Loosely translated message from mother:
"So about the garden: We bought a bunch of bulbs and buried them. They grew. The stump from the dead lavender is still there. Should we save it for you or can we dig it up?"
Oh mom.
She's caught on to the whole interest in botany and all, but her updates regarding the tiny garden in the back is always a cross of lol'ing and face-palm moments. (Like most things with my parents, it is touching when it isn't frustrating.)
20120226
20120224
Information learned from emails & colleagues: most biotech companies require 5 years of either company or post-doc experience, because not all newly minted PhDs are equal and some of them has never had an independent project before.
My thoughts:
1) What's the point of grad school if you don't even get to have your own project??
2) Five years?
Bleh.
My thoughts:
1) What's the point of grad school if you don't even get to have your own project??
2) Five years?
Bleh.
20120221
Two things:
1) I have a new contestant for the competition of the "Most Boring Dream, Ever". Last night I had a (short, thankfully) dream where I was at the store buying bread. Oh brain.
2) Have been introduced to GoodReads by someone on Facebook and am attempting to import my spreadsheet over to it. (It's got nicer graphics, for one thing.) As I'm going over books I have read and ones that I meant to read and ones I despised I can't help but think that so many problems with people in the world could be solved if only you're allowed to prescribe them books. Not even the self-help books, but genuine works of literature. I mean issues of efficacy and side-effects and incompatibility can't be worse than some of the medicine that's currently in the market.
...like a book-psychologist. I'd want to be one except I'd have to talk to people.
1) I have a new contestant for the competition of the "Most Boring Dream, Ever". Last night I had a (short, thankfully) dream where I was at the store buying bread. Oh brain.
2) Have been introduced to GoodReads by someone on Facebook and am attempting to import my spreadsheet over to it. (It's got nicer graphics, for one thing.) As I'm going over books I have read and ones that I meant to read and ones I despised I can't help but think that so many problems with people in the world could be solved if only you're allowed to prescribe them books. Not even the self-help books, but genuine works of literature. I mean issues of efficacy and side-effects and incompatibility can't be worse than some of the medicine that's currently in the market.
...like a book-psychologist. I'd want to be one except I'd have to talk to people.
20120218
I returned from this morning's classes happy with endorphins, only to realize that somehow the list of chores I have to do this weekend had multiplied drastically.
...how did this even happen.
Dear Life,
I would like a nice break about now. A few hours with some nice music with nothing to do but to think happy fluffy hoppy thoughts. The music is optional.
Thank you kindly,
Me
...how did this even happen.
Dear Life,
I would like a nice break about now. A few hours with some nice music with nothing to do but to think happy fluffy hoppy thoughts. The music is optional.
Thank you kindly,
Me
Oh God it's time to deal with taxes and their associated paperwork and whyyyyyyyyyyyy.
(For those unfamiliar with my situation: the school sends me forms indicating the amount that I paid for tuition. I did not actually pay for those tuition, my program / professor did. The school also sends me a W2 of the amount the professor pays for my wage. This accounts for less than 40% of my income. The bulk of it comes from my training grant which is awarded to the school, which I don't get paperwork for. In other words: I have no paperwork for reality and must correct the paperwork manually for it.)
(For those unfamiliar with my situation: the school sends me forms indicating the amount that I paid for tuition. I did not actually pay for those tuition, my program / professor did. The school also sends me a W2 of the amount the professor pays for my wage. This accounts for less than 40% of my income. The bulk of it comes from my training grant which is awarded to the school, which I don't get paperwork for. In other words: I have no paperwork for reality and must correct the paperwork manually for it.)
20120214
Love letters to science
Today only, from LooksLikeScience:
Speaking of which, I think the LooksLikeScience site is a pretty cool profiling of all the types of people who ends up in the scientists. I mean yes there're the dorky bespectacled types, but there are also plant biologists with blue hair and material chemists dressed as bees.
The thing that really makes the pursuit worthwhile is that there’s a truly visceral joy, a sense of excitement and wonderment and pure relief when the data lines up and you realize you’re seeing something that nobody else has ever seen. You think then that maybe, just maybe, science loves you back. That moment is one that hangs suspended, like that brief moment after the first kiss with that one you’ve been chasing for so long, tugging at heart strings and letting you know that it’s all been worth it.Now that I think about it, my relationship with science is very much like a crush. Complete with more teenage pining that I'd ever done as a teenager. (Oh dear God.)
Speaking of which, I think the LooksLikeScience site is a pretty cool profiling of all the types of people who ends up in the scientists. I mean yes there're the dorky bespectacled types, but there are also plant biologists with blue hair and material chemists dressed as bees.
20120211
This is me, being a girl (sort of)
If I were to ever wear nail polish on my hands, I'd want to try something like this which, yes, is hugely time consuming but it looks awesome.
...however I can't really stand nail polish on my fingers (it just feels weird). I can tolerate it on my feet but then I've stopped that as well what with the martial arts thing, because when the polish starts to get chipped (which happens early because I'm the sort to go barefoot as soon as it's warm enough) people in class start thinking "blood" because the current two "colors" I tolerate is dark red and pearlescent (nevermind pearlescence isn't even a color).
Also, nail polish is kinda flammable. And time consuming. So my options are either to wait until I go into a career that is less 7-days-a-week kind of insane and involves fewer bunsen burners, or do this on a friend's nails.
Conclusion: I need a friend who lives locally who wears nail polish who will allow me to experiment on them.
...darn it.
...however I can't really stand nail polish on my fingers (it just feels weird). I can tolerate it on my feet but then I've stopped that as well what with the martial arts thing, because when the polish starts to get chipped (which happens early because I'm the sort to go barefoot as soon as it's warm enough) people in class start thinking "blood" because the current two "colors" I tolerate is dark red and pearlescent (nevermind pearlescence isn't even a color).
Also, nail polish is kinda flammable. And time consuming. So my options are either to wait until I go into a career that is less 7-days-a-week kind of insane and involves fewer bunsen burners, or do this on a friend's nails.
Conclusion: I need a friend who lives locally who wears nail polish who will allow me to experiment on them.
...darn it.
20120210
20120209
What is this madness
Ever tried to run an experiment that has the incubation time of 5 minutes, 5 minutes, 10, 1, 1, 1 at the same time as another experiment that goes 15 minutes, 15, 15, for two hours? Guaranteed to drive you mad. Occasionally my labmates and I fantasize about having less stressful jobs. Sadly the fantasy usually doesn't last long, since someone would always point out, after a few minutes, that any of the other jobs we could come up with just seems...well...boring in comparison to what we could currently do. This inevitably leads to my conclusion that all scientist are all terrible addicts at heart, with compulsive tendencies. We're addicted to stress. And then I go and put the song "Stress" on because that's how life goes these days.
This conclusion about stress addiction got an interesting note added to it yesterday when The Adviser said something along the lines of "like how the marines knows to put together and take apart their guns you guys show know how to do that to your pipetman."
So...scientific research == going to war...?
This conclusion about stress addiction got an interesting note added to it yesterday when The Adviser said something along the lines of "like how the marines knows to put together and take apart their guns you guys show know how to do that to your pipetman."
So...scientific research == going to war...?
20120208
Please be not linear
1) I've managed to get the Adviser to TYPE LIKE THIS TO ME in an email. I feel like this should be considered some kind of achievement. (Though mostly it's just a consequence of the fact that, despite of the amount of time I spent in his presence, there will be times when one or both of our translators break and understanding each other is harder than interpreting the lyrics of a pop star trying to be significantly thematic / artistic.)
2) At some point last night I realized that grad school in fact defies most common sense. At dark 'o clock, I found this immensely amusing, because my experience is pointing toward a trend that increase in length of time in grad school correlates to decrease in amount of common sense. I can only hope that it's a half-life / exponential sort of decay and not linear, so that the amount of common sense I possess will never actually hit zero. (If it ever does I will respectfully ask for a mercy killing. Please.)
2) At some point last night I realized that grad school in fact defies most common sense. At dark 'o clock, I found this immensely amusing, because my experience is pointing toward a trend that increase in length of time in grad school correlates to decrease in amount of common sense. I can only hope that it's a half-life / exponential sort of decay and not linear, so that the amount of common sense I possess will never actually hit zero. (If it ever does I will respectfully ask for a mercy killing. Please.)
20120207
Face-palm moment
I've never been asked by someone whether or not I speak Chinese after I'd had three conversations with him in Chinese before. It was a novel experience. Not to mention he was a scientists from a neighboring lab and I tend to expect scientifically trained people to be ...well...more observant.
Hypotheses:
1) People really are that unobservant
2) People's power of observation are not uniform across the board
3) I am really that forgettable.
2) seems the most likely, though I'd actually prefer 3)....
Hypotheses:
1) People really are that unobservant
2) People's power of observation are not uniform across the board
3) I am really that forgettable.
2) seems the most likely, though I'd actually prefer 3)....
20120206
20120205
Some kind of philosophy on life
Wendy was describing to me a kind of soda that has a unique bottle where you open it by pushing a glass ball (which then gets trapped in the bottle) in. Apparently one of her friend collects the bottles (or used to, before she graduated and moved away), another one of her friend breaks the bottle and collects the balls (I have no idea why, but I've met him and he is certainly...quirky), and you can buy the soda from 99 Ranch.
...so when I went to do my grocery shopping this morning, I got myself a bottle of Ramune soda (lychee flavor), which does indeed operate by trapping a glass ball inside a bottle. Suddenly the reason for collecting the bottle became clear. No doubt this fell in the same line of thought as the thing going around on facebook the other week with the sausage bits with noodles stuck through them -- namely, it seems like the thing to do to "mess with the kids". (I'm deriving an immense amount of pleasure these days from messing with people. It's indecent. It's also really fun.) The soda tasted, as far as I can tell, about average, but the bottle with something trapped in it endlessly fascinating in a juvenile way that reminds me of my fascination with mud and insects between the ages of 4 to 6 (you can imagine mother's reactions) -- it's interesting in an uncomplicated, inexplicable way. So I may keep buying the soda not so much for the taste but for the bottle which, when I thought about it, is an very effective marketing strategy.
It, of all things, reminded me of something that Gaiman once wrote about style in writing. Basically it boils down to: the key to success is delivering what you, and only you, can deliver. This appears to apply to both shapes of soda bottles as well as story telling.
Darn it, I accidentally closed the bottle again with the glass ball. Good thing I kept the plastic thing on the lid so I can open it again.
This is probably some sort of statement on life as well, but I'll leave it to someone else to interpret.
...so when I went to do my grocery shopping this morning, I got myself a bottle of Ramune soda (lychee flavor), which does indeed operate by trapping a glass ball inside a bottle. Suddenly the reason for collecting the bottle became clear. No doubt this fell in the same line of thought as the thing going around on facebook the other week with the sausage bits with noodles stuck through them -- namely, it seems like the thing to do to "mess with the kids". (I'm deriving an immense amount of pleasure these days from messing with people. It's indecent. It's also really fun.) The soda tasted, as far as I can tell, about average, but the bottle with something trapped in it endlessly fascinating in a juvenile way that reminds me of my fascination with mud and insects between the ages of 4 to 6 (you can imagine mother's reactions) -- it's interesting in an uncomplicated, inexplicable way. So I may keep buying the soda not so much for the taste but for the bottle which, when I thought about it, is an very effective marketing strategy.
It, of all things, reminded me of something that Gaiman once wrote about style in writing. Basically it boils down to: the key to success is delivering what you, and only you, can deliver. This appears to apply to both shapes of soda bottles as well as story telling.
Darn it, I accidentally closed the bottle again with the glass ball. Good thing I kept the plastic thing on the lid so I can open it again.
This is probably some sort of statement on life as well, but I'll leave it to someone else to interpret.
20120203
1) I find that my book-hording tendencies expands very readily to include digital books, and that I have already amassed enough to use up half of the memory space on my Kindle, and therefore Kindle will have to be a device and not The Library. Alas.
2) Aside from that and one issue with connecting Calibre with Kindle on Linux (no issues at all with Windows Systems), Kindle = magical fairy dust. (Note: Magical unicorn fairy dust is still reserved for my tablet.)
3) I was listening and wondering at what the song "Dark Blue" was about, and then I looked up the lyrics and thought "Oh hey that makes sense... ...no. No it doesn't. What?" What on earth is the guy singing about? Is the tsunami a metaphor for love? Despair? Both? I'm guessing unrequited affections (mostly because this seems to cover 50% of pop music one way or another)? This is really bothering me.
2) Aside from that and one issue with connecting Calibre with Kindle on Linux (no issues at all with Windows Systems), Kindle = magical fairy dust. (Note: Magical unicorn fairy dust is still reserved for my tablet.)
3) I was listening and wondering at what the song "Dark Blue" was about, and then I looked up the lyrics and thought "Oh hey that makes sense... ...no. No it doesn't. What?" What on earth is the guy singing about? Is the tsunami a metaphor for love? Despair? Both? I'm guessing unrequited affections (mostly because this seems to cover 50% of pop music one way or another)? This is really bothering me.
Polling all my friends between the ages of 20-30: if you had the option of knowing, within the next year, with about 95% certainty, whether or not you will get a certain rare neurodegenerative disease (age of onset 50-65), which occurs sporadically and for no known medical reason and for which there is no cure...
...would you want to know?
Anonymous replies allowed. "I don't know" will be counted as "no".
...would you want to know?
Anonymous replies allowed. "I don't know" will be counted as "no".
20120202
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