European Vacation Recap

Quick summaries of what I did and where I went to across the Pond:

London (7/14): Went to Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Globe. Saw the changing of the guard. Went to the Imperial War Museum and the British Museum. got picked off the street to dance in a British Christian punk rock music video. You heard me. British Christian punk.



Cambridge (7/15) Went to 10 out of 31 colleges at Cambridge and went punting (propelling a boat with a pole) down the river Cam. Almost drowned and hit every boat and wall along the river Cam.

Vienna (7/16) Took a RyanAir (Irish version of Southwest, except you have to buy the drinks and complementary peanuts, and they sell lotto tickets) to Austria. Saw a bunch of former imperial palances belonging to the emperor Franz Josef, and sat through an actual concert of Mozart's "Requiem" at Karlskirche, a 18th century Baroque church, instead of bad university student dressed in funny wigs playing bad Mozart music.

Salzburg (7/18) Was not impressed with everything built on a cliff or nuns spinning around singing.

Munich (7/19) Apparently, when we got there, it was the festival of Munich's patron saint, which meant random people dressed in traditional Bavarian costumes and beer being sold by the liter on the street for about $4 (€2.75). So I threw back a couple of liters of beer, because you know those Germans; if you don't join the party, they come get you.

Rome (7/21) After sleeping in a six-bed room for twelve hours on a train, finally got to Rome, only to discover the city is like living in a distillery: hot, smoky, and smelling of cheap alcohol. Sights here included the Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and waking up at 6am to stand in line another two hours to get into the Vatican, where I met two Filipino nuns who went to school with my mom. And an interesting conversation at a laundry mat where my friend Tristen spoke Korean to this one Korean guy who spoke Italian to the laundress to get out clothes cleaned on time.



Florence (7/23) Took a nap at the Florence hostel and had a dream that a hot, lost Italian girl woke me up and asked me for coffee. Instead, I was woken up by Peter, my friend from Boston who is not a hot, lost Italian girl. Thoroughly disappointed. And the Renaissance art wasn't that impressive. Botticelli's Birth of Venus or Michaelangelo's David were ok, somewhat disappointing in how imperfect they look in real life.

Nice (7/25) Spent the day on the beaches. Most of the women were topless, unfortunately most of them were also thrice my age. Did see a quartet of Chinese girls sunbathing, but, alas, I didn't know how to speak Mandarin or French.

Barcelona (7/27) Drinking beer I bought of the street at 2am. Going back to the hostel at 2pm for R&R. I think I went to the Olympic Park and the unfinished cathedral, La Sagrada Família, but the rest is a blurry, drunken haze.

Madrid (7/29) More a haze too. I was impressed by the Prado and immense detail of Picasso's Guernica. Spent the last night drinking out of bottle of wine on a tour bus given to us by Filipinos.

If It´s Tuesday, This Must Be Barcelona

Actually it´s Thursday, and I´m in the airport in Madrid. Horribly bad about keeping up with the blog this summer, but will have a lot to say about the entire Euro trip. Just wanted to make one entry en España.

There Goes the Neighborhood

I promised I wouldn't get very political in my blog entries, but this time, the Republicans made it personal....

Apparently, pundits who are being paid to charge Barack Obama with being too liberal and too elite are skipping the fact he went to Harvard Law School and lived in Cambridge and instead are attacking where he lived and taught constitutional law: the University of Chicago and Hyde Park. One of the first articles was a Washington Post last Friday which said "Republicans plan to describe Obama as an elitist from the Hyde Park section of Chicago, where liberal professors mingle in an academic world that is alien to most working-class voters." The Weekly Standard featured an article, "Mr. Obama's Neighborhood," which described Hyde Park as "Berkeley with snow" and rampant with "the same alarmingly high number of men wandering about looking like NPR announcers — the wispy beards and wire rims, the pressed jeans and unscuffed sneakers, the backpacks and the bikes" as Berkeley. It ends, "[t]his is the perfect place for a man without an identity to make one of his own choosing."

Former and current Hyde Parkers were quick to defend their alma mater and its world. Thomas Frank in the Wall Street Journal pointed out the fallacy in the Republicans associating the UofC academia with liberalism, especially in a school home to Milton Friedman, Anthony Scalia, Allan Bloom, and a bunch of economists that helped a Chilean dictator. The Asian Times and Inside Higher Education are lamenting how one of the last bastions of academia is being defamed.


I guess my biggest problem with these articles is that they (purposefully) screwed up describing Hyde Park as another Berkeley or Cambridge. Well, its not; it has people who aren't just white and rich (just joking). There is nothing elite or extremely gentrified about it. There's a Starbucks next to Jimmy's. That's about it. There's no Apple stores or Abercrombie-malls anywhere and you're more likely to find Chardonnay drinking yuppies in Lincold Park than at the Med. Yeah, the UofC still is an ivory tower. But most of all, those articles miss how diverse the neighborhood is. Hyde Park does not have a classifiable identity because it doesn't adhere mindlessly to one doctrine or one party platform. Of all the neighborhoods of Chicago, it's the most diverse and most defiant. It also shows the limits of academic paternalism. co-existing with the UofC has its advantages (urban renewal, the UofC police, high incomes and property values) and its drawbacks (the UofC's intentions, the exclusion of lower-income minorities, the overpriced Co-op that's been replaced by a Treasure Island. But where else can a guy interview top Venezuelan businessmen at the GSB and then grab 40s of Steel Reserve with his SOUL friends? (that happened in one day).

So John McCain and his campaign is free to attack Obama; I mean it is an election. But mess with the UofC, caricature Hyde Park as some liberal elitist haven, there are a lot of UofC alum in high places who'd make you their bitch.

Still Getting Calls from the DNCC

I've stayed away from a political entry mainly because the primary season has been so long and volatile that there have been children conceived and born before it ended, including my newborn niece Kaitlyn, and really, I've been too damn busy with work and med school. Still, I've never shied away from debating my political views, whether or not it's my family, my peers, the New York City Police Department, or the Department of Defense. And everyone in my lab still wonders why I have a degree in Political Science and didn't think about the high-paying world of political operative (truth being, I'm too blunt and honest to spin. Bite me, Bill O'Reilly.)

So today I was listening to the radio to hear a woman talk about how she knew Senator Barack Obama follows closely Senator Clinton on most of the issues pertaining to women's rights, but she didn't care. She would vote for Senator John McCain in the fall and hope he screws up the next four years so badly that Hilary can run again in 2012. This wasn't NPR. This was Kiss 108. And her sentiments have been bounced all over message boards this past week.

Without interjecting my own political views, let's take this from a logical step. Now let's say that you are trying to nail something together to build an object. And your choices were a hammer... or a jigsaw. Let's say the choices for the hammer are a claw hammer or a framing hammer. And when you go get the hammer, you find your choice (claw, whatever) is gone. Would you really use a jigsaw to drive one nail because you don't prefer the framing hammer?

Now this was a really dumb-down, and blatant metaphor, but I think it works (maybe?) Hilary's was a flawed campaign. Obama's was not perfect. But if Clinton supporters believe that the change promised by her campaign are needed to fix this country, then they really should reconsider their threat to abstain from voting or voting for Senator McCain. Because when all the filters are applied, and all the sand is sifted, the two candidates for the Democratic nomination are incredibly close on the major, vital issues that make up governance of a nation. McCain is not close to Hillary's positions by a long shot.

Now whether or not you should support either platforms is a different issue.

Going to California

I am. From July 2 to July 10. Mostly in the Bay Area. But I haven't been to California (LA) for years, at least not since the Reagan years, so suggestions about what to do there other than engage the Filipino community would be appreciated.

The West Coast has that image of being super-health conscious, so I doubt there would be as many barbecues there as there were here during Memorial Day. Except in New England, they don't call them barbecue, they're called "cook-outs." Unless it's a "Southern-style BBQ," which is entirely the same as a cookout except they think "Southerners" (which is everybody else in the country) layer their meat with four pounds of sauce. And then they barbecue everything in New England, from burgers, ribs, bacon? and kielbasa to swordfish, lobster and clams. And every dish has this complementary side of beans that's supposed to be the vegetarian option, if it didn't have a piece of pork floating in it. Yeah, so much beef.

PIE FIGHT

Scav Hunt 2008.

Evidence the Blogger is Alive

I have been MIA from Joel Sequitur for a while, but the reality is that out of this blog's six readers, I've personally seen four of you guys in the past month. And the two who I haven't seen, get your butts out to the East Coast once in a while.

The month has been exciting as A) I have achieved the Masters in Science by finishing the Master's thesis of minor doom, B) said thesis then became the thesis of major inconvenience as I had to revise it because my graphs printed outside the margins which wasn't evident on Word, C) I'm working on a poster and several papers with my Parkinson's disease research for the Society for Neuroscience, D) I went to Portsmouth, Virginia to tour naval hospitals, E) had several "hilarious" encounters with miscellaneous women and F) did Scav Hunt. Barnraisings and pie-fights galore.

With the Parkinson's stuff, I'll actually be busy finishing that up to get authorship on the papers and planning trips to California and Europe, so the next entry might take a while. With that in mind, I like to take this time to congratulate Nick P., who is walking this Sunday at Boston University's campus wide commencement. I could have walked too, but I'm too lazy.

Time Out

The objectives coming to BU and Boston proper were clear: get a Master's with honors, get into (an accredited, American) medical school, and go awesome neo-Scav road-tripping with fellow ex-Shorelanders, all the while retaining whatever sanity I had left after Chicago. Now that all of those goals have been accomplished, though the sanity one is debatable, I've just been playing Halo 3 and bumming around a city whose surface I haven't even scratched.

Joel Sequitur will be leaving its Boston existence very soon, the fourth move in five years. Most of my friends, save for a few matriculating into BU med's Class of 2012, are leaving or have left. And barring meeting the girl of my dreams (or a reasonable facsimile) in the next two months, I will have little incentive to come back to Boston in those four years. So today I thought of all the things and events I have yet to do that can only be accomplish near a stream of dirty water called the river Charles.

1. Grab a sandwich at Charlie's Sandwich Shoppe or All Star Sandwich Bar.
2. Kayak down the Mystic River.
3. Visit the ICA on free Thursdays from 5-9PM.
4. Try all 36 brews on tap at Publick House.
5. Go to a game at Fenway sober.
6. Star-gazing at BU Coit Observatory.
7. See ImprovBoston.
8. Listen to a book reading at Harvard Book Store.
9. Do the Duck Tour.
10. Watch the Boston Marathon (which is tomorrow).
11. Visit the Distillery Gallery.
12. Go to Wally's Cafe during a live Saturday set.
13. Stop subjugating inner tech geek: visit the MIT museum.
14. Relax by Jamaica Pond.
15. See the Mapparium.
16. Attend the 2nd Annual Cambridge Science Festival (damn me for missing the 1st).
17. Actually walk the Paul Revere Trail.
18. Tour the Sam Adams factory, again.
19. See the Blue Hills Reservation.
20. Attend a Boston Pops Orchestra concert.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

I needed to get to the airport for a business trip, so the quickest way to get to Logan from my place was to take the Green Line and switch to the Blue Line at Government Center. So I was on the Green Line inbound last Tuesday, only to find out that the Blue Line was closed from State to the Airport. Now, this would seem like something that the MBTA should have posted on their website as news, but they didn't. Instead, they were shuttling people between Blue Line stations, and I was told by the MBTA police the shuttle I was getting on was going to the airport. Now, if this shuttle had gone straight to Logan, this would be the end of the story. But, as soon as the shuttle got on 1A to Logan, it was told to be rerouted to Maverick Station, where the driver was told she was taking people back to Government Center and we all had to transfer off that shuttle and get onto another one for the airport.

Unfortunately, the driver of that shuttle (this being the 2nd shuttle I've been on today) had never driven to Logan; this wasn't his normal route and no one at the T apparently had ever directed him. So, after he had gotten the bus lost in the Budget rent-a-car parking lot, the shuttle somehow got on the Mass Pike going away from the airport. At this time, I only had an hour left until my flight, and I was pretty pissed off I was being driven by an un-navigated driver and the teens playing craps in the back of the bus. So, finally, before the shuttle got back to I-90 and totally missed all exits getting to Logan, I shouted, "Where the fuck are you taking us?" This prompted three other guys and I to stand up and start asking the driver himself. One guy who was a worker at Logan said he knew the direction to the Airport station, but the driver wouldn't listen. So, half of the bus just got off at Harborside Drive and followed the guy, walking through the East Boston Stadium and Rec Center, to the Airport station, which took only five minutes to get to walking. I asked if they had seen the shuttle, but none of the MBTA officers said they had. As far as I had known, it was still on the Mass Pike.
I got to Logan with 45 minutes to check-in, so I made my flight, despite all the hurdles the MBTA threw at me. Only to find out at Washington/Dulles my connecting flight was delayed for engine trouble...for three hours.
The angel of transportation made it up to me though today. On my flight back to Boston, they overbooked the flight, so I volunteered to give up my seat. Not only did I get the free ticket voucher, but they put me on a direct flight to Boston that actually got me there earlier than if I had gone on my the overbooked flight as schedule. Moral of the story: since there are no black-out dates on that free ticket, I get to go to California during the 4th of July without having to pay $600.

Weird Scientists

If I haven't explained/ranted to you yet about my lab work, I'm currently looking at several gene mutations linked to inheritable forms of Parkinson's disease and my research is looking at the effect of oncological drugs on the genes expressing these mutations, which my lab planted into worms. Well, the basis for my experiment, and for 3 months of work, was looking at a crossed Parkinson's mutant with a transgenic protein that makes its dopamine fluorescent under UV. Well today, I learned there may be a "distinct probability" the transgene has been lost in the worm. And by "distinct probability," I mean it's been PCR confirmed, causing me to kick the PCR machine. Which means there is no genetic difference between my control and experimental groups....which means loud expletives were said.

How this happened could have been homozygous control worms could have infected the strain, or there was breeding back, or I'm being punished for transgressions in a previous life.

That's the way the cookie crumbles, before spontaneously combusting, I guess. Still have 2 more months to get the re-crossed worms.

In real world news, my sister has signed up for gun training class.

Yeah, I'm beginning to see no difference between reality and absurdism.

In Which I think Some Higher Sentient Beings Watch My Life Like a Sitcom

I think I was dumped. The real problem is I didn't think I was in a relationship. But a girl I've been seeing on and off for the past three months (more like actually we interacted once in each of those three months) gave the 'just a friend' speech . I'm sitting there wondering if she's been dating my doppelganger. And truth be told, my reason for hanging out with her in the first place was ennui, but I ended up even more bored and sedated after every date. So really, I managed to not have the stresses or fun one usually gets out of a relationship. I break even.

Now I need to keep on working on my thesis, because my PI has availability to enough drugs and chemicals to kill 50,000 worms and it would be trouble if he offers me some "tea."

Cause I've Gone to Canada in My Mind

So my friend Anne and I were discussing how first-year medical students either are in a relationship coming into med school, or end up hooking up with someone during their first semester, it dawned on me that should a medical class be mainly composed of men, those men normally would have to compete for the affections of the female students if this were true. Then I saw this article, and realized what my Plan B should be.

Actually I Prefer Mario Cart Wii

"Yes, I'm not very well-versed in the electrophysiological subtleties of the C. elegans worms. I'm more interested in grinding up their bodies and draining their neurotransmitters." -JML
"I take it you played a lot of World of Warcraft." -Dr. James Eberwine, Ph.D., Professor of Pharmacology, University of Pennsylvania

Overheard at BU...

is usually rather boring, monotonous shit. But at lunchtime, when I got on the elevator, I couldn't help but overhear this one guy's conversation with two embarrassed and uninterested women. And by couldn't help, I mean he was the only one talking on the elevator. So to paraphrase what he said:
"So, I've gotta say - that I didn't know what inner peace was until these past two weeks. I mean, that's what enlightenment is - is giving of yourself and, like, finding yourself in love. There's where you find your purpose. Yea, I believe that everyone has a soulmate and they bring you meaning. I feel so enlightened now..."

Other than the fact I wanted to stuff his mouth with a gym sock and berate him for his liberal use of the word "enlighten", his conversation got me thinking, is it that people need to find love to achieve peace? Or do people have to be in peace with themselves to be able to love others? Because I've known people who had to be in a relatively stress-free time of their lives (including me) to get into serious relationships. But then again there are manic problem-thinkers who need a significant other to put a leash on them. Or is it just a case by case basis? And really, what type of love was he discussing? What happens when the initial euphoria is over?

I ponder this, while I bang my head against my laptop, wishing this will make my thesis write itself. Sadly, this didn't work for my BA thesis either.

I've noticed many of the old Chicago crowd are re-reading Nietzsche again, and I had an interesting conversation with a PhD candidate from BC on nihilism at a party last night (after accidentally hitting on his girlfriend). So I tried going through Birth of Tragedy today. From what I read, Nietzsche really didn't have that much to say about love. Not love "agape" or love "philia"; he's all about that love as a moral emotion to affirm life and transcend the old past philosophies. But the eros type of love. That struck me most reading the entire Apollonian and Dionysian diatribe. Yes, the entire disparity of balance between presenting good and evil is written, but I've yet to be rid of my disinterest in his philosophy or to find any connection between reading his books and Valentine's day. Is the will to power romantic?

I Hear Linkin Park when I Hear Valentine's Day...

"Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap." Joel Barish, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Every other person I talked to last week wasn't, per se, outright embittered it was Valentine's day. They just had a more apparent feeling of malaise than usual. Hearing stories about relationships that strained to make it past last Thursday, failed engagements, the stress of long-distance relationships, I began to wonder why I myself wasn't sulking or indignant about being single on Valentine's day. Maybe because I just associate with bitter intellectual people. But the holiday never meant anything really significant to me except another example of crass commercialization destroying the true meaning of a Catholic holiday (I damn you all if you do that to Palm Sunday!!), so I never saw giving tokens of affection as being limited to, or the duty of, Valentine's Day. Also I'm fine not being attached to anyone right now and just playing the field. I know (or suspect I know) of what I'm missing out in not being in a relationship - the confusion, the dizzying initial happiness, and possible isolation, regret, hope and future. Yet I'd rather work on being sane and grounded myself and not having to force that responsibility on any new love interest.

Talking with old Sports editor Joe from the Maroon, we recalled what probably is the most saccharine thing i ever did for a girl, which was have Joe deliver her a birthday cake (actually a cupcake with a candle on it) on my behalf as a surprise. His version of the story was that he was madly in love with the girl, even though he had just met her two minutes before he delivered the cupcake. I resolved my next romantic gesture will involve a boombox and Peter Gabriel.

February Observations

- February is an insane word to spell correctly. Stupid eclipsed first 'r'.
- I find it strange that the only times I experience anything close to inebriation in Boston is with the old UChicago crowd. And it's not with the UChicago crowd who have or had transplanted here, but instead visiting compadres who say, "Hey, it's been a long time since I've gotten hammered. Roger that, we have a goal." And before you know it, I'm drinking a pitcher of Sam Adams, Blue Moon, Johnny Walker, weird tasting grappa, or some other wowie sauce. Is it that the company I keep at BU just can't hold their liquor as well, or the life of the mind happens to ruin the life of the kidneys and the liver? Could be both.
- Today it started to rain. Then it got sunny. Then I heard thunder. And then it started to snow flakes as large as cottonballs. Cold, icy cottonballs being hurled at 20 mph. Now it's sunny again.

Election Smelection

The most Super Tuesday activity I did yesterday was sitting at an Obama phone bank reminding the good citizens of Massachusetts to vote and using up 80 minutes. The most interesting conversation I had was with an elderly man chiding me for supporting a "Muslim Communist who would turn over the country to those terrorists."

There's many things inherently wrong with that statement.

It was an honest mistake ...

As part of a long ruminations I've been having lately about the direction of my life (which sometimes ends with me saying I'm an old man and start shaking my fist at BU college students calling them whippersnappers), I've compiled a list of what I consider the worst mistakes I've committed in my life. Possibly, this list's existence is to be a reminder so I never repeat them again, or as a future reference for my future children, or just for everybody's amusement. The fact most of my egregious mistakes involve high school or infectious disease means it's mainly for amusement. And since society likes lists, I've placed the top 10 so far. Note, they are not ranked.

a Becoming the manager for the girls' basketball team, thinking it's a great way to get dates.
b. Learning how to skip.
c. Wanting attention, even if it was negative.
d. Accidentally plagiarizing from the Disney Channel and Arthur Schlesinger.
e. Picking fights with people I was unmatched with, including a QB from a rival high school.
f. Gave up playing a musical instrument.
g. Forgetting certain precautions and asking really, really important questions to romantically-interested girls.
h. Letting myself be worked to death and verbally insulted in a laboratory, even if I was the youngest student there; should have stood up for myself and had more confidence against the post-docs.
i. Not saying I love you enough to family, girlfriends, drunken reprobate roommates.
j. Donating blood on a day when I had little sleep, no real food, a horribly-planned party to set up in Cobb, and an incompetent Scav captain to wake up 10 times. (Yes, this last one is very specific.)

Winter Update

1. I had a dream this morning where snowfall predictions turned out to be false, and everyone was pointing at a light dusting of flurries at Cherokee Park and laughing at the meteorologists. Then I realized Cherokee Park was back in Kentucky. I woke up screaming and remembered I was back in Boston, but there was a foot of snow outside.


2. The undergraduate technician in the neighboring lab is actually not as innocent or work-oriented as she appeared to be when she made snarky comments about her mom pushing her towards dental school. I may ask her out for coffee soon.
3. My Masters diploma application and first thesis draft are due soon. Thus, the C. elegans worms I experiment on rule my life. Stupid important worms.
4. I will be getting a crash course in high-performance liquid column chromatography next week. Somewhere, Paul Strieleman is laughing.
5. The last albums I downloaded were by Radiohead, Miles Davis, the Shins, and Maroon 5 (one of these things is not like the other...)
6. I've been surfing online for tickets to Europe, because let's face it, I won't have this opportunity during med school. My friend Ramon is pro-France while my sister Roze wants Ireland, and my lab mate Andrew went to Poland on the cheap (although he lost his luggage in Italy). Hmmm... going to have to make some choices. Also, if you have about $1500 in disposable tender and some free time this summer, I invite you to come along.
7. And finally, I'm still wondering if karma is setting up the Patriots for a horrible fall (losing the Super Bowl to the Giants, Bridget Moynahan with a rolling pin on the 1-yard line, a giant video camera falling on Randy Moss). But considering the luck they've had so far, it seems that God is wearing a hat with a B on it.

The Summation of Current American Politics

Saw this guy standing on a street corner in Manchester, NH during the state primary yesterday. The photo was also included on Digg and Yahoo News.

Auld Lang Syne

Currently, I'm stuck in bed with a runny nose, ear canal drainage, a continuing medication regimen of penicillin, and possible halitosis. But last night, I finally celebrated a New Year's without an impending sense of stress for the new year with 50 of my closest relatives and seven bottles of Seagram's (and two liters of 7 Up). For the first time in about five years, I wasn't concerned about having to climb the AMCAS mountain or pandering to resumes, MCAT scores, GPAs or picking certain extracurriculars over others. This new year, I'm drinking till 2AM, eating sliders till 3AM and planning tuberculosis screenings for 8AM, there's a half-inch of snow and the wind chill's at -32C, there's bird flu and Pakastani insurgencies for the upcoming year, and I feel fine.

I do have the usual resolutions - of losing weight, getting more fit, keeping up correspondences with friends and family, actually looking for a relationship, hoping the girl doesn't care about my dancing skills. But I also realize that everything I put off from my senior year of college onto moving to Boston. I started to pick this year when I went on a relief trip to New Orleans during Spring Break, then actually had a Spring Break vacation going to a bachelor party in Miami, and then went to the Philippines in September. I have not travelled as much as I used to in my youth, and now, before the long nights of USMLE Board studying begin for me, I have technically three months to go travel, to experience new people, places ideas, and the serendipitious forces that have kept me alive these past 25 years. I'll also pick up recreational reading again, as with the status of airports, I'll probably have more free time to read in between traveling.

So first planned trip is an excursion to California to erase all my bad associations with that state (which actually only involve LA) and then to southern Europe (the Mediterranean coast, Northern Italy, possibly eastern Europe). If any one has more places or books to suggest, feel free.

To 2008.