First workday in a rainy Nouméa

The rain doesn't really bother me, especially when I'm working most of the day indoors and the outside temperature is still way above comfortable due to a ridiculous humidity.
Walk down one street and that morning shower will seem like a big waste of time and laundry.

Me and my colleague had an awesome breakfast (probably the best part of staying at a hotel) at the hotel before going to the IRD (L’Institut de recherche pour le développement) and our first workday.
We quickly found our equipment which had been delivered a few days earlier and got setup in a molecular lab. Our contact person was really helpful and provided all we needed in addition to our own equipment. After going through some planning and practical details we got the work quickly progressing and after a few hours we had pipetted aliquots of all our chemicals (except the standards) as well as re-eluting and diluting primers, probes and standards for the qPCR. In addition we had to track down some "absolute vodka" (not really, this shit is way better) to add to our DNA extraction buffers before making aliquots.

In terms of preparing our methodology we only have a configuration plate to run on the qPCR and then confirming our Ct values from the standard dilution serie that we made today. Just to make sure that our standard curve is good enough (and adjust it by diluting in case it isn't). If it's not good enough our estimations of number of cells/liter for the target organisms could be severely inaccurate.

Since both me and my colleague really had to sit down and think about what we were supposed to do, how we were supposed to do it and why, to then land at the concluding question of "how do we want it while working on the ship", I think we actively learned a lot, pulling forth our previous passive introductory skills into active ones. It felt good, and it felt even better when the day's work was done.

After work, although rather late, we managed to find some time for leisure. A mandatory dip in the sea and also a swim in the pool. The rain was just pouring down but I didn't really mind. It reminded me of always going for a swim during heavy rainfall when I was a kid, because the water felt warmer due to the temperature difference between the air/cold rain and warmer water. That was not the case here though, where it was all equally warm. In the evening I got the opportunity to taste both a local and a Tahiti beer at a rather fancy, but half empty bar (probably due to the lack of tourists this time of year). They were not very good...