Farewell

Another good friend is moving away, back to Europe...I wish I had become friends with her earlier, but in the end, I am so happy we did, even if it was just for a few months before she got a great job in Barcelona. At least, next time I go there, I will have a friend to visit :) So long and be happy and we will miss you a lot!

Chemistry

What is attraction? Chemistry, as we often call it? It's not something I can wrap my mind around, it's there or it isn't and we know when it is, even if we sometimes like to pretend otherwise. Is there love - or lust - at first sight? Maybe, sometimes, or at least we'd like to think so. Maybe just in the movies. Reality is much more complicated...

You meet someone, friend of a friend, birthday parties, graduation parties, good-bye parties, maybe even meet a few times, but don't think anything of him. He's nice and talkative and social and you even chat a few times, small talk maybe, but you even forget what you've talked about. Maybe the third or fourth time you see him, there is something more: a comment he makes about how nice you look, a flirtatious gesture, a look, a funny story might grab your attention. All of a sudden you start thinking: why didn't I notice him before? All of a sudden, you no longer mind that he's much older, you find him handsome, you realize that in fact you have a lot to talk about and he makes you laugh. There is a connection, maybe even chemistry. Why didn't you notice before?

Old farts

What a strange week this has been! Monday and Tuesday I was working really hard - well, except for Monday night half-priced bottles of wine at my favorite French wine bar - to finish experiments and prepare my presentation for lab meeting. I was hoping to have a good discussion about my project that I had just recently written up into a manuscript-form (I am reluctant to call is a manuscript just yet, this being my first time ever writing an article, I don't really know what I am doing, and while I think I did an OK job writing it up and putting my data all together, I fully expect my mentor to rewrite the whole thing or tell me that it's absolute crap). In any case, I have sent my advisor the first draft a couple of weeks ago, after some weeks of him nagging me about it. It finally made me really motivated and I quickly got my shit together and finished with what I thought would be a good place to start at, in terms of discussion. He told me a few days later that he wouldn't have time to read it for a while (he actually said he was "mentally burnt out" from writing grants and other people's papers) but I thought that having me present the data at lab meeting would start a discussion and he would be more inclined to read it then. Also, it's just good to remind him of things - he does have a lot on his plate and I know it's not easy to manage a lab with over 15 people who are all trying to get in their time with him and get him to read their manuscripts and such.

Wednesday morning, he was in a particularly awful mood - we all know he's extremely moody, but damn, this was too much! Even before I started my presentation, he scolded the whole lab for 30 minutes for not being organized enough and told the lab manager - who is doing a really great job - that she didn't know what she was doing, and this wasn't done in a respectful manner at all! He has a way of really digging into people's feelings without even raising his voice, which just makes it so much more hurtful and unexpected in a way. He also picks on particular people, most of whom are great scientists and very good at their jobs. I have no idea where all this anger and need to put people down comes from - we all have our theories though :)

Once I started my presentation 30 minutes late, the tension in the room was super high. And then it just kept getting worse. I was nervous myself, realizing how badly things started off, my heart pounding like crazy even though I feel extremely comfortable around my coworkers and I had never once felt this nervous presenting in front of them or my advisor. He managed to stop at every slide and criticized every single panel of every single figure I showed, accusing me of things unrealistic and ridiculous, me trying to defend myself... on and on and on for an hour and a half longer... I was trying to skip as many figures as I could without him noticing, clicking the down button faster and faster until finally I got to a semi-conclusion slide and I said that I was done, even though I had 10 more slides.

After everyone left the room in a hurry, I had to stay for another half an hour talking to him... oh god, it was awful! He started by saying that he didn't know why I was "so down". Most of his comments are so weird I don't even know how to react to them. The worst part was when he started talking shit about other people in the lab to me, and I didn't know how to stand up to them and defend them. In one case, about our lab manager, I told him he wasn't being fair with her and that she was doing an outstanding job, to which he admitted that maybe he should reconsider things... argh, maybe he should reconsider before he opens his mouth to humiliate people in front of the whole group!

Since Wednesday morning, the atmosphere in the lab has been awful! He must realize that his tactic is working against him! I mean, this doesn't make anyone wanna work harder. Rather, the opposite effect was achieved. I left after the meeting and haven't picked up a pipette since. Our lab manager is considering quitting and going back to her old boss, who is also crazy, but at least predictable and a decent human being. Other people are terrified of him: they are too afraid to tell him if some experiment is not working or if they ordered some expensive reagent that doesn't seem to be working. This is not the way to run a research lab!

Anyhow, I don't even wanna think about all this until tomorrow!

On a positive note, I haven't been to the lab all weekend, which is a first in a long time on a weekend when I was in town. Yesterday, we went to the beach on Long Island, which was relaxing even though there were so many people and as usual, I forgot to put sunscreen on my ears the result of which is one very red and burning ear. I am happily full with this morning's brunch omelette and cappuccino and waiting to be able to move again to go for my weekly long run. I also figured out that while bowling is really not my cup of tea, I am much better with smaller, faster balls and not halfway bad at ping pong, even after a very tasty cocktail and 3 beers and that numbers of years mean nothing when it comes to people. Even an "old fart" like Lance Armstrong can stand up on the Tour de France podium with those "kids" like Contador!

I suck at bowling but am good at drinking

I need a break from making slides and staring at my unfinished presentation! Of course, my experiment today didn't work and now I am redoing it, hoping that if it works, I can show it in lab meeting tomorrow - totally silly, like anybody cares how many experiments I have done since last time I presented!!??

To be absolutely honest, I am not too upset to be staying in lab late tonight. My apartment, once again, has turned into a hotel... a high-school classmate from Hungary was in the area - well, Boston - for a conference and wanted to check out NYC since it's her first time in the US. This is all great and I am always happy to help people out and show them around, but she's staying for 9 days! She's a very nice girl, but we haven't been friends since high school and she's a bit overwhelming at times. After spending pretty much the entire weekend with her, I am happy to have some alone time, even if it's spent with my macrophages growing in the incubator.

I am not sure how much people appreciate favors like this one. It's not only about staying in a city like NY for free - although that's pretty amazing too - but also the fact that being a tourist vs. hanging out with someone local are totally different. I am taking her along with me to all the things I have planned with friends. I think that's the perfect to way to get the feel for a city and the people who live there and the way it is to live there.

In any case, I shouldn't complain, I had a wonderful weekend, I hope she did too. Some pictures to prove it.




Bar Mé on top of a hotel in Midtown right underneath the Empire State Building, for Erin's 1st good-bye party (sadly, she left for California today :(




And then, the essential, lab bowling outing, in the first row on the bottom picture, are the 4 crazy but totally funnest Ivashkiv lab chicks :)
I bowled shittier than ever before in my life, I think I am taking a loooong break from it!

Music and the City

Summer fun in New York continues...

Last night was the first free NY Philharmonics concert in Central Park, playing Mozart - not that we could hear very well - in perfect weather, picnic with the lab-mates, lots of food and wine.




Things started getting a little crazy at some point...




And then, by the time it got dark and cooler, I became very contemplative.



Fun times, reminding me of the days of outdoor festivals, the crowds, peeing in the bushes - my first time in the rather civilized and brightly lit Central Park, it was just totally hopeless waiting in the lines for the portal potties which were endless.

On a slightly unrelated note, New Yorkers are angry people. Cops chasing ones who broke through the barricades, people stepping on each other and yelling, others complaining about a bike being locked to the gates, there was a lot of anger there. And this is a classical music concert! Come on people, calm down!

What's not meant to be

I had a wonderful visit with my host family in Kansas this weekend. The weather there in the summer is not exactly ideal (35C with near 100% humidity, feels like the rain forest I imagine, not that I'd ever been to one) so spending time inside the cool air conditioned house is everyone's best bet. Thanks to the 150+ cable channels an DVR, I got to catch up on the Tour de France (Lance is in 3rd place with only 8 seconds behind, although there's some fierce competition between him and one of his teammates, who's currently in 2nd place, so the next 2 weeks will be quite interesting), got to have some feasts including some of the tastiest cocktails ever, got addicted to some new TV shows (Mental and Raising the Bar) and got to work out in a state-of-the-art home-gym with the softest treadmill I have ever stepped foot on. I was also able to catch up with my step-brothers, who are no so little anymore; I have so many memories of them being 15 and 13 when I was living with them :)

After a long, meaningful conversation with my brother - for the first time in about a year - I felt really happy, in a strange way. He was so honest. Sometimes I feel like the closest friends can't be honest with me, and the same way, I can't be honest with them. We don't want to hurt each others feelings, sometimes we want to say what the other person wants to hear, to make them feel better, to try to "be a good friend", whatever that means. I guess, lately I have been feeling somewhat disconnected from my friends, maybe for this reason. My brother's naive honesty was a reality check. Not being judgemental, but just expressing an opinion without the bias of expectations and wanting to please. It put some things in a new light for me.

Then today, back in lab, I was chatting with a coworker. He has this same kind of honesty that I so respect in him. While others tiptoe around things, he just puts it right out there. When I complain, he tells me that it's a waste of a short life. He always reminds me that things are really not as bad as I sometimes see them. Today, I said to him that I didn't know what I wanted most of the time but that sometimes, when I finally know what I want, I can't have it. To this he just said: if you want it, fight for it, and if you can't have it no matter what, then it's not meant to be! It's pretty simple. In the name is simplicity, I am not going to dwell on this, just going to leave it as it is. It's not meant to be.

A collection of the most ridiculous scientific articles

For all of you scientifically inclined, this is the most hilarious blog I have ever set my eyes upon. Procrastinating UC Berkeley grad students searching for and finding ridiculous articles on PubMed. Some titles include:

Acute management of the zipper-entrapped penis.

The nature of navel fluff.

Accidental condom inhalation

Pigeons can discriminate "good" and "bad" paintings by children

Bust size and hitchhiking: a field study.

Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage.

And it goes on and on and on... these are all legitimate articles published in legitimate journals. I no longer doubt that I will ever be able to publish my results!