I'm back!

Did you miss me?

No?

Well...me neither, really. Too much to do.

Work. Party. Work. Party. Work. Work. Work. Its been a fun couple of weeks. Running around a like a chicken with its head cut off is not conducive to blogging. Or even thinking.

But as the 5 faithful people who read this know, I'm always open to life lessons. Even when I'm dying of too-much-work-itis. And this is what I learnt in the last 3 or so weeks:

1). Never do 28 MEF preps at the same time. Eventually you end up with about 3 zillion plates of cells and a crick in your neck from sitting in the hood.

2). You can cook the most delectable food and be unable to eat it because you've spent too long cooking it and the flavor has permeated every cell in your body.

3). Want to throw a surprise party? Incarcerate the invitees in solitary chambers for a month before the event. Especially if they are women. I hate to say this of my sex....but seriously, we CANNOT keep our mouths shut to save our lives.

4). Want to watch a raunchy movie with way too much booty on display? Go watch The Bank Job. Its a sleaze fest. And the tunnel digging thing is old. OK. Apparently its a true story. But Royal Family sleaze is so 90s! We are way over them now.

5). Want to watch tasteful eye candy? Watch Hrithik do his topless sword fighting practice scene in Jodhaa Akbar. And rewatch it. Until you've run out of drool.

6). Want to NOT meet with your boss every Friday afternoon? Just pretend to be super busy and make him come and ask you when you'll be free to talk, 3 weeks in a row. The 4th week...he'll cave in and say..lets just do this on Monday. Yay!

7). Refrain from asking the Chinese people in your lab their opinion on the Tibetan conflict. If you want a peaceful working relationship, that is. When you eat lunch with them, just talk about the weather, their health, the general status of their experiments, the terrible cafeteria food and other (seemingly) non-controversial topics.

8). 28 is NOT old (yeah, right!). Its past the annus mirabilis age. But its not all over. Yet. I think. I hope. Desperately. Actually, I had this teacher in med school who told me that you should accomplish whatever you want to before you're 25. Because its downhill all the way after that. I really didn't like her very much. She was mean. And scary. The way she yelled when she was mad. And the whites of her eyes. God. I can never forget her. And she dispensed this particular piece of advice. It may have been the only thing she ever said to me in 18 months that I heard without my heart pounding, or palms sweating. Because I was 18 then. And 25 seemed oh-so-far away. She was evil incarnate. And now I'm 28. Its all coming back to me now.

9). If you jump out of a plane without a parachute, and an explosion occurs on the ground simultaneously...you will not be miraculously saved by the pressure created by the explosion that will cushion your fall, and ensure you land safely on your rear end on a soft patch of grass. No sir. You will be blown to smithereens. Saw it on MythBusters. Next time I want to jump out of a plane, I'll make sure I have a parachute. Not just jump out over Bosnia, feeling hopeful.

10). I have an unhealthy obsession with Wikipedia, chocolate, and this song.

Aaaaarrrrrrrggghhh!

Just letting out a cyber scream to release the tension. I feel so much better now.

A hiatus

I haven't written anything lately, because I find I have nothing to say. Which is pretty strange. Because the one thing I have never found myself at a loss for, is something to yak about. In the meanwhile, read this and rejoice. If you have the time, and crave even more entertainment, read the comments section.

In other still more depressing news than the above, the NIH funding situation is seriously screwed up. I'm seeing it have an impact in my own department, as I watch a lab on my floor wrap it up and shut down completely, because they have run out of funding. This is an eye-opener, and everyone must read their brochure.

This blog is on a hiatus until I get my groove back, my chakras in sync, and my aura is a clear silver. Ciao.

Random post

Before I put Farewell, my Concubine on my Netflix queue, I read the story synopsis real quick. Clearly, I didn't read it properly. For some reason I assumed the friendship was between a guy and a girl. I spent the first 20 minutes of the movie trying to figure out if Douzi was a girl or a guy. Chinese names don't help any..they are completely asexual. Anyway, the movie was just about OK. A little slow and way too long for a movie in Mandarin, a language I cannot fathom inspite of spending 2 years in the company of Chinese people on a daily basis. Plus, the Chinese music grates on your ears after a while. (If a man is singing in a female voice, it can hardly be melodious. Shrieky is the word that comes to mind.)) And they show the same damn opera about 30 times in the course of 3 hours. I liked Gong Li's performance. And Leslie Cheung was a drama queen par extraordinaire. But strictly OK otherwise. The only good thing was that I got to impress my lab at lunch the next day with my intimate knowledge of the personal life of all the lead actors.

This whole magic candle thing is kinda scary. I kept trying to blow the thing out and it wouldn't extinguish. I had serious misgivings about my lung capacity for about 30 seconds, before the cat was let out of the bag.

OK..anybody know why this article in the ToI about a scientific paper has a sentence referring to some Greek island (the island is totally irrelevant to autophagy as far as I know)?

I just watched Atonement. Its totally, completely awesome. But I think I have now reached my threshold for movies that require a brain, or even half a brain, in order to enjoy them. Considering that Netflix has just sent me a documentary entitled "God grew tired of us", it doesn't look too good. I may have to watch Rush Hour3 on TBS to allow my brain cells a much needed rest.

So I'm older...

But not necessarily wiser, or anything else-er. Thanks to all the family and friends who called and emailed. Thanks to all the people on Orkut who wished. People who forgot, you know now why I forget your birthday!

Thanks to roommate (who has been a very good friend) and made sure I had a nice evening in a good restaurant with close pals. Double thanks to her for an extremely luscious chocolate cake from the best cake shop in town. Thanks to labmates and mentor who took me out to lunch. Veggie Dol sot bibimbap tastes just as good as it sounds. ( No, seriously. Its very good.)

And lastly, I'd like to thank my parents for giving birth to me, and God, for creating this intelligently designed, super-duper cool, extremely perfect world that we live in.

Thanks y'all for a lovely birthday.

PS: I forgot to thank my landlord for the pretty flowers and the first birthday balloon I have ever received in my life....as far back as I can remember. (slight pang after reading that last sentence!)

Sunday insanity

Are you in the mood to tear your hair out? Do you feel like watching cheerleader movies is not sufficient to melt the entirety of your brains into a mushy puddle? Do you not know what to do to keep up the aggravation quotient in your life?

If the answer to all the above is yes...then go read this.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

NB: Nothing against the article itself. I happen to think its rather well-written. Just that I can never get used to how spectacularly pathetic our species can sometimes be.

Recently viewed

Over the last few weeks my Netflix list has yielded some very good stuff. I watched Mighty Aphrodite, The Departed, and rewatched Kramer vs. Kramer.The pick of the lot for me was Mighty Aphrodite. I have a preference for goofball comedies.

Mira Sorvino is so good as the ditzy, dumb, prostitute, with a voice that grates on your ears. I loved the Greek chorus intervening at strategic moments with irreverent comments and sage advice. Plus..the scene where Tiresias tells Allen about his wife's infidelity made me laugh out loud. Yeah..I googled him. I can't help it. I Google everything.

I cried while watching K vs. K. But its freaking Meryl Streep. There's no shame in crying when its the best actress in the world doing the acting. And the kid is so darn cute. I defy any normal girl to NOT cry.

Saying Martin Scorcese makes good movies is like saying Sachin bats well. 'Nuff said about The Departed. Except that watching familiar Boston locations filmed as they have been is mildly scary.

PS: I don't know why I'm sitting through Keira Knightley's Pride and Prejudice on TV as I type this. Its the worst interpretation of P&P ever. And I've seen 4 of them. (Not including Bride and Prejudice if you please! That piece of tripe doesn't even qualify as a version of P&P.)

Recipe for Bheja Fry

Take 1 harassed grad student. Add one irritable thesis advisor demanding data for grant ASAP. Stir in a talk due by said student at a meeting next week. Cook on low flame with experiments that refuse to work when you most need them. Garnish with ridiculous seminar with inexcusably bad data that one was forced to attend, thus causing this student to develop a headache. Serve hot.

PS: I know this is terrible, but seriously, my brain is fried. Need weekend. Now.

Aawww!

I don't like dogs or cats, but these, I could so adopt as pets. After reading 20 pages of Wodehouse followed by this cutesy article, I feel brimful of sweetness and light. Bring it on experiments. Lets see what you can do to destroy my spirit this day!

Now...why'd she have to go and say that?

I was seriously contemplating watching La Vi En Rose. Mainly because I was intrigued by the tiny clipping they showed during the Academy Awards, and because Marion Cotillard cried with such artlessness during her acceptance speech. I was even willing to forgive the scaly mermaid dress. (It was way better than Kidman's vulgar display of diamonds!) But then I read this. Now, when I watch the movie I'll keep thinking she's crazy in real life too. How hard can it be for her to portray troubled? Aaarghh!

Moral of the story: Ignorance is bliss. I should stop reading the Drudge Report.

Since you can't escape the weather..

You'd much rather enjoy it. And thats what we decided to do this morning after being hit by 7 inches of snow overnight. So...its my 3rd winter here, and I'd never actually built a snowman. So, we got the carrots, muffler, cap , and shovel and decided to build one.

Discoveries made:

1). Its hard work. The layers started coming off pretty quick.

2). Its not easy. Our snowman looked rather misshapen. Like he had an inordinately large bottom.

3). Plums do not eyes make.

4). Snowfights are insane fun.

5). My landlord is really the nicest guy. For providing him with all the free entertainment, he took us to lunch. Free food. Yay!

6). We ate lunch with his sister and her electrician (for sure)/boyfriend (mere speculation) . He informed us that our snowman looked oddly shaped because you're supposed to roll the snow while making it. Damn...I should've read this before I ventured into the snowman building business.

7). Thank God we didn't go with my initial suggestion and build a snow-woman! My roommate has her uses.

Here is the final result:

I call him Earl. After Earl the electrician...my go-to guy for future projects involving snowmen. Plus, Earl fixed our heating 3 months ago, so he deserves the honor.