalayas when it comes to looking for mountains of information.
For you carnivores out there, I know your mouth may be watering at the sight of that steak. Let’s be real, you could probably be a substitute for Pavlov’s dogs due to the stream of food photos in this blog. Typical Mahir hyperbole aside, Korean beef is known to be pretty good. I am not talking about 불고기, but the nice, juicy 소고기 (beef) steak you may pass by when you’re shopping at Grand Mart. Mhmm…
Truth be told, you may to think a bit before buying some 소고기 for that next barbecue. Astonishingly, there is no regulatory body overviewing the care of cattle, associated farm conditions, and the output of beef throughout the country (feel free to enlighten me on one, if you search the web, there is a lot on import and the fine cattle of 한우 (Korean cattle) but very little on exactly who regulates their sales on a national scale). So as meh as the FDA is, as an American, I am pretty glad there is somebody to count on to go various farms and check on how the meat I eat on a regular basis is being treated. Think about this… Korean beef is not allowed to be exported. Inherently, the lack of a regulatory body causes that problem, but the bigger problem here is the fact that Korea is feeding their people something they are not even allowed to feed to others. You may be thinking this is not a big issue, and if so, I strongly urge you to reconsider your thought process. There is actually a long albeit thorough piece by Ted Conover on the significance of this all from “The Way of All Flesh“, a piece here wrote for Harper’s Magazine. Take a while to check it out if you have never had the pleasure. As for me, 소고기 has been pretty undesirable.
