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.

History of Drugs: Part I

Something that was passed around in the lab on a holiday card, proving my ultimate association to geekiness.

Patient: Doctor, I'm in pain.
1000 B.C. Doctor: Eat this root.
250 A.D. Doctor: That root is heathen. Say this prayer.
1700 A.D. Doctor: That prayer is superstition. Take this vial.
1900 A.D. Doctor: That potion is snake-oil. Smoke this powder.
1950 A.D. Doctor: That powder is addictive. Take this pill.
1990 A.D. Doctor: That pill is not efficacious. Take this bioengineered drug.
2000s A.D. Doctor: That drug is artificial. Eat this root.

Luckily, alcohol is the drug of choice this season. Happy holidays!

In Mourning for Mr. Plow

Apparently the best way to prepare for a Nor'easter in Boston is to let out every student and government worker at 2pm on the main roads and highways...right before the snow plows and salt trucks are on the road. Let's just say it was quite exciting watching cars not move on Boylston Street for three hours. The old-timer New Englanders, who've been here for years, just simply didn't go to work or send their kids to school and stayed at home. They've gotten used to the idea that it is not going to stop snowing right away.

I'm finished with exams, but since every form of frozen precipitation has fallen in the past 96 hours, it's obvious Mother Nature wants me to celebrate indoors. And like any normal American, I say to her "Screw you" and venture outdoors to take pictures while doing errands like grocery shopping (was sober) or exploring the Transcendentalist quality of snow falling (was drunk.)


On my street in South End:


At Harvard's main quad:


The Massachusetts State House:


Boston Common:


Union Park:

Analogize

I said, "Great, I'm going back to the kingdom of the blind as the one-eyed man."
Nick said, "Well, if you want I could poke out your other eye."
I said, "Uh, I need that eye to be king. The point is I don't want to go back to the kingdom of the blind."
Nick said, "Why not? You could tell them you have two eyes. Better yet, three eyes. They're blind, they can't tell!"
I said, "Wouldn't they brand me as a witch or something with the three eyes."
Nick said, "They're blind, what can they do?"
I said, "Yeah, the forming of the lynch mob with pitch forks and torches would be hard to organize."
Nick said, "They'd probably grab a lot of brooms...

Seven Ivy Leagues in Search of a Sense of Humor

At the Harvard Coop
JL: "Excuse me, do you know if any of the houses sell their own Harvard t-shirts?"
Sales Representative #1: "No, no, all of the official Harvard merchandise comes through us. None of the houses have their own shirts unless it's a special discount from the COOP. It simplifies the process."
JL: ( in sotto voce )"Yeah, getting rid of imaginative houses does simplify things."

At the Harvard Shop
JL: "Do you have any Harvard shirts with the logo that are funny?"
(Blank expression from girl at counter. Looks to guy stocking hoodies)
Guy:"Sorry, I don't think so. We're very sober here."
JL: "Nothing? Nothing like 'If it were easy, it'd be Yale'?"
Girl: "That statement's true, how is it funny?"

At Hidden Sweets, also in Cambridge, MA
JL: "Are there any funny Harvard shirts here?" JML
Sales Representative #2: "Harvard? Nah? But we got alot of funny Boston shirts, like one that's says 'Wicked Pissah'"
JL: "But none from Harvard?"
Sales Representative #2: "Don't think so."
JL: "How about a Harvard shirt that's spelled Hahvahd?
Sales Representative #2: "How's that different from its regular spelling?
JL: "No, with like h's for the r's."
Sales Representative #2: "Oh yeah, we did have shirts like those, but we ran out of them."
JL: "Any time you might get them back in stock?"
Sales Representative #2: "Probably not. We got them that way cause the printer made a mistake."
JL: (Runs out and gives Harvard campus middle finger)

I think years of blue-blooded elitism and also blue-blooded inbreeding has rendered the parts of the neural limbic system associated with laughter obsolete with some of our Cambridge brothers. I miss UChicago's witty self-deprecation. With that, you knew you were nerdy, your school is soul-crushing, and you're damn proud of that.

*Am fully aware there are eight schools in the conference, but Yale seems fully equipped to make fun of its other Ivy League fellows.

Glass Half Full, but Leaking

I got accepted to the University of Louisville for medical school, which mean Plan B and C don't need to be started. But then when I told my lab about this, the South Asian post-doc said, "Too bad you didn't go to Sweden. They train some of the best doctors."

Yeah, that Swedish application was a bitch to complete to begin with.

A Convenient Truth

I was contemplating getting up to grab a beer from the kitchen when I realized that I had a bottle of wine, a bottle of whiskey and somehow, a bottle of tequila on my desk.

They're all unopened and I was mainly going to use them as gifts/bribes, but still, it's a weird coincidence.

Five Years in ESL for this?

I've been in Boston too long.

The catalysis for this conclusion comes from some conversations I've had around town, the first when I went to a Walgreen's that was all decked out in Red Sox championship gear.

JML:'Cuse me, mam. Ya know when they gonna get any Celtics geah in heah?
Excuse me, madam. Do you know when there will be any Celtics gear in this here establishment?
Store Clerk: No, but you'd think it would be soon.
JML: Yeaah, I juhst thot it would be heah now, with Sahx season ovah.
Yes, I just thought it would be here now with Sox season over.
JML's brain: Ok, who just spoke?

I've been noticing that lately I can relatively imitate the Boston accent with ease - replacing R's with Ah's, making D's sound like T's, elongating I's to sound like EE's, sounding like Ted Kennedy. At first I did this to get around Boston easier and secretly taunt Bostonians with their loss of the letter R as every New Yorker and Jon Stewart does.

Me at Dunkin Donuts:
One Year Ago -
JML: Could I get medium coffee, with cream and sugar?
Dunkin Donuts Person: Wat?
Now -
JML: Can I get a regulaah coffee, lahge?
Can I get a coffee with cream and two sugars, large?
Dunkin Donuts Person: Suah thing, suh.
Sure thing, sir.

Now, I don't now if I'm talking like this to local Bostonians just to communicate better with them or out of habit, which is the worse case scenario.

JML: (Getting into a taxi) Thanks, suh. Can I get ta da cohnah of Union Pahk and Tremont?
Can I get to the corner of Union Park and Tremont?
Taxi Driver: Vehy good, suh. Not that fah.
JML: Yeah, I coulda walked, but it's wicked cald.
Yes, I could have walked, but it's wicked cold.
JML's brain: Why the hell are you speaking like Elmer Fudd?

I've noticed I don't talk like this among people outside of Boston, so I think if I extricate myself from the New England area, my ability to speak will return to normal. Hopefully. But if you here me say the word "idear," kick me.