How do you eat DNA spaghetti?

it feels good

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:11:49 GMT

Dear Senators Obama and Biden,

I voted for you tonight. Thank you for inspiring hope. I hope you win.

presidential debates.

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:21:28 GMT

I watched the town-hall style Obama-McCain debate last night. Well, the first 30 minutes of it. Frankly, I am tired of this "he said, he said" finger pointing. How many people will actually change their mind based on the debates? What I did notice is that McCain is really old, as in I worry for his health old.

Dark Knight

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:15:03 GMT

I FINALLY saw the Dark Knight. The movie was great, and I loved the cars and the motorcycle. But how DEPRESSING! So depressing, in fact, I actually has somatic manifestations. I walked out of the theater feeling heaviness in my chest, and shortness of breath. Unlike any other good v. evil movie that ends with triumph for the good, this movie left me believing that selfishness and a trace of evil are intrinsic in human nature, thus good will never win the battle.

Ok. Time to go to lab and do some science, my contribution to hopefully make the world a little better (or at least one more step toward graduating).

NBA finals

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:17:05 GMT

boston fans are OBNOXIOUS and FAIR-WEATHER ONLY and KOBE > MJ.

that is all.

i look forward to watching an amazing basketball GENIUS DOMINATE all them other chumps.

For Tim

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:26:57 GMT

Do you know how many people carry a photograph of you? As far as I know, two: my mom, and Tim Imes.

Tim was a security guard at the med student dorm building. Even though I never lived there, I visited others frequently enough to make a friend out of Tim. He was a friendly guy that loved sports. He didn't have an easy life, born and raised in the poor neighborhoods of Baltimore, but he made honest money and a respectable living. After his wife died last year, he began working the night shift so he could be home during the day for his kids. Sometimes I thought, he must be lonely.

Tim treasured the memories of his life. He had several photo albums in the bag he carried to work: one from his younger days, one of family members, and one of friends at work. There is a photograph of my boyfriend and me in the third album. He took the picture with a disposable camera more than a year ago. It was on the day of the groundbreaking ceremony for the new med student education building. We were in our white coats, smiling in front of his security front desk. I had forgotten about that picture by the time he showed it to me, but I remember the warm feeling that our friendship meant so much.

Tim passed away on Wednesday night. He went to sleep, suffered a heart attack, and never woke up. He was only in his early 50s.

Rest in peace Tim, I'm so sorry you left us, but I'm glad you didn't suffer too much. I wish I had a picture of you. You were a good friend.

Pants Gripe

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:07:23 GMT

I got my pants from Victoria's Secret yesterday. And they didn't fit. Size 4 in any other brand fits me just fine, but oh no, not VS. It's too big at the waist and sticks out at the hips, giving the appearance of a reverse muffin top. Now I have to return them. To make it worse, VS stores does not take return items bought online. UGH!

I hate that certain brands will have non-conforming size systems. Is this to make customers feel better because suddenly and magically, they have shrunken a full size? Lame.

YOGA

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:16:20 GMT

Now that the weather is getting nicer, my walk to the gym is no longer painful, prompting me to start exercising again. Today I went to yoga for the first time ever. It was as amazing as everyone has chalked it up to be! I love this lunch-time 45 minute nap/stretching session, and even more since I can call it "exercise"!! And I am so calm right now, it feels great.

I imagine there will be more yoga in the near future.

January progress

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:55:48 GMT

Lab: Small bumps on the road. As always. Science never works on the first try. But I guess if it did, I would get my PhD next month with a Nature publication in hand. That would be nice. My lab mates are great and my PI is having us over for burritos this weekend.

Grad School: I hate it.

Home: New furnace is installed and working. Thanks to my parents, I will not be breaking the bank over this. Though they insist it is a gift, I will be paying them back. Very slowly. Strangely, within the last weekend, two of my lab mate also had broken furnaces. In this 20 degree Baltimore winter.

Social life: I saw 27 Dresses, which was much better than expectations. The major plot was predictable (of course, it's a chick flick!), but it was cute and fun. And the very end made me tear up a bit. What a feel good movie! Next week I am going to Capital Grille for Baltimore Restaurant Week. Yay!

The pain of home ownership

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 13:30:02 GMT

Owning a home is great (mostly), except for those awful times when something goes awry. Since two days ago, I've had a sneaking suspicion that the furnace is doing something funky. It looks and sounds like it's working, but the house is consistently at 60 degrees (cold!). Great. This is barely 48 hours before I fly out. I scheduled an appointment for a maintenance check up for this morning, and it's pretty much going to break the bank ($99 just for a diagnostic, plus $an arm and $a leg to fix whatever is wrong)... Let's hope I don't have to replace it, which is anywhere from $3000+.

Perhaps it's time for a phone call to the parents :(

Update: it'll take $340 to fix. Ok. At least I can afford that. But it still hurts.

Cooking with Grace

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 22:04:29 GMT

Every Sunday afternoon, I take some time out to be domestic. It starts with swiffering the house and laundry, and ends with a delicious meal. Today I decided to make a potato dish that my grandmother often cooked, with some modifications. I love potatoes. I love carbs.

It all starts with a potato (actually I used 6)

First, peel the potatoes, cut to thin slices, and then cut to thin strips. This step takes the longest. For 6 potatoes, it took me about an hour. If you want your end product to be a little gooey, leave them the way they are. If you want the end product to be a little crispy, wash it thoroughly to reduce the amount of surface area starch. Now it looks like:

OK. Now cook your proteins. I went for sausage. It didn't turn out so pretty, but that's ok. Taste is #1.

Take out the protein, and use the left over ~~grease~~ oil in the pan, plus some more canola oil, fry onions until they smell AMAZING.

Start cooking! Add salt, pepper, hoison sauce, soy sauce, chili oil

Stir stir stir, fry fry fry! I stirfry everything and I always use chopsticks when cooking. When the potatoes are golden brown, EAT!!!

aerobics!

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:21:38 GMT

The gym on campus offers group aerobics classes. Now that I'm in grad school, I finally have time during the day to go. I want to try their yoga classes. So you yoga gurus, where do I get yoga mats? And what kind of clothing should I wear?

Getting in shape again is amazing. Exercising gives me a boost of energy. I just wish I had someone to go with me!

almost forgot:

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 02:36:48 GMT

My new hobby is decorating baked goods! I just bought my first cookie sheet 2 weeks ago and yesterday, I made brownies and decorated them with white chocolate. So much fun! As it turns out, good baking is not so different from good science. Both require methodology and flexibility. Oh, and perseverence.

black friday shopping

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:39:13 GMT

it's all about the

Lab diaries

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 05:16:25 GMT

Tomorrow 2p.m. will be a moment of truth. For the past 3 months (minus the hiatus I took for Step 1), I've been working on a project to bind bacteria to breast cancer cells via antibodies, in hopes of using bacteria and a novel approach of cancer drug delivery. There have been MANY kinks along the way, but I am finally ready for microscopy. If this works, it could be the holy grail of cancer research, and it could actually lead to a better cure. OK. I can't keep my hopes up. Because nothing in science works the first time. But I've got to try it.

HARRY POTTER OMG

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 17:41:58 GMT

I don't like the books. But I like the movies and the stories. Harry Potter readers, please help spare me from thousands of pages. Does he live? Does he DIE? Synopsis please!

Being a surgeon for a day

Thu, 10 May 2007 00:46:08 GMT

We operated on pigs. Twice now. Once two weeks ago, once today.

I did:
cholecystectomy: taking out the gall bladder.
nephrectomy: taking out the kidney.
small bowel anastomosis: cutting a section out of the small intestine and then reconnecting the two ends.

It's an indescribably amazing feeling to be the surgeon. The table is yours. The patient is yours. When you are holding that scalpel, everything else fades away.

I was a surgeon for a day. How cool is that?

conversation with m

Thu, 03 May 2007 01:50:57 GMT

on the way back to the floor after clinic:

dr. m (my attending): so, grace, what do you want to go into? surgery?
me: to be honest, i love surgery, but i don't think i'm cut out to be a surgeon. i get too emotional.
dr. m: grace, you are too nice to be a surgeon.

i'm going to take that as a compliment and think nothing more of it.

at my midterm eval today, i found out that i got high pass in neurosurgery and honors in thoracic surgery, despite passing out.

good news

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 23:26:18 GMT

Ms. VS is a lovely woman on thoracic surgery. I first met her in the pre-op room, at just another routine introduction before scrubbing in. I watched her surgery, LL lobectomy for a carcinoid tumor. Throughout the week, I visited her daily. She is a warm, funny, and passionate woman. Today was her last day in the hospital. When I went to check up on her by myself, she asked about her pathology report and was so anxious that she cried.

Two hours later I got the report and dragged my very tired post-call resident to go tell her the good news: benign and non invasive! She cried and hugged me. And made my day.

life-death

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 02:18:13 GMT

In the same hour that I found out about the Virginia Tech murder yesterday, I was scrubbed in a open chest surgery, where I held a living and vibrantly beating human heart in my hand.

Despite having had years of classes in science, ethics, philosophy, no amount of theoretical discussion compared to the 30 seconds that I held another person's heart. Life is fragile, life is sacred, and life is so close to death. It is easy to kill, but it is tremendously hard, and demands the utmost mutual trust and respect to preserve the sanctity of life.

The murderer was wrong. Killing oneself is wrong, and killing others is worse. Depression is a terrible thing, it can make one forget to care for humanity.

day 2 of surgery and this is what happened

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 04:32:03 GMT

-16 hour day, but I'm lucky that I got to go home on call night to catch a 4 hour nap before reporting back to duty.
-5 ER trauma consults, including lots of screaming kids.
-1 case scrubbed in on, from beginning to end. I got to MAKE THE FIRST CUT, retract, help out in general, stand on my feet hunched over holding my arms in weird positions for over 5 hours, and SUTURE (3 stitches!!). I am so freaking lucky.
-1 egg sandwich, 3 granola bars, 2 bananas, 6 inch subway, 1/2 apple, 2 diet cokes consumed. Does that sound like a lot? I don't know. No time to eat, and I'm so hungry.
-1 brilliant question, 1 stupid question asked.
-8 times pimped, 6 times succeeded.

Thank you to friends who commented. I will write back this weekend when I have more time. I really shouldn't LJ, I don't have the time. But this is so amazing, I had to document it.

A photo post: snowboarding

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 05:47:11 GMT

This weekend I went to York, PA for some quality time of snowboarding. Though I lived in Oregon, hours within prime skiing locations, for many years, I never attempted at this sport. Because quite frankly, every Oregonian is already an avid skiing/boarder, and I don't enjoy people laughing at me.

It was a gorgeous day. But I hated the first 2 hours of it. My instructor, Justin, was a pimple-faced impatient youngster who didn't care if his group was getting lost in the gutters of the mountain. And not long after we started, he actually abandoned us. Nevertheless, he gave us a few key points: look up, and just do it. Oh wait, was that from Nike?

Anyway...

Here's Vanessa and I, looking so good. But if you look closely, we are not on the board yet. Because that's how much we sucked. Oh the day ahead of us is long.

Here, I am obviously in pain and confusion. It was so hard. I was cursing non stop. And I screamed. Many times. To be fair, the screaming continued all day, even when I did well. Every time I got off the lift, I let out a heart wrenching scream. Jio, who was next to me one of these times, asked me, are you actually falling or just screaming like you are falling? I'm not sure. I fell a lot, but I think I screamed more.

At the top of the trecherous mountain (or what others call the "bunny slope"), I hung on to my peers for a glamour shot. The glamour is in the standing. For a beginning, remaining vertical is sweet success. For a beginner with below-average balance and boarderline choclear defect like me, standing is a fricking miracle.

And after just a few tries, my brilliant self became an avid snowboarder, true to my Oregonian nature and inner athelete. You can't tell from the photo, but by this point, it was so easy and effortless that I'm actually ordering a latte, reciting the alphabet backward, and editing Robbins' Pathology all at the same time.

Ok. I can't lie. It was actually like this 79% of the time.

Lesson of the day: No pain, no gain. But not all pain is gain.

Le sigh.

p.s. it was so much fun, I can't wait to go out there again and induce some serious pain.

Spring break plans!

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:39:53 GMT

I know spring break is still 5 weeks away, but for the first time ever, I thought ahead and have actual plans.

I'M GOING TO HANG OUT WITH AMISH!!!

That's right. I'm going to Amish country in Lancaster and staying at a cute little B&B. This is also my first time going to a B&B. I'm totally excited. But I'm only going there for a day, because I really have to charge my cell phone.

Advice on what I should do? Please do tell.

And what are YOU doing for spring break?

Thanksgiving

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 22:19:10 GMT

My Thanksgiving menu:

hot and sour soup (homemade!)
chicken & tofu
chives and eggs
garlic bok choy
italian bread
pasta (homemade sauce!)
pecan pie (whole food's)
butter pecan ice cream
apple cider

amazing. best thanksgiving evar.

Stupid Seattle

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 22:47:28 GMT

Seattle recently launched the city slogan: "METRONATURAL" to promote itself. (http://www.metronatural.com/) This slogan is the product of a year-long, $200,000 effort. How lame. They might as well just dump feces all over the city. I'd like to know what retardotron actually thought "METRONATURAL" can bring more visitors and businesses. What does it even mean? It doesn't matter what it means, the fact that they plastered the slogan on top of the spaceneedle just reduced Seattle's cool factor by 10 fold.

Speaking of stupid city slogans, Baltimore has had several in the past few years. First, it was "Baltimore, the city that reads" --how ironic for a city that can't even feed its citizens, let alone educate them. Then, it was "Baltimore, the greatest city in America" --according to whom, you might ask? The mayor of Baltimore. Ok, so it's laughable, but good job for having so much pride, oh mayor of Bomo. Now, it's "Believe." You see this on giant black and white banners all over the city, mostly on school buildings. Believe what? That maybe someday the city will pave the roads, give money to education, fix the high crime problem, or gasp, maybe even do something about its pathetic economic situation so that it doesn't have to depend on a hospital and a university to be its number one money maker? (Johns Hopkins system is the 2nd largest employer in the state of Maryland, second only to the state government).

Pour that energy and money somewhere useful, so I can actually start believing in your metronaturality, please.

School

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 05:30:37 GMT

Not much to update. Except school is getting way hard. I have to memorize this bug-drug grid, basically a chart of about 20 antibiotics and their effects on about 12 major types of bacteria--so that makes it 240 boxes of information. And that's only one little part of one exam. I think I am going crazy.

Go on this website and watch the animation of a cell's machineries. It's gorgeous.
http://aimediaserver.com/studiodaily/videoplayer/?src=harvard/harvard.swf&width=640&height=520