Happy Birthday Nelsa!

Today is Nelsa’s birthday. A look back at her growing up!

Here's Nelsa in 2006: July 4th celebration in Philly

Us in 2007 hanging out in New Jersey. Look how cute she is!

Nelsa's birthday party in 2008.

Stuffing her face in 2009! Chubby Cheeks

And now look at her in 2010! All growed up and more beautiful than ever.

Oh Babes. Sorry I can’t celebrate your birthday with you this year in person. But I hope you go out and have fun anyways. To whoever is taking her out: she hates cake!

Happy Birthday, I love you dearly.

The Fly Brain

I’ve started dissecting fly brains.

What this means is that I have to, very carefully, rip up the tiny fly and make sure that I do not damage its even tinier brain. Actually I’m lying to you. It’s not the brain. It’s the brain AND the spinal cord. (You should know, of course, that flies do not have spinal cords, but they do have an equivalent. It’s called the ventral nerve cord.) The VNC is directly attached to the brain. Now let me try my best to explain to you how I go about doing this.

I put the fly under general anesthesia (knock it out with carbon dioxide) and then I impale it through the belly with a small insect pin. I then submerge the whole thing under water. (Ok. Are you ok? Want me to keep going? ) I then rip open the fly’s chest, after of course, taking all the legs and wings off. Remember the scene in Saw 3 (or 4?) where the machine rips the woman’s chest in half? That’s what I do to the fly. Using very sharp tweezers.  After some poking around and blind “go-at-it-isms”, the head and some tissue pop off. Hopefully, the VNC is somewhere within that tissue. I then clean up the mess I made and if I did things right, the VNC should have been hiding within the mess. If you were to walk into the room and stand behind me. You would think I was poking a water droplet as I stare at it under a microscope. And you’d probably think: “what a waste. Billions of tax dollars and scientists get paid so much money just to poke water all day”. (It’s important to note that scientists do not actually make much money.) But the point I am trying to make is that, you would probably smash a fly with your thumb if given the chance (Obama!) and yet there is so much information there.

I’m the one trying to unlock this treasure of knowledge. It’s just soooo tiny.

Back on track. Now that we have the head + the VNC, we have to get at the brain. Why don’t I just show you?

I have just learned this entire surgery yesterday, and already today I feel a lot better at it. I have to be able to do it in 10 minutes or less though. Then we can stain the brain for different things and end up with beautiful pictures like the one below. I mean, the fly is incredibly tiny. You can fit a dozen or so on my pinky nail. And yet, with some care and some scientific aptitude, we can take a major step back and stand there in awe at its beauty. In the scientific literature, the pictures of the fly brain, in my opinion, should be hung in galleries. And I will undoubtedly  hang some up in my room once I get started with this kind of work. I hope you now have some appreciation for this, the bridge between art and science.

A birthday weekend

Yesterday night I went bananas with my classmates. Alex, an MD student, has the same birthday as me and today was Moses’s birthday. So about 15 of us decide to hit up the richmond district with style. People got lost and a lot happened that I don’t have people’s permission to write about publicly. Needless to say, a lot of people had fun and no one got hurt.

In other news, I’ve finished analyzing data for a paper I’m sending out for publication with my mentor from Monell. Hopefully they won’t have many things bad to say about it and we can get through the process as swiftly as possible. It can take 6 months to a year to get your work published. It has to be reviewed and revised and that takes a hell of a long time. But it’s all worth it to see your work in print. If this gets put through, it’ll be my first ever first-author publication. Fingers crossed.

Also, Stephanie made my day yesterday when she showed me what her mom said about Carry The One Radio. She listened to one episode and became really excited and she hopes to keep tuning in. I want to thank everyone who has provided me with feedback to make the show better. Trust me, I am in the process of implementing almost all of your suggestions. I just lack the skill needed for some changes and the time needed for others. But it will get done. In the mean time, I really need all of your help. Please add as many of your friends as possible to the facebook page. We are at 200 fans right now but we can get to 1,000+ easily if we work together. I really can’t do this without you.

And a heads up everyone. Next Friday is a special day!

What a stressful year!

Whoa! Things are moving WAY too fast… Exams, homework assignments, lectures, seminars, papers to read, and research!

To slow things down a bit, I did two things today.

(1) I went to a meditation session:

So around 12:50pm I check my email and see that UCSF’s Wellness program has sent me another email (they send about 4 a week to the entire student body). This one said, “1:10pm free guided meditation session. Free food for students.” And the best part was that it was 2 minutes away, in the building across the street from where I work. I check my clock and think. Man, I have too much work. I don’t even have time to eat lunch. I better not go to this thing. Instead I should pull out some papers and start reading. Or at least work more on my hard as hell homework assignment. But a big part of me is yelling loudly in my inner ear. You have 5 minutes to decide! Why are you living such a stressed out life! Chill man! Just go.

So I listen to myself, for the first time in a long time.

I go the session. I eat a peasant pie (hot pocket?) and I meditate. It wasn’t more than sitting down in a chair, breathing, and being still for 20 minutes. That was it, just 20 minutes of eyes closed. No need to take your shoes off or anything else. Just sit. Breath. And relax. And that’s exactly what I did. I can’t claim that all my problems melted away after the session was over. But it really helped. I finally broke the busy rhythm, at least for the time being.

Overall? I’m going again next Thursday. And I’m still overwhelmed with work.

(2) I go to “Night Life” at the Academy of Natural Sciences with Colleen:

She invited our grad school class but everyone who wasn’t me decided to be lame and not reply (in fairness we all have a paper discussion to prepare for). It worked out well because she got both of us in for free. And it was really cool. There were all kinds of people, walking around, boozing, taking pictures, and just enjoying themselves. Not worrying about neurons and voltage clamps. The Academy is practically in my backyard, just a few blocks into Golden Gate Park. And this event happens every Thursday night. it’s really amazing. For $12 you get to enjoy live Dj music and the museum. Really worth it!

After a while I left Acetyl-Colleen at the museum and went home to read more papers and spend more time ripping my hair out over homework. it’s all worth it! I’m damn good at teaching myself but it just takes longer because I have to wait for that AHA! moment. Know what I mean? Nelsa says I love to keep myself busy so I should just stop complaining. The complaining makes it better though!

I’ve lost count of how many covers I’ve shown.

The Question: Zen and Violence

My favorite comic book hero of all time. Even more than batman!

I’m 22 years old now

Watup everyone,

Today is my birthday. I am straight up too tired to write anything. I have a 9am class tomorrow, followed by work, followed by basketball, followed by more work… At least tonight, Moses and I did things right. We headed down to Sutter street and checked out Scratchpad. You’ll never get anything like this in Philly. They had this dude named The Genie who hooked up his electric guitar to beatmaker and his ipod and was remaking songs with his feet. Then they had a main Dj, a live drum set, an MC, and two DJ decks with 4 DJs taking turns scratching. And that’s just ONE room. Next to it, you have another live DJ playing mostly popping music and some dance classics. What’s cool is that you have a bunch of dope breakers just going at it. I got down with most of them tonight. But then Moses and I left to get a late night Mission super burrito. Delicious!

Thanks to everyone who’s said Happy Birthday on facebook. But SUPER thanks go to Nelsa, Muzzy and my main man ROB (aka the other half of contra) who called me all the way from Taiwan at 12midnight on the dot. Unfortunately, I was underground and missed the call. But I got the voicemail.

now to sleep. It’s been a good 22 years. Hopefully, another 22 will come by and I’ll learn something new.

Peace, Love and Harmonicas.

(Those of you keeping track. A new episode of Carry the One Radio is being posted later today.)

Still on the exam…

I’m sorry folks. But I am still, quite literally, working on the exam. I mean, I just wrote that sentence, stepped away for an entire hour to research one of the questions, and I now I’m back. I thought the professor was joking when he said it will take 4 hours per question and there are 11 questions total. My entire weekend has been nothing but this exam. And I’ve been losing track of time. Yesterday, I worked until 4 in the morning and didn’t even realize it. I forced myself to sleep. Actually, I tried to sleep but I couldn’t, so I watched Community. It was my first time watching it. That show is hilarious! I’m glad I have another distraction on hulu now.

Well, back to complaining about this exam. I don’t even know if I’ve brushed my teeth today. Oh wait, I did. I think.. I’m not sure. And if I did, it was probably about 3 hours ago. I’ve literally worked more than 5 hours on a single question (worth only 6 points) and I still don’t have it. So I drop it, pick up a 12 point question, and 2 hours later, I’m done. Makes absolutely no sense. I can happily say that I finished the majority of my exam and that I only have 3-4 more questions to knock out tomorrow. Hopefully I can get another one done tonight before sleeping.

This is making me lose track of life. I burned my hand making tea today. I picked up the pot of boiling water with my bare hand, moved to the sink and instantly felt the singe. My instinct is to drop the pot, which my fingers begin to do. Instead, I override that instinct, I swear to you, in that second of pain I saw myself dropping the pot, burning my leg, having to clean the mess afterwards, AND a lecture we had on this exact scenario given to us by one of the leading experts on pain. Adults have the power to override the pain system. Well, guess what. I toss the boiling pot back on the stove, there is some water on the floor but enough for a paper towel to handle, and the skin on my index finger is literally melted off. I’m not even joking. I felt nothing for a while, and then burning. I made the mistake of biting off the melted skin. Stupid. Now I have a cut surrounded by dead skin, and it’s oozing. Are you cringing yet? Well, I wish I could tell you more about my exciting life as a graduate student but unfortunately it’s non-existent.

(it wasn’t until a few minutes later that I noticed a faint stench of burnt flesh in the air).

Actually, maybe this will keep you busy. I remember seeing this when I was a kid. I found time to watch it earlier today. I ask you, is it karma that I got burned, because I laughed?

You should know, I ate an entire box of frosted strawberry shredded wheat things today. Just kept snacking on them…

Exam time..

One of the things I love about my grad program here is that they emphasize the research. You take one core class that gives you a taste of all aspects of neuroscience, you learn a hell of a lot of cool things, it’s fun, and you only do it for 6 hours a week. I mean, a lot of other graduate students I know are taking 20 hours of class a week while rotating in labs. It’s a lucky break for me. But there are setbacks to this.

The first major, and more serious, setback is that you have to know your basic biology down cold. This sucks if you come from a non-science background. But in reality, all it means is that you have to run through some old textbooks and you’ll be fine.

The second setback is that it’s a class. And they need to test you to make sure you have digested the crazy amount of information. In reality, the exams (and your grades period) don’t matter. I’ll say that again for those people who aren’t in PhD graduate schools and are unfamiliar with the system.

Your grades don’t matter.

They have very little effect on your career, but you still have to take the exam seriously. The classes are really there to give you a foundation so you can learn how to tackle the research. You need to learn techniques and history. And you also need to be able to sit down at a seminar and actually understand what’s going on, and be able to ask questions and philosophizzzze (get it, doctorate of philosophy?).

That all makes sense to me.

Well, I currently have my second exam of the year to work on. It’s another take home which means (hopefully not) another 15-20 hours of drudgery mixed in with some “aha!” and a little bit of intuitive thinking. All in all, this equals a quiet weekend. And I think I’m still going in to lab.

Research doesn’t sleep

(sorry for the late post everyone, I was studying and got caught up – but no excuses!)

On a more serious note. Please visit any of the websites below (thanks Elena and Joey) to donate money in order to alleviate the disastrous situation in Haiti right now. 5$ can really make a difference so don’t be lazy.

• Mercy corps
• Salvation Army
• The IRC
• Yele
• Save the Children
• American Red Cross

Basketball League

My life has begun adjusting to a completely new rhythm. Last class quarter, I would wake up early, go to class, hop on the shuttle and head off to work, play basketball during my lunch break, stay late at lab, then get home too tired to take my shoes off. Now, after class, I head to lab, do some research, head home at around 4 or 5pm to eat dinner or shoot around in the gym, then I head back to lab for some late night research, followed by another shuttle back to my house, where I cook dinner (I actually cook now!), talk to Nelsa for 8 hours on the phone, and then fall asleep a happy man. I like it a lot better for two reasons.

(1) I’m actually cooking food now. I bought a rice cooker and I finally realized what butter is good for. Now I make delicious meals once every other day. It’s amazing!

(2) I do more work in a single day because I take advantage of the extra shuttle bus rides in the late afternoon. I either read papers or work on homework while I ride along.

This new fly research is where it’s at. I feel like I’m going to have a great time figuring out the role of this gene in sex behavior (at least for the fly). I’ll keep you guys updated if anything comes up.

Aside from that, I’m playing my first basketball game in the intramural winter league today. I don’t have a jersey so I’m gonna duct tape a number to my shirt later on. Steven and I joined the staff basketball team in the co-ed league. Should be a lot of fun and less stress than the first league I played in. You know, the one where we lost every single game except one. We’ll see if I got better at basketball. Updates later.

The Amazing Spider-Man #615

Fly Sex

I started work in a new lab! Once again, doing some incredibly cool things. This season, I’ll be studying sexual behavior using fruit flies as a model organism. Instead of telling you about it, I uploaded a video from a 2005 publication from the Dickson lab in Vienna.

The Dickson lab spliced a male version of a gene that codes for sexual behavior into a form that prevents male-specific sexual behavior. So if you toss 8 of these males together in a dish, they chase each other down. Pretty much, each male courts the male in front of him while also being courted by a male from behind. What’s also cool is that the gene doesn’t change the anatomy of the fly. He still looks like a male, but his behavior is different. This suggests that sexual behavior is under different genetic control than the anatomy.

Check out the video. Cool science huh?

天天開心！by Rob Vavra

Rob and Sama - Contra Squad

Today, all of you get a taste of another culture. My main man Rob Vavra, Red Member of the Contra Squad and the Voice of Freaks of the Beat, traveled to Taiwan right after graduation this past summer. I was wondering how he made the transition. So I asked him to write about his time there. Check it out below. Moral of his story?

Stop being a punk and go explore something new! (My words, not his).

— 天天開心！by Rob Vavra

I live in Taipei, Taiwan. I’m American and teach English and study Chinese. My life is awesome.

I live in a city that’s tons of fun, relatively cheap, and easy to get around in. I’m a short flight away from a ton of other big cities that I barely know about and would love to go visit – – Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Bangkok, Manila.  I have a low stress job that pays well for the country. I get to study something I’m interested in every day that has real practical applications and is an integral part of my future goals. I meet new friends on a weekly basis. I go freakin’ rock climbing. I eat delicious food every single day. I can still watch all the American movies that I want. My biggest source of discontent is how I can’t buy size 13 puma shoes on this island.

The best part about everything is that I didn’t even have to try that hard. I knew what kind of job I could get, I applied for it, I got it, I packed all my stuff into some suitcases and got on a plane and then got off in Taipei. You not only could easily do the same, you should.

I did my degree in engineering, but studied Chinese on the side as sort of a hobby. I decided I might as well make use of one summer break and go do something different and exciting before I had to join the dreaded working world, so I went to study abroad in Taiwan one summer. I just sort of applied and showed up. No real idea of what to expect, but it was something new and it was only for 15 weeks, so if it totally sucked, what was the big deal? I actually screwed up big time and got an apartment with no A/C, which was by far one of the worst decisions of my life. I lived and it was actually a great talking point during my interview for the job I have now.

Flash forward a year. When I graduated I had a couple of options, so I did the radical thing and picked the one that I liked best and that seemed most exciting and conducive to how I wanted the rest of my life to turn out. Crazy. Depending on who you ask I’m either wasting my time, doing something of marginal worth, earning valuable life experience,  making a solid investment in my skills, screwing up my future, letting my degree go to waste,  or making the most of what life has to offer. I’m pretty sure I do a little of each every day, but you know, whatever.

I’ve been here for 7 months so far and have enjoyed it the entire time. Yes, I miss America sometimes. But no, I do not have a definitive date for when I’m going to leave. If you didn’t catch it yet, I’m having a great time here. There’s plenty of cultural sights to go see, unique political and social issues, and a ton of history. But I’m not a museum, politics, or history guy, and don’t particularly care about any of that. (I know, I’m a terrible person).

What’s fun and exciting for me is that it’s like being a kid again – everything is new and shiny and I get to figure it out. It’s a challenge. I know I can survive in America where I totally understand the culture and have 20+ years of experience. But can I survive in another country where I don’t have that much experience and have a language barrier as well? Of course. You’re never going to run into a culture that is so foreign and unusual that you’re not going to understand it. You even understood the culture of those blue people in Avatar, and they’re not even the same species. However, it is true that you’re going to run into certain situations you don’t understand or that are different. This is fun and awesome.

I have to relearn all sorts of stuff that I just took for granted back home. There are these big places (KTVs) that have private rooms with karaoke machines set up and it’s a common and totally viable (not to mention fun) way to pass an evening. Signing official documents is a little different here. I have to get my check book stamped every third time I use the ATM. My cell phone bill is several times more complicated than it was in the US, but I can go pay it at 7-11, along with my utilities bill and parking fees. I drive a scooter. There’s a million new types of food I’ve had to get exposure to. Where do I go to buy electronics? Where can I buy fruit cheaper than the grocery store? Weddings are substantially different. Living arrangements and apartments are a bit different. The majority of bathrooms don’t have stalls or bathtubs for their showers. You probably get to pay less if you live on the 4th floor. There are earthquakes (new for me!). All students wear uniforms. College dorms frequently have 4+ people sharing a room. Business cards have some slightly different etiquette rules. There’s like 80 different types of drinks to order at a tea shop.

In all honesty, it’s not that different from say, moving to NY from LA or vice versa. They still say “ok” in both places. But the weather and TV programming and restaurants and traffic (and the language) are all different. It’s cool, you’ll get used to it.  It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made (even after the A/C fiasco) and I don’t regret it at all. What do you have to lose? Take a chance and go try something new. You don’t have to move to another country, but go try some new restaurants, buy a different brand of cereal, apply for a job you’d actually enjoy doing, or go ask those bboys where you can learn to dance like them.