Jazz, Pizza, Broadway, Waterfalls, Wall Street, Work, Work , Work.

Hi folks. Sorry I didn’t deliver on my promise. I haven’t been updating much, mostly because I’ve been running around trying to do all the things I wanted to do here. Plus, the past two weeks have really been crunch time, as far as finishing up lab work goes.

I don’t know if I have made this clear here, but I really really love my project and it has been killing me to know that I won’t be able to work on it for very long. So, the last two weeks, when I really should have been wrapping up and working on my poster, oral presentation, and paper, I’ve been doing new experiments. I really love these experiments and they make my project very thorough, but it also makes writing my paper and making my presentations sorta tricky. So there won’t be much sleeping going on for the next 4 days. But, seeing that there hasn’t been much sleeping going on for the past few weeks, I’m thinking that shouldn’t be a problem.

Sidenote: I’m listening to “A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left” by Andrew Bird right now. If you haven’t every listened to it, go do so right now. There’s a pretty good live version on youtube. It’s absolutely AMAZING.

Lets see here, the weekend before the last one has got to be the most amazing weekend of my entire life. Here’s a run down of things that happened:

Fridays, at 5 p.m., we have happy hour, which means free pizza and drinks. Is that the best start to a weekend or what? So I had pizza after work, and then some of us went to the Modern Museum of Art. They had Salvador Dali’s paintings and movies as their special exhibit. I could not get myself to look away from those. His paintings are amazing. The more you stare at them, the more you love em. I wanted to bring about half of them home with me.

After that we walked by Carnegie Hall, came home for a few hours and then got ready to go to the Jazz Club at the Lincoln Center. I think we were there from 11 p.m. to 2 p.m. The jazz was really great. I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated it enough, but you can’t help but appreciate it when its live and soooo good. The jazz band was followed by a brass southern folksy band, which was also really good. It was perhaps not as enlightening as the jazz, but definitely more entertaining. GREAT overall experience. I give it a 10/10. They also had amazing dessert. That was followed by a few minutes of aimless wanderings around Lincoln Center area. I went to sleep at some point that night, but had to wake up EARLY to get to work.

I think I worked from about 8 to 10:30 a.m. Then we left to try and get lottery tickets for either Wicked or Young Frankenstein on Broadway. Tickets for both of these are always sold out and expensive. So, interns and other folks who want them can go to the box office 2 hours before a show and enter their names in a lottery for up to two tickets. I went to the Wicked box office, there were probably a couple hundred people in the lottery and 26 tickets. Needless to say, Kevin and I didn’t win the lottery. But David won two tickets for Young Frankenstein, so we went to see Young Frankenstein! Joel had told me that he had absolutely hated this one, so I was sorta wary, but it turned out to be hilarious and very energetic. And, our seats were front row, center! We were literally 2 feel from the stage and the orchestra! Again, another 10/10 experience!

Between winning the lottery and going to the musical, we wandered around Times Sqaure, went to a Jamba Juice, and the m&m factory. Honestly the m&m factory was sorta depressing. They have so much merchandise, it made me sad to think that people actually bought those! America, in general is so commercialized, it makes me sad. And all of Times Sqaure is probably a testament to that.

Anyway, after the play we went to FAO Shorz, or whatever the huge toy store with the huge keyboard is. That was great too. We played on the Keyboard!

Then came the top of the Rockefeller Center. Such a great view, better than the one from the top of the Empire State Building, I think. You can see all of Central park and really appreciate how odd it looks in the midst of Manhattan. Whoever it is that thought of having a huge park in the middle of skyscrapers, I love you. Unfortunately I had to go back to work after that. I got home, made dinner and passed out on the couch as Henrika and I were listening to music.

Then we woke up to just as much excitement on Sunday. It started with me oversleeping, Bryan showing up on my door and wondering if I still wanted to go to brunch, me jumping out of bed, getting dressed in 5 minutes and then hurrying down to meet the guys. We went to this cute cozy breakfast place 4 blocks from here. Definitely the best coffee I’ve had in America and the best blueberry pancakes I’ve ever had. So good. We got in without a wait, but when we got out, there was a huge line outside. That felt good! I had to go to work after that. But then after work we went to Brooklyn to Grimaldi’s pizza, which apparently is the best pizza in New York. It was great, I won’t ever be able to pick a pizzeria as the best one, but this one was definitely great. Also fairly cheap. Then we got ice-cream at the Hudson river landing and watched the water falls. That was followed by a trip to Wall Street and the pier. Wall street is DEAD on a Sunday evening, so it wasn’t that exciting, but still good to have been there. We took pictures with the bull.

I came home that night. Took a shower. Started working on my power point presentation, which I had told my post doc I’d finish by Monday. So I started at 11 p.m. and got done at 3 a.m. And, hey, it is probably the best powerpoint presentation I’ve ever made!

So that was an excellent close to an excellent weekend!

We spent this past weekend in Hartford, CT at a conference for a bunch of good summer programs around the country. The science part of it was great! I was told by the other SURPies that I was the happiest/most excited presenter. That’s okay with me =)

Well, now that I have vomited this all on here without actually thinking about what I’m writing, I’d like to apologize to all the grammar gods that I’ve probably enraged by my terrible writing and numerous grammatical errors. But, as Vampire Weekend says, who gives a fuck about the Oxford Comma.

Hurried Updates

Sorry for no recent updates… My days for the past two weeks have more or less been the following:

Wake up
Work
Get dinner
Do fun stuff
Get back home too tired to type
Stay awake for another few hours doing nothing very productive
Get about 5 hours of sleep

I’m really loving this. Working full time feels great, there’s no homework and no procrastination to feel guilty about. Working full time in New York City is what heaven must feel like. I worked in a lab in Athens last summer, a lab that I had worked in for 2 years and enjoyed a lot. I absolutely love Athens, but like Joel says “Athens is great only when you don’t know any better.” Well, I know better now. I almost wish I had done a summer program at another university in an exciting city last summer too. But, I didn’t know any better, so I still liked what I did then. But, I think I’d change it up if I had to do it again.

I do love Athens, but cities like New York fall under an entirely different category. Every evening here is exciting, every weekend a short vacation. Again, like Joel said as we were riding a cab down Broadway, “this street probably has more culture than all of Athens.” Very true. And, I even manage to wake up at 8a.m. every morning and by 8:30 am actually excited about walking to lab. I just feel so good about where I am and what I do, early mornings don’t even dishearten me. Its sickening, I know.

At the beginning of the summer, I was almost frightened by the aspect of being a senior. Only one more year at UGA, only one more year in Athens! I thought I needed more, I thought I wanted more… Not so much anymore. I’d now be okay with just skipping senior year and jumping right into grad school in a big exciting city. And although I still get a funny feeling when I click the prospective graduate student instead of the undergraduate link on university websites, I really feel ready to be a graduate student. I think I’ll enjoy it only if I like where I am as much as I like what I do.

I suppose Senior year will be exciting nonetheless. I am looking forward to my classes, and spending time with friends. They will hopefully keep me from having city withdrawals.

I’ve been diligently checking off things off my to do in New York list. I ate at Tom’s Restaurant (the restaurant from Seinfeld) a couple of weeks ago. It was a cute diner, sort of an upscale, famous version of The Grill. Food was good, I recommend the pineapple juice. I also, almost accidentally, found and had dinner at the Soup Nazi place, another Seinfeld classic. It wasn’t actually the place where the episode was shot, but it’s the first restaurant that opened after the owner decided to make a chain out of it. The original, I believe, is now closed. This was actually just a lucky coincidence. Anne and I had decided to visit the New York Public Library after work one day, but because we both finished at different times, we walked there separately. Well, on her way there, Anne just happened to pass by this place! So on our way back we got soup there. It was yum.

I also visited Columbia. Ah! The campus is beautiful! I am very jealous of all those who get to call it their home. NYU is just sort of scattered around the city, but Columbia actually has a well defined campus, which is surprisingly quiet and secluded despite being in NYC. I fell in love with it in seconds, and decided to add it to my list of prospective grad schools.

We also went to Madison Square Park one night. They have a food stand called the Shake Shak, which, I have to say, has the best shake I have ever consumed! The lines at the place are always long, but the wait it definitely worth the end. We haven’t eaten there yet, hopefully we’ll be doing that sometime soon. Madison Square park has now won its way into my list of favorite places in New York. My absolute favorite in the entire city has to be Central Park. Second favorite is probably the Union Square area, where I live. Madison Sqaure park and the are around Grand Central (on Park avenue, where the public library and Bryant park are) are probably tied for the next best. I am, however, not very fond of Bryant park. They do outdoor movies on Bryant park on Monday evenings. I have been to two of those. It’s a pretty area in the midst of sweet buildings, but I just think its too busy and too small to be called a park. A small grassy patch (about as big as the grassy area in front of Ramsey at UGA) in the middle of a very busy area one block away from Times Square, which I’m also not very fond of, just doesn’t cut it for me. I just don’t think it passes as a park. It surely has nothing on Central park or Madison Square park.

I also visited Coney Island, on the 4^th of July. And boy, that has to be the most disappointing thing I’ve done since I’ve been here. People, will someone please explain the point of an International hot dog eating competition to me please? I just don’t get it. I had never even heard of this shindig that apparently is a big enough deal to be aired, live, on ESPN. I have never been more ashamed of being American than I was there, standing in the midst of people who were excited, out of their pants, about a hot dog eating contest. It did not feel like 4^th of July at all. There was nothing patriotic about the event. If anything it helped confirm my dislike of ESPN. Will someone please explain to me why stuffing 56 hotdogs down your throat in 10 minutes is appealing to anyone. Also, why the hell would anyone do that. Those people were having gag reflexes against every bite they chewed down. What a nightmare. I’m sorry for all the various animals that had to give their lives for such lunacy.

Coney Island in general wasn’t that impressive. Then again, compared to Manhattan, not much is very impressive. We walked around the beach a bit, that was fun. Also, some of the main events in Cloverfield took place in and around Coney, so that’s kindda cool.

So much more has happened, but I really should try to go to sleep. More updates soon, I promise.

Such a Perfect day

I remember
We were walking up to strawberry swing
I can't wait until the morning
Wouldn't wanna change a thing

People moving all the time
Inside a perfectly straight line
Don't you wanna curve away?
When it's such…
It's such a perfect day
It's such a perfect day

- Coldplay, “Strawberry Swing”

Story #3

Last Friday started with us on top of the Empire State Building. We were on the 86^th floor, it was windy, and New York was lit up all around us. Beautiful views in every direction. I took pictures, but they do no justice to the actual site. That was a great way to start to the day, but it was just the start, wait till you hear what happened next. We got back to U-Hall around 1 a.m., I went to sleep at 2 and then woke up at 4:30 a.m. to go see Coldplay! They were playing for NBC’s Today Show at the Rockefeller Plaza! We got there at about 5:45 a.m. and although the actual show didn’t start till 7:00 a.m., we got a crappy spot behind the main stage. Then again, that wasn’t very surprising. Some of those people had been waiting there for over 17 hours. All that mattered was that I was about a 100 feet from the band and could hear them play. I had to stare at their backs for the most part, and that’s when I could actually see them, but Chris Martin did turn and jump and run around for the crowd behind the stage. I may be in love with him again...sorry Jens.

So yeah, I saw Coldplay!!! I still can’t believe it. Coldplay is one of two bands that I absolutely wanted to see live. Radiohead being the other. I have now checked off one of them. It was incredible. Its weird to think I was there, starring at Chris Martin as he hopped and sprinted about and still managed to sing incredibly well.

Coldplay has been dear to my heart since I first moved to the U.S. They were my transition band, my introduction to all the non-Indian great music that I love. I was absolutely in love with them in high school and would’ve probably died if I got to see them then. Parachutes and Rush of Blood were both amazing albums, I have probably listened to them hundreds of times. But then the band got quiet for a while and I lost some of my passion for them. A few years later, when they finally come back, they came back with X & Y, a dull album, I think, except for about 4 songs. So my passion tapered a little more. Then, just a couple of months ago, I saw the Viva la Vida I-Pod commercial and, as much as I loved that song, I didn’t want to get my hopes up because Speed of Sound, after all, was also a great single. Luckily though, Viva la Vida more than lived up to the hype that was created by the single. Oh my god! What a great album. Its experimental, but not too much so. It’s like getting chocolate fudge brownie ice cream instead of chocolate ice cream. You still get the great chocolate taste, but its better because there’s more to it. Viva la Vida is quintessential Coldplay with a little of something else. I love the album and have listened to little else since I got it.

What more can I say, it was absolutely mind blowing. Chris Martin is extremely energetic and charming on stage. He clicks with the audience really really well, and has a sweet English accent. What more can you want from a guy? They played Clocks, In My Place, Yellow, Lost!, 42, Viva la Vida, and I feel like I’m missing one. Not all the songs were aired on the show and they did some of them multiple times for sound check. I did not want to leave that place and did not know what to do with myself after the concert was over. We took a subway and a bus to get to work and were there at 10 a.m. It was only the beginning of the day, but having already done so much and seen so much, I was ready to sleep. Luckily it was lab meeting day and there’s always coffee and bagels at those.

I still can’t believe I saw Coldplay!

I saw dead people

Story # 2

Last week, on Wednesday, I woke up about an hour and a half earlier than I usually do, ate breakfast and took the NYU bus (if you can call that thing a bus) to work instead of walking. This was all to prepare myself for what was hopefully the most grotesque experience I’ll ever have.

The Chief Medical Examiner of New York’s office is right beside the NYU Medical Center and they work together on a lot of projects. Because of this, Joel, can hook us up with them for various things. Well, one thing that the Medical Examiner’s office does EVERY weekday morning is autopsies. Autopsies on people who die from unknown causes, who die in homicides, whose families want them to have autopsies, etc. And every year, SURPies are invited to watch these in groups of 4.

I was pretty certain that this was something I didn’t want to do. I watch the cheesiest horror movies through my fingers and feel bad for bugs that I accidentally stomp. This was not my thing. So, I didn’t sign up for it.

Autopsy week came around and everyone who did sign up for them started to talk about their experiences. I cringed every time I heard one of these stories, but was still strangely fascinated by them. I mean, how many people can say they have seen an autopsy? When else was I going to get another chance to watch an autopsy in the Chief Medical Examiner’s office? That and some of the people in the program are pretty convincing, so I decided to go ahead and do it. Once you’re there, no one forces you to stay there. Apparently you can walk in and out of the room whenever.

So its Wednesday morning, I get to the medical examiners office and there’s only one other visitor. A random graduate student. Graduate students are alright, but they’re no SURPies. A second year medical student took us to the autopsy floor. The dead bodies were lying in the hall and I was strangely okay with this. They were just bodies, not people; and it was surprisingly easy for me to accept that at this point. I will say this though, that entire floor had a gloomy feeling. Everything from the old school white tiles, to the fluorescent lights, to the dull walls. As though a dementor was permanently living there, sucking all the positive energy out of the place. Perhaps it was just me anticipating what was about to happen, but I couldn’t imagine how anyone can work there and not be chronically depressed, or a little off their rocker.

After we scrubbed in, we went into the big room where all the action takes place. Everyday, there is a list of people who’re getting ripped open, where they were found, relevant background, wounds on them, etc. The cause of death is not known. That’s what the autopsy’s for. The medical student was showing us all the little bottles they collect samples in. “That’s the heart box, and that’s the brain box, that for peripheral blood” and so on and so on. I was, again most surprisingly, still feeling pretty zen about all of this. The doctors, or medical examiners, were all actually pretty happy, normal people. I always imagined people with jobs like these would have dry personalities and a raw sense of humor. They were all actually laughing and talking about relationships. Well, more about paid sex than relationships, but y’know, normal people talk nonetheless.

As far as my stability was concerned, things went downhill when they started getting the first body into position. His hair was swishing around and I couldn’t help but stare at his face. At that moment, he looked like a real person, not just a body. After rigor mortis sets in, a dead body is pretty still. The only part that still has normal movement is hair. It was near impossible to not keep staring at his face. I couldn’t help but imagine him walking down the streets, swishing his hair off his face.

The body is prepared for the autopsy by elevating the chest a little and washing the counter underneath with a hose. Then some liquid is injected right under the eyes. I covered my eyes and looked away really really quickly when this happened. I don’t know, even on a dead body, the eye seems like something that shouldn’t be messed with. After that, the real cutting begins. The medical examiner who was leading the autopsy started this by nonchalantly saying “opening him up.”

The first cut is a ‘V’ starting at the shoulder blades and meeting at about the center of the sternum. This is followed by a straight line right down from the point of the V to the end of the intestines. These cuts are made with such ease, its not so hard to watch. I probably have a harder time cutting a slice of cheese. With them, its just a smooth movement, and there it is, a thick piece of sliced skin. After these cuts are in place, the skin of the v part is pealed open up to the neck. This was when I got my first look into a human body. I really don’t know if words could describe this part realistically. Suffice it to say that all the pictures in the elementary school science books, the one with the people drawn without skin with labeled organs and skeleton systems and what not, are pretty accurate. Imagine that, with real blood, and real flesh, and real bones. It’s weird. Blood samples are collected from the randomest spots and then, the skin over the intestine is ripped open. This guy, and apparently this is really rare, had 5 liters of some yellow fluid in this abdominal cavity. Most of this gushed out as soon as the skin was opened. It was g-ross. That’s what alcohol does to you, people. While I was still recovering from this, the doctor took out a pair of giant clippers (atleast 4 feet tall) and started to cut out the ribs where they attach to the sternum, in order to get to the heart and lungs, etc in the rib cage. Oh my god! The sound that bones make when they are cut… This was crossing the line a little from medicine into carpentry! And even when I looked away, the sound was haunting. I had to leave the room at this point and get some fresh, living air. I came back in about 4 minutes. They were now taking out and cutting pieces of/examining the lungs, heart, intestines etc. This was all fine by me and I figured I’d probably be okay after that.

So, obviously, the most disturbing part came right after I thought that thought. I was looking at the heart being sliced, while someone another examiner was working on the head. I saw him make a cut around the head (the cut was roughly where a hairband is on your head) and pull the skin apart. They literally peel the skin and squeeze the skull out. I won’t even try to explain exactly what that is like. It’s not a great way to start off a morning. Then, the skull is cut open… with an electric drill!!!!!!!!!!! The sound that makes is the most disturbing I have ever heard. Again, it sounds strangely like drilling wood, but I couldn’t distract myself by thinking about cutting wood. I was watching a skull being drilled into! It was like a SAW movie, in real live. I had to leave the room again. I waited outside till the skull drilling was done. Someone in the hall asked me if I was doing alright, I told him about the drill, and he said “What? That is the best part”. He meant it, too.

More samples were collected and then the sciencey stuff was done. Besides the medical, there was a photographer, taking pictures of interesting wounds and internal bleeding and such. She was actually trained specifically for that job. I don’t understand when or how anyone decides that’s what they want to do with their lives. What makes someone think, ‘boy, I really like photography, I could take pictures of dead people’?

Anyway, the last thing to do is to pack the body back up. It’s fascinating how the human body works. I have always only been interested in studying this at the most back levels: workings of single cells, creation and control of cellular machinery by genes, and differentiation of functions between all the cell types. The most fascinating concept to me is the organization of a living body; just how these different machines come together and make a functional person. All this is sooo complicated when you’re thinking at the basic cellular level. But, standing there, watching a person being opened and torn apart, the human body just seemed so simple. Like a videogame console or something—put a bunch of things in their right places, and voila, it works! When a person’s innards being cut out, when his hollow body is lying on a cold metal counter, it just looks like a container for organs. Like a fruit basket without the fruits. There was nothing human about it. It’s hard to think that this body was once a person who lived and loved. It’s even harder to think of him as a person when his organs are all stuck into a plastic bag and shoved back into his ribcage. That’s that pack up protocol. Shove organs in a plastic bag (it was red), put the bad into the rib cage, and sew the skin. Even the thread used for the sewing process was a thick straw string. Something you’d imagine a puppet or voodoo doll to be sewed with. Before the head is sewed, they pierce a thread with a cardboard labeled with a number right behind his ear Like a price tag that’s sewed through a piece of clothing. He was definitely more it and he at that point. Despite the fact that he looked pretty real after the sewing was complete. Throw on a shirt and cover the head stitches with hair, and he was ready to go. Just like that.

I don’t know if the experience has scarred me any, but I do know, like I always did, that I could not go into medicine. I cannot treat a person as an object; I’d rather work with cell cultures or microscopic nematods, thanks. Other than that, I also realized that I do not appreciate living organisms at a macro level. Organs just don’t fascinate me. I wasn’t excited when I saw the brain, but show me a neuron, and I’d be jumping up and down.

What can I say, it was relieving to finally leave the medical examiner’s office after autopsy number 2, which was more or less the same as autopsy 1, except that there were police around because it was a homicide. I was in my lab 5 minutes later, feeling a lot happier and completely at home. I guess I already knew I belong in a lab. It was fulfilling to find that out all over again, in a completely different way.