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March 04 School fire and beyond...It was a reality check for all of us here today! All those mock fire drills, alarm codes and fire safety instructions were tested and put into effect. There was a fire in one of our transformers and all power supply to the school is out! There was thick black smoke all over and some twenty fire trucks in action... This is another pain of living in a zone surrounded by NYPD and nearly 10 hospitals. We all heard the sirens and promptly disregarded them as we hear them all the time... So, why panic??? Somone is always in emergency! Only this time, we really were in one! Realization that something was indeed wrong dawned only when the number of trucks kept rising and finally, we saw smoke! Panic took over when we realized that all the invaluble cell lines and glycerol stocks in the -80 freezers were going to be lost irreversibly... But when no one, and I mean no one, was allowed inside, all we could do was stand outside in the frigid air and wait... The colder it got, the more chatty we all became and I must admit, I listened to some very meaningful conversations in those few hours... Although most labs tend to share one common room for the -80s and that room is indeed on emergency supply, what about the -20s??? Isn't some really precious stuff stored in there too- like restriction enzymes, enzyme kits etc. These are very sensitive to freeze-thaw and so, isn't it a safer idea to apply the rule of -80s to the -20s too? Wouldn't it have saved a lot of worry and anxiety on the part of the whole school community if the -20s were also in one common place hooked up to emergency??? We could enter the building only close to midnight to salvage whatever we could from the freezers... Luckily for us, the emergency supply had kicked in around 7pm and the -80s were safe... However, only some of the -20s were on emergency... Atleast in our lab, close to five boxes of enzymes were/ could be affected! We managed to move stuff around and pool them all into fridges which are now crammed.... And the school's as cold as the outside air as there's no heating! Also, has made me think how much we could not do without electricity.... I can set up a restriction digestion (if the enzymes are still good!), but there's no 37degree water bath to incubate it. I can pellet cells but can't vortex it. I can't even cast a simple agarose gel!!!!!!! I can't do nothing............As you can see, life here has come to a standstill! And looks like it will continue to stand still for a couple of more days....I guess this is a good excuse for me to sit at home and work on my Qual!!! February 28 The hiatus...After a three-month break, here I am, back to blogging.... If you are beginning to think that I've been too buzy to blog, you are so completely wrong... I forgot my MSN password and so, after raking my head and trying to remember all the passwords I ever had, K3, the computer geek, gave me this software which could recover passwords. And so, here I am, blogging again! The weather in NYC's awesome- breezy, not too chilly and absolutely spectacular!!! Feels like spring already!!!! November 23 NiagaraPerhaps I forgot to type out a blog about one of the most memorable trips of my life - a visit to the Niagara Falls. Well, to be perfectly honest, before this trip I used to go, "So, What? It's just another waterfall...". Perhaps it stemmed from the frustration of having lived in New York City for over a year and still not visiting the great falls, when everyone who even passed by the east coast 'dropped' by Buffalo to see it! But, when a couple of my friends asked me join them for the trip, I more than jumped. And I realized that Niagara would never be 'just another fall'. She is THE QUEEN. We reached the falls on one rainy afternoon and were pretty diappointed by the rains, winds and cold. We couldn't gain any solace even from the spectacular light show at night or the awesome Dhaba food. All we could think of was getting back to warmth of the hotel room. It was with the same gloom that we woke up next morning and peeked outside and heaved a huge sigh of relief. A nice sunny day awaited us and after a quick coffee and Cheetos, we stepped out, hoping to the get the best of the weather. Man! The Niagara is simply breathtaking! My throat went dry when I saw the whole scene - Niagara and the Horse-Shoe! It was one of those weightless, timeless moments when you forget everything but the present. Still entranced we walked around to the Terrapin-point, at an incredibly slow pace, savoring every rapid and every scene and taking a tonne of photographs. Well, the mist completely obscured the stupendous cascade that was crashing down from the Canadian side that we really couldn't see a damn thing. We were getting completely drenched in the steady mist and we could only hear the falls. It took quite a bit of time for our eyes to adjust to the mist and actually 'see' the falls. I was spellbound for a good ten minutes and to think that this was only ten per cent of the total flow rate (the rest being tapped for power). Awesome! After cooling our heels in Terrapin Point, we decided to try the 'Maid of the Mist' ride. I was terribly excited when we actually got under the falls although a wee bit disappointed as I couldn't take any pictures. It, anyway, was a fun ride and worth the wait in the incredibly long line. Tired now after all the travel and adventure, we started back home with memories that would remain etched forever on our minds. November 22 Saturday nightHad dinner with friends at an Afghanistani restaurant, Bamiyaan, here in the city last Saturday. Being a veggie, I had a wee bit of worry at the back of my head that all I was gonna see on the menu would be biriyani, kebabs etc. I needn't have bothered though as the restaurant had a big collection of spicy, veg stuff and we had a wonderful time. Much of Afghani cuisine resemble Indian ( I couldn't pronounce most of the names on the menu though!), with appetizers resembling samosas and the main course tasting like biriyani. The similarities were especially striking in the desserts, the 'Phirni' tasting very much like one of those badam sweets... After three hours of non-stop gossip, we were done with the dinner but the fun wasn't over yet. Sara and Sam departed for a party and Masa, Beza, Patricia and I started walking towards Madison Ave to board our bus. Well, perhaps I should mention here that Beza and I have a serious laughing problem. We really need no reason to laugh and that night, being one of those carefree, jobless times and especially after such a wonderful dinner, turned out into a one in which the laughing-bug bit us real bad..... It all began when Beza started walking away from Madison, when we were supposed to board the bus near Madison Square Park. What began then went on for nearly 45 mins all the way up Madison. I mistook a rod sticking out of a building for stars (Now, don't ask me how I did that!) and Beza thought I really was seeing stars! Now, we had over 30 mins to kill before the next bus, so we decided to pop into one of those coffee shops along Madison. Two of the three shops were locked (which triggered another laughing wave!) and the only one that remained open didn't have any coffee! Now Masa feels guilty for sitting there without buying anything and buys a bottle of water and we were laughing over every funny moment that happened during the last two semesters (interspersed with thoughts of renting an apartment in Madison ave!). When we finally decided to leave the place before the guy kicked us out, we had tears of laughter running down our eyes............One hell of a giggly night that was!!! November 18 Casino Royale!Yaay! Saw the Bond movie first day and it was worth every bit of planning that went into it.... Today I guess the stars decided to shine down on me..... Or maybe the Venus and Jupiter were on the same line and smiling upon me when I woke up this morn! (Or maybe I should stop reading that horoscope thingy and add it to my spam!) In any case, my PCR worked big-time with a huge product band, my yeast and bacterial transformations seemed to have worked fine and........... I got to see the new Bond movie first day! Daniel Craig as the new 007 is simply awesome... He's classy, uncanny, smart, stylish, handsome, omnipotent and has a good sense of humor! The movie alludes to the terrorist plans of blasting off some US-bound planes in London and to 9/11. I'd say it was fast-paced, action-packed and has a lot of twisted plots set in Madagacar, Montenegro, Bahamas, and Miami.... I was truly impressed! And that title song was very creative! All-in-all, great movie, cool plots and a great Bond!!! And the movie ends on a good note - The name's Bond, James Bond! November 12 My day out!Having seen only bits and pieces of Chinatown and having read so much about it, I decided to dedicate a trip entirely to explore it. And today being the auspicious mid-autumn festival of the Chinese, I decided was a fine day to go. The first thing that hits u Bang! in the face is the complete disparity between the worlds outside and inside Chinatown. Chinatown is a world by itself. I started walking along Mulberry street... Well, I shouldn't say walking 'along' as I was walking right in the middle of the street as the sidewalks were essentially 'sit-outs' for the restaurants....The jam-packed streets slowly give way to the relatively empty ones which are mostly gift-shops, chinese art shops, feng-shui etc.... It seems like most shops carry almost the same stuff but when you look closer, differences do surface... One particular art store caught my attention and I decided to explore it. The store had a huge collection of Chinese paintings, sculptures, pottery, incense sticks and Buddha figurines - big ones, small ones, bronze, earth, glass, jade... I even found a dancing Ganesha figurine in bronze!!! I haven't seen such a beautiful figurine even in India where you can see a Ganesha temple almost every block. The goods are real cheap..... Chinese fans seemed to be the hot sellers as they were seen everywhere....I ended up buying one for myself. ;) After a short stop in Columbus park, which appeared to be a meeting ground for the retired folks, I continued along Park Row towards Chatham Square. The place was quite in chaos, with tiny streets merging into each other and non-functional traffic lights and it was a welcome relief to arrive at the Mahayana Buddhist temple at Bowery. This was my first visit to a Buddhist temple and I was really excited upon seeing the 16ft tall, meditating golden Buddha. We were told by the preacher that this Buddha was brought in from India and the paintings that adorn the walls of this beautiful temple are from Japan. At the end of the prayer, we were asked to pick our fortune cards from the feet of the Buddha. Having not been into any temple in more than a year, this was a truly relaxing experience. As I was considering a walk towards Manhattan bridge, the name Mott street suddenly popped up in my head and as it sounded awfully familiar, I decided to take a sneak-peek at it and.......Voila! I realized my adventure wasn't over yet. Like I mentioned earlier, today is the mid-autumn festival, a festival that is celebrated in China in the same scale as Diwali in India. The sound of drums and banjos immediately drew my attention towards Mott Street. There was a festive celebration underway and I was right on time. I saw some street performances like the dragon dance, some Chinese music accompanied by a lot of excitement. Standing there, among the many children trying to draw the attention of the 'dragon', I felt myself transformed into someone many years younger. The mild drizzle, the soothing music and the agog crowd pumped a ton of energy into my system and after a quick and yummy almond-cookie ice-cream at Chinatown Icecream Factory, I departed homewards, content and happy, just like the two buddhas in my bag. July 11 What is it about 'Alaipayuthe'?"Why do I like this movie?" I ask myself for the umpteenth time as I watch the movie for perhaps the hundredth time... "Madhavan! Of course its him.... Isn't he so adorable in this movie?" says one part of my mind. But then, as I watch the movie again and again, it flashes on me that there is not one person in that movie who doesn't leave a lasting impression in your mind. Shalini, with her simple, girl-next-door appearance, conveys so many emotions with her lovely eyes. Then, the Nungambakkam train station.... It captures Chennai at its best..... I wonder how they shot the movie that way! (If it is a set, it is indistinguishable from the original!) Swarnamalya, as Shalini's sister is so 'big-sistery' she reminds me of my own sis! Madhavan's dad, whose name I dunno, is the image of any dad you'd see... I've noticed him in many movies and I see that he has an awesome flair for dialogue delivery; the casual, paternal way in which he admonishes Madhavan early on in the movie is hilarious.... His reaction when his granddaughter tells him joyfully that she earned two rupees from Madhavan for calling up a girl is absolute exasperation!!! Vivek - whom I've never seen in a non-comedian role before, Shalini's parents, house-owner Chetta, Aravindswamy and Kushboo, who only make a brief appearance towards the end of the movie, are so close to reality, that it is hard to forget them.... ARR's music, Sriram's photography.......... everything about this movie rocks! Mani Ratnam, you are indeed something! July 08 Disaster pasta..What does someone who has been trying to pack (but didn't get anywhere close to finishing!) all day do after a nice three-hour nap on a Saturday night? Just this! Extremely enthusiastic about cooking, I decided to please my palate with some homemade pasta.... Well, I wouldn't say it was all my fault entirely... After all I followed the instructions to the letter. Here are some of the 'minor' imperfections: 1) The sauce was too thin.....So, I really had to fish out the pasta and vegetables with my fork! Can call it 'pasta-soup' too! 2) Didn't I add three whole teaspoons of garlic and herb sauce? There was absolutely no evidence of it in the concoction that resulted. 3) Added too many broccoli florets! 4) Forgot to add salt! "She did not so much cook as assassinate food." Storm Jameson (1891-1986) I realize that Jameson had me in mind when he said this but I'll give you reasons why my 'pasta-soup' is better off than most others.... Hunting for pasta into the sauce is fun too...(You never know what you might get!) In fact, its an art which I've now mastered!  Broccoli is such a good source of fiber.. My Eatsmart book says that broccoli is also a good source of sulforaphane, indoles and carotenoids - all of which help prevent cancer. And we all know that lesser the salt, stronger the heart! Who wants to end up with a bad heart? So, fiasco or no, my 'pasta-soup' rocks!The lesser-known NYC!Mention New York City and images of sky-scrapers, glitz, glamor, Times Square, 9/11, the Empire State Building, the statue of Liberty, Wall Street etc etc etc swim in your head. But, that's just the NYC the world sees! To shed some light on some very obscure and very non-NYC places in NYC, here's my blog. I had the misfortune of travelling to this place called Jamaica yesterday. The very mention of Jamaica provoked visions of beaches (Well, I saw on the map that there was no beach nearby, but I was hoping to see atleast some bubbly, energetic landscape), colors and excitement. After a series of transfers from the 2 to the A and E trains, I finally landed near Jamaica Avenue. I kinda knew where I had to go (after all the hours of intense research on Google and Yahoo maps), so I promptly stepped out, all suave and seemingly acquainted with the place and I realized in a microsecond that the place did not match my 'dream Jamaica' even remotely. It was full of dust and grime, and my first wave of disappointment was washed over by the second when I realized that the path (which I had so carefully drawn out from Yahoo! maps) wouldn't work due to some major construction work on the bridge.... So, had to walk a couple of more blocks down before I somehow arrived at Hillside avenue. Now, this avenue rekindled some completely old mental images of Khavda, Najab, Allaharakha and The Rann of Kutch! Those of you who have read the story "Love across the salt desert"by K.N. Daruwala, would get my picture right away.... For those who haven't, here's a gist: "Love across the salt desert" is a love story set in a remote village named Khavda in Gujarat, India and another just across the Indo-Pak border in Pakistan. The Thar desert separates the two villages and the images that form in your mind are of sand dunes, camels, dryness, famine...........well! in short, grim and bleak. So, why did I jump to India from Jamaica, NYC? This is why! Hillside avenue bore a stark resemblance to my mental images of Khavda. Well, I didn't see sand-dunes and camels (though I wouldn't have been so completely surprised!), but the dull, boring, hot, dusty picture I saw was so completely like the old village from the story. There were no clear-cut directions anywhere and somehow I magically landed on the street I was looking for. Now, something really strange occured. The street didn't have the building I came looking for travelling for nearly three hours! I was pissed and the desperate phone call to the company wasn't answered. Swearing big-time now, I started walking further down this completely cheerless avenue with no real destination in mind, when I literally bumped into the address, not on the street listed, but two blocks up!! There was no door-number, no name, nothing.... Would you believe this? Anyways, the only good thing out of this ordeal was that my job was done in less than ten minutes and I scooted to the nearest subway, to the peace of the Bronx.... Snippets from NYC!I happened to hear the strangest conversation between two women in the elevator this morning... Girl 1: My cousin flushed his cell phone down the toilet... Girl 2 replies quite nonchalantly, "And the toilet didn't clog?" It's the US of A, ain't it???? July 04 The five-minute manager..Here's a case of five minutes well-managed..... My job for that night was simple -simply go and inoculate a loopful of yeast into a 100ml media. Can you think of ways in which this could extend beyond 2 minutes? Here's one. Being a novice at yeast work, I had to search for the strain of yeast I had used earlier. And exactly that day, someone had rearranged the cold room which meant that the plate wasn't there where I had seen it last. Optimistic as I obviously was, I began a slow and diligent exploration of each and every rack in the cold room. And Voila! I found the strain too. Very smug now, I returned to my lab bench and measured out the media with a very clumsy burner on. And then disaster struck! An apparently over-precautious idea popped up in my head and I wanted to check if there was a fresh plate of the same strain in the cold room. So, off I went to the cold room and the lab door promptly locked shut behind me, locking me out. Now, I felt a surge of panic. Lots of "What ifs?" started swimming in my head....(What if the burner toppled? What if the bench caught fire? What if I am kicked out of lab? What if? What if? What if?) So, I quickly called security and they opened the door for me, which took a maximum of 5 minutes, before which I was a nervous wreck..... Whew! finally I inoculated my friend, yeast (not from the new plate!), into the media and fled the place......Talk about a five-minute work! June 24 On top of the world!To kill boredom, Xuanling and I decided to go to the 86th floor
observatory of the Empire State Building last weekend... After ensuring
that the weather was good and our cells wouldn't die in our absence, we
finally managed to escape the confines of the Bronx and reached the
ESB... Curious about the Sky-Ride, we decided to check it out first and Yo! It was simply superb! This ride is a flight-simulator and it is assumed that you are aboard a space-ship and taken on a tour of NYC. I must say it was very entertaining, especially the part when the spaceship crashes and we all go berserk on the crowded streets and finally underwater... It ended too soon though! After nearly an hour-long wait, we finally managed to reach the 86th floor... The visibilty wasn't too great but even then the view was spectacular... It took me quite a bit of time to orient myself to the place as initially every view looked similar to the earlier one. Never seen such mercurial change in conditions within a span of a few meters - in one zone the wind literally would knock you off your feet and it gets scorching on the other end..... Learnt quite a bit of titbits from this visit. First, looks like the Chrysler and the Empire State Building were built at roughly the same time and were tough contenders for the "tallest building in the world".. (We now know who finally won! I detected quite a significant bit of pride when the guy says "ESB became the tallest building in the world and the Chrysler building became...... Well! The Chrysler Building!"......) And before this visit, I thought that the Rockefeller Center was taller than ESB! (!@#@$$) Tried as I might, I couldn't see my school from there (though I could swear that I could see the nearby Bay Plaza!) and I attributed it to the fog! And I also
found out that just because the weather forecast tells you that the sun sets at
8:29pm, it doesn't really mean that it would get dark at 8:30! We
were waiting and waiting and waiting for the sun to go down and for the
lights to turn on, but neither did it get dark at 8:30 (not even at
9:30!) nor did the lights come up till close to 9! (Some long-forgotten
memories of the excruiciatingly long and chilly wait during the New Years' eve at
Times Square popped up in my head, but I promptly stamped them down...)
Anyways, the scene that awaited us was worth every microsecond of the wait and after a couple
of walks around the place, some ESB shopping and a good Pizza, we
departed homeward around midnight..
June 16 Heights of stupidity!Watched a completely wacky movie today.... The logic behind it was so mind-blowing that I was rendered speechless, for.... OK! Never mind how long... I am still astounded, flummoxed and flabbergasted. How often does one get to see movies where the hero manages to step on a landmine (YES! A REAL AND ALIVE LANDMINE!), fights off all the baddies, flirts with his sweetheart and still manages to come out of it alive??? Well, I'd say if you are as unfortunate as I was, once in your lifetime! Here's how the story goes: After all the gore, fights and superhero stunts, the story somehow manages to lumber towards the climax. And the bad guys have planted a landmine in some zone where they do not expect our omnipotent hero to arrive. Unluckily for them, he does and in the course of fighting off all the baddies, he accidentally steps into the shaft of a landmine. Smart as he is, he doesn't remove his leg from it and now the bomb squad comes in and are unsucessful in defusing it. In an effort to save the hero, the hero's best friend appeals to the guys who actually planted the landmine! (Logic completely forsakes one here. Why would the guy who planted the bomb hang around that zone? To be blasted off? ) Man! He appeals and lo! and behold!, a guy materializes and tries to defuse it!! (Ever heard of a terrorist as obtuse as this one? First, he plants the bomb and doesn't flee the place and next, he comes to defuse it in front of the cops!) And, in the meantime, the ladylove joins the hero and both of them are balancing their weights on the shaft of the landmine! (And it never goes off!) If some tiny corner of your mind tells you that these are not quite impossible, read on and you'd be truly dumbfolded. The hero now realizes that he has no choice but to die and being a Good Samaritan, clears off the people. Now, you MUST believe this! He sits down (one leg still on landmine) and actually digs the landmine out! Now, he kicks the bomb high up in the air(Oh! forgot to mention that the hero is a soccer star in his college!) where it explodes without hurting a soul! COMPLETE BS! I am sure the thousands of soliders who lost their lives in a landmine would now be shifting in their graves! June 14 Clones, Cloning and Cloners!Would you believe it if I say that I was in lab from 7am till 7pm, doing nothing but looking at DNA sequences, that too in silly Macs? Well, you gotto believe me.. I seriously wonder what the "Mac guys" were thinking when they designed them. Why can't these Macs jus' behave like good ol' PCs? And why does my school have nothing but Macs? (Well, if someone is planning to start off on the "Oh! it has a better virus protection!! Macs are cool!!" funda, please! gimme a break!) Well, a task as completely trivial as a minimize doesn't work jus' the same way as it does in a PC. I ask the program to minimize, not hide!! You minimize it and it goes and sits somewhere under all those icons and you spend a good part of your time, fishing out what is what! It wouldn't be half as annoying as it sounds when you work with things as disparate as a Word, Excel and a PDF. But, when you have a string of DNA sequences, one looking no different from the next, and you make the blunder of minimizing it, you are screwed royally! Anyways, the idea of this blog is not to complain about the ineptitude of Macs (for which I am planning to dedicate a nice and long one!), but to talk about some wierd problems in aligning DNA sequences from two different HIV-1 molecular clones. When I tried to align a gene sequence against two different molecular clones of HIV-1, I realized that one of the clones showed homology from the 151st nucleotide! I was pretty confounded by this and had to literally crawl along the DNA to identify the START site(which I eventually did after two whole hours of battling with these Macs, which also do not allow many of the useful softwares to work!) I guess I'd see A, T, C, Gs spinning in my head for a reasonable amount of time today.. I even picked up some new letters in the DNA cipher - Y and R! June 11 WATERJus' saw WATER by Deepa Mehta! Never seen such a beautifully crafted movie so far.. A truly wonderful piece of work! WATER captures the hardships of widows in pre-independent India in a so-completely absorbing and poignant tale. Lisa Ray and John Abraham add to the glam of it all. Kudos to Deepa Mehta! I was overwhelmed with emotion after watching it! June 10 Going 'yeast'Well, I've started working on yeast two-hybrid now and man! its too good. I simply love yeast work! I can list out a few of the reasons why yeast is better than bacteria. First and foremost, yeast smells awesome! (A million times better than our dear friend, E.coli..) and second and equally important, yeast colonies take three days to come up! (which essentially means that you could be jobless for three days...;)....) Jokes apart, I realized that when you do yeast work, never, never, never borrow any chemical from anybody...Yeast transformations swill plasmids and so, after working your ass off with one set of transformation, which could go as long as 15 hours, spotting colorful contaminants on your plate disconcerts and depresses you big-time. (Identifying the source of contamination is a problem by itself!) My first solo yeast transformation was a fiasco! After slogging in the lab for 16 hours non-stop, starving and on a Friday night, I realized that almost all my plates were heavily contaminated... Saw colorful, green and yucky mould on my plate and all I could think of was "yewww!!" (Disposing the biohazard was another ordeal!) Had to repeat the whole expt, not to mention the looming maxi-preps! And, I really really really think that Sorvall should design centrifuges which has rotors that can hold upto a litre (and in case they already have those, I think M&I should buy one!) and, I wish their brakes worked! A five-minute spin (Looking at a 5 min spin in a protocol would make one jump in joy!) essentially is a 15-minute spin! (The extra 10-min is for the fuge to stop!) And when you have 2 liters of culture to spin and three such '5-min' spins, you calculate the amount of time wasted simply for pelleting the cells You wait and wait and wait next to the fuge praying that it would stop soon... (I even do a mini countdown after the needle has reached the zero-mark!) Whew! The little things that could bug you... The whole of this week went in a 5x6 two-hybrid and I have my fingers crossed... Hoping and hoping that it should look nice and pretty when I see it tomorrow night.. In the meantime, I wanna go downtown and have fun! June 07 As a graddie! This is Dhivya, new to the blog world and so decided to start off with a few of my experiences as a New Yorker and a graddie... The flight from India to here was a blur... I have no idea how I got onto the plane, shifted flights at Frankfurt, got off at Newark.. Nothing.... Well, considering the fact that the Lufthansa flight from Chennai takes off at 1:45am, I am sure lots of people would join my club. The silly flight-attendant spilt coffee over me and I was between two Americans who were never awake all through the first flight. Frankfurt airport was freeeezing and the six-hour stop seemed like ages. (My only cheer during the ordeal were Akshay Kumar and Twinkle Khanna whom I happened to notice in Frankfurt. Not that I am a big fan of Mr. Khiladi, but jus that they were the first Bollywood stars I've seen off-screen. Some spice to my much too boring voyage!) I doubt if there is a person who would have walked round and round and round that airport the number of times I did. Was bored rotten... The second flight was even harrowing than the first.. The flight was caught up in some major air-turbulence and we had to fasten our seat-belts ALL THE TIME! Was queasy and shaky after the second nightmare of a flight! What a welcome relief it was to see land again! It took me more than two days to even realize that I was in the US of A and should be starting a whole new life here.... My first few days in NYC were also my gloomiest. Had a whole, empty apartment which was screaming silence. Sitting on the air-conditioner and looking out from my 22nd floor window at Manhattan was the only source of entertainment and I must admit, that I was indeed intimidated by the glitz and glamor of the Big Apple. Soon, it was time for grad school... Orientation was the most memorable part of it all.... Made a whole lot of friends in such a short time and all too suddenly, my inital glooom started lifting... Trips around the city, scavenger hunts, the US open and Bronx Zoo made me so completely at ease with the city and I realized, I was falling in love with the fast pace and activity of it. For more than a month, a couple of my labmates were under the assumption that I was some high-schooler who was gonna spend a couple of months in lab. Obviously, I wouldn't guess that and so, my intial excitement of getting my first bank account and cell-phone was met with perplexed expressions which almost said "Hey! You are here only for two months! Why the hell do you need a bank account??" It was only after my first lab-meeting, thanks to my PI, that people actually believed that I was a grad student here. From then on, I've learnt science the fun way. I really enjoy being in a 'sciency' world and I've developed a strong appreciation for a lot of 'small' things. I think RNAs are the coolest molecules ever made and RNAi, I feel, is the best discovery since PCR. Spice in life!Oh! I saw someone shop-lifting yesterday! I was waiting
dutifully in line at a Pizza place and the line moves at an
incredibly slow pace coz' a couple of people at the counter are
quarelling with the cashier for a nickel..... And, therez this woman
ahead of me with a baby who promptly removes a Tropicana from the
counter and stashes it under one of the many sheets of the stroller in
the blink of an eye. She picks up another drink from the counter,
pays for it, turns around and gives an "oh-so-sweet" smile to a gaping
me and scoots!! I dunno why I was grinning when the security at the
entrance scanned my stuff before letting me out.......and it wasn't from the Pizza I had! |
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