It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a...fruit fly?

Gender Gap

2005-08-18T23:26:00.000-04:00

The woman in the picture is Maria Callas, the greatest soprano of all time. She is La Divina in my heart. I have already bought at least 10 CDs of her operas and recitals, and downloaded even more.

Soon after I changed my MSN messenger display picture to this, I got several messages from my friends.

From girls: "Wow, what a big diamond!"

From guys: "Wow, who is this pretty girl?"

What did you see?

Pan Gu

2005-08-11T22:31:00.000-04:00

In the paper we were discussing today, there was a gene called Pan Gu.

The boss asked:"Is that a Chinese thing?"

We told him:"Yes. It is a Chinese god. In Chinese myth, he basically created this world. You see the world before him was like an egg. No heaven, no earth, no nothing. Then he was born. He cut the egg in half with an axe. The upper part was light and it floated up to form the heaven. The lower part was heavy, so it dropped down to become the earth."

He thought about this for a second and said:"I wonder if he's going to incoorperate this into the textbooks, along with the Intellectual Design."

Of course, he had been reading TIME.

The Metamorphosis

2005-08-05T21:13:00.000-04:00

"Lei, come out here real quick!!"

Simon's head appeared through the half-opened lab door.

"There's a bat in the hallway!!!"

My utterly bored brain needed no more invitation.

Holy Macaroni! There was indeed a bat in the hallway! And a huge one! It flew back and forth across the hallway as if looking for an exit. Sometimes it would investigate the vents on the ceiling for a while until it came to the conclusion that they ain't no exits. The only legitimate exits were the two doors at each end of the hallway. But they were tightly shut. That's why it couldn't get out. But how the hell did it get in?

Linda heard our excited cries, opened the door to see what was going on, saw the bat, let out a little cry, shut the door immediately, and looked on through the door window.

Even my boss came out to see what the fuss was.

"How did it get in?" he said, "I don't want to be bitten by this thing."

Then he showed us why he was the boss and we weren't. He carefully walked to one end of the hallway, avoiding the flying bat on his way, and opened the exit door, which led to the stairway.

"Come on," he shouted to the bat,"This is your way out. Get out!"

But the bat seemed to enjoy the attention it had obtained from us. It slowed down its speed, as if to say:"No rush, man! Let me play a little." Then it flew straight toward the open door. But just when it almost got out, it suddenly made a U turn and dashed directly toward us. Thus the hallway was filled with our cries:

Simon:"Lei! Look out! It's coming at you!"

Me:"No, it's coming at you! Duck!"

Boss:"Don't let it bite you! It looks crazy! Might have rabies!"

Linda:"Gosh! It's still there??"

Seeing that we couldn't come up with any imaginative offense or defense to get it out, it quickly lost its interest to terrorize us. It studied our posters on the wall a little bit but found our research on fruit flies wasn't particularly useful to increase its preying skills or decrease fruit flies' escaping skills. Then it circled around a vent on the ceiling for a few more times before it decided to fly out of the door and disappear into the stairway.

Back in the lab, we were still excited by this special treat. When we were trying to figure out how it got into the hallway, Peng entered. He was surprised to see us all gathering together.

"What's the matter? Is this a lab meeting?"

The boss said:"Where were you? You missed the bat!"

I pointed out my theory:"He might be that bat."

The boss snapped:"Ah-ha! That explains everything! You disappeared when the bat showed up and you showed up when the bat disappeared! Have you been bitten by a bat recently? Do you feel alright? Have you turned into a vampire? Do you have a black cape hiding under your bench?"

Peng, not expecting this, was speechless for about 4 seconds. Then his face changed to show that his feelings were hurt.

"What are you talking about? Of course I am not a vampire!" he said,

"I am Batman!"

Lost And (Hopefully) Found

2005-08-04T18:18:00.000-04:00

I saw this on the whiteboard in the public computer cluster today:

Lost USB Stick(Datascan)
Please, please, please RETURN it!
I have irreplaceable pictures from going abroad only on that drive!!
****@gmail.com
REWARD!!!

Now, whoever got this USB Stick, if he/she hadn't done so yet, after seeing this notice, would definitely take a look at the above mentioned pictures. Even I was intrigued.

The take-home lesson: everybody is a potential voyeur.

My Japanese Name?

2005-07-31T23:32:00.000-04:00

Not that I want one...

If I type in my name in Chinese characters, It says:

My japanese name is 石丸 Ishimaru (round stone) 一真 Kazuma (one reality).
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

If I use English letters, it changes to:

My japanese name is 長谷川 Hasegawa (long valley river) 大輝 Taiki (large radiance).
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

The second one sounds better.

A Good Start

2005-07-25T17:25:00.000-04:00

A seminar speaker today said:

"A good way to start a successful career in science is to make an outrageous claim that will take decades to disprove."

Then he quote one such claim made in 1967, which, according to the speaker, was very famous. But I had never heard of it, and didn't understand its meaning at all.

However, since it was supposed to be "outrageous", and hopefully had been disproved, I think I was fine.

Logogle

2005-07-25T16:43:00.000-04:00

Logogle

Faux Pas

2005-06-24T00:36:00.000-04:00

Ling, a Chinese student in my lab, asked me:

"What's pussy?"

I looked at her and said:

"Errr...little cat."

"No. It doesn't make sense. Some other meaning?"

"Why not look it up yourself?"

"I looked," she held up her tiny pocket English-Chinese dictionary,"it says 'little cat',too. But it doesn't make much sense."

"It also means this," I took out my pocket pc, found its "proper" meaning in the digital dictionary, and showed it to her.

She read it, blushed and said,

"I knew it means something bad."

"Don't worry," I comforted her, "it happens to many people."

So I told her the stories of Mei, another Chinese girl who did rotation in my lab a few years ago. Once she asked my boss a question when he walked out of his office for a cup of coffee:

"What's dick?"

"Errr...it's the nick name for Richard."

"No. The place I read it, it probably means some thing."

"Oh, boy, what were you reading? Err...let's just say it's some organ men have but women don't."

With that, my boss turned around and went back to his office, without coffee.

She realized what she had just asked, blushed and said:

"My God, I did it again! Oh!"

Then Mei told me another story of her:

She did her first rotation in Hall's lab when she first came here from China. She wanted to give him a good impression so she often worked late till 11 pm. Another graduate student in the lab, Tom, was also a hard-working guy so they often worked together in the night and developed good friendship.

One night, around nine o'clock, all of a sudden, she asked Tom,

"Tom, do you happen to have a rubber?"

He stared at her, wide-eyed, for a full minute before he said:

"What???"

She thought he didn't understand her because of her Chinese accent, so she repeated:

"Do you have a RUBBER?"

He was still staring so she add:

"You know, I was writing this stuff and I found some mistakes so I want to correct them..." and she pointed to the piece of paper she was writing on.

He immediately relaxed and said:

"Sure. Here you are. By the way, it's called ERASER."

"You sure scared poor old Tom!"I laughed out loud.

She cried out innocently:"How would I know rubber means condom in the States? We learned the word rubber in the middle school English textbook! Don't you remember? -'What is this?' -'This is a ruler.' -'What is that?' -'That is a rubber!'How can they change this to such a bad meaning?!"

The takehome lesson: stop reading textbooks and start watching porn.

Mean Boss

2005-06-22T15:31:00.000-04:00

We were out of fly food today.

If science is the spirit of a fly lab, then food is its flesh. Would there be spirit without flesh?

We needed food! Today!

We, the graduate students plus the boss, used to take turns to make food for the lab. And let's face it, it wasn't the most pleasent job in the life science world. But ever since my boss hired an undergraduate student to take charge of this business, our lives became much easier.

So I went to him:

"Will, we are out of food. Do you have time to make some today?"

"Oh, man,"he immediately complained,"it's 90 degrees outside, and you want me to stir the boiling food in that no air conditioning kitchen?"

That was true. It was so hot today that I had to go directly to the 4 degree cold room to cool down when I walked in from outside this morning.

Then I realized: "OMG, I must have sounded like a mean boss to him!"

But I was not a boss, and I was certainly not mean!

I ended up making food with him.

Oh, man, how we sweated!

The take-home lesson: Science could be mean.

Language Barrier

2005-06-19T17:41:00.000-04:00

Oh, it's always there:
http://interwhores.com/downloads/iraq.wmv

I'm not talking!

2005-06-13T15:23:00.000-04:00

Every other week at 11:45 am we have a "germline" meeting, where people from three "germline labs" gether together and listen to one person to present his or her work.

The order of the talks are usually scheduled this way: the three bosses go first, then the senior students, and the junior students go last. So my boss's talk was scheduled in early March, and mine was today. But my boss wanted to switch talks with me because: "you have more data than I do. Do you mind if I let you go first?"

Of course I didn't mind.

So today it was my boss's turn to present. At 11:45, when it was supposed to begin, only people from our lab were in the room.

Five minutes later, the mouse lab people came. But the worm lab people were still missing. So Bill, a mouse guy, took out his cell phone and called Shing, a worm guy:

"Hello, Shing, it's Bill."

"..."

"I'm doing pretty good."

(Everybody laughed.)

"..."

"Yeah. So are you guys coming to the meeting?"

"..."

"Oh, no," Bill looked at me and smiled strangely,"It's not Lei. It's his boss talking today."

(Everybody except me laughed. I managed to laugh about 4 seconds later.)

When they came they said:"Oh we completely lost track of time. We thought it began at noon."

Yeah, right.

Got To Go Got To Go Got To Go Right Now!!

2005-05-31T20:25:00.000-04:00

Bathrooms are widely considered the second greatest inventions of all time. The greatest inventions of all time is, of course, toilet paper. The apparent popularity of bathrooms therefore makes it surprising, sometimes traumatic, to learn the fact that the nearest bathroom is always too far away when you most need it.

For example, in the Biology building, old and ugly, not all floors are equipped with bathrooms. Even those lucky floors have only one of the necessary two: either men's room or women's room. This arbitrary arrangement are welcomed by certain residents of the building but hated by others, who have to travel to other floors to answer nature's call. Imagine when you have diarrhea.

My lab is on the 3rd floor. Right across the hallway is a bathroom-a men's room.

Boy, aren't I lucky.

Which was precisely what I was thinking when I walked out of the bathroom today. A girl, who was an undergraduate student working in the lab next door to us, was hurrying by the bathroom door. Seeing me coming out of it, she turned around and asked:

"Is there anyone in there?"

"Eh...no,"I answered, quite puzzled by the question,"but..."

She pushed the door open and rushed in:

"I don't care. I have to go! No time to take the stairs! Hahahahahahaha..."

Her nervous laughter echoed behind the closing door, while I remained dumbfounded. Finally, realizing that I could do nothing about it, I decided to pace to and fro outside the bathroom to prevent any possible "accidents" to happen, until I heard the sound of flushing.

The take-home lesson: wish for a new building.

Perfect Weather!

2005-05-29T22:54:00.000-04:00

After several weeks of miserable, rainy weather, we finally had a warm, sunny Sunday.

Blue sky, cool breeze. Perfect.

I sat in the lab, feeling happy. The experiment that had failed me several times seemed be working, too.

The boss came in. As a part of the usual greetings, I said:

"Perfect weather out there."

He looked at the tree shadows outside the lab window and nodded,

"Yes. Just perfect."

Then he looked at me and said:

"Then why are we here?"

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

2005-04-16T18:32:00.000-04:00

This post is a severe distortion of the sad reality that I speak 0% of any American English and 100% of bad English.

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English

35% Yankee

10% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

The Fifth

2005-04-06T23:00:00.000-04:00

I am the 5th in the 2005 NCAA Men's basketball pool!

My department's pool, of course.

What a surprise!

I was dragged into doing this pool the last minute by Simon. I said:"But I don't know much about these teams! Who's better than whom? I have no idea!" Simon said:"Who does? Come on! It's fun! And it's only 5 bucks! I'm sure you can spare 5 bucks!"

So I filled in the brackets randomly and turned it in with the $5 bill. Simon was right. It was fun. However, the early upsets totally screwed up my brackets and I thought I had no chance of being anywhere near top ten. But the fact that I wisely picked UNC to be the champion counted a lot of points and made me the 5th.

I am sure a lot of hardcore basketball fans in my department will look at the top ten list in disbelief and say:"Lei? What does he know about basketball??"

Anyway, I wonder how much money I can get out of this.

Clint The Scientist

2005-03-01T23:46:00.000-05:00

He's been standing against the wall for all he can remember. Year after year, he watches new students come, old students go. His famous white labcoat is torn on the shoulder. But he still looks the same as the first day he was placed here, except the mask and mustache a naughty student called Feng drew on him.

He is a devoted scientist. Look at the coat! The mouse! The gloves! But people always mistake him for that Oscar winner.

"Someday," he thinks to himself,"people will come up to the actor and say:'aren't you that fly lab paperboard guy?'"

A Car With Many Opinions

2005-02-27T22:02:00.000-05:00

A Car With Many Opinions

The Trailer Of "The Guide"

2005-02-17T14:51:00.002-05:00

Amazon has the world premiere trailer of The Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!

Cool! My favorate book!

Can't wait to see it!

Update: now you can watch the trailer here.

The Lab Pet...Dead.

2005-02-12T19:59:00.000-05:00

Our lab pet, the Lucky Cricket, was dead.

It was a terrible death. Its middle and rear legs were broken from its body, and one of its antennae was broken, too. I felt sorry for it.

But Feng said:"The snow will kill it anyway, if I didn't catch it. It probably outlived its peer a lot longer in this warm room."

Sounded reasonable.

Our boss printed out a "R.I.P" gravestone on a piece of paper and taped it on the bottle.

Simon, an undergrad, came in and saw this. He shook his head at us accusingly:"Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. I told you to set it free months ago. Now see what you've done to it."

I repeated Feng's theory for our defence:"It's gonna die outside anyway. It can't survive the snow."

"No,"he said,"it can dig a hole and hide in it. You guys killed it."

Really? Terrible! If it was true, it must have hated us and cursed us in its final days. Its ghost would probably haunt us in the lab, messing with our experiments, or scaring our precious fruit flies to death.

To prove our innocence, and to have peace of mind, I did a little research on this subject. This website said:

They become adults in July and August, mate, and usually die in September, although some may live until the first frost.

So we didn't kill it. We actually made it live longer, much longer, than normal crickets, although it didn't have any grandchildren to tell his longevity secrets to.

I guess it could rest in peace now. So could my mind.

A Star Is Born

2005-02-07T23:46:00.000-05:00

This morning my boss asked me:"Lei, are you gonna be around this afternoon?"

"Yes. What?"

"Dr. D is going to videotape the lab. They are making a film for undergraduate bio students or something. So I want people looking busy in the lab. You can save your work till then if you don't have much to do today."

"Haha, sure. I will be VERY busy then."

2pm, when I was dissecting flies, I heard some people walking into my boss's office. Since my eyes were looking into the dissecting scope, I didn't look up to see who they were, but I guess they must be Dr. D and his "film crew".

Then I heard my boss showing them around the lab while explaining what our lab was doing (genetics), what were in those bottles (flies), and why we used them(convenience, short life cycle, cute...)

"Ah, here you are."My boss's voice was next to me. I looked up and saw two undergraduate students standing beside me, holding a SONY HC20 camcorder.

"This is Lei. He is looking busy. Maybe you guys can film him dissecting some flies."My boss suggested. The two camera men said"Ok", attached the camcorder to a tripod and pointed it at me. So I went back to work while secretly straightening my back so that I wouldn't look humped in the camera.

After a while, one of the guys said:"OK." I relaxed my shoulders, turned to them and asked:"What's this for?" They said:"Dr. D wants to film the lab that are doing research and make a little video and put it on the department's website so that the new undergraduate students can know what lab is doing what and help them to decide which lab to go to if they are interested in science."

"Oh. I see. That's nice."

"Yeah. It's good for the students. Besides, as Dr. D would say,'You are gonna be a star.'"

There And Back Again

2005-02-05T10:06:00.000-05:00

"We can't give you the visa today. We have to review your application to decide whether or not to give you the visa." The visa officer said with a stern face.

He was in his late 30's or early 40's, not quite an age for the middle-age crisis yet, but looked already experiencing it. His weary eyes and impatient voice were drenched with his disgust for this job. And apparently, he had a very bad day that day. He tortured the guy before me, also a returning student just like me, for about 10 minutes and finally sent him off with a We-have-to-check-your-background-so-fuck-off verdict.

The authoritative "we" word fanfared the whole American people's eagerness to interrogate this poor innocent-looking spectacled Chinese student, or maybe just the officer's personal eagerness to ruin some people's life. How many evil things had been done under this "we" word?

Knowing that a "background check" meaning at least a 6 to 8 weeks' delay and my spring semester would begin in two weeks, I anxiously asked the officer:"Am I being checked?"

"No. We have to review your application to decide whether to check you or not. We will contact you." With this, he threw out my passport and other documents.

I told my brain that it should probably make a little beautiful, moving, I-come-in-peace speech to convince the officer that I was perfectly harmless to the US government, its people and world freedom, but it failed to produce any meaningful sounds to convey my purpose. Instead, it directed myself to say"Thank you", gether my stuff he threw out and leave the room. Later I blame this on the over-crowded, over-heated visa office waiting room. I had been waiting in this hot room for over 3 hours just to get interviewed and no brain would function properly under this situation.

The cold air outside cooled my brain down and it started working once again. Now I fully realized my situation. My scheduled flight back to the states was only 5 days away, which meant that: a) I could get my visa within 5 days and happily come back to the States with no harm done; b) I could get my visa after 5 days and have to change my flight and come back to the States with a little delay and about $200 of the flight changing fee, hopefully; c) I could be background-checked and have to linger in Shanghai for 1 to 2 months and finally come back to the lab finding all my flies had died one week before; and d) I could be rejected the visa-application so that I couldn't come back to the States to finish my study and consequently become a janitor in Shanghai and die a non-PhD.

Of course, I hope scenario a would happen and I only had to wait for 5 days.

So I waited. Four agonizing days passed and no word from the embassy. Each day killed a fifth of my hope. Each day made it clearer that I wanted to come back to the lab to finish my experiments. I missed my flies. Really. Please don't die.

In the afternoon of the fifth day, with my flight at 7:30pm, I couldn't sit around and wait for the call any longer. I decided to go there in person and ask them "What the hell is going on?" So I rushed out of my friend's apartment where I stayed and hopped on a taxi. On a quiet street near Westgate Mall Plaza (Mei Long Zhen Plaza), where the visa office was located, my cellphone rang suddenly. It was from THE VISA OFFICE.

"Come to the visa office tomorrow morning at 10:00 am and have another visa interview. Bring all the forms and your passport."

"But can I do it today? My flight is this evening."

"No way."

The next day, after another 3 hours' waiting in the suffocatingly hot waiting room, I was interviewed by a different guy who was apparently asian and always smiling. After ten seconds of Q&A session, he said:"OK. I don't think there's any problem with your application. Please wait in front of Window 7 while we print your visa."

I didn't feel any excitement, just a little relief and a stronger desire to get out of here and go back.

Of course, I had to cancel my flight. And because it was bought on Hotwire.com, my ticket could not "be cancelled, refunded, changed, exchanged or transferred", as the United Airlines representative insisted, after I called, argued, and begged for 10 minutes. I had to buy a new ticket, which costed me $600.

"Time is money". Whoever first said this, he/she must have experienced the same situation as I did.

Anyway, I was just glad that I was back.

I went to my lab the next day. In the hallway, I met another graduate student. We chatted a little bit about my trip back to China. Family?-Great. Food?-Super. Fun?-Sure!

Then he said:"I bet you don't want to come back, do you?"

I wanted to tell him the whole visa episode, but didn't know where to start. So I just smiled, and nodded.

Going Home

2004-12-12T20:31:00.000-05:00

In a few hours, I will be on my plane, flying home!

Home, sweet home. I can do anything I want. Eat, sleep...oh yes, that's pretty much what my "anything" is.

Won't be able to post from there, though. I heard blogger.com was blocked there.

So see you next year!

You Are Going Home?

2004-12-06T23:07:00.000-05:00

Our department is interviewing new faculty candidates, again. I guess it means we are expanding.

As the tradition goes, everytime a candidate comes, the department will appoint 4 graduate students to have lunch with him/her.

I was picked for today's lunch.

During the eating and talking, the candidate asked us, among other things, what we were going to do this winter.

When it was my turn, I said:"I am going home."

He sounded surprised:"What?? You are going home???"

"Yeah."

"And your advisor agreed to let you go home? Who's your advisor?"

"Err...Dr. B."

"For how long?"

"Err...a little less than a month."

"Will your advisor still want you when you come back?"

I studied his eyes behind those frameless glasses, hoping to see any indication that he was just joking.

I saw none. He was serious.

The disdain in his eyes annoyed me.

Since when had going home become a sin?

"For my defence,"I tried to prove I wasn't a slacker,"I haven't been home for like 5 years."

"OK."

Well, somewhere, some day, some graduate student's PhD life will be very long and very hard.

Just not here, not in this department, I hope.

OMG! Is That Meat In Your Food?

2004-12-05T11:22:00.000-05:00

Red meat link to arthritis risk

Red meat risk for endometriosis

Red meat 'cancer threat'

Less meat 'means a longer life'

Update Freak

2004-12-04T23:49:00.000-05:00

I am an update freak.

I like software with the "Check for Update" option. I like clicking "Update Now!" buttons. I like seeing dialogue boxes with inviting "Update Availalbe! Download?" messages. I like watching rapidly growing progress meters. I like these so much that I check many many times a day.

In fact, anytime I unnecessarily open a new tab but don't really have anywhere to go, I will subconsciously click that dot-circle icon at the upper-right corner of Firefox to go to its homepage and click "extensions" to see if there's any new ones. Or, at other mind-blank moments, I will open Norton Antivirus or Lavasoft Ad-ware or Spybot or Spywareblaster to check for new updates.

It's like using CPU idle time to search for ETs or attack SPAM servers.

It worries me that I spend so much time on just checking for updates. To open and close these programs alone takes a lot of time and energy. So I think there should be a program to automatically check, download and install updates of all the updatable software installed on my harddrive, with just one convenient click.

One thing I hate about updates is that sometimes I can't download them. Like today, I found out there was a security update for Mac OS X. I wanted to install it on our lab Mac but I couldn't, because I didn't have the privilege to change any system files. I hate this powerless feeling.

Life is hard for an update freak.