Never a dull moment..

So Jeroen, Nia and I set off for Auckland (a six hour drive) last night.. Just over an hour into the trip we blew a hole in the manifold.. Being that we were in the middle of nowhere, we had to keep driving to the nearest town, with the car smoking like crazy and sounding awful.. By the time we got to Mangaweka, a small town with a gas station (that closes at 7pm), a motel/bar and no supermarket, we'd lost power steering and all but lost the brakes.. The boys grabbed some food (I grabbed chocolate of course) and we waited for mum and dad to organise a tow truck from the nearest town that had a towing company (lol small-town NZ...) and one of Jeroen's army buddies to come and pick us up. The guys at the gas station were very helpful though so that was good. Over an hour later and we finally had the car on the tow truck and were heading back to Palmy.. Wanatini (the guy who picked us up) had no petrol in his car (the empty light was on by the time he got to us) but the only town with a petrol station (or a petrol station that was open at 9pm on a Friday) was almost 100ks away.. Anyway, we got some petrol, got to the garage and waited for the tow truck.. Left the car at the garage, and went home.. Then this morning it turns out that the car was broken into.. They got all the CDs, mine and Jeroen's sunglasses, ripped out Jeroen's tacho and took what they could of the CD player. Gutted. At least Mayhem agreed to give him the money back that he spent on the manifold and turbo etc.. (Around $2300) So now he's back to square one.. And wants to break someone's legs.

Let's see.. There was another drama.. Oh yeah, Richard (the guy I live with) has managed to get in the middle of a dispute between two guys who each think the other owes them money. One of the guys has taken to stealing stuff from the other guy, and may also turn up here.. Now, I spend quite a bit of time at home at night while Richard is out/away so the thought of some guy breaking in worries me just a little.. I think at the very least I'll try to sort out some insurance for my stuff this week..

On another note.. Despite their reputation.. Army guys are cool. lol. Nia even opened the car door for me yesterday, and Wanatini noticed I was cold last night and said he'd unlock the car and turn on the heater for me if I wanted.. See? They can be sweet. ;)

AND.. I tried making cDNA from my RNA this week, and used it to run PCR with the primers Amram left.. It worked!!! Check out the photo below! The bright band by itself is what I wanted to see. :) Sadly my antibody doesn't work but I'm looking at possibly buying some more antibody since I found a mouse and a rabbit antibody online today. I'll talk to Kathryn about it on Monday anyway. Yay!