Chan Weng Kit's Blogspot: June 2017

Friday, 30 June 2017

DAY 299/300/301

Jun 27, 28, 29

1) The past week has been rather taxing on me. Having to pack up and shift houses is something new for me, and I grossly underestimated how much effort it would require. Thankfully, I've (almost) finished packing, and the weekend is coming too.

2) For the most part, my past three days have been spent in the labs as usual. Counting today, we've set up eight experiments so far, all of them related to some form of bismuth complex which we're trying to create. The two earlier experiments had failed due to contaminated DCM/ methylene chloride solution, but the third one we did (with a better batch of DCM) turned out fine. So it's all systems go, as we seek to combine that product with another ligand, to form Deferasirox, an iron chelator. So the idea is to combine Deferasirox with bismuth (chloride, nitrate etc) to form an organometallic complex. This delivers a double-whammy to the bacteria (iron chelators bind iron so bacteria can't take up iron from the surroundings, and bismuth itself is an antibacterial/ antimicrobial). Hopefully, we'll get there soon haha...

3) Yesterday I bade goodbye to my good friend and housemate George. George hails from Cyprus, and we've been really close friends ever since I met him last September. His mom and brother came over the other day, and they brought some lovely treats from Cyprus - soutzoukous (churchkhela) and loukoumi (Turkish delight). I'm really grateful to have met such a kind and sincere friend in George. Wishing you every success in your future endeavours! :D

4) Today's story has pretty much been the same. Dr. Griffith came himself to work with us in the labs, and I started a new experiment using PBT2 - an experimental drug candidate intended to be a successor to clioquinol and a potential treatment of Alzheimer's disease and Huntington disease. Only time will tell if it's yeay or nay, so I'll just have to be patient then. Anyway, that sums up the past three days here, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Thanks for visiting, and have a great day. Cheers!

George and I

"loukoumi" or Turkish Delights

Soutzoukous- a traditional, chewy sweet made from grape juice,

that has a unique appearance (it looks like a candle!), and is popular at traditional festivals.

Burrito from Pablo Picante for dinner

Tuesday, 27 June 2017

DAY 297/ 298

Jun 25 & 26

1) I've been quite busy these past two days. Mostly because I'm packing up to shift houses this Saturday. So yesterday, I met Erika (the exchange student from Hoshi University, Japan) near RCSI and I decided to show her around, as she's only been here for three weeks. So we went on a walking tour to Trinity College Dublin, before walking past the Ha'penny Bridge to Dublin 1. While walking towards the Spire, we made the acquaintance of a fellow student from UCD, Patrick "Paddy" O'Grady.

2) Together, the three of us walked around Dublin 1, passing Penneys and the Ten Thousand World Buffet and The Savoy. As we were about to double back, we met Melvin, who sadly was in a rush to go somewhere. So we continued our way back to the bridge, before walking along the River Liffey to Dublin Castle. That's opposite the Queen of Tarts shop where I bought some lovely pies on my second day here in Dublin. How time flies...

3) But I digress. We found out more about each other, especially Paddy since we had only just met him haha. After spending some time in the St. Stephen's Green Park, it was time for dinner. I brought my friends over to Wok In, and got the beef curry with rice. By this time, it was getting late, so I had to excuse myself to finish my packing at home. That was the gist of my day yesterday :)

4) Today was back to the labs for me. I spent the entire morning and part of the afternoon finishing off the second product (now labelled KC4), only to find out in the end that it wasn't the product that we were looking for! We've now followed two different sets of instructions to synthesize this compound, yet no luck so far. So using Reaxys (a web-based tool for the retrieval of chemistry information and data from published literature), Donal and I found another published article detailing the process. We've set up the experiment as described, and left the intermediate on stirring overnight.

5) Hopefully the product will turn out fine when we finish up tomorrow, as we've run out of the starting material already. Anyway, that's been my day today, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Have a great day, cheers!

Me, Erika, and Paddy at Dublin Castle central square

Posing in front of the Spire

(which is completely overexposed haha)

Having dinner at Wok In ^^

Need to filter ppt tomorrow...

Note to self: When they say add SOCl₂ drop by drop, they really do mean that

(case in point the balloon on the right burst because of the pressure build up due to the sulfur dioxide gas produced - gave me the shock of my life!)

Sunday, 25 June 2017

DAY 295/296

Jun 23 & 24

1) So the day before yesterday was a typical day for me. I went to the labs to switch off the heat on the reflux apparatus, before spending the afternoon attending the "Present Your Research" talk by Mr. Eric Clarke. The rest of the day was pretty mundane as well, so I'll get to the exciting bit...

2) Yesterday, Zi Yan and I took the bus to Howth! I've been to Howth before, but it was smack in the winter, meaning a) it was cold as heck, b) it rained like nobody's business, c) the sky turned dark so fast it wasn't even funny. Yesterday was a completely different story. The Sun was out in all it's glory, the wind billowing in our hair, and the Sun didn't set till at least nine or ten. What a wonderful day for an outing!

3) Our first stop at Howth was the Howth Market, which wasn't open last time we went. It's a really small market to be honest, but laden with all sorts of delicacies (including the traditional Hungarian dish "langos"!) We then went to the pier, where we visited the site where King George IV left his footprints. Across the pier, we could see some seals swimming about. As we were walking back, we saw a huge flock of seagulls waiting to feast on the daily catch, brought by the fishermen to shore. It was a unique spectacle for us city dwellers.

4) We spent the morning visiting Howth Castle, the ancestral home of the line of the St Lawrence family that died out in 1909. It wasn't a particularly big castle, but unique as next to it is the National Transport Museum. After our visit, we decided to have lunch first before embarking on our next destination. So we went back to the pier, where we bought fish and chips for takeaway at a fish market called Doran's. The fish they used was so fresh that the chefs literally took fish sitting on the bed of ice (that they caught earlier in the morning) to prepare our meal. Needless to say, Zi Yan, being the seafood addict/ connoisseur that he is, was full of praise for the meal.

5) After our meal, it was time to burn away the calories. So we went for the Howth Cliffside Walk. There are four different routes to take, with the Purple Route a.k.a. "Bog of the Frogs" walk being the longest and most difficult. The estimated distance and time is 10km and 2.5~3 hours respectively. Along the way, we were greeted with magnificent sights of the hillside, as well as some lovely beaches. It was not an easy walk by any means, and very often the pathway went up and down as it cut through lush flora.

6) We literally thought the walk was over when we reached a road, only to discover that the pathway continued up the hill! We circumnavigated around the hill, passed multiple forests and even a football field, before ending up near Howth Castle again - an exhausting 3.5 hours walk for the both of us. But the pictures (and videos) that we took were nothing short of spectacular. After that long trek, we bought fish and chips (for dinner!) at Howth Market. Then I spotted a stall claiming to sell the best 99s as voted by the Irish Times, so I had to try it! It was extra creamy, and you definitely smell the aroma of vanilla beans used to make the vanilla ice cream. Money well spent if you ask me.

7) The last stop for the day was the Howth Summit. Since there is a daily cap of €5 for our student leap card, we just took the bus to the very top. I took some pictures of the Summit Inn, which was where walked out of the cliffside trek the previous time we came. It's hard to believe that six months has passed since I last came to Howth. Anyway, we boarded the no. 14 bus back from Howth, and walked the remainder of the distance back to the my house. That has been the past two days' worth of adventure to recall, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Thanks so much for visiting, and do scroll down all the way for some lovely photos of our trip to Howth. Thanks for reading, and have a nice day. Cheers!