Glycolysis, coffee, my second home...

Go on, ask me anything about glycolysis, the krebs cycle or the electron transport chain.

That was yesterdays brain food.

Today I have to go deep with reactive oxygen species and the metabolism of triacylglycerols. I'm doing a graduate paper in Nutritional Science and, surprisingly, it's very... scientific. This is one of those papers where they really expect you to get down to the nitty gritty of what goes on in the body at a cellular level. Interesting as it is, sometimes my head hurts.

It is kind of cool to begin to better understand certain little points about the role of nutrients; for example the crucial role of pantothenic acid (B5) in glucose metabolism (it is present in the multi-enzyme complex that converts pyruvate into acetyl CoA, the acyl group of which enters the Krebs cycle.. that'll be in your head forever now, aren't you glad you read this blog?).

I took a break yesterday to visit a place I'll be seeing a lot of over the next week:

The domestic arrivals terminal.  Christchurch has a flash new airport, not quite finished yet, but already a big improvement on the old one, which looked a bit hick. The new part - which looks a bit sci-fi, especially in the check-in area - survived the earthquakes completely intact, just a few cracks on the floor to brighten the day of whoever has to fix that up.

The international terminal is even more swish, and I'll be heading there on Thursday to pick up Kek, but mostly it'll be rellys arriving from other places in NZ that will be sending me to the place of travel buzz and overpriced espresso in paper cups.

Yesterday I was there to retrieve Miss J, Sistasana and the bro-in-law, who had been soaking up the 'laxation in Rotorua. They missed the excitement of three good aftershocks too. 

The return of the fam meant that I did have my Zumba supervisor on duty this morning, telling me I was not keeping up or that I was puffing and needed to take a break. I think Miss J is destined to be some sort of bossy-boots trainer. It just comes naturally to her.