So the theme today is crying. S was talking to C about someone going over to his place and how if she doesn't succeed, she should just cry and threaten to leave. Then I asked C about cell bio lab, and he said that many people get F for the first midterm and many people end up crying. F for a 6-unit class is no joke, and you can't drop it. Anywa I continued this C lab conversation with S in Chinese of course, and about how PIs work and what makes a good PI and stuff.

My preparations for expts have failed miserably. So due to a blurness on our parts and a lousiness in running gel and interpreting the ladder, I've made a terrible blunder and cut my gene in the middle before transforming whatever crap that's left into my cells. So some stuff grew, and who knows what they are. My PCRs didn't work, that's for sure, but that's also because of many other different reasons. Anyway because of my dumbo mistake, I'm going to spend the next month generating a clone again. That was mistake no. 1. Mistake no. 2, was supposed to be that my insert was in the wrong orientation and it can't be transcribed. I was talking to the KO expert on all the dumb things that's been done, and she was commenting on how the orientation doesn't matter at all cos it's a cassette, meaning it has its own promoter and will be transcribed anyway. Makes sense totally. But mistake no. 1 is a real mistake. So for some reason, the conversation turned into a lab lesson on how to make KOs. In Chinese again. And as usual, talking about anything will lead to talking about people, and some remarks are made about different people.

All these Chinese conversations caught the attention of P. P started walking around and hanging around, I'm not sure if P really needs to do stuff around our area. And when I stopped talking to S, P asked if everything's ok and I said yes. I was figuring out what to do for the next 25 min before my psyc final when S asked me to follow her. And we went to the office, where we continued the lab lesson, and bitching. I wonder if there was a problem between them before or not. I know that they're not best friends, but well, the clique's kind of based on where you're located in the office and they're not anywhere near each other. Anyway now P's pissed. Conversation went as follows:
P (enters the office): What's going on here? What's the problem? I'm not stupid you know, you were whispering in Chinese right in front of me, I can sense something's wrong.. (something something that I didn't really catch)
S (shrugs and smiles and keeps the vector map that she's showing me as though nothing happened)
P: if there's any problem, she should be talking to me, she's my student. If you want to work with S, that's fine.
Me: No! No!
P: You know you're not supposed to use Chinese in the lab, if there's any problem, she should be discussing it with me. Do you understand S?
S (smiles and sneaks out): fine, I'm sorry.
Me (left with P) (darn): I was just telling her about what went wrong in my KO and she was explaining what's going on
P: Yeah but you should be asking me, I don't want you getting confused. And you were whispering in Chinese. (and on the verge of tears) I'm going to get paranoid you know.
Me: It's nothing about you (yeah right). Well, I'm sorry.
P turns and leaves.

A few things to say. Gosh this is taking too long.
1) I need to work on talking well to smooth out situations like this
2) I hate politics but it's part of life. I hate being part of it, I want to stay as an innocent undergrad kid, but it's not possible any more. The blame's not entirely on S, it was on me as well. It's not a, aw.. she's a kid, let her be, thing any more.
3) I need to depend on me more. Check more.
4) This is affecting my relationship with these 2 people drastically. S is never going to give any more comments or help on what I'm doing, which might end up hindering my progress tremendously, I need tips and tricks from her, and I'm never talking to her in Chinese in lab again. Currently I depend entirely on P for my survival, if I screw up our relationship, I'm dead meat. No doubt P feedbacks to the boss more than S, no doubt P's more vocal, I depend on P for my letter. All I can do now is damage repair.. retransform, fix my rel. with both P and S and everyone else in the lab. Wonder if joining gossiping sessions is a good idea at all. Have to be like Sheng, part of every clique.

So I went back to lab after my final final, which I wasn't concentrating very well in, and did digestions. S wasn't there, probably went home. P and I were talking as if nothing happened. I guess we were both trying to patch things up. Too much emotional trauma in one day. It's my turn to cry.