And the trouble begins...

Entry: 7/18/06

Yesterday (Monday in Fiji) our group went to the University of the South Pacific in Suva. Part of the group has been here for a while, so they were working on experiments that had already been started. The rest of us needed to organize, get paperwork done, and prepare for our upcoming departure to the Coral Coast. I expected it to be a slightly stressful day with glitches to fix and plans to modify. However, I’ve spent the past several months getting things ready for this trip and trying to make things go as smoothly as possible. I’m not naïve. I know that there will always be glitches, but if you minimize the biggest ones, then it’s easier to take care of the ones that follow. Anyway, my biggest concern was in getting TRIzol to Fiji. TRIzol is a toxic chemical that I need to preserve my samples for RNA extraction. It is essential for what I do. It is also very difficult to ship because of its toxicity. I was already aware of this, so I made arrangements with a company in Australia that distributes TRIzol. It was shipped to Fiji last month, and although the shipping alone cost enough to fly my whole family to the moon and back, at least I would have it in Fiji and that would be one less glitch to repair. I was confident that TRIzol would be the least of my worries. Oh! How I underestimated Fiji.

I’m sure those of you who have read my previous blogs realize that there is a certain culture in Fiji. It’s very laid back with a sense of communalism. This aspect of the culture is somewhat muted in Suva, the “Big City”. But, compared to big cities in the U.S., Suva is a small, lazy town where life is slow, nothing’s overly important and things get done in their own way. I’m absolutely stunned that anything ACTUALLy gets done though, which brings me back to my TRIzol. As I mentioned, I had it shipped from New Zealand a month ago. It was suppose to arrive within a few days of shipping. To my surprise, when I went to find it… no TRIzol. I asked Klaus, the professor to whose attention it was shipped, and he had not seen it or heard anything about it (other than my emails letting him know it was on the way). We went on a wild goose chase trying to figure out where the hell my TRIzol was. Was it still at the docks? Was it held up in customs? Had it been shipped to the wrong place? I spent hours trying to call out of USP (which is ridiculously difficult) to get in touch with my sales rep at the company. He began to frantically track the shipment. After hours of my blood pressure and adrenaline skyrocketing of the scales, Klaus asked one of his students if he knew anything about a package that was suppose to have arrived several weeks ago. “Oh, yeah. That’s in your lab under the bench.” What the &$@#*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who doesn’t tell someone that they’ve received a package? Did this guy just ASSUME that Klaus could read his mind and figure out where the package was? I was, to say the least, infuriated. It cost me hours of my time and probably took days off my life from the stress…. All because this guy was too damn lazy to simply TELL someone they received a package. Aaaarrrrrggghhhh!!!