Inside The Blue

On Dr. Mavis Agbandje-McKenna

2021-03-03T21:48:00.000+05:30

“I am not really looking for a graduate student. I guess I will take one”, said Mavis in a thick British accent at the Biochemistry faculty talks to recruit fresh graduate students to their labs as the fresh meat looked back at her blankly. So, naturally, Dr. Mavis Agbandje-McKenna followed through in her usual style and took THREE sincere and hardworking graduate students who expressed the desire to work with her after an 8-week rotation stint in her lab. And then she took in a fourth one. A raw, playful Indian kid with infinite enthusiasm but limited skills, focus and tact (yours truly). He had done a rotation with her husband Dr. Robert McKenna and the latter offered him a chance to work as a shared student with Mavis, “We like your personality”.

Over the next 5 years, I managed to exhaust Rob and Mavis’ patience as they chipped away at me with hammer and chisel (only occasionally literal) to somehow extract meaningful research effort. They were successful, however, and I went from being a bouncy platypus to a salable research duck (Rob loves collecting them) that almost looked like a swan. I expressed the desire to join one of their best friends’ labs as a post-doctoral fellow and they risked their reputations to recommended me to Dr. Adam Zlotnick, who hired me quickly. I wonder if it may have been my personality again, but it had to be because I had the “Mavis’ graduate student” stamp. Because this is not my story.

Dr. Mavis Agbandje-McKenna was born in her grandmother’s hut in Nigeria. She moved to live with her parents in England at the age of 11 and needed to be tutored to speak in English. Just 10 years later Mavis started a PhD in Dr. Stephen Neidle’s lab at the University of London where she met a tall, long-distance running, introverted mathematics nerd with flaming red hair - Robert McKenna. They managed to get their PhDs, fell in love and got married, all in 3 years and before the age of 25, they were post-doctoral fellows in Dr. Michael Rossmann’s lab at Purdue University. They were younger than most of the graduate students around them, one of them, the aforementioned Adam Zlotnick. But they were talented and hardworking and had very productive post-doctoral stints. Soon enough, they were able to start their own lab at the University of Warwick. Shortly after, the McKenna lab moved to its permanent home at the University of Florida.

Mavis’ lab fit her personality. She was very tough on the outside and very warm inside. She built a strong, diverse, thorough-minded crew that worked crazy hard and played just as hard. Everything that she did had an extra challenge to it - it was whole virus capsid structure determination, not just one protein; it was Adeno-Associated Virus - the gene therapy vector - and not another easy-to-work-on virus (“That virus is a piece of rock” - Adam Zlotnick); it was cryo-electron microscopy with 10Å resolution and messy film data collection, at a time when the resolution revolution had not yet happened. But Mavis was tenacious and never gave up. She charged at the problem again and again with a new approach or a new collaboration each time until the science simply had to yield. This had to be Mavis’ most defining trait and her team loved her for it. It was never a small team; it was heterogenous and diverse in ethnicity and ideas; even running a team had to be a larger-than-normal challenge to fit Mavis’ plate.

And boy did she run it well. Her undergrads were talented and they were rewarded with publications that helped them to successful medical school admissions and research careers. Her graduate students and post-doctoral fellows had to be extremely hardworking to catch up with her expectations. If you were caught napping, you were done. I struggled to somehow keep my naps just under the bar, so my tendency to slack passed off as more of an annoyance. But Mavis did not give up on me. She would never hold back on expressing high expectations or critical feedback. It would be quick, tough and final.

Her expectations, however, were no more than what her own performance matched. She would work on grants like a machine, locked in her office for days. We would drive the 25-hour stretch each way to Ithaca, NY to collect synchrotron data at Cornell (a continuous 48-96 hour shift) regularly. These were the days before we shipped protein crystals in those fancy pucks for remote data collection. Mavis would do a bulk of the driving and data collection herself as we would try to get the most data collected in the allotted time. Between us, we would average a few hours of sleep through those days (I would sleep the most while Mavis’ would barely yawn).

These trips were also the best time to get to know Mavis’ other side and how her thoughts worked. She shocked me when her pronunciation of ‘Jalfreizi’ was more accurate than my own. I only got to know on one of these trips that she overcame great personal tragedy when her father was murdered in Nigeria and she could not travel there to see him. She had profound, yet practical thoughts on feminism, culture and third-world sensibilities. This was significant especially for those of us that came from diverse backgrounds seeking acceptance. Mavis’ thoughts have significantly influenced my own views and values. Despite the pressures of running her lab, a wonderful family and a constant scientific drive, Mavis would find time like this to sustain her inclusive environment.

Mavis’ personality and work ethic have won her many fans outside the lab. She was a stand-out member of the structural virology community and her collaborators always became close friends soon enough. We would have about two conference trips each year (another larger-than-normal Mavis special). We would nervously smile at the professors that we recognized at the conferences even though they would coldly stare straight through us and not reciprocate our unspoken request to connect. Mavis was never one of them. She would always be surrounded by friends but still take time to engage with students that were not her own. She would always join the dance floor, be a voice in the birthday song and share wisdom without restrain. She had big accomplishments and a big team but operated with regular sized sensibilities, a tough act to pull off.

A few months after I left the McKenna lab, I got the call. Mavis had been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). It struck me like a free-electron laser. I had lost a very dear uncle to that dreaded disease a decade before and I knew what it meant; what it would do to her. But ALS was not going to have it easy with this one. She fought it for almost a decade, while her scientific empire flourished. She continued to churn out students, structures, publications and even gene-therapy companies. She would still travel to all the meetings, do interviews and stay in touch with her science-children.

Mavis’ larger-than-normal life stands as a stellar example of almost every kind of struggle that one overcomes. Barriers of gender, race, nationality, language, bureaucracy, health or fate could not hold back this mountain of a woman. Her science-children (as she refers to us) take pride in knowing her and calling her our own. As someone who now has a meaningful scientific career with a short mentorship journey of my own, I hope to live up to her standards in my professional and personal life. Late last year, she sent me a text, “Rob and I are SO proud of you” - something I will hold in memory (and in screenshot form) for as long as I live. It is my privilege to have had Mavis guide my journey thus far as her story and principles will take over from here on.

Rest in peace my dear mentor.

Note: In eulogizing Mavis, I hope not to have minimized Rob’s partnership in Mavis’ achievements and central role in molding me as a graduate student or Adam’s mentorship that I have modeled my own mentorship on. I am grateful to have them all.

Basketball student sections

2017-01-11T20:43:00.001+05:30

In the spirit of college football being is officially over for the season, I present my collated (incomplete) list of college basketball student section names. It took me a couple of weekends to put this together; some of these are tough to find and others are quite fluid with their names. Additions and corrections are warmly welcomed. Help me complete this list!

Google Cardboard

2014-10-04T07:35:00.000+05:30

I tried out google's cardboard virtual reality (VR) system this week. It was awesome!

I have always been a big google fanboy, mostly because they make life cheaper and easier. And most of their applications are free. What is to really be admired though is their commitment to lateral thinking and cool science. For the uninformed, google cardboard is one such project. A couple of google employees took some time out to write an application that ports google maps, photos and youtube to a stereo display format on supported android devices. They then designed a simple cardboard mount to hold the phone to be viewed through lenses on the mount. They even put a cute little magnet contraption on the side of the mount to act as a switch detected by the phone. And then they released the app and the mount schematics for free.

I had heard of some upcoming sophisticated VR devices that are apparently poised to take humanity a lot closer to The Matrix. So when google announced this cheap cardboard app, I wanted to try it out. I was skeptical however. You see, most of my specialized viewing experiences have been less fun than expected. Stereo images make my eyes water and 3D movies give me a headache. I still grieve the day I spent $17 on a that awful remake of Clash of the Titans (in 3D!) that looked better without the glasses. I spent a weekend playing Super Mario 3D land on the 3DS console and it was OK because I turned off the 3D function. But a gadget-geek coworker encouraged me to try it out just as a craft project, so I bought in. The schematics were simple enough and in no time I had the pieces ready. Getting the lenses was a little tricky but I managed to find what I needed ($2.52) from the local hipster hardware store. I had a couple of spare magnets lying around for the switch contraption.

Assembly was a breeze and I had the mount ready in ten minutes. The phone app was quite big and I was concerned if my faithful old galaxy nexus would handle the beast but it loaded fine.

I turned on the app and a playstation-like menu popped up and I could navigate through it by looking around. The dual viewing paired with the lenses worked well enough and I could see just one image; the measurements from the schematics weren't too shabby. I magnet-contraption-clicked on the street view (street vue) option and within seconds my mind was blown.

It put me on a car driving through a European city in full speed where I was free to look around and it rocked! I am a big google maps user and I spend about half hour everyday taking virtual tours through the world on it. This was that experience on steroids. I spent a good ten minutes on the ride after which I tried the other options, that were mercifully slower paced. The earth option puts you on a stationary spot in a few selected locations and surrounds you with google's 3D building models to look at. You can even fly off to space and look at the earth from above. Tour guide does the same with some select spots in Versailles and adds voiced descriptions. Photosphere allows you to explore you own photosphere images. While all these options were more like trial versions than full fledged virtual worlds, the youtube app seemed more open. It put you in a theater-like surrounding with the video of choice running on the big screen and more videos on the side to look at and click on. Some of the videos seemed related to my viewing history on youtube, so I suspect that it may have a longer lifetime than the other app options.

It was a fun home project. Overall, the experience was brilliant cheap fun and has me lauding the google engineers that came up with it for their smart work. Thumbs up gentlemen, keep up the good work!

Cedar Bluffs

2014-07-21T00:55:00.000+05:30

There are a good number of established trails and state parks around south-west Indiana. Cedar Bluffs remains one of the less discovered locations. I like trails that are less manufactured and more rugged and Cedar Bluffs gets a 8/10 for that. It is lush green, has water bodies, plenty of small creatures and hardly any noise.

It was a nice warm day and we drove south along S Ketcham Rd until we saw a tiny black board marking the entrance to Cedar Bluffs. It is basically a protected nature preserve and you are cautioned to not go off trail and ruin its delicate fauna.

Ramya had been there before so she was to guide me through the trail.

The trail started out pretty and innocuous. I let Ramya lead our party and used my camera to cover the walk in google glass-like fashion.

We walked until we hit the stream that goes along the trail. A number of people seem to come here for fishing.

On the other side of the trail was this rocky cliff that we had to get to later.

At one point the trail turned to the left but we decided that we knew better and ended up making our own trail. That is when the fun started.

The trail got a lot less trail-like and we had to now find a way to get to the cliffs from there. So we turned left and headed uphill.

The place was now a maze of spiderwebs and trees. Note: You will have to leave your arachnophobia at home to come here.

Lost. Yes.

No we were totally off.

After unwillingly and unintentionally destroying a dozen spider homes, we compass-ed our way back to the true trail and we decided to stick to it from that point on.

Win. And we learnt something.

The trail is actually a smaller stream that joined the one we walked along.

Trail

Not trail

A little farther on, Ramya found some parts of the trail that she actually remembered!

Like Ariel's grotto but with snakes.

We stayed along the trail until we could get back on the hillock we had seen and walked down the other side of it back to our car. Overall a pretty fun place. I recommend it.

Riddles in the dark

2014-06-02T05:45:00.001+05:30

Crapstallography

2014-02-12T03:02:00.003+05:30

I spend a good amount of time at work wading through microscopy images of concentrated proteins soaking in salt syrups that should hopefully tease them into forming innocent pretty crystals (that I can mercilessly shot with X-ray guns but that part is another story). It takes just a glance to figure an image out. So with a few thousand conditions and a few images per condition the whole process takes just a few thousand times a few glaces.

Rarely do you get to see something that has crystal written across the image with zoom-in zoom-out effects. The image on the right is a UV light image of the same drop.

Less rarely, you get to see misshapen gunk that has meh written across the image with sound effects that say 'really'?

Then you can spend some time perfecting the syrup recipe until you have something that is workable.

What you see most of the time is either clear boring drops or drops that contain what looks like shredded snakes or alien foetuses.

This one actually looks like the alien from alien.

An that is the scary part. You wade through enough of these crap-drop images that you start seeing mind-game things. Like smiley faces.

Or flirty botched plastic surgery-lips.

Or hand-bags.

Spend enough time and you really start seeing crazy things. Like stars.

Or the Batman.

Must...focus...

I am headed out for some soup, sports and grounded sanity. Peace.

Tennis the menace

2013-09-09T23:12:00.002+05:30

I secretly love sports. Watching football and basketball is fun but playing just about any sport is awesome (except for when you play with competitive killjoys). I signed up for a new intramural league sport every semester in grad school and that turned out to be quite useful in a jack of all trades sort of way. I blew my knee out a couple of years back though, as a result of which there is a narrower range of sports that I can play now. No cutting-jumping motions - so no badminton, football, ultimate frisbee, soccer, basketball, and sprinting. Unfortunately those were my favorite sports and now I was forced to find new ones that fit better. I can still play racquetball, racquetball is fun.

I have been trying to get a grip on tennis for close to six years now and most of my best cricketing shots have happened on a tennis court. The muscle memory from playing other racquet sports makes you even more clumsy on the tennis court. Only recently I have managed to get enough of touch that I can actually return a hittable ball to the opponent. But my play is not of exhibition quality, so I mostly pick late evenings and hidden courts to do my dance.

This week, we started playing at the apartment complex court at about 8:30 pm. Twenty minutes in, I was starting to find a groove. A couple of rallies happened. 'I must be getting better at this', I reflected. Just that moment, a balding man with a white t-shirt and frayed shorts walked up to the enclosure. He said something inaudible, so I moved closer. And then the horrifying thing happened.

"Can my son play with you guys?", he requested. He moved aside to reveal a scrawny 8-year old kid clutching a racquet, his pockets bulging with tennis balls. Ignoring all niceties, I inquired seriously, "how good are you?". "Actually, I'm really good", the kid replied nervously. I spat inside my mouth and probably made a face too. "Why not?" my wife said and the kid propped open the gate and entered the enclosure. "Thanks", said the dad and stayed outside to watch.

Now I don't really hate kids and I definitely don't mind playing with them. I just have some scars from my past. I remember playing a reluctant chess game with my (then) 6-year old cousin when I was about 17. He beat me in less than ten moves. Thrice. It hurt bad. I am a pretty competitive person, it is just that I am also simply incompetent. The sensitive ego makes it worse. From then on, I restricted myself to handicap games that still look fair.

So I now had to manage this crisis. I signaled for my wife to join my side of the court. The kid held two balls in his hand. It was surprising that he could fit one in those tiny hands but he held one firmly and bounced the other one on the ground in preparation. He arched back in a perfect semi-circle and let loose his cannon serve at me as I skipped slightly in my spot so nobody would notice me shivering.

BANG! It rammed into the net. I smiled in relief. BANG! The second serve hit the net too. And a third. And a fourth. "Can I just serve like this instead?", the kid asked nervously and motioned to make an underarm serve. "Is that allowed?", I asked my wife with a grin. She ignored me and nodded at the kid.

It was not too bad a game as things turned out. I let the wife serve the entire time. This kid had a talent for apologizing for everything. He raced around the court to take my erratic returns, often with a sorry when he missed (and I chuckled). The dad got his workout around the court enclosure as he picked up and returned balls from my home runs back to the park. I noticed that my wife was a better player than I thought. With a proper opponent, she was able to hit the ball back with a lot of zip on it (though she did not get as many apologies as I did. Ha!). I mostly stared at them play, occasionally chipping in and making the kid run more. Half hour later, it was over and we walked home. I was still grinning.

Lets do this again sometime kid.

because, Scatterday

2013-08-10T19:32:00.001+05:30

Tech retrospection

2013-03-31T04:39:00.000+05:30

This day, a decade ago, I did not have a cell phone. Two decades ago, I did not know what the internet was. Just about six years ago, I did not know what a smartphone was. While, it would seem that my personality has not changed much over time, my lifestyle has been undergoing a massive transition over the last decade in quick jumps to become a lot more minimalistic. I have had a sweet affair with minimalism, at times with borderline OCD-level tendencies to organize and use one tool to its death. This is my love letter to all the technology that has made my life today.

The extremis Iron man. Except it is me.

While I have always stayed regularly updated on tech news, my fanboy tendencies have not involved much purchasing. Somehow the purpose has always been to become an informed buyer, so when the need arises the geek-gadget bought is one that will last its true life with minimal upgrading (and my handling); a long-term release. So when cellphones became commonplace at the start of the millenium, I bought one four years later when multimedia cellphones were being perfected. The main priority has mostly been, to avoid a prototype and find a smooth and lasting experience. My favorite tech picks:

PSP: I bought a Star Wars: Battlefield limited edition PSP-2000 in winter 2007. I did not want to use my computer for gaming and I was looking for something versatile. I still use the PSP for most my gaming. The experience has not slowed down over the years and some of the titles (GTA: Chinatown wars, LittleBigPlanet, Ratchet and Clank: Size matters) have had tremendous replay value. The portable media capabilities alone would warrant the buy. Just a great piece of hardware that has lasted its value and more.

Macbook pro: Child please, I am not a mac person or something. I just want a device that works smooth and lasts long with minimal maintenance. The Mac experience has been a hard one to beat. I have used this one for five years and it still has not become crusty despite constant use and abuse. It tend to use shell-scripts and home-made scripts often and the unix base has cooperated well. Zero virus issues, mostly bug-free, fast-enough load times - it has allowed me to focus more on what I am doing rather than how.

Nexus: I was fooled into trying out the Motorola Bravo device (awful at best) before I found the Samsung galaxy nexus a year ago. Most cell phones have a very short half-life and the nexus is not one of them. I am a heavy google user; I had my contacts organized on google since 2006 with no idea that this device would someday import and synchronize them; a very pleasant surprise. This device is my mp3 player, gps, organizer, running planner, accelerometer and reading device. It makes a decent communication device too. A lot of my friends and family live far away from me and this device has allowed for smooth, bug-free distance bridging. If only I had more friends using google+.

Google: What can I say about google that has not already been said? I wrote a bit on it some years back. I do not think that google wants to take over the world. They have a bigger agenda than that. I love having synchrony across platforms and devices.

Wii: When is it OK for the minimalist to have a second gaming device? When you get the second one for free. Babysteak gave me his device, with some excellent titles - Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario galaxy, Kirby's epic yarn. I love the backwards compatibility and the innovative design, well, in games that use it properly anyway (The legend of Zelda: Skyward sword). Just watching my mom beat me and others at video games is a sweet experience.

I have a draft on the crazy awful side of technology that I will someday publish. Today the world is just beautiful.

star vyar

2013-03-13T09:16:00.001+05:30

Been in an origami mood over the last few weeks. Some creations from a galaxy far far away a long time ago.

Grand finale - The millenium falcon

V-day

2013-02-16T04:45:00.001+05:30

Exhibit 1:

Exhibit 2:

Exhibit 3:

Coming soon

Buzz

2013-01-30T21:26:00.000+05:30

My first world problem for the day? The smartphone and its games.

I have an interesting situation at work. So if I keep the smartphone on the left side of the desk, it is too far from the wifi router - no internet but one bar to receive calls. If I keep it on the right side of the desk, away from the window (yeah I have a window and the view is awesome!), it loses that one bar but grabs on to the wifi signal - no calls, just internet. Which one do I pick?

I thought for a bit, picked the phone up, stuffed it into my pocket and started working. Problem solved.

Blissard

2012-12-27T04:33:00.001+05:30

I've been a tropical person all my life; never more than 15 minutes away from the beach until I moved to Florida - you get the picture. Naturally my first real temperate winter here in Indiana brought some gloom in tow. But over the last week I have "warmed up" to it. I guess I have a new addition to the like list.

Swag rag

2012-12-16T05:44:00.000+05:30

I absolutely detest douchebag fans. Every last one of them. The ones that will wear a Michigan jersey to a Florida-Florida state game just because.

I recently met one at an IU-Michigan State football game.

It was a freezing but bright fall Saturday morning. I trekked up College Ave. to the tailgating grounds to meet Lisa and company. The new rotation student Drew had a spot for us with hot breakfast and cold beer. I was a bit surprised by the large turnout all the way up College Ave. and at the tailgating grounds. IU fans had pride; it would take some effort for me to do this chilly outing even in Gainesville, FL. I found my bunch at the tailgate spot and met some new people. Within five minutes I struck up an intense conversation with David, another first year grad student. David was stroking the coals in the bbq rack and seemed to enjoy talking about recruiting classes and 3-3-5 defenses as much as I did, and a mutual respect was quickly seeded and growing. We were talking about pass-catching half backs when we were rudely distracted by a drunk Michigan State contingent in their merry green. We both rolled our eyes and I told David about my thoughts on douchebag fans.

"I saw a Michigan fan like that once. I hate Michigan fans."

"Really?" said David and pulled off his black sweatshirt to reveal an eye-blinding maize T-shirt with blue writing on it - 'Wolverines'.

He was a Michigan fan? But he was cool to talk to! One hasty switch of topics later, I caught Lisa's eye and signaled to her that I wanted to go scalp tickets. We left immediately and I poured to her on the way what I thought about douchebag fans and she sniggered politely.

The tickets were scalped and we were surveying the tailgating scene as we made our way back to Drew's truck. I was really very impressed with the number of people in Indiana Crimson all around. IU has always had an awful football team and these fans really had to either be clueless or just plain stupid to brave this weather to watch them lose to a mediocre Michigan State team. And tailgating before that? Man are they nuts!

We almost reached the truck when I saw him. He was walking up past the intersection of College Ave. and Madison, a stocky guy with short hair, a beer belly and a Nike Pro combat orange and blue jersey from the the 2009 Florida-Florida state game. A Florida fan!! I yelled out to him "Go Gators baby!!!" (scaring Lisa to an inch of her life in the process) and unzipped my faux-leather jacket to reveal a bright orange T-shirt with blue streaks and a roaring alligator logo. I ran over to him as he noticed what was happening and we screamed as we did a chest bump followed by several gator chomps at everyone staring at our war dance.

Yeah I met a douchebag fan that day. That douchebag fan was me.

******

My thoughts go out to anyone that has ever been hurt by arms. I am not smart or motivated enough to drone on about gun control and therapy for criminals but somewhere in the reactions and the political debate, the value for a life lost is shamefully neglected. Let us not sensationalize, politicize or commercialize sadness. The human condition has a responsibility to be better than that.

A Test

2012-12-10T23:26:00.001+05:30

The blogger requests all faithful and wonderful google friend connect followers to continue doing the same using google+ so he can keep looking super legit.

kthnxbye

What is in a name

2012-10-05T07:56:00.000+05:30

I have everything that a 27 year old needs. Except for a badass nickname. It matters! Look at what I have to use instead.

Someone came up with a pretty researched list of sporting nicknames a while ago. Here are my personal favorites. And I hate all of you in no specific order.

10. Rahul Dravid - The wall

9. Lionel Messi - La Pulga Atómica

8. John White - The wolfman

7. Usain Bolt -
(He doesn't need one. See what I mean? Are you reading this pa?)

6. Marshawn Lynch - Beast mode

5. Kobe Bryant - The black mamba

4. Tim Tebow, Dwight Howard - Superman

3. Sachin Tendulkar - God

2. Tyrann Mathiu - The honey badger

1. Calvin Johnson - Megatron

On loop this week

Try this

2012-09-12T00:31:00.002+05:30

When you find the time that is.

Pour ice slush into the lab sink such that the sink drain is clogged from all the ice but you can still see it. Listen to the ice melting and dropping (pop!) from contact with the drain surface. In a few seconds, you can also see the ice bits getting smaller and falling into the trap making it a fun lightning and thunder combination!

Or you can spice it up by pouring a slush of ethanol and dry ice. Brilliant smoke effects! Use a spatula to play some dry ice hockey on the sink surface as you watch the smoky ice rearrangement show.

Or you can make it more awesome by making it a slush of liquid nitrgen and regular/dry ice for some extra hot spring bubbling effects as well! Except that is against lab safety regulations so cross that.

And they thought Tuesdays aren't fun.

I've been missing for the last month because, amongst other things, I have been working really hard. Peace.

Brain on the rain

2012-07-21T07:04:00.000+05:30

A collection of demotivators made over the years.

What has been on loop:

How to sleep at night

2012-06-23T23:02:00.000+05:30

While a large fraction of us between the ages of 20 and 35 have no trouble claiming that we are night birds and even insomniacs, most of us do not really know what a true nocturnal or an insomniac even looks like. Should we really pride ourselves in being that? As much as it is a great fad to claim our differences from regular society, to show that in irregular eating or sleeping habits has an awful cost to benefit ratio. While a structured life is seemingly dull, you will be surprised how much a structured life can do to allow you to do your favorite awesome things better. A low effort high reward means of structuring is to just sleep at the right times. They need not be fixed for everyone in the world, but they need to be fixed for you and they need to be normalized to your surroundings. Here I present the one thing that I have through years of not doing in grad school.

1. Physically exhaust yourself

If you are reading this, chances are you are not someone whose job description is "heavy macho-ness". You work, drive, and unwind in the same position with a screen in front of you and at the end of the day, you have put your mind through a cane juicer. Physically you probably have given your eyes a heat-stroke but nothing more. The discrepancy between your mental activity and physical activity is what makes you toss around even if you force wrap yourself into your sleep-face. But if you could have some sort of physical activity for an hour or two (you have to sweat) to end your day, the physical exhaustion should automatically lull you to a good sleep.

2. Eat

It seems alright and even fun sometimes to skip meals. But starting with your mood, it could go on to determine if your grandchildren live to be 30 or 60. It may be hard to whip up mom quality meals four times each day especially if you are single. A bare-basic meal will suffice but it has to be there. When you have your meals is also crucial. Start with a 7-day program where you eat at the same time each day and eat enough quality food and the difference will start to show. Preparing the meal and cleaning up later could be part of your physical activity.

3. Make yourself comfortable

In some cases this could be a luxury but it is obvious that you need to be in a nice relaxed position to doze off. A lot of times however the determinant of comfort is mental. You could be in the best therapeutic bed and still toss around with all the thoughts running through your head. Empty your mind. If ambient noise is your thing, have that work in your favor. Stop analyzing. If you survive to to see the next morning, you can think about it. If you don't, it doesn't matter anyway. A lot of times though, the mental wandering is because of something that fuels the itch, which brings us to...

4. Tune out

Turn off that computer. You really do not need the music running. Those youtube cat videos, those facebook updates, those not-that-funny memes, all those tweets and blogs that just came up will not change your world forever, though a good night's rest could. If everything were to disappear when you ignored it and went to sleep, you'd never take a vacation ever. Oh you don't? Never mind.

5. Have a partner

I found that when I had my sleep irregularities in grad school, I kept a perfect 11 pm - 7 am sleep schedule when I visited my parents on vacation. I definitely was not working hard though I was eating better and stayed disconnected from the interwebs. But mostly it was simply because everyone else in the house was doing it. It worked as some sort of group therapy where I was comfortable with sleeping at 11 pm and springing out at 7 am because the others were. Having a partner for sleep works just like having a partner at the gym. Now you don't have to work too hard and find someone that will live with you. You could just have an agreement with a similarly afflicted friend and work the program from where you are.

5. Plan it

You will find that as much as sleep can help organize your life, organizing the rest of your day will help you sleep better. Make your sleep time that important to you. Do not skip that crucial time point that you are meant to retire at. For anything or anyone. Not everyday is an emergency. Those emails can wait until the morning. If they can't then it is too late anyway and the repercussions can be dealt with tomorrow. A good night's rest is a great reward to sleeping on time. Reward yourself for waking up in the morning too, with the thought or the song that you itched to listen to when you had to retire. It will give you something to wake up for.

You will find that a great many things will start looking better. Your health and energy will be on the upward trend. You will be able to restrain your need to do things impulsively. You will be able to channel your mind and body better. It is really all about the self-love. Once you have one important thing figured everything else falls in place automatically. If it doesn't, we'll deal with it tomorrow morning.

Commencement

2012-05-05T09:15:00.001+05:30

August 15 2008

Rob walked in with a gimpy dance and an impish grin.

"What is it?"

I grunted tiredly. I did not want to stare away from my computer screen.

"Apparently it is the Indian independence day today. But I know one indian that is still ruled by a brit!"

Rob's eyebrows arched as he awaited my reply. But the right look was sufficient. A snort later, I was back to my real space tour through the AAV surface landscape.

**********

April 27 2012

Her excellency, the Indian ambassador to the United States had been droning on for about 25 minutes. 'Wrongest person for a commencement address ever' I thought as I zoned in and out of the speech to grab random words about India, Indira Gandhi and something about a golden sparrrow. Where was that Steve Jobs material? It did not matter; I was getting my forty winks for the day. It was excusable though. The one thing I had developed through graduate school was a large attention span for dry talks. If her excellency was able to lull me to static, she deserved to.

Just as I zoned in one last time, she had to talk about how the british were driven out of India. I felt a nudge on my left rib. It was Rob. He smiled and released an invisible bird from his hand. I chuckled. He turned back to the her excellency but I kept staring at him and Mavis on his side. This smile will not leave.

Fulfillment

2012-03-25T19:30:00.003+05:30

I am structural virologist. I determine and analyze the 3-D structure of viruses at an atomic scale to identify how they function. My PhD. thesis work focussed on how different pH levels affect the structure of Adeno-Associated Viruses to enable proper virus infection.

Ladies and gentlemen, this degree has been earned.

The greatest thing

2012-03-04T23:19:00.004+05:30

Twenty days from now, I can technically be referred to as a doctor. The funny thing is I don't feel any more scholarly and I definitely cannot cure cancer. So I have created a personal yardstick for the required scholarliness to satisfy this doctorate. If I can describe my work and my scientific interests within 3 sentences or 30 seconds (whichever comes first) to any random layman that I meet, I can keep the right to be called a doctor. Otherwise, I would just be another elitist degree holder.

How I created my studio

2011-08-04T20:06:00.005+05:30

It all started with just my trusty Jack and Danny brothers EG3/P lead guitar - Lois. It had a great sound box but needed the right strings. So picked up a standard D'Addario nickel-would steel set and a plugandplay mini-amplifier and I was all set to just strum away at home. But then one day Matt decided that we needed to start jamming together. He did bring it up in the past but somehow it always got put off.
So one fine day we started jamming. A week later we decided that the most fun thing to do at the moment was to go to bestbuy to browse around. There I spotted a Dean Edge hammer bass and suddenly I just had to buy it. Of course I needed a decent amplifier to go with it so within a week came a Fender 10G basic amplifier that worked fine enough for both the bass - now named Lana - and the lead.
But what is a good guitar combo without a voice? So in came a Sony F-V220 Uni-directional microphone with MDR-XD200 headphones. There now had to be a system that allowed for digital recording of vocals and instruments together because garageband sounded so much better without ambient noise. The next piece of the puzzle was therefore a Behringer XENYX502 5-Channel Mixer. I could now connect both the lead and the bass as well as a mike but by now the old 10G amplifier did not seem juicy enough and so a Fender Mustang 1 got involved.
Did I mention that by now I had gotten tired of the old Danelectro distortion pedal so I invested in a Zoom G1N multi-effects pedal? Everything I did now involved wah-wah in some consistency or the other.
It has been one of my oldest wishes to learn to drum at some point in my life. Now seemed like a good time so an Alesis DM7 kit joined the band. The old 10G amplifier now had a new boss. Within a few weeks I had to admit, drumming is way more fun than strumming. It really is.
Of course no collection is complete without a keyboard so a Casio CTK-4000 entered the pack so I could be a little bit Maroon 5 if I chose to. And that is where it stands. For now.

Oh James

2011-06-23T04:40:00.000+05:30

Midnight inspiration

2011-05-06T05:52:00.003+05:30

There once met the Huskies and the Huskers
On the gridiron like raging tuskers
But the predictions got beat
and the corn got eat
and the huskees had become the Huskers

-Based on the 2011 Holiday Bowl