After all the primers, PCRs, digests, agarose gels, gel extractions, precipitations, ligations, transformations, colonies, innoculations, incubations, minipreps, midipreps, and maxipreps; the in vitro transcriptions, dig labeling, prehybs, hybridizations, washes, and development; cell lysis, denaturations, quantifications, polyacrylamide gels, coomassies, transfers, blocks, primaries, secondaries, ECL, films, and casettes; after filtering, autoclaving, thawing, splitting, counting, freezing, plating, transfections, cultures, and co-cultures; the co-IPs, protein purifications, equilibrating, loading, washing, eluting, and dialyzing; the superinfections, harvesting, concentrations, and titering, the perfusions, fixations, cryoprotections, cryosections, permeabilizations, and immunostaining, the dissections, triturations, immunopanning, purifications, counting, coating, plating, and replating; after the surgeries, anesthesias, incisions, sutures, injections, implantations, electroporations, hemisections, transections, and crushes; after making buffers, washing tools, and aliquoting solutions; the rinsing, washing, vortexing, and spinning … the box has finally been checked.

Work continues to eat away at me as we gather more data and the prospect of a paper looms on the horizon. Even as we’re approaching the holidays, the atmosphere at lab has gotten more tense as our boss enters his hyper-abusive “You can’t get this experiment to work in TWO days?!?!?” mode. A friend actually called me last Friday night because he was surprised that I would actually miss out on free pool at the recent HST TGIF. Fortunately, Melody’s been taking good care of me with lots of tasty recipes. I also got a good laugh when I received a copy of my new book from Kaplan. This book project was essentially an all-in-one STEP I study guide designed to compete head-on with the popular First Aid series. I spent some time over the summer writing several chapters for them, and among the list of contributing authors, I was listed as “Glenn Yiu, MD”. Hehehe – and to think that I’m working my butt off to get a PhD when I can already be a doctor! =D

Between teaching class and juggling several projects at lab, not much time has been left for anything interesting in recent weeks. Melody and I ended up spending Thanksgiving this year sittin’ at home watching a movie and eating napa-pork (my mom’s recipe for a delicious napa cabbage and ground pork stew). We did bus down to NYC over the weekend to visit home, taking the opportunity at the same time to do some window shopping and also to be disappointed by yet another sub-par ramen experience. Otherwise, work’s been the same old hell that continues to dominate my life. Until my upcoming thesis advisory meeting in 3 weeks, I’ll probably be immersed in experiments up the wazoo.

Who would’ve thought that a bunch of scientists at the Dalai Lama’s lecture would fare no better than teenage girls at a pop idol concert? After yesterday’s poster session, I arrived outside the lecture hall about an hour before the scheduled talk. Thinking I was actually early, I instead found thousands of students, post-docs, and professors already lined up to see his holiness’ speech on meditation and neuroscience. Attendance was over 25000 at the conference this year, but there was only room for 7500 at the lecture. Over the course of the hour-long wait, the lines slowly degenerated into disorderly mobs as people pushed and shoved their ways through. Realizing the chaos, I ended up leaving the crowds to find my own way. By the time I discovered the security check and entered the lecture hall, I found it only half-occupied. The crowds had been so lost that people ended up waiting in lines that led nowhere. It was somewhat disappointing then that the speech itself actually didn’t have much substance, and much of his broken English was impossible to decipher. But it was still interesting hearing the Dalai Lama’s response to such controversial issues as animal testing, use of antidepressants, and the role of religion in education. Afterwards, I met some friends for dinner at a cute little tapas place and crashed early for the night. Apparently, the only airport shuttle available this morning left at 5:30am. And so I’ll be waiting here at the terminal for another several hours before my 9am flight back home.

My trip to the SFN Neuroscience meeting in DC this year began Friday with a flight scheduled for departure at 3pm and arrival at 5pm. Sounds like a piece of cake… or is it? Let’s take a closer look at my actual itinerary:

1330 After a quick lunch, Melody began driving me to airport

1400 Arrived in airport for check-in

1415 Arrived at gate; found out flight was delayed half-an-hour

1530 Boarding began another half-hour behind schedule

1550 Plane finally took off and I proceeded to catch some zzz’s

1700 Plane actually arrives on-time! Began walking to main terminal

1730 After a looooong walk, found SuperShuttle and began waiting in line

1800 Finally reached receptionist and paid for a shuttle bus to my hotel

1900 Read papers for another hour before shuttle was actually ready

1930 Shuttle leaves airport after waiting another half-hour for other passengers

2045 Shuttle drops off all 9 other passengers before finally finding my hotel

In total, my trip down took more than 7 hours – not much less than if I had DRIVEN from Boston! Part of the problem, it turned out, was that my hotel was new, and neither the receptionist nor the driver actually believed it existed. I was curious when I got to the hotel, and asked the attendant when they actually opened. The girl looked at me and said, “Oh, we just opened 4pm this afternoon.” Yes, this hotel is so brand-spanking new, in fact, that the swimming pool has not yet opened, the wireless network is still down, and the hotel restaurant is still running training exercises. Fortunately, our suite turned out to be quite modern, complete with a plasma TV and a chic-looking kitchenette. I ended my long day with a hearty meal in nearby Chinatown with a post-doc from lab. Now I’ve got to catch some shut-eye before Dalai Lama’s talk tomorrow afternoon.

A photo of several co-workers and myself appears in this week’s issue of the Focus. If you think we looked dead tired in the picture, that’s ’cause we WERE dead tired. And if you looked more carefully, you might actually catch a hint of the pain and tears behind our smiles. Anyway, since Melody’s still stuck on nights and she normally wouldn’t watch horror films with me, the past few week’s been Fright-Fest at Glenn’s apartment, with a slew of scary movies like The Ring 2, The Grudge, The Amityville Horror, The Devil’s Rejects, and House of Wax. My theory is that horror films nowadays belong either to the creepy-long-haired-girl category, or the sexy-skin-flick genre – both of which are, of course, pure crap. Fortunately, I was redeemed this week by an incredibly moving film entitled “Crash“, which has been under the radar since its release earlier this year. The movie offers a gritty, racially-charged portrayal of the behemoth of a melting pot that is urban America. At various points, the film would grip you by the stomach, then ease a little, then tighten again – an experience which was ultimately cathartic. A great choice of locations, diverse cast, haunting music, and a series of tightly-woven plots make this film my favorite so far this year.

Our city didn’t see much of an autumn this year, as the crazy weather down South’s been bringing us some chilly rain over the past two weeks. In fact, we spent most of our time indoors at this year’s MD-PhD retreat due to the heavy rain. Fortunately, despite missing out on the fall foliage and golf, we made sure to be present at the Saturday night clambake, taking down 5 lobsters between the two of us. Since returning from the retreat, and with Melody back on nights, I’ve returned to a late schedule at work again. The week’s dinner menu has slowly evolved to include canned soup, instant Korean noodles, frozen dumplings, as well as leftover pasta and cold pizza from the building lobby. I haven’t gotten the MSG headache yet, but I’m sure my blood pressure must be up several points…

all work no play makes glenn a dull boy.
all work no play makes glenn a dull boy.
all work no play makes glenn a dull boy.
all work no play makes glenn a dull boy.
all work no play makes glenn a dull boy.

You know… while it’s commonly thought that scientists have something against furry little animals, I just realized today that most of my friends in lab are actually rodent pet owners. Among my classmates and labmates, we’ve got a guinea pig, a chinchilla, a rabbit, and of course, our amazing super-rats! My theory is that working with rodents each day actually help us labrats (pun intended) appreciate them much more than the average Joe. Anyway, this past weekend’s been one of those random-run-in-with-Asian-postdoc-in-Asian-restaurant weekends. We ran into a Korean post-doc from Melody’s lab at a Korean restaurant, and a Japanese post-doc at, of course, a Japanese restaurant. Amazing, huh? By the way, there is a new press release about our recent article in Science.

My 4th author Science article has just been released this evening. In retrospect, I was somewhat surprised myself that this paper got published in such a prestigious journal. We were probably lucky that one of the reviewers liked us so much. It kinda makes you wonder about all the other high profile publications out there. Anyway, I had originally planned a 16-hour work day, but after my last 5 hours of work just entered the trash, I’m going to just give up. Yes, give up. That’s what we all should do. As Cartman would say, “Screw you guys, I’m going home!”