cervelle

the commute

2010-09-23T11:14:00.003-04:00

i've been listening to a new podcast that makes my commute to satellite campus feel remarkably short. i love the production on this show. the sound collage, the piecing together of words. the rhythm keeps me engaged, rather than drifting off into thought.

radiolab, from WNYC and NPR

protection

2010-09-21T10:30:00.002-04:00

having just read this book, having just listened to the most recent episode of this very favourite podcast, a story from the author Joyce Maynard. the theme of love for and protection of children, the jumble between the two.

photo taken earlier this year in a late-afternoon playground.

end of summer

2010-09-20T23:29:00.004-04:00

this weekend i ate the last of the strawberries i'd frozen for winter. they never last long.

at least there is still jam.

ow my most of me

2009-11-14T14:50:00.004-05:00

so, earlier this summer i started rock climbing. this is not an activity that i would normally list on the "top 50 things to do in my life" roster, but one of my roommates was looking for a new climbing partner and she managed to convince me that there's nothing like the jolt of adrenaline when you fall off the wall 30 feet in the air (safely secured in your harness of course) to take your mind off things.

i comment on this now because i returned to the climbing gym on thursday after a 2 month hiatus. and man, i am aggressively reminded that this hanging on to tiny little protrusions from a tall vertical surface? this stuff takes muscles that i've never used before in my life. and being a dancer, i feel i can claim use of most of the muscles in my body.

allow me to borrow an image off the internet to elaborate.

(thank you http://www.andrewdiec.com/Anatomy/)

mmmmm finger pain.

but seriously, i do enjoy this climbing stuff. it has provided a situation in which i am repeatedly reminded of the fact that i can fail. and i do fail so often, in the sense of missing a hold and falling off the wall into my harness, that failing becomes not so frightening, not so alarming, not so bothersome. it's just inherent to the activity.

similarly, it's helped me get used to taking risks, since i know that my kind friendly climbing partner is sitting at the bottom of the course keeping my belay rope tight, watching to see whether i've had too much and need to be let down. attempting to propel my body weight up and to the right at a 45 degree angle in order to get the tips of my fingers around a shard of plastic becomes less scary. the outcomes are known. i will get it, or i will have to try again.

it's nice to remember this feeling back on the ground, when faced with more abstract decisions.

two windows

2009-11-10T10:27:00.003-05:00

wow. it's been a while.

life since i last wrote is pretty much equivalent. still in grad school, though now a year closer to getting that Ph.D. and very much more looking forward to it. still in the same apartment.

here is the view from my dining room table, where i sit and check my email before going into the lab. the email checking has been somewhat prolonged today, mainly because it is so nice and quiet and serene looking out at the rusty golden leaves. the coffee here doesn't hurt either.

miss you all and think of you often.

service of magnets

2008-11-23T16:31:00.003-05:00

i'm sitting working on my laptop in the kitchen, and i realized that when 3 grad students share an apartment, there is a shift in priorities of what to display on the refrigerator door. to wit:

- print out from farmer's market with recipes using sweet potatoes
- clipped column from the Globe with a response letter from roommate's boyfriend
- discount card from Canadian Tire
- business card from neighbourhood coffee place
- list of cooking times for grains and legumes
- postcard from Guinness brewery
- handwoven doll magnet from Guatemala
- poem written during recent game of Cranium
- publicity magnets from 2 scientific societies
- whiteboard with list of communal groceries needed
- pictures of 1 roommate's brain scanned by other roommate for pilot study

studs

2008-11-12T01:05:00.003-05:00

discovered a generous online archive of studs terkel today:

Conversations with America

i think i now understand what it means to be interviewed.

history ?

2008-11-04T12:11:00.003-05:00

for just this one day, i wish i could be american.

please, america, don't be stupid.

endurance babysitting

2008-10-22T23:43:00.002-04:00

this weekend i got an email from my supervisor asking me if i could spend tonight at her house, hanging out with her two daughters while she and her husband went to a show. i'm all about babysitting. i can tell stories about princesses and oversized vegetables. i can feed 1-year old twins lunch while keeping a 4-year old entertained with a pipe cleaner. since i am not yet a mom, and don't plan on being one for some time yet, babysitting reminds me of the lengths that any person or creature would go to in order to make their offspring smile, giggle, be warm, be safe, and fall asleep soundly.

that is: the lengths which include standing, holding, and rocking a 16-month old for about two hours. my arms are so tired that i can hardly type, and i can't begin to imagine how tired they would be if i was doing this every single day, but the fact is that in the moment, swaying that little curly-haired girl back and forth while lightly bouncing around the house on my tiptoes was keeping her happy and magically enabling her to fall asleep against my shoulder. and in the moment, that was all that really mattered.

unfortunately, 5-year old sister thought this was pretty boring. but that's a lesson of parenting i'm not prepared to tackle this evening.

écoute ceux-çi

2008-10-16T13:07:00.002-04:00

in addition to david rakoff audiobooks, i've got some new tunes spinning. am totally pumped by these three albums at the moment.

1. the ting tings - we started nothing
2. yelle - pop up de luxe
3. amy winehouse - back to black

i admit that i was skeptical about amy winehouse until last night, since i'd only heard 'rehab' 5 bagillion times and was entirely sick of her, but have you listened to the whole album? freakin' amazin'! my labmate was blasting it in the car on the way home from the lab at a very early hour of the morning, and it changed my world.

my rakoff connection

2008-10-15T01:07:00.008-04:00

when i find myself in the middle of a phase of much menial lab work, such as right now, i tend to also find myself in the middle of a phase of searching for new, brain-stimulating things to listen to while slicing brains, doing histology, tracing neurons, etc. so, last night i was poking around on iTunes looking for new podcasts, and came out with a very yummy david rakoff audiobook. suddenly brain slicing becomes not a torment, but hours of much-anticipated fun!

i should disclose that i feel a particular affinity for mr. rakoff because of his origins. it happens that his father, dr. vivian rakoff, is professor emeritus of psychiatry at u of t and was head of the clarke institute (former incarnation of the centre for addiction and mental health - camh) in toronto, which happens to be where i did my master's. because vivian rakoff was important around the camh, the lab where i worked for those years was NAMED after him. as in, The Vivian Rakoff Mood Disorders Laboratory. and, this one time, he happened to wander into our lab meeting, and i was like "you're THE vivian rakoff??" and did the celebrity jaw-drop thing.

needless to say, i think david rakoff is pretty cool by association. if you don't already listen to this american life, this is one of my favourites of his.

my thanksgiving

2008-10-14T01:32:00.010-04:00

after spending a lot of september with friends, and taking a trip home to ottawa last week, i opted for a quiet weekend with some work and some media consumption. thought about making something thanksgiving-ey for dinner today, but the water supply to our kitchen tap abruptly cut out last night while i was doing my dishes. random dysfunction of kitchen appliances/utilities seems to have become a holiday tradition, as i remember the power going down on our section of the street last year just as i wanted to prepare my smoked turkey and wild rice with cranberries.

by consequence, i am thankful for my favourite thai delivery place.

this weekend i saw this company perform, read this book, and watched the final season of this show.

the oldest ones

2008-10-06T15:28:00.005-04:00

very thankful that two weddings created an excuse to reunite with the 6 non-family people who have known me the longest. the past month has been a happy reminder of why i became friends with them all in the first place, and how well each of us are doing at finding our ways.

this photo was taken about 6 years ago:

and here are the other two of us, just last week:

love you all.

effective

2008-08-29T00:08:00.002-04:00

what have i been up to since the beginning of may?

this:

ah yes. this is a beautiful thing.

golden boys

2008-08-26T07:35:00.003-04:00

my roommate started a very ambitious-looking garden when we moved in 4 months ago. in the past weeks, we've had an endless supply of these sweet little things for our breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. or, sometimes for our into mouth-popping, juicy burst of summer-feeling.

this whole growing food thing? i like!

similes

2008-08-23T23:16:00.003-04:00

Two favourite comparisons drawn in books recently read.

The next morning I left the city in one of the blue vans that constantly circulate its streets, taking people to the airport like cells that remove free radicals from the blood.

from Grief, by Andrew Holleran (p. 150)

Hologram Boy saw God as more human than human, moving among subhuman beings like the weekly celebrity among the Muppets on The Muppet Show.

from The Accidental, by Ali Smith (p. 40)

new doors

2008-06-04T17:17:00.003-04:00

all from my new apartment.

doc decadence

2008-04-28T01:25:00.002-04:00

for the past week, my favourite of the many many toronto film festivals has been going on. hotdocs - all documentaries for 10 full days. luckily, the festival coincided with me being finished courses and having a flexible pre-summer-experiment schedule, and i managed to make it to 13 screenings. it was hard not to keep going, when every show before 6:00 pm is free for students, and when you show up for evening screenings and nice people happen to offer you their extra industry tickets out of the kindness of their movie-loving hearts.

figs

2008-04-23T17:24:00.005-04:00

winter is over, summer is here, i'm feeling like keeping my hands busy in the kitchen.

these are delicious for dessert. sliced in half, drizzled with balsamic vinegar, roasted very briefly in a medium oven, eaten in one bite with a tiny spoonful of milanese vanilla gelato.

poor them, the taste-blind

2008-04-23T16:51:00.004-04:00

after reading ruth reichl's 3 books of memoirs in a blink, i was trying to decide which food author to devote myself to next. should i pick the politically-conscious, eco-minded michael pollan, who i abandoned a couple of years ago because it felt a bit too much like reading science, or should i opt for something a little more pithy, a little more romantic. seemed the right time to make my way through m.f.k. fisher's body of work (spanning 1930 through 1978). should keep me busy for a while. at least through the summer.

for those not familiar, m.f.k. fisher is 'la grande dame' of food writing. lover of good foods, good wines, good conversation, and great men. ruth reichl describes meeting her in the second of her books (Comfort Me With Apples), and it sounds as though she kept these passions alive well into her later days.

here's my favourite snippet so far, from fisher's essay Pity the Blind in Palate:

Almost all people are born unconscious of the nuances of flavour. Many die so. Some of these unfortunates are physically deformed, and remain all their lives as truly taste-blind as their brother sufferers are blind to colour. Others never taste because they are stupid, or, more often, because they have never been taught to search for differentiations of flavour.

They like hot coffee, a fried steak with plenty of salt and pepper and meat sauce upon it, a piece of apple pie and a chunk of cheese. They like the feeling of a full stomach. They resemble those myriad souls who say, "I don't know anything about music, but I love a good rousing military band."

think i've stumbled upon the margaret atwood of food writing. hallelujah!

this particular essay is one of twenty-five included in Serve It Forth, 1937.

daily dose

2008-04-04T22:14:00.003-04:00

in the spirit of frequent posting, another look through the microscope:

pyramidal neurons in the rat somatosensory cortex.

neuron-gazing

2008-04-02T17:39:00.003-04:00

oops, there went two months.

...

it's been a bit of a course work frenzy, all stats assignments and reaction papers and readings and seminars. but i will be finished all (save 1/2 a credit) of my PhD course requirements in exactly one week! this is undeniably exciting, as it means i can go back to doing actual research on a full time basis. which is, you know, what grad students are supposed to do.

i guess there are a few exciting things that have happened since february 4th. i found a new apartment into which i will be moving with 2 grad student friends at the beginning of may. it is the most beautiful apartment i have ever seen in toronto, almost as beautiful as some of the apartments i've seen in montreal. very cute old little walk-up, well-kept, new track lighting on ceilings, little glass-doored cabinets in pantry area between dining room and kitchen, front balcony, wood-burning fireplace. i could go on. counting down the days til move-in, as i sit here listening to the house mouse scurry around in the ceiling over my desk.

second excitement is that an undergrad student from my neuroanatomy lab in the fall has secured herself some funding to come and do research with me this summer. reasons for my excitement include: (1) my first experiences with research took place around the same time of my undergrad under the guidance of some very enthusiastic and fun grad students, and i am looking forward to picking up the supervisory torch, (2) one of my favourite parts of doing scientific research is sharing the process with other students, and hopefully getting them excited about spending hours in front of a microscope, and (3) i was not in a position to supervise undergrad students in my previous lab, since the departments with which i was affiliated didn't offer any undergrad programs. and i guess, admittedly, (4) it will be nice to have someone around to help out with all the menial day-to-day tasks that comprise the types of experiments that i do. i am interested to see how i evolve as a teacher and mentor in my first *official* supervisory role. will update on this as it happens.

for now, i will go back to writing the first of two term papers, while occasionally glancing out the window at the for-now-still bare trees behind the houses across the street. since i started studying neuronal morphology in earnest (think back to that trip to india), i can't look at bare branches without automatically tracing them out in my mind like this:

a little beaver

2008-02-04T23:16:00.002-05:00

i don't think i would be possible to have more things that need to get done this week. i'm reminded of my last couple of years in halifax, when i was managing to work several jobs, take courses, and do research. but it is all happy work. and there is always time to stop, breathe, and read a little about sartre and beauvoir's relationship:

The underlying existentialist philosophy of Beauvoir's memoirs -- it was also the underlying philosophy of her relationship with Sartre -- is that it is "bad faith" to look to another, whether a human being or a god, for a sense of salvation. As individuals we are free, and we act in "bad faith" when we try to avoid our freedom. It is not easy, freedom. It brings with it the anguish of choice. It comes with the burden of responsibility.

From Tête-à-Tête: The tumultuous lives and loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre
by Hazel Rowley

and a yummy new sweater.

2008-01-29T21:06:00.000-05:00

every time i've moved to a new city, i am reminded of how difficult it can be to make new friends. friends of the sort that you'll want to keep around forever.

i had a lunch date today with two of my fellow psych grad students, both of whom i had a class with last semester. then i ended up in one of those afternoons where you wander around and window-shop and chat, and forget to even think of looking at your watch, and all of a sudden it's past dinner time. oops! seems i have managed to find a few more precious and wonderful like-minded lady friends.

friday afternoon

2008-01-25T15:18:00.000-05:00

calculating expected cell frequencies by hand, on the 12th floor of robarts library.

(i.e. reading blogs and intending to work on my stats assignment)

competing perspectives

2008-01-24T22:05:00.000-05:00

i am reading a deliciously well-written book about the brain right now. i first really took note of Jeff Hawkins when he lectured at the Congregation of All Neuroscientists in san diego this past fall. at the conference, he discussed the framework outlined in On Intelligence, which I impulse-bought a couple of weeks ago when picking up the text for my research ethics course. in his prologue, he raises several excellent points. among them:

... I refused to study the problem of intelligence as others have before me. I believe the best way to solve this problem is to use the detailed biology of the brain as a constraint and as a guide, yet think about intelligence as a computational problem--a position somewhere between biology and computer science. Many biologists tend to reject or ignore the idea of thinking of the brain in computational terms, and computer scientists often don't believe they have anything to learn from biology.

setting up camp on the fringes between disciplines has always appealed to me. serving as a bridge. a hybrid.

yikes

2008-01-23T23:00:00.000-05:00

i just came across mention of the company 23andMe on blogTO. if you don't mind swabbing your cheek for a little skin and saliva, they will sequence your genome for the not unreasonable price of $999 USD. so, you can now spend money to figure out whether you have certain versions of certain genes, and whether these certain versions of the genes predispose you to developing certain disorders, cancers, or colours of hair.

interesting. despite my initial shock and trepidation, i can see this pushing the envelope a little further for personalized medicine. once people realize that they can gain access to their genome, the medical community will need to read up and take this information into account when diagnosing and treating.

in the mean time, i'll be interested to hear about the sorts of people who seek out this information just for the sake of it. bring on the genetic interpretation blogs and wikis!

also

2008-01-22T17:04:00.000-05:00

percy says hi.

fresh life

2008-01-22T16:36:00.000-05:00

basking in the glow of that 100th post was so delightful that i had to keep on doing it for 5 months. i mean, the Roundness of that number is supremely satisfying. now i will have to quickly work my way up to 200. or 1000.

so... for any loyal family members who still have an honorary slot for me on their blogroll, i am back. i'm no longer in vancouver, but rather sitting in one of my favourite toronto starbucks, in the most hidden corner, watching the snow pound down on the roof of the U of T bookstore. i don't come to this starbucks very much anymore, now that i'm working out of a lab at the scarborough campus. i was thinking earlier this afternoon that i've been coming to this starbucks for almost 4 years. i remember writing the manuscript containing my honours thesis data here in the fall of 2004, sitting across from my (now ex-) boyfriend [ed. note: that paper was subsequently published in april 2006]. i have read textbooks and journal articles here for 4 different courses. i've had coffee with at least 8 of my friends and colleagues. i've had a few moments of inspiration, each of which spurred a jog back down the street to my former lab. i wrote several sections of my Master's thesis here. i attempted to put together the first and second incarnations of a manuscript describing my Master's data here. neither of those were completed, but the third version of this paper was recently submitted [and, unfortunately, rejected on the first round]. i think that i've actually sat at each and every table here, at various points in time.

it's kind of too bad that i've done all of these things in this starbucks and not in an independently owned establishment. i've recently started frequenting a Much Cooler, Independent, Fair-Trade Serving Coffee Place in a different neighbourhood. they serve you coffee at your table, bring you glasses of water without your having to ask, and have shelves full of books lining the walls instead of vaguely ugly wallpaper sent from corporate offices in the states. i like the new coffee place a lot. in fact, i would say that it is my new toronto-location crush. i feel that i shouldn't go there too often, for fear that we might tire of each other early in the relationship. i'm restricting myself to one afternoon a week. perhaps in another four years i'll write a similar post and talk about the inspirations i had and papers i finished while sitting at the little table in the back with the wobbly chair. i'm looking forward to getting to know Much Cooler Coffee Place over the course of my PhD.

yes, i'm well into my PhD in my new lab with my new supervisor in the new department. it has made me so happy to return to a more traditional academic environment, in which all of the grad students regularly convene at seminars and colloquia. i've TA'd for the first time in 3 years, and managed to inspire a couple of undergrads to apply to come and work with me on my science. i took a course about food. i danced in a show. i love my new PhD life here, but appreciate the old Master's one now that it's over.

centennial

2007-08-08T02:02:00.000-04:00

happy 100th post to me!

sun coming through the trees in stanley park:

photos: rainy day walk

2007-07-23T00:16:00.000-04:00

after 7 days of rain, verging on stir-crazy, i finally donned my MEC rain anorak and went for a long walk around my neighbourhood. here are some photos i caught before the batteries in my camera died. i am in awe of the trees and greens that line each of the streets in this part of town. it is definitely a gardener's paradise, but you would have to get used to gardening with a rain suit on (which i noticed a few people were doing today).

this last shot was taken looking north at king edward ave and quesnel dr. the dramatic slope just north of king edward makes for an incredible view! i'm sure the value of the houses along this stretch reflects this...

photos: the lab

2007-07-22T23:52:00.000-04:00

i have been promising photos for a while now, but unfortunately it's been raining since monday... so i haven't been outside exploring very much. instead, i decided to play around with my camera at work one night. the part of the hospital in which our lab is situated has a very distinct 70's-drab aesthetic, but there are a few design touches that i appreciate.

looking down the hallway by the entrance to our lab.

autumnal mural painted next to the washroom on our floor. this strikes me as odd. wouldn't you want spring-time imagery in a place that offers healing?

my desk, in our office.

semi-unpacked bench space in the lab.

storage in the lab. as my supervisor put it, "a mondrian look".

glassware hanging to dry.

surprisingly nice tile in the washroom. i love these!

into week 3

2007-07-18T03:40:00.000-04:00

can't believe i've been here for three weeks already. after a very slow first weekend spent lounging on the beach, life got busy again and sped past. i've also started to get a feel for the city, so am enjoying getting out exploring when i'm not at work. this past week i managed to get to a couple of dance shows at the Dancing on the Edge festival. both were thought-provoking and beautiful, but for very different reasons. i plan on writing about them, but am feeling a little drained of words after working on a paper for the past 36 hours.

this week i am excited to meet up with a very treasured old friend who was a coordinator at the summer program i attended the last time i was in vancouver for an extended period of time (summer '99). he is now a professor at the university of windsor back in ontario, but in a lucky twist is here coordinating the same summer program at UBC right now! we are meeting at my favourite lunch spot on campus tomorrow. i can't wait to see him.

hoping to get that paper off to collaborators to read by friday, so that i don't have to bring my laptop while i'm away this weekend in tofino. somehow i was lucky enough to be here at the same time that a good friend had a trip planned with her girlfriends, so i will be heading to the pacific side of vancouver island with them. unfortunately, it looks like it's supposed to rain from now through monday. hoping they're wrong on that prediction.

kitsilano farmers' market

2007-07-18T03:31:00.001-04:00

figured out that this past sunday was the first convening of the farmers' market in kitsilano, up around 10th and larch. went to check it out, and came away with delicious okanagan berries. also a selection of wild mushrooms and some bunches of baby bok choy, but unfortunately i ate those tonight before i remembered to snap a photo. will post more on the mushrooms once i get to the market again, but i need to write down their names so that i don't forget what kinds they were. that's right.. even i hadn't heard of them!

the old train station

2007-07-18T03:24:00.000-04:00

went for a walk around gastown last friday night, and ended up in front of the old CPR railway station on west cordova street. it was a beautiful golden evening.

95 cents

2007-07-10T03:17:00.000-04:00

to a USD. incredible. hoping the economy will hold out for my US conference in november.

things move slowly

2007-07-10T03:08:00.001-04:00

today i scored a chair for my office! mind you, it's a loaner until our research account is set up so that we can order our own chairs. at least now i can sit in front of my laptop and imagine that i'm on the internet. access to the UBC wireless network MAY come tomorrow. fingers crossed. then i could actually do work at work!

toronto subway

2007-07-07T15:00:00.000-04:00

Photo by Craig James White from the set Toronto's TTC Stations.

despite being on the west coast, i am still following my toronto blogs (here and here). yesterday, the torontoist had a piece on the controversial decision to edit much of the signage used in subway stations around the city. although i am all for updating and refreshing where updating and refreshing are due, i have to agree with the author and with accessibility expert Joe Clark. the subway has been integral to my experience in toronto as a frequent visitor throughout my childhood and teenagedom, and as a resident for the past 3 years. i remember memorizing the station sequence heading southbound from Finch (where we typically stayed with my granny or grandpa) around the loop to the University line, reciting the station names in my head based on the first rush of coloured tiles as we pulled in. Lawrence was a deep orangey-brown, Eglinton was grey. Rosedale's identity was conveyed in bright canary yellow on a broad sweep of tiny diamond-shaped khaki green tiles. i liked Wellesley in turquoise, and the mosaic patterns of St. Andrew and Osgoode. but across every station, the bold subway typeface was familiar and authoritative. frankly, i would be devastated if they went through and changed all of the signage to match the comparatively dull black-on-concrete look of the newer Sheppard line.

the torontoist story linked out to some great TTC-related items. at spacing, you can purchase pins portraying each and every subway station. and, Craig James White has a beautiful TTC flickr photo set. these pictures make me want to be back in toronto riding the subway. my personal favourite shots are of Arlene Stamp's tile designs at Downsview station, and of the stunning tile artwork by James Sutherland at Dupont station. i am particularly sentimental about the latter, since Dupont was my home station for the past three years. how can you not feel deco glamorous when walking up a stairwell like this or down the main corridor that looks like this? i would recommend checking out the entire photo set. there are some hidden gems in those stations under the ground!

overdue again

2007-07-05T02:22:00.001-04:00

since that night of celebrating the over-ness of my defense, i have not done a single ounce of work. well.. that's not entirely true. i finished off an experiment that i had going during the 2 weeks prior to my defense. then i pulled together a presentation for a conference in banff that i attended a couple of weekends ago, and engaged in some academic discussion at said conference. and if you count packing and moving the lab to vancouver, i've done a bit of that too. but apart from these few things, i have unabashedly engaged in a strict regimen of fun, sun, and trashy fashion fiction. i realized today that it's july the 4th (happy independence day americans who i like!) and nearly a month since finishing.. and i started to feel a bit ick for having avoided my papers that need to get written (count: 2) and my grants that need to get submitted by september/october (count: 3). hopefully the ick will translate to a bit of grindstone-meets-nose, but i have to confess that it is hard to pick up a stack of journal articles after wiling away the past weeks with such gems as everyone worth knowing and bergdorf blondes. my brain may have pruned up a little while reading about alligator birkin bags and champagne cocktails at cipriani's.

oh well. sometimes self-indulgence is important.

right now i'm sitting at a desk that does not belong to me in a subletted room in vancouver. i arrived on the west coast exactly a week ago, and was staying at a friend's place near kitsilano beach until yesterday. after a bit of a hassle from air canada, i was able to get percy sent out here by live animal cargo; he joined me last night. he was doing great with the new house and the extreme laid-backedness embodied by all pacific coasters. then our third subletter roommate arrived with her enormous 1-year old huskie mix puppy. if a cat's jaw could drop, i think percy's would have. needless to say, we will be engineering a slow introduction of giant mutt to tiny kitty.

apart from socializing domestic animals, i'll spend the rest of the summer writing the aforementioned papers and grants. i also might do a little bit of data collection, if we manage to unpack the equipment and slides that i need anytime soon. to provide a bit of context, for anyone who is not already up-to-date on my life, my master's supervisor decided to leave U of T last fall to accept a position at UBC. after wrapping up all of my MSc experiments, and allowing the other grad students to transfer to new labs or finish, we packed up and brought the lab out here for him. i've decided to return to toronto in the fall to start fresh on my PhD with a new supervisor, but agreed to spend july and august out here on MSc supervisor's dime. it is not a bad set-up. i get to taste vancouver living during the most beautiful part of summer, avoid toronto humidity and smog, and sort of relax before joining my new lab and embarking on the next five years of studies. so far, i am enjoying myself. i have a good friend here who i met in the lab at dalhousie, and she has introduced me to her group of grad student and other friends. i also know a few other random people who i will hopefully get to connect with once or twice. i've also met up with an old good friend from grades 7/8 who i found on facebook this past weekend. oh what would we do when moving to new cities without the internet... i am entirely dependent on the BC translink bus system web site, Googlemaps, and facebook for daily function here.

the views are beautiful (try breathtaking mountains as you coast down the hill to work in the morning), everyone walks about 10 times slower, and the air smells like flowers, cut grass, and open water. the sushi is delicious, and 40% off after 7 pm (freshness guarantee). the beach is never far away. but still, i miss my dirty, noisy, stinking-hot toronto with its crowded streetcars and bad drivers. i miss living in my new house on a street that never quite falls asleep. i take this all as a sign that i've finally found home again. despite two - almost three - years of struggling to find my place at U of T and in the city, i feel like i will belong there for my PhD. can't wait to get started all over again.

la petite cervelle, B.Sc. M.Sc.

2007-06-08T01:33:00.000-04:00

the defense? it all worked out.

now to the important bits! celebrated with a pint of my favourite yummy Caledonian 80/- and a half-pint of the very tasty Delirium Tremens, which comes in the cutest glass i've ever seen (those are tiny pink elephants). since all i had for breakfast and lunch beforehand was 2 cups of coffee and a breakfast muslix pita with peanut butter, i supplemented the perfect beers with an elegant oval of mushroom and blue cheese pizza. beer and pizza in this master-ful style was provided by beerbistro.

knowing me, the festivities didn't end there. a couple of hours later, i had a small group of friends join me for dinner at The Rosebud, my favourite Toronto restaurant. highlights were an heirloom tomato and watermelon gazpacho riddled with tender grilled shrimp, and a praline semifreddo with perfectly bitter mocha mousse for dessert. mmmmmmmm.

with the adrenaline from the morning's nerves and early afternoon defending, the landmark of adding a few more letters after my name, the good feedback from my committee and examiners, the company of my colleagues and friends, and the yumminess of drinks and dinner, i would say it was close to the best day ever. sitting between courses at dinner, i think i said that it felt as though it was my wedding day, but i was getting married to myself. i can't imagine what it will feel like when i get the Ph.D. pulled together... in the mean time, yay for me.

that's better

2007-06-06T08:50:00.000-04:00

the sun came out for my big day. 4 hours to go...

so close

2007-06-05T11:37:00.000-04:00

my master's defense is tomorrow at 1:00 pm. just sitting at my desk right now going through my slides. one of the great things about my new place is that said desk is positioned in front of a huge window. natural light! also, a bit of a view (though somewhat of a dreary gray one today):

peeking out in the back you can see Mies van der Rohe's TD Centre (dark buildings), with a more blatant Toronto landmark way over to the right. i also just realized you can see the cement monstrosity that is my current workplace between the TD Centre and CN tower. huh.

wish me luck!

status update III

2007-05-29T23:42:00.000-04:00

more than a month later, the thesis is written, submitted to my department, and waiting to be defended. i will take care of this minor detail next wednesday - a week from tomorrow. when asked if i am ready to tackle the defending i would answer yes. being a master's thesis, i don't feel the overwhelming reality that i am becoming an *official* expert on my topic. rather, i'm just going to be presenting my work to a bunch of professors who have read about it, explaining why i spent 3 years doing the work, and then acknowledging that there are some things i could have done differently although i ultimately made good choices in designing the experiments. i need to finish making the slides for my defence presentation tomorrow.

since all of this thesis business went down, i have been otherwise occupied with packing up my apartment and relocating. for the past 3 years i've lived in the basement of a wonderful family i know through connections i made as an RA in my undergrad. i loved this basement apartment for its exposed brick walls, its little gas fireplace, its personal sauna in the bathroom, and its muted avocado green walls, but i can only handle 3 years of living under the ground. to rectify this situation, i moved to the third floor of a house last weekend. i am now unpacked enough to get dressed everyday, and have most of my furniture reassembled. percy seems to enjoy soliciting cuddles from the roommates, and has sorted out his 5 favourite nap spots. overall, i'm thrilled to be waking up to sunlight spilling through my massive north-facing window.

i have spent the past couple of days in ottawa, catching up with my parents, brother, and a best friend who is briefly home from the other side of the planet. tomorrow i'll be back to my new house in toronto and initiating the quick countdown to becoming a master of science... will be around more from now on.

status update II

2007-04-18T23:08:00.000-04:00

two weeks later - still working on my thesis. have been interrupted by other school related things (i.e. submitting data to present at that conference in june, preparing a poster to present this friday, helping in lab with a random experiment) and life related things (i.e. celebrating my 25th birthday, visiting with mom, finding a new apartment).

i'm a little bit tired of writing.

status update

2007-04-04T23:33:00.000-04:00

lately, it seems like every journal article or book that i pick up is saying something uncannily relevant to my life at that exact moment. this helps a lot with thesis writing, and also provides amusement. from small world by david lodge:

when april with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of march to the root, and bathed every vein of earth with that liquid by whose power the flowers are engendered; when the zephyr, too, with its dulcet breath, has breathed life into the tender new shoots in every copse and on every heath, and the young sun has run half his course in the sign of the ram, and the little birds that sleep all night with their eyes open give song (so nature prompts them in their hearts), then, as the poet geoffrey chaucer observed many years ago, folk long to go on pilgrimages. only, these days, professional people call them conferences.

since last week when i found some very happy results for the second experiment of my thesis (as evoked by rainbow photo of rat brain section in post below), my supervisor has agreed we should submit the data to an upcoming conference. while i thought i'd go conference-less this summer (having opted out of a meeting in brazil, figuring i would be caught up in my MSc defense at approximately the same time), it seems i'll get to do a tiny bit of travel, present some exciting results, and see some of my favourite people on the second weekend of june.

also since last week, i've come up with some equally happy results for the third and FINAL experiment of my thesis. i was excited about said results this afternoon, when i made it through the data analysis. now i'm just tired. before i fall asleep, i'll remind myself that i don't have to trace any more beautiful neurons for at least a few weeks.

to bed - i have a thesis to write tomorrow.

the good part

2007-03-25T20:24:00.000-04:00

i finished collecting the data from another of my ongoing experiments this past week. amazingly, the results agree with my previous data and support my thesis. there are really no words to describe the feeling of being the first to find something out.

lately, in lieu of collecting data

2007-03-21T23:30:00.000-04:00

i went on an ordering spree at the public library, and ended up with a stack of five non-academic books to read.

1. notes on a scandal - zoë heller
2. passionate spectator - eric kraft
3. memoir of the hawk: poems - james tate [brilliant and hilarious!]
4. the spirit catches you and you fall down - anne fadiman
5. small world: an academic romance - david lodge

i also baked. back in the fall, when i was working on grant proposals, i baked like a fiend. this time it's not quite as extensive; i just made one batch of chocolate chip cookies. these are also excusable, because they're going to work tomorrow as a thank you to another lab who lent a hand with one of my thesis experiments. the fiendish muffins in the fall, however, were entirely about procrastination. in the spirit of procrastination, let me spend a few minutes posting my favourite muffin recipe.

Sarah's Oatmeal Berry Muffins
3/4 c light spelt flour
3/4 c whole wheat flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 c rolled oats (can be quick-cooking or regular)
1/2 c tightly packed brown sugar
1 c fresh or frozen cranberries or blueberries
1 c skim milk
3 Tbsp melted butter
1 large egg, lightly beaten

preheat oven to 400 degrees F. prepare a 12-muffin tin with paper liners.

in a large bowl, sift together the flours, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg. stir in oats and brown sugar. in a separate bowl, beat the milk, melted butter, and egg together lightly. add to dry ingredients and stir just until blended (about 20 strokes). quickly stir in berries with 1 or 2 strokes (minimizing stirring keeps muffins fluffy - ra ra kitchen science).

spoon batter into tin, dividing equally among the 12 cups. bake for 20 to 25 mins (may take a few minutes longer if you used frozen berries).

EVERYONE eats muffins!

after 3 years in grad school

2007-03-18T18:11:00.000-04:00

-it is important to set aside the occasional afternoon to read and think.

-the majority of my used hard drive gigs are devoted to data, not music.

-time becomes relative. without the structure of semesters and courses, months and weeks are qualified based on their distance from the next goal. 2 days until next class meeting. 1 week until abstracts are due for a conference. 15 days until committee members need my thesis. 1 month until a mini-vacation.

-still have difficulty deciding how to describe where i wake up and go, and then spend my days and evenings. as in, "i go to work" versus "i go to school". even when i eventually finish my PhD, and a post-doctoral research stint, and hopefully land an academic job, would i be coming home from 'work' or 'school'? technically, a university is a school. but technically, i receive money that supports what i do at the university. i'm continuously learning, so it feels like school. it doesn't usually feel like work. amazingly, i have stumbled on the opposite of a job. i am in science. i am in life.

-journal articles are useful as coasters and placemats.

on blogging

2007-03-18T13:51:00.000-04:00

one of my cousins (hi spoons!) recently created a blog, and contemplated whether time creating a virtual conversation is wasted or productive.

the blogs i read fall into 3 general categories: (1) people i know, (2) people whose writing i enjoy, and (3) people who discuss issues i care about (i.e. mostly issues of sciencey relevance). fortunately, there is plenty of overlap among these 3 categories. this morning, one of my category 2 blogs published a post that illustrates why i love the internet so much. when we find ourselves in situations that our immediate circles of family and friends don't necessarily identify with, such as in raising a child with an autistic spectrum disorder, creating a virtual conversation reminds us that we aren't the only ones touched by these issues.

it also allows us to hear the voices of friends and family members who are spread all over the world. to me, that is 100% productive.

in which birthdays are discussed

2007-03-07T23:43:00.000-05:00

last week i was so busy finishing a grant submission and packing for a weekend trip to vancouver that i had no time to celebrate percy's first birthday. i don't think he noticed. i should specify that feb 28, 2006 was his true birthday. he came to live with me on april 8 last year, 2 days before MY birthday.

here is percy being 1 month old:

about 6 months, gazing longingly at the world outside:

full-blown adolescent mirth, wishing i would put down the camera [eye roll]:

and finally, compliance with my wishes for a 1st birthday candid:

collingwood weekend

2007-02-24T23:11:00.000-05:00

this weekend i was treated to an escape from toronto courtesy of my landlords. they had been encouraging me to join them at their house in collingwood for the past few weeks, and the timing appeared to be right for this particular saturday/sunday. the only condition was full internet access, as i have been going back and forth with my supervisor on final details for his grant proposal that is due next wednesday. fortunately, the internet was not a problem, and i have fully enjoyed my relaxing winter saturday away from the city. i started by waking up naturally with the sun at 8:00 am (something not often possible in my basement apartment), then enjoyed a freshly baked muffin and coffee for breakfast. took a leisurely shower after reading the entire globe & mail. worked on aforementioned grant for a couple of hours and paused for lunch. then, i snowshoed up the escarpment and around a loop of the bruce trail with my landlord, which took about 2 hours. great cardio (!) and so peaceful in the ravines. i thought about taking my camera, but didn't want to spoil the serenity of the run by stopping to take snaps. so unfortunately, no photos for all of you. the view from the top was incredible though - at one point you can see georgian bay out between two of the ski hills. after the very quick trip down the escarpment, i took a 30 minute soak in the outdoor hot tub. outdoor hot tubs are SO underrated. after another shower and another hour of work i helped assemble a few parts of dinner, and spent the evening with friends of the landlords. i think tomorrow i will try for another snowshoe run up the hills, justifying another hot tub soak. then i should get back to the city and back to reality. not for long though, as i'm headed for vancouver on thursday morning!

that's all. snowshoes plus hot tub soak plus wine equals sleepy.

sub-zero neuron tracing

2007-02-13T15:12:00.000-05:00

it is cold in toronto. i'm not complaining, but merely informing you that it hurts to be outside right now. of course, this snap has timed itself perfectly for the one month in which i need to spend more time than usual walking around out of doors. i'm in the last stretch of an experiment that i started back in november, and this particular phase involves using a microscope located at the Toronto Western Hospital. my lab is at a different hospital, about a 12 minute walk from where the microscope is. unfortunately, those 12 minutes are not in the direction of my house, but further away from my house. this means that every morning i have to spend 32 minutes walking to work instead of 20, and then there are one or two 24 minute return trips to the lab squished in over the day. i have broken out the long johns.

incidentally, i still wear the same long johns that i've had since elementary school. somehow they wield a miraculous power of stretch, while maintaining consistent warm-and-cosiness.

anyways, for the past couple of weeks i have been tracing neurons. apart from eating, this is how i kept myself busy while in India last winter (as described here). in fact, the reason that i was sent to India in the first place was to learn a method of staining tissue called Golgi-Cox impregnation. this Golgi Staining allows you to visualize single neurons in a thick section of brain tissue. then, with fancy computer software and a microscope, you can trace the outline of the neuron's body (called the soma in this context) and all of its arms and legs (called dendrites). you end up with something that looks like this:

then, with the fancy computer software, i can determine how long the arms and legs are and how big the cell body is. i might also get excited and look at how complicated the network of arms and legs is. some neurons will have only one or two arms, while others will have many. this tells us a bit about how active the cell might have been while it was still alive - a neuron with fewer arms would make fewer points of contact with other neurons, while a neuron with plenty of arms and legs would probably have been heavily connected to other neurons.

because they're so pretty, here's one more before i brave the cold:

i heart co-op

2007-02-05T20:09:00.000-05:00

apparently the excitement of my new laptop has kept me from posting for a full 2.5 weeks. i've been amassing things to talk about in that time, though, so sit tight.

first up? my new obsession and life-changing experience. joining a neighbourhood food co-op! my landlords were generously kind enough to gift me with a membership for xmas. i had been talking to one of them about the struggle to find good local produce on a regular and accessible basis without signing up for a delivery service or visiting the farmer's market on saturday mornings. she had been a member of a local co-op for the past many years, and suggested i come try it out. in my 2006 procrastinating ways, i never did. but with the gifting of the membership, i was obligated - and so, about a week after i got back to toronto from the holidays, i made my way over to the co-op and executed my first trial shop. i was hardly in the doors before falling head over heels. not only is it hidden in a little back alley, away from the noise and light pollution of the big city, but real people work there (i.e. not teenage robots) and they play the same music that i was listening to at home 10 minutes before walking over!

before extolling any more virtues, i will explain to my questioning readers what exactly 'food co-op' refers to. in this case, a group of people got together back in the 70's and felt like they were not having sufficient access to healthy, locally-grown, non-pesticided foods. these people took a mortgage out on an old bakery, started sourcing healthy, locally-grown, non-pesticided foods, and opened up to the community. in order to shop at the co-op, you had to become a member. this meant paying a small membership loan up front (it's now about $70), an annual membership fee (now about $16), and volunteering 2 hours of your time every month to help keep the place running. in return, the co-op staff take care of making sure the food is grown, prepared, and packaged in a healthy and ethical way, and they keep mark-up on prices incredibly low because the co-op is NON-PROFIT. so much like for one of my favourite NON-PROFIT orgs from one of my earlier lives, the Ottawa School of Art (where I worked for several years during high school), all money that the co-op takes in is invested back in the co-op. as a result, money flows from the customer through the co-op to the healthy and ethical food producers, and the producers get to remain producers as they are sustained by support from the co-op.

all this appeals to me at a political level and at a basic satisfaction of needs level. as someone who enjoys food A LOT, and who loves to cook in a number of different styles, i am blown away by the diversity of ingredients the co-op carries. at last! one store that sells Lacinato kale, shiitake mushrooms, tamari-roasted almonds, and my favourite breakfast muslix pitas. behold the bounty.

and that was just my trial shop...

like cake

2007-01-20T01:36:00.000-05:00

not quite 24 hours, but here i am on my couch with my beautiful new family member. interweb, meet MacBook.

luckily, my iBook managed to hold out for about 45 minutes of hard core data transfer. anyone who anticipates a mac-to-mac transfer in the near future: let me assure you it is simple as pie. after my inaugural boot, the shmancey Mac orientation movie prompted me to restore settings and data from my previous machine. plug in to power, connect with firewire, hit enter, and enjoy dinner with a glass of celebratory chianti. then, it's like i'm back on my iBook - from my mail settings to my bookmark organization, right down to the spatial layout of the countless pdfs cluttering my desktop. beautiful.

lady friends

2007-01-18T18:25:00.000-05:00

it seems funny to link to my aunt from here, as i think most people who read this blog are from that side of the family - and therefore have already seen my aunt's posts, but i was touched by her entry today. i also have a wonderful group of internet lady friends who i've known over e-mail for 2 and a half years, and i agree wholeheartedly with my aunt that it is both wonderful and important to have a support group of peers. some of my lady friends are artists, some are educators, some are academics, but all of them are inspiring. cheers to lady friends.

enforced hiatus

2007-01-18T17:49:00.001-05:00

ack! this past weekend, my iBook G4 that has faithfully served me through an Honours thesis, two rounds of grad school applications, a PhD transfer exam, and countless PowerPoint presentations decided to cough a bit and then die. my beautiful little iBook, he who travelled with me to India last winter, who has been to every Society for Neuroscience meeting that I have (including San Diego, Washington, and Atlanta), who keeps me company on my plane or train trips back to Ottawa; yes, beautiful little iBook has passed. luckily, this was an ideal time for my laptop to die. term paper from last semester's course? done back in december. new grad school applications so that i can continue my PhD in the fall? sent off last Thursday. manuscript that i was supposed to finish 6 months ago? complete as of last Tuesday. and so, little iBook allowed me to access my desktop for one last back-up. then we took a trip to the Apple store, and i waited 2 hours for an appointment with a bleached-blonde and facial-pierced Genius (which is what they call the staff who work behind the Tech Support desk, not a sardonic moniker on my part). Genius tried to turn iBook on a few times unsuccessfully, listened to my detailed description of The Symptoms (which included: sudden black screen, won't boot past the opening apple screen, then scary vertical flashy stripes that look like a grand mal seizure), consulted with a compatriot Genius, and diagnosed iBook as requiring expensive replacement of the motherboard or worthwhile replacement of his entire being.

after a little detective work on the very helpful Apple Technical Support web site, a phone call to my computer-savvy father, and several hours scrolling through pages of Apple internet discussion boards, i came to the conclusion that iBook's motherboard had indeed failed. not that i didn't trust peroxided-pierced Genius; he just had a rather flippant way of diagnosing which begged a second opinion. as a result, i will soon be the proud owner of my second Apple laptop. this time around, a mid-level MacBook with all the trimmings!

1 GB RAM? check! 80 GB hard drive? check! (how crazy it is to reflect that my first laptop, a generous gift from my Grampa in 1999 - hi Grampa!, had only 4 GB of hard drive storage. and this was more than enough! simply baffling.) combo CD and DVD burning drive? check! built in wireless? check. built in camera for video chat? check. remote control to turn on/off iTunes while i'm standing in the kitchen? check. i can't wait to get my hands on this new piece of beautiful computing goodness. hopefully i can put out my first post from MacBook in T-24 hours... see you soon!

coveted [update]

2007-01-09T23:50:00.000-05:00

kottke has posted a play-by-play of steve jobs' keynote at the macworld conference, complete with corresponding stock jumps and dives of apple and RIMM (manufacturer of the blackberry).

he's also compiled a helpful guide which answers the question you must all be asking: how big is this thing, really?

oh, and it turns out steve did announce the release date -- june 2007. unfortunately, the phone will only be available in the US for now, and you have to sign a 2-year contract with cingular. *grumble grumble*

coveted

2007-01-09T14:36:00.000-05:00

apple has just published details on their new iPhone.

i want i want i want!!!!!

also, if you look here and click to watch the QuickTour of Maps, you will see a very important application of my favourite feature.

no release date set, but i can't wait. it should take about a year for them to iron out the kinks, and it just happens i'll be looking for a new phone around then... i really hope they didn't scrimp on the actual phone part that enables good reception. that would make it almost all not worth it. we shall see.

word play

2007-01-08T02:33:00.000-05:00

after finishing the first complete draft of my paper, i popped over to queen video on bloor and picked up wordplay for viewing pleasure in what remained of my evening. i vaguely knew that it was about crossword puzzles, but clearly recalled mention that jon stewart makes an appearance. it was worth it just for him:

"i'm so confident, i'm gonna do it in glue stick."

-stewart, when asked whether he dare attempt the NY times puzzle with pen

as if he just happened to have a glue stick lying around on his desk. in case he feels a craft itch coming on. love that guy.

anyways, the whole movie is great. a veritable celebration of crossword geekdom, complete with endorsement of puzzling by bill clinton. he explains that he used to enjoy doing the NY times crossword over his lunch breaks in the white house, to take his mind off the multitude of issues he faced during the rest of the day. seems a stark contrast to looking up satellite images of one's texas ranch on The Google.

watching put me in the mood for a bit of my own wordplay, so i was happy to locate this. daily crosswords that even i can solve! we've all gotta start somewhere. i just spent the past hour working on today's, but i better escape to bed before i get caught up in yesterday's.

my year in cities (part deux)

2007-01-08T02:23:00.000-05:00

i remember doing this last year after seeing the idea on kottke. since i travelled fairly much over the past twelve months, and since i did attain one of my travel goals from 2006, felt like it was worth reprising.

Ottawa, ON*
Toronto, ON*
Saskatoon, SK
Vancouver, BC
Whistler, BC
Montreal, PQ*
New Haven, CT
New York, NY
Atlanta, GA
Simcoe, ON

in order to list a city, i had to have spent one or more nights in the city at some point in the year. cities with a star were visited on more than one occasion. bolded cities were particularly exciting.

final drafted

2007-01-08T01:43:00.000-05:00

after nearly seven (count them.. SEVEN) months of procrastination, i am proud to say that this afternoon i finished the first draft of my paper. this is not just some term paper (wrote that be-FORE xmas), but rather the kind of paper that formally describes and pontificates on the results of an experiment that yours truly carried out with her own hands and brain. in order to not feel like a total slacker, i need to remind myself that in the SEVEN months since i started writing i was distracted by a week-long smarty-pants conference in montreal, my first trip to new york city (which was partially for academic purposes), submission of an operating grant proposal to CIHR by my supervisor, the realization that i need to reconvene my studies elsewhere by sept 2007, submission of four PhD funding applications, prep and travel to the annual neuroscience meeting in atlanta, two experiments for my thesis, one experiment for fun, one GRE general test, and two grad school applications. oh, and that comparative cognition course with the term paper that i wrote on the weekend before vacation.

so maybe i'm not a slacker, but i'm still minorly disgusted with myself for taking seven months to write the paper.

i don't really believe in new year's resolutions, since you shouldn't have to wait until january the first of every year to decide to change something in your life, but if i were to make a small resolution for the occasion of 2007 i would aim to fully characterize and understand my procrastination patterns. i have always been a procrastinator, and it has never posed me any problems. because i am also obsessively organized, everything gets done on time. i typically just end up losing a bit of sleep... one thing i have noticed is that the more busy i make my life, the less room i have to procrastinate. for example, in my last year of undergrad i was working at the housing office, TAing for two courses, teaching two evening dance classes, running the Dal dance society, serving on a student services committee, taking a full course load, carrying out my honours experiments, and somehow having a fulfilling long-distance relationship on the side. i was at my most busy, but also very efficient, productive, and happy. when i started grad school in toronto, i figured that i should cut back on accessory things in order to spend more time on my research and course work. this has worked out OK, as i have oodles of hours to devote to all aspects of my experiments, but i don't feel that i'm as productive as i was in that year at Dal. conclusion? in order to feel productive, i need to be able to dabble in more than one or two activities.

perhaps i'll re-incorporate fresh pasta making into my weekly routine. productivity can also be yummy.

you're not lost

2007-01-02T02:41:00.000-05:00

with the switchover to google-blogger, i decided to adopt a fresh template. thought this one was a bit more fresh and punchy.

she's jolly good, fellows

2007-01-02T01:50:00.000-05:00

happy new year to all!

my time at home in ottawa is coming quickly to its end. unfortunately i brought a nasty cough/cold virus home and shared it with my brother and mom, but we took it as an excuse to stay in the house and eat turkey soup and sleep. i did get better enough after christmas to go out and see a couple of friends, and think i might actually get to briefly visit with my ex-roommate from halifax who is heading home to nunavut via ottawa. then on wednesday, back to toronto. much like last year at this time, i'm going to be flat out with data collection for the next 6 to 8 weeks. hoping to have everything for my thesis done by the end of february.

over the holidays i read one book: Heat, by Bill Buford. an account of Buford's culinary experience with Mario Batali and one of his NYC restaurant kitchens, plus wonderful detail on several trips to Italy to gain insight into the mysteries of eggy pasta and cuts of pig and cow.

i also saw one movie: The Secret Life of Words, directed by Isabel Coixet and starring Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins. i had never heard of it, but found it on our Rogers On Demand movie thingy and was subsequently amazed that i had never heard of it. great film, and great performances by Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins. also great soundtrack.

best present would have to be personally addressed and signed copies of margaret atwood's two latest books: Moral Disorder, and The Penelopiad. yippee! apparently, she was in ottawa recently announcing a collaboration among herself, the NAC English Theatre, and the Royal Shakespeare Company -- they'll be preparing a musical theatre version of The Penelopiad, which will debut in England next summer and open the NAC's english theatre season next fall. unfortunately, i don't think i'll be able to justify a trip back to ottawa from vancouver for only that performance. hope they take it across the country...

the deal

2006-12-06T08:29:00.000-05:00

i think i have now alluded to the fact that there has been a recent development in my life plan. it's likely that most of you family or friend-type people who continue checking back here already know that i'll be moving, but here is a quick summary of my plans for the next 8 months or so.

i found out in early september that my supervisor accepted a very impressive and deserved job offer from the University of British Columbia. when you have a lab, and you accept a job at a different university, your lab will typically move with you and continue on in the same vein of research. by consequence, your lab at the old university will close. this meant that before next June, the deadline that was set by the hospital/institute where we conduct our research, i would need to find a new home. i had a few options: (1) i could remain a University of Toronto student and just go finish up my projects in Vancouver with current supervisor, (2) i could try to orchestrate a transfer from the PhD program in Medical Science/Neuroscience at U of T to the PhD program in Neuroscience at UBC, or (3) i could drop back into the Master's stream here and defend my existing work in order to start fresh in a PhD program at UBC or elsewhere. after some very careful consideration, i decided that (3) was my best option.

i have had a really interesting experience working in my current lab with my current supervisor, especially in the fact that i've been directly introduced to the realm of psychiatry. because my research addresses questions about mental health and psychiatric disorders, seeing how the field of psychiatry works has opened my eyes to the challenges i'll face in my career, as i plan to interface my basic science experiments with the clinical and patient-oriented side of psychiatry.

with that said, i've also learned over the past couple of years that i think more like psychology, rather than psychiatry or molecular biology. neuroscience, or more generally the study of the brain and what it does, is a tricky label for a lot of interesting stuff that's going on right now. if you think about it, neuroscience is probably one of the only broad fields of study that incorporates measurements at the level of the single atom or molecule, of the single cell, of a set of interacting cells, of a set of interacting groups of cells, of a whole organ, and of the behavioural output of that organ. as cool as that is, a lot of the people who study the brain at these various levels come from backgrounds that predispose them to thinking in certain ways, as differerent branches of science have specific ways of viewing the world. this means that everyone working in neuroscience has a unique perspective and set of skills to offer, but also that it can sometimes be difficult to communicate in a common 'language' or paradigm.

to bring this back to me and my choice, i feel like it's important for me to get my grounding in psychology before i go off to be an independent scientist. i had a taste of psychology in undergrad, but thought at the time that i wanted to explore the molecular details of what was going on in the brain rather than the conceptual aspects of behaviour. as you may have gathered, this is what i've been doing here in toronto: measuring how stress and/or drug treatment changes the expression of molecules in certain parts of the brain. this is pretty dandy in its own right - i mean, only in the past 30 years or so have we figured out ways of detecting single molecules in the brain! but, i personally think that studying these molecules is most interesting when you consider their changes in the context of what the brain is doing. in other words, look at the molecules and look at behaviour. then use carefully designed experiments to figure out if changes in molecules relate to changes in behaviour.

and so, i'm applying to re-start my PhD next September in Psychology. i'll finish up a few experiments that i had been working on for my PhD here, and then write them up as my Master's thesis. i should be able to defend that thesis next May or June, and then i plan to move out to Vancouver to work with a new supervisor at UBC. although this change of plans is a bit on the unexpected side, i'm looking forward to the change of scenery and will be proud to say that my studies took me all the way from Halifax to Vancouver.

mmmmm... all-you-can-eat sushi.

doctor auntie lorna

2006-11-19T20:08:00.000-05:00

this past friday my aunt (i.e. younger sister of my mom) was conferred her PhD in Nursing by the chancellor of McMaster University. i snuck out of the lab for the day to attend her convocation, and was treated to a whole 24 hours with my cousins, cousin's girlfriend, aunt & uncle, granny, mom, and various others intermittently. i am so proud of her for this accomplishment, and for her choice to also complete a post-doc at McMaster and continue her research. she studies issues surrounding quality of life in individuals with dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

congratulations auntie lorna! :)

i have discovered over the past few years that i am a total sucker for ceremony. i cried through the entire first half of the convocation, just as i cried through my brother's entire high school graduation, my own undergraduate convocation, and my cousin's undergraduate convocation. something about the organ and the bagpipes and the academic robes and the guy who carries the sceptre... what particularly got me is the simple act of a supervisor placing the hood around the graduating student's neck. to me this represents the transition from a mentor-student relationship to a colleague-colleague relationship, like the official welcome to a circle of individuals who have a little fire burning within themselves over the pursuit of knowledge. despite the minor setback that has emerged with regards to my PhD studies (more details on this next post), i am more excited than ever to continue being a part of the academic world and to achieve all that the PhD entails. maybe one day i'll get to carry the sceptre. ha ha.

remember me?

2006-11-07T10:04:00.000-05:00

so... haven't been around for a while. seems i last posted at the end of august, and i've been pretty much in the grant writing and experiment zone since then. as you might recall, the funding proposals i was working here did not get me any $$, so i've been aggressively putting together 4 (yes 4!) PhD funding apps this year. just submitted the last of them on Friday.

i have to get back to the lab to do a whole bunch of stuff, but to appease everyone who's been waiting for news for the past 2.5 months, here is percy in all his adolescent glory. with a decorative autumn gourd.

victoire

2006-08-29T17:41:00.000-04:00

my old friend regine and her friend katie opened a store this summer, and i am so proud of them for pursuing and attaining their dream. there's a little blurb about them in Fashion18 magazine this month:

Blurb about Victoire.

'redesign'

2006-08-26T14:18:00.000-04:00

look what i figured out how to do. custom mastheads at last! this initiative was inspired by my latest foray into writing code; i'm starting a new experiment in the lab and need to teach myself how to program a piece of equipment. unfortunately, the equipment is about 15 years old, and uses a weird sensical-at-the-time, but not-so-sensical-now custom language. looks like my one year of java won't be of much use to me now...

i really enjoyed travelling this summer: to saskatoon, vancouver, and whistler in may for visits and a conference, to montreal and ottawa in june for more visits and a conference, and to new york and new haven in july for yet another few visits and a workshop. i was also lucky to have a lot of visitors over the summer - friends from ottawa, and montreal, and as far as new zealand. it's been a long time since i've seen some of the people i got to spend time with this summer, and each of them reminded me of how valuable friendships can be. thanks everyone. let's do it again soon.

this month has been, overall, a return to feeling (and actually being) productive, in the lab and work sense. i really needed some low-key time this summer to figure out the grand master plan for the rest of my PhD, and those travelling breaks seemed to do the trick. now that i'm back in toronto and not going anywhere for a few months (the carnival that is the Society for Neuroscience Meeting will go down in atlanta in mid-october), i've had a chance to seriously start two new projects. i love the feeling of getting something off the ground, and the time at the beginning of a project when you are organizing lists of supplies, scheduling each stage that needs to be accomplished, reading background literature to establish what you are going to measure exactly and how to go about measuring, and sitting down to learn and practice new techniques. i love this part so much that i've been spending most of my energy there this week, and ignoring the discussion of a paper that i really should be finishing. maybe in the next few hours i'll try to tackle that...

more travels

2006-08-02T23:09:00.000-04:00

took my final mini-break of the summer this past weekend. i attended a workshop in new haven, CT on friday, and then hopped a commuter train back to new york to stay with good friend martha and her boyfriend, thomas. being my first time in the city and all, i was treated to a very exciting two days of walking past famous/notorious restaurants. on the list: pastis, babbo (one of mario batali's), per se (one of thomas keller's), masa, jean-georges (i.e., vongerichten), and spice market (also belonging to j-g vongerichten). apart from this culinary landmark-spotting (or as thomas put it, gastric tourism), i adored the architecture and feel of the brownstones in chelsea and the west village, the sense that everyone walking down the street is on their way to doing something Incredibly Important, the tendency to relax on the front stoop of your walk-up with the morning paper and a starbucks as the garbage trucks and yellow cabs whip by, and all the boys dressed in their nice clothes. apart from chelsea, where i spent the few nights, i got to see park slope in brooklyn, where my other good friend anna is hanging out in a gorgeous studio/loft for the summer. sunday was spent lying around in the grass in central park, attempting the NY times crossword.

and now, back to work.

value village impromptu

2006-07-12T23:24:00.000-04:00

took a july wednesday night outing with friend craig to see poet Lisa Robertson perform a reading at value village, to launch her latest book, 'Occasional Work and Seven Walks From the Office for Soft Architecture'. for a remarkably surreal 20 minutes, we wandered among the aisles of pants organized by colour in rainbow order to the sound of her essay 'The Value Village Lyric' over the PA. some of the patrons were less than enthusiastic, but the hipster kids who turned out were all digging. kind of re-defines the poetry reading. and reminds me of those times in high school dance composition class when we would choreograph pieces that integrated through different locations around the building. including the girls bathrooms.

then, in a particular moment of brilliance, we spotted a south indian corner take-out/sit-down place where i enjoyed my first masala dosa since bangalore! 'twas positively delicious. their coconut chutney was the REAL DEAL. and the mango lassi i washed it all down with was stellar. have to go back to this place: South Indian Dosa Mahal. they even have idli! those sweet fluffy breakfast rice cakes that go so perfectly with a saucer of cardomom-scented coffee... sigh. heaven.

lately

2006-07-10T00:34:00.000-04:00

it feels like i just updated last week, but realized today that it has actually been a month. i've been going in cycles of preparing for trips, traveling, and catching up after trips - makes for dropping of most normal day-to-day activities, including laundry and blogging.

i also realized it has now been a year since i started this blog. 'twas july 2005 when i made my first post about a summerlicious meal at Canoe. don't think i'll return to Canoe for summerlicious this year - the menu seems lacklustre. if i can rustle up a companion, i might attempt a reservation at Thuet bistro & bakery, but in the meantime i'm finally going to sample the amusingly described offerings at Czehoski on queen west. perhaps i'll have the "grain-fed cornish game hen brined, then cooked under heavy things with arborio nero risotto, spring garlic oil, baby arugula". snicker.

since june, i've been busy in the lab tying loose ends on my most recent project. finally have the go-ahead to write it up and submit, hopefully to be accepted somewhere before i apply for more grants in october (more papers i publish = more chance of getting funding). then i prepared for a conference trip to montreal (more about that later), and spent a week there before celebrating canada day back home in ottawa (see photo below, courtesy of marsha). this past week has been more catch-up, and a series of visits from friends. i was lucky to have my friend meredith come up for a day to toronto; she's home for a few weeeks from the University of Otago in Dunedin, NZ where she's working on her PhD in population genetics. then i got to spend most of saturday with friend jonny, who was a classmate in neuroscience at Dal. finally, i got to see my aunt and uncle this evening, after my aunt finished a long weekend of exhibiting at the toronto outdoor art down at nathan phillips square.

i have a few posts stored up that will get put up this week. but, for now, this is a few of us at the beer garden across from parliament hill on canada day. we were amazingly lucky to get a table - and didn't let it go from about 4:00 pm 'til after fireworks. now THAT's a proper canada day.

that's almost doctor to you

2006-06-10T12:42:00.000-04:00

so yes, i've been away and not staying on top of writing about things. here's a quick summary of may: madly read and studied for Masters-to-PhD transfer defense, presented work at two departmental research poster days, spent weekend in Saskatoon visiting undergraduate research supervisor and friends, flew to Vancouver and visited other friends, spent week in Whistler at IBNS meeting, came home, defended my PhD transfer exactly 12 hours after my plane landed, became a PhD student.

two photographic selections:

on the road outside Saskatoon, SK.

detour through Stanley Park - view of mountains in Vancouver, BC.

elongation

2006-06-10T12:35:00.000-04:00

i was recently in vancouver, and stayed with a friend who has two cats that look a lot like percy. i practically had a hernia when i realized they were only 1 year old, and looked like huge fluffy cat monsters compared to my little kitten. such is the accelerated lifespan of pet felines... so far percy just seems a lot longer: he can stretch across my entire laptop and then some, as opposed to neatly fitting on the keyboard as i try to catch up on e-mail. he also gets all sulky-teenager when i try to take photos of him.

Senate Report on Mental Health

2006-05-14T23:23:00.000-04:00

This past week, the senate social affairs committee released a detailed report on the status of mental health care in Canada, and I was ecstatic to hear that among the 118 recommendations offered, formation of a Canadian Mental Health Commission was prominent. Good discussion of the report on Cross Country Checkup today (can listen here), including a closing comment from Shitij Kapur - Chief of Research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health here in Toronto (also, where I work), and a Canada Research Chair at U of T. The full version of the report is available here and here, or an executive summary can be viewed here.

I wouldn't have expected, but the first thing that popped into my head when I heard about the call for formation of a Mental Health Commission was, "Can I join??" I wish such a body had been around when I was applying for random government jobs, back in the days of summers off. I think I'm catching the advocacy bug... as most people who are passionate about their work seem to.

autobiography of red

2006-05-14T22:49:00.000-04:00

as a refresher between stacks of journal articles, i finished Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red this weekend. Carson is a poet and professor at McGill university in Montreal, and one of my good friends had been on me to check her out. i noticed on the book jacket that Michael Ondaatje also sings praise: "Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today. She is a rare talent - brilliant and full of wit, passionate and also deeply moving."

evidence:

I am a philosopher of sandwiches, he decided.
Things good on the inside. [p. 97]

Wrongness came like a lone finger
chopping through the room and he ducked. [p. 136]

i have her latest (i.e., Decreation) on hold at the library.

big mistake

2006-05-13T09:29:00.000-04:00

at the annual neuroscience poster day lunch yesterday, i grabbed what i thought were two half-sandwiches stuffed with lettuce, tomatoes, and turkey breast. a few pickles and cherry tomatoes for the side. headed upstairs to meander through the posters i had not had a chance to see. part-way through my first sandwich, i realized the deli meat was in no way turkey breast. removal of the top bun confirmed my dire suspicion: telltale orange casing. i had mistakenly opted for mock chicken.

individuals of my generation must remember mock chicken. when i was in pre-school i though 'mock' was a country, or style of cuisine, and that 'mock chicken' was simply a mode of poultry preparation, as per 'chicken cacciatore' and 'chicken kiev'. it was not until later that i realized 'mock' was a synonym for 'pretend' and 'fake'. i can imagine how this might have been explained to me, "when you play hairdresser, you are pretending to be a hairdresser. well, mock chicken is pretending to be chicken." what a concept.

this episode made me wonder: whatever happened to mock chicken's evil cousin, macaroni-and-cheese deli meat? apparently, still making it. how entirely unfortunate.

recent cat

2006-05-01T23:21:00.000-04:00

not a cat blog... but he won't stop being cute.

percy, before yawn:

percy, during yawn:

percy, after yawn:

music note #4

2006-04-30T01:55:00.000-04:00

my mom was here for a visit over Easter weekend, and we were wandering around the shops on Bloor in the Annex one day. at one particular shop, we were listening in on a conversation between two cashiers about 1) which two albums they would select if desert-island bound, and 2) what their last meal would be if they were about to be capital punished. since i could write a book on 2), i'll instead share my brief reflections on 1). it was an obvious choice for me.

1. Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
2. Abbey Road (The Beatles)

both of these were always around when i was growing up, and then brought back out at various points in junior high and high school. i actually remember when my mom bought me the tape of Bridge Over Troubled Water; we were on a trip back to Waterloo, ON after moving to Ottawa. i think i must have gone through it 100+ times over the week that we were in Waterloo, and now i still get a feeling of coming back to something you'd left and missed a lot when listening to each song.

if i was allowed to add a third album, it would be:

3. Mermaid Avenue, Vol. 1 (Billy Bragg and Wilco)

and three weeks passed

2006-04-30T01:28:00.000-04:00

i'm still here. i would say that i have been busy, but i actually don't feel that i've been accomplishing much lately. sitting in front of a computer all day and partaking in rapid fire e-mail with the faculty members of my transfer exam committee, in hopes of coming to a consensus on a date and time for said 'exam', doesn't exactly qualify as consuming work. but, this was definitely the major accomplishment of the past three weeks. you see, i am currently registered at U of T as a Master's student, but plan on sticking in grad school and finishing a more extensive series of projects (one of which involves the work i did while in Bangalore last December). instead of writing up a Master's thesis, defending the Master's thesis, applying to the Ph.D. program, and waiting to get accepted to the Ph.D. program, i can directly jump into Ph.D. student status by writing up my Ph.D. proposal and defending it to an examining committee. most of March was spent on the writing part, and now i've been going through the administrative muck of organizing the exam itself. seems it won't be happening on May 15, as i had originally hoped, but instead on May 29. fair enough.

apart from this exam bit, i'm also working on a few papers. counting some cells, to round out the project i originally had finished at the end of February. playing with a potential new experiment in the lab. planning a few trips for the summer. i'm heading to Saskatoon, Vancouver, and Whistler for a brief visit and conference for the last week of May (ironically, right before the transfer exam). then Montreal for a week at the end of June for another conference. then! i've managed to get myself sent to a microscopy workshop in New Haven, CT at the end of July. since it's 100% cheaper to fly to NYC than to anywhere in Connecticut, I'm going to do so and extend the workshop stay for a long weekend with a good friend who is living in Manhattan. this will (finally) be my first visit to NYC. i'm working on my restaurant & shopping list already. will accept suggestions from anonymous bidders.

percy is now almost 9 weeks old. i think he has doubled in length since i got him, though i can't tell for sure, and has recently begun engaging in adolescent-type behaviour. this extra length affords him the ability to shimmy up dangling towels and the back of the couch. he is currently licking my big toe.

it's a boy!

2006-04-08T21:12:00.000-04:00

my life changed in a significant way this friday evening. for the first time in my life, i own a pet that doesn't live in a bowl full of water on my shelf. appearing below is percy, who is now 5 weeks and 4 days old. he seems to be adjusting nicely to a rhythm of sleep, play, eat, sleep, play, eat, sleep, etc. tonight, after helping out in the kitchen with dinner, percy feels like watching capote.

meet percy:

milestones

2006-03-22T00:23:00.000-05:00

april 10 1982: born
june 6 1985: learns to read by watching wheel of fortune
may 24 2004: crosses stage and receives B.Sc. in neuroscience
march 21 2006: personal e-mail communication with science idol

yes, it has been a landmark day in the history of my life.

A+ for planning

2006-03-18T12:57:00.000-05:00

from the new york times, thursday march 16:

in the rush to provide shelter for victims of hurricane katrina, FEMA has created what state and federal officials say is a new hazard. it's put nearly 90 000 lightweight trailers in an area that's prone to flooding, tornadoes, and of course, hurricanes.

windows open

2006-03-11T17:51:00.000-05:00

today was that first saturday of the year when the sun shines and warms the local atmosphere to a temperature above 10 degrees Celsius (i.e., 50 degrees Fahrenheit). if you live in America, or anywhere else on the planet besides Scandinavia, Canada, or Russia, this is probably not a big deal. however, in Toronto, it means the windows can be open for the first time in 2006. look at the gorgeous blue sky! i walked around with mikey the cat and took some photos to document the occasion.

hopefully those trees will be full of leaves in 30 days or less.

where i am

2006-03-06T19:21:00.000-05:00

good news! all of that counting of cells that was driving me to write bad haiku, eat couscous, and not update for the past 34 days? finished! finito! accompli! and the best part - i uncovered a novel, interesting effect by doing all of the counting of cells. the type of science that i do (behavioural neuroscience, with a slant toward understanding the link between stress and mood disorders) involves studying differences between groups. these can be groups that are stressed, versus not stressed. or groups that are treated with a particular antidepressant, versus not treated. for the first large project of my Master's, i didn't find any differences between groups. now, in this second large project, i have found that something which happens in the brain of stressed subjects can be prevented by treatment with a particular drug. conclusion? i can go ahead, write a proposal, and initiate a sequence of events that will lead to me being a PhD student.

hip hip.

in the meantime, i have been thinking about where i want this little journal to go. when i started writing last summer, i played around with posting recipes (not successful; realized i am more of an IDEA person in the kitchen), writing about food (never a problem), making lists of my favourite songs (also enjoyable), and generally blathering. india provided a focus to my efforts for a brief window of time, but after coming home i got wrapped up in work and dropped off. i honestly enjoy having this accessible way of communicating with distant people, and i love the thought of my grampa reading what i have to say every morning over his tim horton's coffee (hi grampa!), so i will definitely continue to write. but for those periods of time when i feel tied up with mind-numbing, time-consuming lab work, i have decided to give myself a mission statement: to spread the word on what's new in science, and why you should care. i keep up on these things as part of my grad student life, and i feel very strongly about making basic research findings (particularly neuroscience-related findings) accessible and interesting to non-science people (and perhaps even some science people). i had a team blog going with a couple of friends who shared this view, but we weren't posting very often - and i felt posting to multiple blogs was getting distracting - so it fizzled out. from now on, i'll put any material i would have considered scientifically interesting for that team blog on here instead. peppered, of course, with the occasional treatise on oyster mushrooms, and frequent lists of new favourite songs.

now, on to some light reading.

couldn't resist

2006-01-31T01:51:00.000-05:00

to go with the couscous, i have a new favourite sleepy song.

somewhere - vic chesnutt & liz durrett

ok.. now really time for bed.

sleepy food

2006-01-31T00:54:00.000-05:00

as evidenced by my absence from internet-world, i am still spending approximately 80% of my waking hours in front of a microscope. thanks to my "careful" planning, i think i may actually have enough data collected to analyze for an abstract deadline coming up on friday. but by writing that i have probably jinxed myself. at this point, all my poor grad student soul can ask for is a phoenix of a result, to assemble and rise from the ashes of my endless boring days spent counting cells on a computer screen. remind self: i love science.

in the meantime, i just came up with the best bed time snack of 2006 so far. leftover couscous with apricots and almonds, reheated. drizzled with a little of the trial size bottle of San Giorgio Morgeto olive oil that was kindly given to me by one of the olive oil guys at the ottawa food & wine show when i told him i was a poor grad student and could tragically only afford low-medium grade olive oil. then a tiny pinch of kosher salt. mmmmm. this is the BEST olive oil i've ever tasted. i may not be lying if i told you i actually drank a tiny bit. hey, i can think of MUCH worse things to drink.

time for bed.

inspired by sounds of cell counting: a haiku

2006-01-17T23:55:00.000-05:00

click click click click click
click click beep click click click click
click click oops undo

stereological irony

2006-01-16T00:44:00.000-05:00

realized i haven't posted any top music picks since pre-India.

top 7 80's new wave revival songs for cell counting:

1. tribulations - LCD soundsystem
2. international dateline - ladytron
3. pleasure and pain - rinocerose
4. take me home - don juan dracula
5. when? (demo?) - stars
6. i am not surprised - the organ
7. white light generator - ladytron

the best part is that design-based stereology (i.e., the cell counting protocol i'm using in my current experiment) didn't become standard practice until the early to mid 90's. so, in implementing my 80's revival playlist, i'm putting myself ahead of my time. ha ha ha.

my year in cities

2006-01-11T23:28:00.000-05:00

saw this on kottke.org, and wondered what my 2005 in cities would look like. hmmmmmmmmm.

Ottawa, ON*
Toronto, ON*
Boston, MA
Halifax, NS
Montreal, PQ
Washington, DC
Bangalore, India

wow. apart from the India bit, this is really not that exciting. goal for 2006: get to conferences in better places. apart from places i know that i will go (i.e., Whistler/Vancouver, BC and Atlanta, GA - wholehearted 'yippee' on that last one...) my goal is to finally get to New York and possibly get to Europe. the Paris is calling.

boxing day

2005-12-26T16:09:00.000-05:00

and so... i am back. since exactly one week ago, i have been on north american terrain. for the past seven days i've been accidentally falling asleep at seemingly inappropriate times, remaining stubbornly awake until not-so-early hours of the morning, re-acclimating to sub-zero temperatures, snow, sleet, slush, rain, etc. and thinking about how much i'd like to travel back to india.

i wasn't sure that 3 and a half weeks would be long enough to get used to the noise, to the smells, to the tastes and language and customs. in many ways, it wasn't - particularly because the NCBS campus is in no way characteristically "India". but through the people i met, and the foods i ate. through some of the places i had a chance to see. through these things, i think i've caught a glimpse of Bangalore, of Karnataka, and of India. i was sad to leave. this just means i will have to return.

belated merry christmas, and happy holidays. i'll resume my north american narrative after a few more days of turkey sandwiches.

india: almost over (25)

2005-12-15T14:41:00.000-05:00

it is very very early on a friday morning, and i'm realizing that within 72 hours I will be packed and ready to head back to Canada... the past 3 weeks have flown by. i'm trying to cram much work and fun into my last 3 days. briefly, to summarize this past week: i gave a talk for the neurobiology journal club group on monday, and spent quite a few hours on the microscope. travelled on tuesday (see photo post below). screening and quantifying slides all day wednesday, and then headed downtown to shop and have a North Indian meal. i bought an incredible silk hand-embroidered dupatta (which is the long scarf/shawl most women wear draped over the shoulders). i also bought 2 short kurtas (which are chemise type garments.. think Old Navy summer 2005: everybody in tunics). one is plain orange, to wear for my next day trip on saturday. the other is bright coral with gold detail around the neck and hem. i'm thinking of going back to this store on the weekend to pick up a few more - they are cheap and comfy. today i spent the whole day on the microscope, and tomorrow will be the same. although i think we may be heading out to see a movie if all goes well. now, time to brave the bat-path and get some sleep back at the hostel.

india: tuesday photos (24)

2005-12-15T14:35:00.000-05:00

as promised, got my photos from my tuesday trip posted. the photos below link to the albums.

india: tuesday trip (23)

2005-12-12T12:58:00.000-05:00

going to see temples at Belur and Halebidu and a very large statue at Shravanabelagola tomorrow. leaving in the morning, very early. will post photos as soon as i get back tomorrow night, very late.

india: pickles i've tried (22)

2005-12-12T12:54:00.000-05:00

listed in order from best to slightly less best, but still really good.

1) lime
2) mango
3) black pepper

lime pickle has WHOLE limes, with the peel still on. you just eat the whole thing. incredibly delicious - a cross between sour and vinegar and spice and savoury. the mango pickle contained whole chunks of fresh mango, treated in the same way. you take the chunk of mango and eat the flesh off from the skin. black pepper pickle was fresh black pepper corns floating in a pickling vinegar liquid. surprisingly not spicy, just pure peppery vinegary.

india: RR (21)

2005-12-12T12:12:00.000-05:00

i had THE BEST meal of the trip yet (i know, i keep saying that.. but it keeps being true) on saturday night at a place called RR. it was on Church Street, just off Brigade Road. wow; i can even remember addresses now! it seems everyone was worried about me going to eat here because they serve Andhra food (i.e., the cuisine of neighbouring state Andhra Pradesh), which is particularly spicy. given the fact that i have not found any of the food here particularly spicy, and the fact that i managed to eat a whole bowl of veg curry at lunch out with the lab that other native Indian grad students found too spicy, i was granted the opportunity to try this place.

instead of plates, you eat your meal off a real banana leaf. they have them folded on every table, and then when you sit down the waiters unfold it for you - rather than laying a napkin across your lap. my companion and i both ordered the unlimited non-veg meal. yes, unlimited. if homer simpson was interested in Andhra cuisine, this would be his personal paradise. once your leaf is open, waiters quickly come to the table with brimming pots of 4 options. this particular night we got (1) okra curry, (2) green bean curry, (3) dal, and (4) chutney.

quick curry lesson: there are generally 2 kinds of curry: curry served in liquid/sauce and curry served dry. i just learned that in some cases you will call curry in liquid/sauce 'gili sabji', whereas curry served dry is 'sookhi sabji'. 'sabji' just means 'mixture', while 'gili' and 'sookhi' translate to 'wet' and 'dry'.

for this meal, the okra curry was a gili sabji (actually a bhindi sabji - 'bhindi' means okra) and the green bean curry was a sookhi sabji. i'm really a fan of these sookhi sabjis. one of the research fellows made one for lunch earlier this week, which she shared with me while we were hanging out at NIMHANS. they often/always have shredded fresh coconut stirred in, and this coats all the exposed sides of the veg. delicious.

along with the 4 options, we got heaping amounts of white rice (note that Andhra Pradesh is the main rice producing state of India, known as the 'rice bowl' of India), a few papadums, a dish of sambhar (the dal of south India, which includes some vegetables in addition to lentils or beans), a dish of rasam (a complex condiment that contains curry leaves, turmeric, tamarind, garlic, chilies, black pepper, and mustard seeds), and a dish of curd (yogurt). there was also a very incredible delicious mango pickle already on the table, and some sort of graham powder which we sprinkled on our rice. the waiter came back and poured warm ghee over the powder and rice, turning it into a delicious buttery graham powder treat.

once you finish part of your meal, they come back and replenish. over, and over, and over.. until you are forced to turn them away. i ate so much, and it was SO good. the best part is that i ate the whole meal with only my bare right hand. there is something very earthy and liberating about not using utensils. maybe i'll have to keep this tradition alive once i get back to North America...

india: hindi 101 (20)

2005-12-12T12:11:00.000-05:00

i've now learned a few hindi words:

ha = yes
ladki = girl
moti = fat girl

india: pizza corner (19)

2005-12-11T07:21:00.000-05:00

since the dining hall closes on sunday night, we have to order food into campus or go out - and tonight we ordered Indian pizza from Pizza Corner. if i were going to make Indian pizza, I would probably get a nice thick round of naan bread, slather it with spicy curry sauce, crumble some paneer (mild Indian cheese) over the top, and maybe include some chunks of braised okra or cauliflower or pepper. this wasn't Indian pizza in that sense. just Indian pizza in the sense that it was American pizza trying to be American pizza in India.

and to correct for traffic, delivery in 39 minutes or free.

india: more photos (18)

2005-12-09T23:28:00.000-05:00

i've been sparse on the photo content lately because my time has been mostly spent in the histology lab at NIMHANS or in the microscope room here at NCBS. i was able to take a few on one of my trips into NIMHANS this week, which you can find in this album. can also click through the menu to see my Indian desserts and a few more photos of NCBS campus.

india: plans (17)

2005-12-09T23:16:00.000-05:00

as my second week here concludes, i'm making arrangements to do a little bit of day-tripping and some shopping/schlepping around Bangalore before leaving on the 19th. today i am going to try to book a spot on a day tour to Mysore (see here) and another day tour to Belur, Halebid and Sharavanabelagola (see here). i'm also planning at least one shopping trip into Bangalore to hit Commercial and M.G. Roads, where i need to obtain a sari and Indian spice tray for myself. tonight we are going to see a real live Bollywood movie in the theatre, which i am TOTALLY excited for. and this will likely be followed by another delicious restaurant meal and perhaps a little celebration for the grad students who just wrote their last exam yesterday.

india: to NIMHANS (16)

2005-12-09T08:43:00.000-05:00

i'm beginning to lose track of the days as i become more accustomed to the pace of life here.. trying to remember what i have been up to since last posting. the major undertaking of this week has been travelling back and forth to NIMHANS, the National Institute for Mental Health and Neuro Sciences. the investigator with whom i am working at the moment here at NCBS has a former post-doc from this lab who still collaborates on morphological studies. this former post-doc is now a professor at NIMHANS, and has his morphology lab well set-up over there. NIMHANS is pretty much on the OTHER side of Bangalore, usually an hour's drive in light traffic; however, as i learned today, heavy afternoon traffic can render this journey somewhat unpleasant and long. although, this time provides ample opportunity for observing scenes that any North American might find quirky.

Signage. i've been very intrigued and amused by many store names and store signage that i see along the streets in Bangalore. the one that has been BY FAR most intriguing is for "The Physical Cultural Institute". the sign includes this title in text, flanked by images of two airbrushed men flexing muscles and wearing small undergarments. i'm assuming the establishment is what we North Americans commonly refer to as a "Gym".

Things people can carry on bikes and auto-cabs. so far: an auto-rickshaw with a mattress strapped to the roof (this takes trips to Ikea to a whole other level). a motorbike with the driver carrying a bar stool over his head and upper body. a bicycle pulling a cart filled with 6 LARGE propane tanks.

Crossing the street. i consider myself to be fairly observant, but have not noticed many (i.e., any) prominent cross-walks on any of the streets here. the general strategy seems to be to wait until there is a *minor* break in traffic flow, then run. many people, though, just go Frogger style through the oncoming, fast, heavy traffic. every time i watch this happening, i am completely stunned and amazed that the street-crosser makes it to the other side intact. i thought this habit may be only a trend in daring young Indian males, but today i watched a DOG do the same thing.