Sometimes I went down to the Wellington wharves for what was called 'seagulling', where I joined a crowd of other men just before 8 a.m., hoping to be given the nod for a day's work.

And in fact, forgetting the past was easy to do in Indonesia. Jakarta was still a sleepy backwater in those days, with few buildings over four or five stories high, cycle rickshaws outnumbering cars, the city center and wealthier sections of town—with their colonial elegance and lush, well-tended lawns—quickly giving way to clots of small villages with unpaved roads and open sewers, dusty markets, and shanties of mud and brick and plywood and corrugated iron that tumbled down gentle banks to murky rivers where families bathed and washed laundry like pilgrims in the Ganges.

That imprinted genes escape demethylation is, we now know, all that stood between science and the cloning of mammals for many years.

Lipemia and icteremia (elevated bilirubin) can inhibit optical readings and falsely decrease values. Reaction of picric acid with bilirubin can be minimized by treatment with ferricyanide or small amounts of surfactant.