22 October: Tempe samples

On our trip around Rawah Paning, the lake near Salatiga, we were surprised by a heavy rain storm! (21 October 2008)

22 October. Tempe: fresh and spoiled

With Lusi and Kris we discuss possibilities for a project and a grant application. A technician brings two packages of tempe packed in banana leaves: fresh and rotten. The rotten, brown-colored tempe has a terrible smell. Only now I realize that all the fresh tempe is produced the previous day from soybeans that are imported from the US. Local farmers cannot make profit with growing soybeans.

Two packages of tempe: fresh and rotten.
Sudaryanti (technician), Fenny (biology student) and Lusi, making preparations in the lab.

In the lab we try to make preparations of the two samples. We have to vortex, to centrifuge and to dilute the fluorescence stains. Now I realize how spoiled we are in our dutch laboratory with all the modern equipment. We only succeed in photographing Rhizopus-spores and yeast cells from the starter culture given by Rob Samson of CBS (Fungal Biodiversity Center, Utrecht).

21 October 2008 Microscope in Salatiga

The first picture in Salatiga

On Monday morning, 20th October 2008, Lusi Dewi came with her husband Santoso to Hotel Metro in Semarang. After eight years we saw each other again! We made a detour to the beach with very rich houses but no birds, we ate delicious fish in a big restaurant and visited the coffee plantation Banaran in Bawen (“Kampoeng Kopi”). From there we could see Salatiga beneath us on the plane.

View on Salatiga (left) with the gunung (mountain) Marbabu and the lake Rawa Paning

The next day, October 21, Ed and I went to Lusi’s office together with computer, camera, agar plates, cells and fluorochromes. After drinking coffee with the rector of the University, Kris Timotius, Lusi and Agus Kristijanto, we went down to the room where the microscope had been waiting for almost a year. It took me a full hour to assemble the microscope; but then Lusi could take the first picture!

It took a full hour to assemble the fluorescence microscope.
With Kris Timotius and Lusi Dewi: the first picture

Ed, Kris and Lusi at the microscope