lady friends

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

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]

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

percy, before yawn:

percy, during yawn:

percy, after yawn:

music note #4

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

stereological irony

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

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

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)

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)

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

india: tuesday trip (23)

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)

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)

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)

i've now learned a few hindi words:

ha = yes
ladki = girl
moti = fat girl

india: pizza corner (19)

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)

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)

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)

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.

india: small flying things (15)

i don't think i'm a very squeamish person, but there are several types of insects which i find particularly aversive. this would have to include the large creepy-crawly type bugs that occasionally make an appearance in basement apartments. and also bees. in the past two days, i have discovered a completely new category of small creatures to be afraid of: bats.

there is a stretch of path right outside the academic block, on the way to the dining hall and hostel, that is shaded by low-hanging berry trees. in the first few nights that i walked home, i noticed there were some interesting-looking birds that seemed to appear out of nowhere and fly around these trees. i thought to myself, odd. birds don't usually make dart-ey flying motions in the evening or at night. but this is India, and things are different. so i accepted and moved on.

then i started to wonder whether these were in fact NOT birds. grad students confirmed my suspicions; they are fruit bats who like to feed on the berries from the trees. they're totally harmless, and only make swoop-ey flying motions when they hear people coming in order to get out of the way. regardless, i think i will be happy to do without them once i head back to North America...

india: more dosa (14)

at last, this past weekend, i was taken out on the town for my second South Indian meal. much to my delight, the grad students accepted that, after a week of acclimation, i was now ready for the 'Real India' dosa restaurant. a quick auto-cab ride left us at a small corner joint that was (quite literally) overflowing with people. we stood by the hand-washing sink near the entrance to the kitchen to wait for a table, in order to maximize our proximity to the group that looked closest to finishing up (no line-ups or priority by time at which you arrived whatsoever, obviously). i think we actually sat down at the table before one of the men had finished his coffee, but amidst the constant traffic of busboys and waiters and customers, no one had a chance to notice.

this week, again, i ordered a masala dosa to start. how could i not, after hearing from one particular grad student that this was in her opinion THE BEST masala dosa ever? to be completely honest, i have not sufficiently developed my palate for masala dosa, and was unable to distinguish between this week's and last week's. regardless, it was delicious. crispy outer layer of pancake, spongy warm inside of pancake. perfectly spicy potatoes and veg inside. this time though, they served it with both the coconut condiment and a coriander condiment. i asked the grad students what the name for these were; i'm told 'coconut chutney' and 'coriander chutney'. so much for exotic. then, we ordered a second round. this time i went for an onion dosa, but also got to sample an idli. idli is a round white cake/loaf-type thing which i was told is made of fermented grain flour. i would liken it to matzoh balls, or some kind of ethiopian spongey bread. very bland, but functional as a carbohydrate. my onion dosa was much more flavourful. this time, instead of wrapping the dosa around the potato like a burrito, the onions were actually cooked into the pancake. the dosa was then folded in half. came with the same condiments. i was again, VERY full after the 2 dosa. but, why have only 1 dosa when in India for only 1.7 more weeks?

to finish, one of the barefoot busboys brought a stack of squares of newspaper. this was to wipe our hands; a step down from the warm water and lemon finger bowls we got at the restaurant last week. but hey, it works! we each had a very tasty coffee, served in a little tin cup resting in a little tin dish. you are supposed to pour the coffee back and forth between the cup and dish to allow it to cool, and then drink it from the dish. i thought the dish was like a saucer, and accidentally missed this whole process.

after this very satisfying meal, we walked a couple of blocks to Asha Sweets, where i had a spectacular Indian Dessert Adventure. i'm still doing a little recon for this post - need to find out names and main ingredients of each selection - but it will be coming soon, complete with photos.

india: lecture-fest (13)

alright.. after a brief hiatus, i am back. i have officially reached the point where the novelty of seeking out nice-looking neurons in my slides has worn off, and a supplementation of daily activities with blog posting is in order.

what have i been doing, really, in the past week? between 3 hour blocks of time in front of the microscope, i have been able to attend daily lectures from visiting scientists at NCBS. apparently, in a stroke of good timing, my trip coincides with an international calcium-signaling workshop. this workshop went on last week somewhere nearby, but the faculty at NCBS managed to pull each famous scientist visiting for this purpose out for a day to give a talk here. as a result, in the past week, i've heard about some pretty incredible research on 2-photon microscopy for real-time calcium imaging in Drosophila (i.e. fruit flies), the role of calcium signaling in T-cell development (i.e. developing cells of the immune system), the role of calcium signaling in determining receptor populations at developing synapses (i.e. in cells of the nervous system), and (from a non-calcium perspective) vesicle endocytosis (i.e. how the little packages carrying transmitter to synapses are taken back into the cell for recycling). even if this sounds like a foreign language, i'm sure you can appreciate the breadth of topics covered.

i was also lucky to catch two lectures by a French physicist, who seemed to be visiting for reasons other than the calcium workshop. the first was a relatively brief summary of three instances in which this professor and his lab had taken biological problems and considered them from a physical perspective, while the second was more focused on how physics can be used to generate artificial cell systems for applications in biology. i strongly believe that biologists and neuroscientists can benefit from interactions with people from other fields, and it was truly inspiring to hear this physicist speak. he was obviously in the later stages of his career, but he brought a refreshing perspective to issues that biologists continue to look at in the same old way. sometime they should have a conference where a bunch of academics from every field (including the humanities and social sciences!) are randomly selected and sent to an island for a week. i bet that at least one discussion would lead to a major scientific development, just from taking a new angle on a problem.

the public dinner i mentioned earlier was held on friday night for the french physicist. this involved eating outside, at tables set out by the pond behind the dining hall. there were red and white striped canopies, and white table cloths, and i felt like i was stepping into a scene from late summer picnic in the 1950s. except instead of rolled cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches, they served mutton with curry, chapatis, and some other spicy dishes that provided a welcome departure from the normal dining hall fare. all in all, a lovely lecture and a lovely evening.

interjection

i know that SOME of you out there are reading this blog, but my comments section is sadly completely empty. since being here, i haven't even gotten any SPAM comments. a little word every once and a while would make me incredibly happy...

india: recent events (12)

no time to write much now. currently scouring pubmed for detailed information on cell morphology in the amygdala... but i have done a few interesting things over the past couple of days that will warrant extensive posting tonight or tomorrow. these include 1) public dinner for guest lecturer on friday evening, 2) second dosa experience at the *real* dosa joint last night, and 3) the Indian sweets boutique. event (3) may span multiple posts. both visual and gustatory delights to recount at length...

but for now, back to work.

india: the science (11)

considering i've now been here for nearly a week (minus approximately 5 hours, as i write), perhaps it would be appropriate to explain WHY exactly i travelled half-way around the world to visit Bangalore. the situation, in general terms, is as follows:

i am currently a grad student in Toronto, and i am interested in the relationship between stressful experiences and the emergence of psychopathology (i.e. symptoms of anxiety, fear, depression, mania, psychosis, etc). for a while now, there has been evidence from patients which suggests that having something very stressful happen to you can precipitate the onset of a mood disorder, and also that the way in which your body and brain is programmed to respond to stress can predict your chances of developing a mood disorder when presented with a very stressful event.

for the past little while, i have been working on a project that takes this potential link between stress and psychopathology and uses it to explore the effects of drugs used to treat psychopathology. basically, if you are stressed, certain things happen in your brain. these certain things are quite possibly involved in the emergence of mood disorders in predisposed individuals. the question is, how do we KNOW that they're REALLY involved in the emergence of mood disorders? as usual in science, this is not a simple question to answer. one of the approaches we can take is to see whether drugs that are currently used to treat mood disorders are able to PREVENT stress-induced brain things from happening. the logic being that:

stress --> brain things, stress --> changes in behaviour

drug --> prevents stress-induced brain things, drug --> prevents stress-induced changes in behaviour

therefore, stress-induced brain things may be related to symptoms treated by the drug

make sense?

it is these 'stress-induced brain things' that have led me to India. here is a quick lesson on neurons: neurons are cells of the nervous system (i.e. spinal cord, brain, blah). neurons are kind of like us, they have a body (called the soma) and appendages (called axons and dendrites). these appendages form contacts with other cells, and communication happens where they meet (at junctions called synapses). on certain types of neurons, synapses form on special structures called spines (for more detail, see Wikipedia entry). this means that on these particular neurons, the number of SPINES present can reflect the number of SYNAPSES present. very helpful, because spines are something we can see AND COUNT under a normal microscope.

it so happens that STRESS affects the number of spines on certain types of neurons. which has led me to my current project.

and that is what i'm doing in India. counting spines. yes, i spend my days in a little tiny closet with a microscope and my iPod... listening to rilo kiley and mouse-clicking a picture of a neuron on the computer screen every time i see a little bump on a dendrite. it's actually quite exciting, when you think that i'm LOOKING AT A CELL OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM!!! and COUNTING the NUMBER OF CONTACTS IT MAKES WITH OTHER CELLS!!! sometimes i feel like a young Ramon y Cajal, ready to open my sketchbook and make detailed drawings of complicated dendritic arbors...

india: first photos (10)

went down to see the LAN administrator this morning and he did something to my laptop which now permits me to access the internet. yay! i've uploaded my first photos to my .mac site, so you can take a look at my room, the view from the hostel, and some plants. alternately, access the index here.

i'll try to have some photos of Bangalore proper soon. at the latest, by Sunday night - after my next delicious meal.

india: first meal out (9)

i've been anxiously awaiting the opportunity to post about my first TRUE Indian meal. given that over the weekend i ate only in the dining hall, and at an Italian restaurant with my supervisor as he passed through Bangalore on Saturday night, i was looking forward to Sunday because no dinner is served on campus. necessitating the going out to find food. at first the grad students in the lab were planning to just order in, but somehow circumstances changed and i found myself crammed into the back of an auto-cab on my way to sample masala dosa (on a side note, auto-cab rides through speedy traffic = most fun).

we went to what appeared to be a family restaurant, which 'specialized' in South Indian cuisine. to distinguish, most classic Canadian-Indian food is North Indian cuisine - naan bread, tandoor, etc. in doing my background food research before coming here, i didn't recognize any of the names of the characteristic South Indian dishes... and so I was looking forward to trying all. we started with the masala dosa, which is a large crepe-like pancake made of ground lentils and some type of whole grain, allowed to ferment together, pounded out, then fried crispy on a hot cast-iron skillet. only one side is fried, which leaves the other spongey and moist and delicious. in thinking back, i MAY have had a dosa at The Roses Cafe in Ottawa at one time... but it was nowhere near as good as this dosa. folded inside was a nice helping of spiced potato and veg, plus a couple of green chiles. they melt butter on the outside of the folded pancake, which is a perfect finishing touch. dosa, by the way, refers to the pancake - while masala refers to the spices used to season the potatoes inside.

i probably could have left the restaurant after the dosa and been very nicely satisfied. fortunately, the grad students i was with are into eating more than necessary on occasion, and we ordered several other dishes. along with my dosa i had a sweet lassi. i kept assuming it would have mango in it, but was corrected that 'sweet lassi' was just yogurt blended and sweetened with sugar. only 'mango lassi' comes with mango. the lassi was much thicker than what i've had in Canada, but pleasantly tangy and perfect against the spice of the dosa.

next came rounds of naan bread to soak up the rich sauce of the vegetable kofte and of a creamy paneer. kofte i recognized from turkish cuisine, where it refers to a kebab type serving of lamb or chicken or other meat, covered in a heavily-spiced yogurt sauce. this kofte was not meat, but seemed to be a patty of lentil or chickpea paste covered in a spicy yogurt sauce. i'll have to confirm what was in the kofte. we also had a particular type of paneer which is more creamy than others (paneer refers to a cottage-type cheese, which i've most commonly had with spinach - as in saag paneer). it was flecked with veg and peas and was very tasty. again, i'll have to confirm exactly what type this paneer was.

thoroughly stuffed, i managed to make room for my newest favourite beverage: Indian filter coffee. they serve it in small cups, much like espresso. it reminds me of greek or turkish coffee - sweetened and frothy. i enjoy one of these at the coffee bar on the roof of the NCBS academic building in the mornings now.

and so ended my first TRUE Indian meal. apparently, there is a restaurant that serves MUCH better dosa - but it is a little 'rough around the edges' (i.e. squares of newspaper in lieu of napkins). i've been told that after i continue to acclimate for another week, i'll be allowed to experience it next sunday. counting down...

india: money changed (8)

mission to the state bank of india for my currency exchange was successful. my 75 USD worked out to something like 3400 Rupees (Rs-3400). to put this in perspective, at the dining hall i can get a very filling meal of 1 chapati, 1 heaping mound of lemon rice, 2 small servings of miscellaneous veg curry, 1 small dish of yogurt, and a 1 L bottle of water for Rs-30 (significantly less than 1 USD). since i only buy 1 L of water a day, i only end up spending about Rs-60 on eating per day. this also includes 2 coffee breaks and a breakfast snack/sandwich. even when we ate out last night (more on that to follow), the HUGE meal for 4 of us, including bottled water, lassi, and coffee, came to about Rs-480. eating in India is incredibly cheap! this means more Rupees leftover to buy gifts...

on a side note, despite my being a relatively intelligent person, i am continually amazed by my tendency to do fundamentally stupid things. before i left my room this morning, knowing FULLY that i was going to head to the bank to exchange my currency, i decided that it would be better to leave my passport locked in my suitcase, locked in my closet, and locked in my room than to carry it around with me in my bag (as i had been doing for the last couple of days). several of you probably know that i also brought several COPIES of my passport with me to India (one for each piece of luggage) but for some reason i neglected to transfer one of these copies to my bag. and of course, when i arrived at the foreign currency exchange counter to get my rupees, the first thing the teller asked for was MY PASSPORT or EVEN JUST A COPY of my passport. she was wielding the iron fist on the requirement, but the teller next door overheard my pleas, and saw me pulling out multiple pieces of canadian photo ID, and she let me off after taking a copy of my driver's license. with a promise to bring my passport tomorrow. sigh. i suppose next time i'll know.

india: photo teaser (7)

here are a couple of my favourites from today.

view of the front of my hostel, from the terrace above. note the red earth and tropical foliage.


one of the outdoor 'hallways' of the hostel, where you'll see everyone hangs their laundry to dry.

india: money-changing (6)

after reading on every india travel web site that it is illegal to bring rupees into the country, i decided the best plan of attack was to pick up some USD in Toronto and then exchange once i got here. the travel guide i was reading told me there was an exchange counter at the airport, but it also told me to avoid using any shady-looking currency exchange services. given this is my first time travelling to India, it was hard to immediately distinguish 'shady' from 'non-shady'... and I decided to forego the airport exchange service for this reason.

thus, i was left with a bunch of american dollars and no rupees - and i hadn't really known that i would have to pay for my meals here on campus in rupees (having lived in residence at Dal for many years, I naively assumed they would have a swipe card system in place). fortunately, for the past few days i've been allowed to run a tab at the cafeteria, but i was starting to feel guilty about asking for bottles of water and things when i couldn't actually pay.

hence, my first adventure: an excursion to downtown Bangalore on the shuttle bus to exchange currency at the Thomas Cook on IISc (Indian Institute of Sciences) campus. by myself. instructions from the grad students here were very clear - the Thomas Cook is located next the the shuttle bus stop (i.e., impossible to NOT find). so off I went.

first, the shuttle bus. it was Saturday afternoon, and quite a few of the students here were heading downtown to visit family or go shopping, so the bus was crowded. I didn't realize I'd have to push ahead to get a seat, so I ended up standing for most of the journey. after living in Toronto for over a year, I've honed my TTC-riding skills enough to not hold on to the dirty poles. this shuttle ride was a) nothing like the smooth-as-velvet TTC tracks and b) required clinging to (comparably) much dirtier poles. not only was the road out of campus incredibly rocky, but the driver took it at what felt like 80 or 90 km/h. then, traffic. I had no idea what Indian highways would actually be like. trucks, buses, cars, SUVs, auto-cabs (little half rickshaw-half car type things with a seat in the back for passengers), motorbikes, scooters. no lanes. very muddy red dirt roads. huge lines of people waiting on the shoulder of the highway for a passing bus to pause and allow a few to jump on. and HORNS. constant NOISE. I get fed up with Toronto drivers who use the horn unnecessarily, but after 5 minutes on the Indian highway, it's hard to imagine being annoyed by a few isolated beeps. the constant honking and blaring quickly fades into the background.

what amazed me most was the aggression/fearlessness of the motorbike drivers. imagine you have 4 lanes of traffic moving at a good clip in the same direction. then imagine you have 5 times as many motorbikes as you do cars in a given 5 vehicle by 5 vehicle area. then imagine these motorbikes not actually occupying positions in any given lane, but rather weaving in and out of traffic, speeding up erratically, and cutting around trucks on the shoulder. only a handful wear helmets. and i was highly impressed by the number of women dressed in impeccably clean saris who managed to keep up with the chaos on their own bikes.

the rest of the trip was less eventful/noteworthy. after arriving at Thomas Cook, I was told they only exchange currency at the M.G. Road (shopping district) location... but there are 2 banks on campus where I could get rupees. so I set out to find the banks, and was successful thanks to many helpful directions from passersby. unfortunately, both banks had closed before lunch, and by now it was about 2:45 pm. most businesses seem to only open for Saturday morning, then close down for the rest of the weekend. so I'll head back to IISc tomorrow, and hopefully return with enough rupees to cover meals for the remainder of my stay.

india: arrived (5)

after 7 hours of cramped up sleeping on the flight to Heathrow, close to 10 hours of trying to sleep but instead watching the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie multiple times on the flight to Bangalore, two unfortunate plane dinners, two unfortunate plane breakfasts, and a British Starbucks latte, I am now officially in India. I arrived at approximately 4:30 this morning.. and it is now 9:48 at night. Somehow I have only slept for about 4 hours over the course of the day, but hope to compensate and sleep somewhat normal hours tonight.

first impressions?

the weather is very pleasant. definitely not hot, probably about 15 degrees celsius today. cloudy. apparently it has been raining all week, and will continue to rain forever. not driving rain, but just drizzles.

there are trees everywhere. tropical-type trees. palm trees. orange trees. mango trees. trees with flowers.

instead of pigeons on the cricket field outside my hostel, there are beautiful large white birds. i'm not sure what they are yet, but will ask next time i see one with an Indian friend close at hand.

**found out on saturday, they are egrets!

the food in the cafeteria here is apparently 'americanized' Indian cuisine, to accommodate all of the NCBS faculty who studied/grew up abroad and then returned to India. it's not spicy at all! except with generous doses of mango-lime pickle.

i think that shall be it for now. just wanted to let you all know that i am here, i am safe, i have a room to myself with a toilet that flushes, my laptop will be connected to the LAN here very soon, and i should be counting dendrites by monday. pictures will follow as soon as my laptop can access the internet.

india: pretty much packed (4)

with just under 24 hours to go, my luggage finally gave in and swallowed the 4 varieties of footwear, rain jacket, and items of clothing i deem necessary for the trip. i've succeeded in not taking advantage of my suitcase's expando-matic capabilities for the trip there. this translates to room for beautiful indian fabric, a new sari (to replace the electric green version used for a grade 11 kathakali dance piece costume), and an indian spice tray on the way home.

india: raspberry bicarbonate (3)

back from a trip to washington, DC for neuroscience 2005. unfortunately got plane-sick on the way home, and now planning to invest in some gravol to prevent any recurrences this week. in less than 72 hours i will be en route to bangalore! definitely have NOT fully realized this is happening yet.

took my second dose of dukoral tonight (wards off cholera and E. coli nastiness). can't remember taking an oral vaccine before this. it came in a box with a little recipe sheet. the illustrated instructions told me to 'dissolve the effervescent granules in a glass of water'. then, shake up and add tiny vial of vaccine. tastes like raspberry seltzer with a heaping tablespoon of sodium bicarbonate. mmmmmmmmm.

Race Against Time

one more thing. tonight i was lucky to catch the second of Stephen Lewis' Massey Lectures on CBC, in which he passionately discussed the AIDS pandemic in Africa. definitely worth tuning in for the remaining two installments. the CBC Radio schedule and information on 'Race Against Time', Massey Lectures 2005 here.

india: 2 weeks to go (2)

since recovering from my multiple arm ailments, i've had the chance to meet the investigator who i will be working with in Bangalore. among other more important, research-oriented things, he confirmed for me that wireless access is to be had on the NCBS campus, as well as a hook-up in my room at the guest-house.

so it looks like i will be able to stay in very good touch. perhaps now would be the time for me to let everyone know about this little travelogue/whatever?

india: ouch (1)

somehow, my arm has contracted hepatitis A and typhoid fever. arm is a little confused, because arm is still in canada, and did not go near any tap water or mixed drinks with ice cubes. arm hurts.

arm reminds me with a dull, throbbing, just-been-vacccinated pain: YOU ARE GOING TO INDIA SOON.

sacks, oliver

it's the kind of cold rain day outside that has been so far perfect for things like listening to mazzy star, eating oatmeal with maple syrup, responding to letters from friends, and having conversations with mikey the cat (who keeps asking to go outside, but then abruptly turning up her nose and walking away when i show her it is still a cold rain day outside).

my most recent conversation with mikey focused on the exciting events planned for this evening:

Keynote Lecture
Muki Baum Conference on Sensory Disorders and Therapy
6:30 pm (doors open at 5:45 pm)
Featuring: DR. OLIVER SACKS

as mikey contemplated my praise of 'Uncle Tungsten' and 'The Island of the Color-Blind', my anticipation for this landmark event in the history of my life mounted. oliver and i found each other approx. 5 years ago when i picked up one of his neurological case study books at the recommendation of a psychology prof. he rapidly ascended to my ranks of 'science hero'.

i need to go find something appropriate to wear.

thanksgiving

the visa for india has now been obtained.

next time i plan to travel to a foreign country, i think i may consider mailing in my application and passport rather than waiting for lengthy periods of time at the consulate. when i arrived at the offices around 10:00 am on a processing morning (applications accepted until 12:00 noon - i figured this provided plenty of time for me to pass in my pre-filled out form and photos), my bags were searched, and i was handed a number chit and instructed to watch the VISA display. a 8.5x11" sheet of paper with a large letter E was taped to said VISA display. i quickly inferred that this referred to the prefix on my number chit, which incidentally read B27. as the VISA display announced the turn of person E27 with a derisive ping sound, i edged my way through the crowds to one of the few available seats and hoped that the mysterious letters appearing on 8.5x11" sheets of paper beneath the VISA display did not comply with standard alphabetical order. luckily, this was the case. but it was a good 2 hours before i was summoned to the counter by my very own much-awaited ping. i'm glad i remembered to bring along my copy of this. together with the longest-eyelashed-female-baby i have come across in my life to date (sitting directly in front of me), provided ample entertainment for the waiting period. steingarten is brilliant. don't think i've laughed out loud so hard since i came across david sedaris last spring. to cut this tangential story short, i picked up my passport - complete with visa sticker - the following afternoon. what i don't understand is why they felt the need to plunk it down on page 13 of my otherwise empty travel document. can't they adhere to my obsessive-compulsive tendencies of order order order??? books to be filled are MEANT to be filled from page 1 to page n, in the serial order of {1, 1+1, 1+2, 1+3, ... , n-3, n-2, n-2, n}. right? i suppose i'll have to learn to live with this, as multiple friends have now informed me that passport stamping officers simply 'don't care' about such things. oh well.

music note #3

two weeks since i started in earnest, and still working on those grants. i have three to do, two of which are thankfully similar in format. this weekend i finally had a significant breakthrough, probably owing to the pressure of NEEDING to really finish by this coming friday. i wonder if cognitive behavioural therapy could alter my procrastination patterns...

grant writing is always made much more enjoyable/worthwhile by the following:

- long walks in the early evening, during which one contemplates one's human experience in an attempt to understand why one is truly worthy of receiving money from the government to study something

- grande non-fat starbucks lattes

- black hardcover notebooks filled with science and education-related ideas, compiled since last time one endured a grant-writing process

- house cleaning that gets done during Stage I Procrastination

- tasty muffins that get baked during Stage IV Procrastination

- an appropriate soundtrack

which brings me to the true reason for this post, my top 7 songs of the weekend, from iTunes playlist "Immunohistochemistry II".

1. with arms outstretched - rilo kiley (yes, still obsessed...)
warning: this song will actually make you believe you are sitting around a campfire with rilo kiley
2. conceal me - xavier rudd (thank you snad's picks 2004 for this one)
3. pink bullets - the shins (quickly becoming a fan of these guys)
4. the unwelcome guest - billy bragg & wilco (mermaid avenue)
5. the wrong girl - belle & sebastian (finally available on iTunes...)
6. cannonball - damien rice (new discovery: david gray-ish)
7. breathe in - frou frou (another new discovery: sort of bjork-ish)

and can i also just draw attention to what will likely become my next music obsession (after i tire of rilo kiley, not soon): Isobel Campbell (of Belle & Sebastian) in The Gentle Waves. think nancy sinatra slightly toned-down, but still delightfully head-boppy. if you're unfamiliar, check out Sisterwoman off Swansong for You.

time to fall asleep with rilo kiley forever running through my head.

up for this week: final menu plan for my Deconstructed Thanksgiving Dinner party, final touches on first grant app, apply for visa to go to india, finish all immunohistochemistry for experiment, set new routine of going to bed every night before 1:00 am, set new routine of getting out of bed every morning before 7:30 am. i can already detect incompatibility between several of said objectives...

real estate

just to follow up on my rilo kiley plug, i think i've listened to more adventurous 119 times so far. perfect backdrop for walking in the first week of autumn-chill winds, dodging co-eds all over campus, wearing cute new blazer and flats, and reflecting on how emotionally long it's been since last september.

a very exciting thing happened this week. i moved. not apartments though (i'm perfectly content in my cute basement/sauna/fireplace situation - now that i have that couch). lab benches. yes, i am now the proud occupant of, arguably, the most prime piece of real estate in the VRMDL. the equivalent of rent-control on the upper east side, or whatever.

consider the amenities:
1) room for legs to tuck in under bench while sitting on lab stool (not available at previous corner spot, where my knees would consistently bunge up against the drawer pulls)
2) availability of overhead shelving (again, not available at previous spot - i was right next to the chemical storage cabinets, and all room was thus taken up by alphabetically arranged reagents)
3) correct amount of sunlight (not direct like in the western-most corner, not dark like in my previous eastern-most corner, but just in the middle and just right)
4) proximity to sink for washing dirty tissue culture dishes/hands/etc.

sigh. the benefits of slowly becoming a higher ranking graduate student. maybe one day i'll have my own internet connection... we can only dream.

in other news, i had the most draining exhaustive day of wrestling with old data. was picked up for a second wind by a phone conversation with an old labmate, then officially lost steam around 8:30 pm. to permit relaxation, treated myself to take-out ginger basil chicken, from the little thai neighbourhood place that has turned out to be my hands-down favourite, and the october vogue. then got fed up with the annoying cast of this season's apprentice, not to mention their poor design choices for a lamborghini ad campaign task, and stuck with the vogue instead.

back to work in T-7 hours...

music note #2

how good are RILO KILEY???

and how cute is their web site???

almost as good

as some know, i exact high standards of my food products. particularly of my frozen dessert products. ice cream.. is alright. but i truly adore gelato. and not just any gelato. a brief stint as a gelato scooper in the summer before i started my undergrad instilled in me a passion for handcrafted italian gelato, and for this i thank steve at piccolo grande. if you are ever in ottawa, a piccolo cup brimming with amaretto, bacio, and hazelnut is obilgatory. or, if you prefer something liquid, a coconut gelato milkshake is perfect on a summer afternoon. might i also take this opportunity to remind everyone that i came up with the name for cherry cha-cha, just in case you have forgotten.

i digress. the point i am getting to is that i have discovered a close second to piccolo grande, in the grocery store packaged variety. after sampling numerous hand-crafted gelatos in store around the country, i have to say that this product is truly impressive. in fact, their toasted hazelnut is so outstanding that i would be interested in pitting it in a taste test against PG nocciola. yes, my toronto friends, i am officially endorsing gelato fresco and their tasty gelatos. so far, i have tried 4 flavours of the 'low-fat dairy ice' variety: creme caramel (lovely burnt caramel flavour), devil's chocolate (so dark, and so good), cafe latte (my second favourite), and toasted hazelnut (my hands-down favourite). i also tried the alfonso mango sorbet, which was alright, but not as good as PG mango. last night i decided to sample the milanese vanilla (which is an actual ice cream, rather than a gelato), and it proved to be creamy and fragrantly delicious. unfortunately, it seems to me that GF is only available in toronto. pity for all of you.

music note

in other news, before i finally give in and go to bed, i've been listening to folksy music all weekend while trying to write my grant proposals. harkens back to ani difranco days of high school.

top 7 songs of the weekend, from iTunes playlist "Grant Writing":

1. strawberry blonde - ron sexsmith
2. lowlands - gillian welch
3. only in the past - the be good tanyas
4. jesus, etc. - wilco
5. ain't got no money - tom waits
6. city i go - rose cousins (yes, from the DSU! she pinned my alumni insignia on my gown at graduation!)
7. runnin' out of fools - neko case

and in between repeats of the folksy playlist i looped new slang (live version) by the shins. Q had been insisting that i watch garden state, so i finally did and totally fell in love with this song. kind of like zach braff does when natalie portman passes him the silly earphones. how old is she supposed to be in the movie anyways? something about the pigtails makes her come off as being 12, max 15.

procrastination in absentia

Now that the initial excitement of owning a blog has worn off, it appears I have settled into a nice regular schedule of posting... never. The most plausible explanation? I am a notorious procrastinator and tend to get myself swamped with last minute writing and project-finishing. At times like these, I would rather occupy myself with unnecessary tasks like (a) repeatedly cleaning my bathroom, (b) organizing old utility bills, (c) re-categorizing my iTunes library, or (d) making lists of books that I would like to read when I finish said last minute writing and project-finishing. One time I even felt the sudden need to make a list of people who I plan to send holiday cards to this year. I've brought up these tendencies of mine in conversation occasionally, and am happy to know that I am not alone in my distraction. One person painted their apartment when they were supposed to be writing a comprehensive exam. This makes me feel much better. Another story revealed that a notorious investigator had a friend at the post office who would post-mark his grant application envelopes for the day before, when they took an extra day at the last minute to finish up. Academics are supposed to do everything right before it needs to be done! We're too busy dreaming up experiments and reading articles that have no obvious implications for our research. And, more realistically, spending long hours in the lab doing tedious repetitive stuff.

So I ask myself, will I ever succeed in being prepared a week in advance? Will I have the slides for my student seminar finished and my talk rehearsed and tailored impeccably with time to spare? Will I submit my next conference abstract days, or even hours before the deadline.. rather than minutes?

Insight into these tendencies unexpectedly came at a TA training seminar this past week: Teaching to different learning styles. We covered Kolb's system of classification - the Converger, Diverger, Accomodator, and Assimilator. For anyone who is not familiar, this is just a general 'personality/learning theory' similar to Myers-Briggs. After filling out my copy of the inventory, I charted my results and came out a Strong Diverger. Apparently, Divergers like to relate everything they learn to the real world, creating a narrative into which new information and concepts are incorporated. They also like to talk about concepts with other people, rather than focusing inwards to sort them out. I had to laugh when the facilitator used an example of how the Converger vs. Accomodator vs. Assimilator vs. Diverger would put together a bike. Something like.. the Converger would study the instructions, follow them word for word, and work alone. The Accomodator would throw away the instructions and figure it out based on what they thought a bike should look like. The Assimilator would do a week's worth of background research on bikes, then evaluate their compiled information and use the most relevant to assemble an ideal set of instructions for bike putting-together. And the Diverger would invite their friends over for a barbecue and some drinks, then talk them into putting it together for him/her. This sounded uncannily like the time I had my cousin over for dinner the night my new sofa was delivered... which required assembly.

Point being: those with Diverger tendencies take a more relaxed approach to information gathering, and feed off the energy of others. While I don't necessarily buy into the fact that I can be neatly categorized based on Kolb's inventory, I can see that I have certain characteristics that are identified with the typecast Diverger. Compared to my previous lab environment, my current grad student life is somewhat devoid of collaborative efforts/informal science conversations... and I can see how this has impacted my creativity and energy. More socializing = More productivity? I sense an experiment coming on.