New York, New York

Leaving New York

2008-08-05T16:58:00.003-04:00

It's easier to leave than to be left behind
Leaving was never my proud
Leving New York, never easy
I saw the light fading out

-- R.E.M, "Leaving New York"

I can’t believe the summer I’ve just had. So perfect, it might as well be a dream. I’ll never understand how I ever got so lucky, never know how I ended up with so much without having to give anything in return. Then again, I could care less about understanding; that was one experience I’ll ready accept without an explanation.

I had been dreading leaving New York even before I got there. Well, R.E.M is right, leaving New York’s not easy. As it turns out though, leaving the SURPies is just as hard. I can’t believe how much I miss it all. I got so used to seeing everyone, so used to the full time work schedule, so used to the speed walks around the streets, the buildings, the aimless wonderings, the subway rides, the sarcastic snide remarks that we were all so fond of. Now, I’m just sitting here, occupying myself with applications, books, newspapers, family, whatever comes my way, to keep my mind off of New York, to keep my mind off of the program. I’m being quite productive, surprisingly cheerful, but in the back of my mind I’m always wanting everything to be as it was. I’m always waiting for Henrike’s anecdotes about Germany, for Carlos to come ring the doorbell over and over again, for David’s your mom jokes, for Dorian’s horrible nicknames, for Bryan’s splooshy flip flops. I’m wanting all of this to happen, knowing all the time that they won’t, and continuing with life anyway. It’s not as painful as I’d imagined- just as long as I don’t think about the subway when I’m driving, just as long as I keep Lexington Ave. off my mind when I wake up. That’s hard to do, but manageable.

I suppose I’ll always remember the movies on Bryant Park, the walks around Central Park, the lab work, your mom jokes, the science talks, and lets not forget the vegetarian talks. I’ll always remember everything we did in our pictures, in our blogs. But I’m afraid I’ll forget how I felt when I was doing those things. I’m afraid I’ll forget how amazing it was to find the telectroscope, how surreal it really was to watch Young Frankenstein from the front row, how serene it was to be in Strawberry Fields. I’m afraid I’ll forget how painful it was to leave it all. I’m afraid I’ll forget how I really felt when I walked around Union Sqaure for the last time, when we left Manhattan, when I didn’t want to leave David at the airport, when I sobbed my way through the security line.

Saying goodbye to the city, to all of you, was difficult. But it would have been worse if I’d thought I’d never see you again. Well, I don’t know when we’ll run into each other. At interviews? conferences? Honestly, I could care less, just as long as we run into each other sometime. Just as long as I end up in New York at some point.

I can't wait to be back in Athens and see folks there. I know I'll feel fine as soon as I'm back. But, I also can't wait to be done with my last year and start grad school. I guess that's just the way it crumbles, cookie-wise =)

Rewind Please

2008-08-01T00:43:00.001-04:00

I just packed my clothes, made it to my desk, all determined to pack up my books and what not, but instead ended up here, just sitting in my chair, starring out of the window. We haven’t shut the blinds in our room since our second day here. It was strange at first to wake up in the middle of the night and realize I’m in the middle of the city. Now its strange to think about what it’d be like to not wake up in the middle of the city.

No skyscrapers, no cute dogs, no speed walking, no waiting on the street for the lights to change, no more aimless walks in search of dinner, no more subways. I picked up my last Onion today. I attended my last happy hour at work today.

I can’t believe the summer I’ve had. All of it has been surreally good. Everyday a perfect day. Every moment a sweet memory. I don’t want it to end. But what can one do, real life wants me to check out of this dream and check back into reality.

I walked home from work for the last time today. I was close to tears about 3 times during the 20 minutes.

I have one more day of work. We have a poster presentation session tomorrow, then dinner someplace nice. Saturday I’m spending as much time as I can at Central Park, then flying back to Atlanta.

Can someone please press rewind?

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

2008-07-30T03:28:00.001-04:00

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

2008-07-16T02:49:00.001-04:00

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

2008-07-03T00:49:00.003-04:00

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

2008-07-03T00:04:00.000-04:00

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.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one

2008-06-27T20:31:00.006-04:00

I can happily say that I have checked off a few things on my to do before I die list since my last post.
Really, all these experiences deserve their own separate posts. So, although I’m writing about them at about the same time, I’m going to divide them up into three separate stories in three separate posts.

Story #1

I visited the memorial for John Lennon in Central Park last Saturday! The garden is called Strawberry Fields, named after the song and the orphanage. We took the subway to central park and walked around through it till we found Strawberry Fields. While we were still looking for it, I was really in no hurry to find it. It was a pretty day and we were frolicking around Central Park; really, how much more can one ask for. We stopped at a couple of places to listen to random musicians, watched people roller skate, took pictures, and ate unhealthy food. All was calm until I saw the 72^nd Street and Central Park West intersection. That’s were Strawberry Fields is. Then, I became really restless. I just wanted to be there, and I didn’t much care about anything else. After a little confusion, thanks to my complete lack of a sense of direction, we finally ran into the sign for Strawberry Fields. Ah! I could’ve died. It was impossible for me to wrap my mind around how amazing that moment was. I had been looking forward to visiting this place since I first listened to “Imagine” in 9^th grade. And to finally be there! It was incredible. I just felt really really close to John Lennon, and that was before I even walked into the park! It’s really a pretty garden and the Imagine stone mosaic sort of pops up without any warning. One second I was staring at the grass, the next I was standing right beside the mosaic. I could have died all over again then. Just staring down at the stones and flowers gave me a beautiful feeling. It was sad, and at the same time very empowering. Right then I felt I could do anything, and that made me want to do something great. Something that would make me worthy of all the great emotions I was experiencing. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but suffice it to say, I am in love with that place. I like the actual garden, but I love its other dimensions, I love the way it made me feel.

To add to all of that, a band was playing Beatles songs on a bench right beside the Imagine mosaic! I went over there and started to sing along with them. The third song they played while I was there was “I’ll Get You”!!! As I was singing along with every freakin word, an old guy standing in front of me turned around and gave me a funny look. He did this a couple more times during the song and at the end finally explained the looks by asking me how old I was. I said 20. “How do you know these songs?” he replied all shocked. I just smiled and said “I love the Beatles!” He then proceeded to tell his wife, who was staring intently at me that I was only 20 and knew all these songs =) That also made me feel really good. I stayed for about 5 songs. Seeing that I was about an infinity plus 2 times more appreciative of Strawberry Fields than all the other people I was with we had to leave after about 40 mintues. However, Ringo’s birthday is coming up and we’ll be returning to Strawberry Fields to celebrate that. Who knows, maybe Ringo will come by.

We then walked out of Central Park and went to The Dakota, John’s Lennons last home and the place where he was shot. I was at his home! I stood right where he got shot! And, Yoko still lives there! So yeah, I basically felt like a part of John’s life right then. Honestly, not much else feels that bittersweet.

Rain drops keep fallin on my head

2008-06-18T22:27:00.002-04:00

“Don't ever change, don't ever worry
Because I'm coming back home tomorrow
To 14th Street where I won't hurry
Where I'll learn how to save not just borrow
And they'll be rainbows
And we will finally know”

- Rufus Wainwright, “14^th Street”

That is a verse from 14^th Street, a song by Rufus Wainwright. I have always loved that song, and now I know that it’s about 14^th Street in New York City(thanks, Wikepedia). That’s the street I live on! No matter where I am here, I feel a part of something bigger. So many songs, so many movies, so many great people, so many historic moments have graced the very streets I walk on every day. Every little thing feels monumental, and no matter what I’m doing, just the fact that I’m in NYC is enough to make me feel great.

Talking about things that make me feel great, we went to a great concert on Central park this past Saturday. It was a free concert, so we waited in a huge line under the smokin hot sun, and in the midst of some interestingly dressed people. A pair of orange leggings, some red shorts, and bright blue shoes seem to stick out in my memory. After an hour of standing in the line that moved about 4 feet, we finally made our way into the park, and it started to rain. At first it was all good fun. Things were starting to get damp, but it was a great break from the sun. But then, it started to pour and the umbrellas came out and it was really hard to catch a glimpse of the first opening band, whose name I can’t remember anymore. They were all right. We were soaked before the next act began. After probably more than an hour of downpour, the rain stopped and the sun came out. Everything wet just seems a lot prettier in the sun, and I love the smell of soil after a rain, so I was feeling great at this point. And my hair was staring to die, what more could I ask for? The second opening act was Kid Sister… Oh my god, she is the most annoying singer I have ever heard, and I’m counting my brother and Sophie in that. Thankfully she only did about 3 songs. 3 terrible, terrible songs. One of them was about getting a manicures and pedicures, so you get the picture. To everyone’s great annoyance, it started to pour again during the main act, Vampire Weekend. They’re a sweet indie rock 4 guy band. All the guys are Columbia graduates, and they’re quite cute, so I was thoroughly entertained. Definitely worth getting soaked twice for. Plus, all the people who stuck around through the rain were much more appreciative of the music. Overall, I give the experience a 10 out of 10. The rain, as annoying as it was, added a lot to the music and the waiting. It turned the concert into something special that we will all probably remember for a long time. And although I wouldn’t want to go through that again, I wouldn’t do it any different if I had to redo it.

That night after we dried up at home, we went to China Town to get dinner. And, it was raining all over again. Damn the rain. I was really tired to being wet by this point, but dinner was great. We ended the night with Little Miss Sunshine. One of my suitemates hadn’t seen it and that was not acceptable so we watched it.

Let me back track here a little bit, something quite interesting happened on Friday night. After work, four of us decided to go the Met for a couple of hours. Tickets were free for NYU medical center students/faculty! We spend a couple of hours there, definitely not enough, but we’ll go back. But anyway, as interesting as that was, the best (or worst) was yet to come. We got back all tired and had dinner and then decided to see what the other folks were up to. Turned out, many of them were waiting to get into a bar/restaurant, so we found them. We had asked for a table for 12, which we got after about 45 minutes of waiting on the street. Upon getting into the tiny, over-crowded, and over-rated place, we figured out that there were over 14 of us. So we all tried to sqeeze into the 12 kid sized chairs they had for us. But oh no, the waiters would have none of that. They actually refused to serve us because our group was larger then we’d told them. Basically, they either wanted some of us to leave, or for all of us to wait all over again to be served. Seriously, that has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever encountered. How does that make any business sense? We’d be the ones who’d be uncomfortable, and they’d be the ones making more money if they had let us stay. How does it make any sense to ask people who want to pay you to leave? I don’t know, but it was annoying so Jeannette and I decided to leave and watch Pan’s Labyrinth instead. It was a great choice, especially after I heard reports about the night from one of the two sober people present there.

New York probably has one of the heaviest alcohol consumption rates (besides New Orleans) in the country, but the bars around here are actually very strict about carding. It seems that going to a bar is all people (by people, I mostly mean students) do for fun in the evenings. That is, if you disregard all the touristy stuff and all expensive stuff. Still, access to bars isn’t nearly as easy as for underage folks as it is in Athens. That said, NYU itself is actually very open with alcohol. The Sackler Institute has a happy hour every Friday, and the Skirball Institute (the part of Sackler I work in) has a happy hour every Thursday. Both these events have free alcohol and no one cares who’s drinking it, as long as they’re students. Completely opposite from the way things seem to work at UGA.

After all the excitement on Friday and Saturday, Sunday was a pretty lazy day. I did laundry and bought grocery. Nothing much happened till around 4 p.m. when I got a call from… Chris Flippo! Also know as Chuck, but only by me. He was in the city for the Peabody awards and he came over for a few hours. Best few hours ever! We walked around NYU’s downtown campus, which I’m not that familiar with because I work at the Medical Center in midtown. It is so much fun to see friends in a completely different geographical setting! Ah! Melanie, KJ and Andrew are all supposed to come see me at some point. I can’t wait!

On Monday, after a hard days work, Bryan, Jeanette and I decided to go watch Dr. No at Bryant park. They do outdoor movies on Mondays during the summer. And guess what, it rained again! But this time it wasn’t too bad and we had all remembered to bring our umbrellas having learned our lessons from the concert. So it ended up being great fun.

And speaking of rain, we got rained on again today on the way to and from dinner. I’m tired of being wet and cold every time we go out. I wish the rain gods would stop already.

Featuring The Telectroscope and more

2008-06-11T22:55:00.001-04:00

Hi and welcome back! I’ve now been in NY for a week and a half, and boy it feels so much longer than that. Many things have changed this past week, not the least of which is the fact that I’m not intimidated by the city anymore. Also, I’ve started to call U-Hall home, I more or less know my way around here, and we’re now regulars at a little bakery across the street (there’s an example of a poorly constructed sentence for you). All of that amounts to one thing: I feel like I belong here. It would be one thing to visit New York and hang out for a few days, but I get the greatest feeling when I realize that I’m actually a working girl in New York. The city is not just some place I’m touring, but it’s my temporary home.

And, let me tell you, my room in this temporary home has the greatest view ever! Here’s a picture if you don’t believe me:

We live on the 11^th floor and I am sure that this is the best view on the floor. Everyone is pretty impressed by it. On our first night here, my suitemates and I just stared out of the window for about half an hour, and we still do this on a regular basis. I always eat my breakfasts and dinners by the window. The streets are always active and just starring at them strikes a major chord in me. I can’t help but feel happy when I’m looking down at it.

Despite that, we have managed to get out of the room and see a lot of Manhattan. This past weekend, most of us went on the Circle Line cruise on Saturday and Joel took us on a bike tour on Sunday. The cruise was chill. My favorite part was taking pictures of the city. Also, I finally got to meet Lady Liberty. She’s a hoot.

The bike tour was even more fun. Luckily, Manhattan is very flat, so the 15-mile ride didn’t feel bad at all. It was about 95 degrees throughout the ride, but that didn’t matter. We were biking around Manhattan, for pete’s sakes. We rode to a sweet park, some place where many of the cooking shows are shot, the streets where a lot of restaurant scenes in Sex and the City are shot, and by this palm garden near Ground Zero. We’re actually going to go to Ground Zero later in the summer. There is a great park close to there and its right by the water. Everything around there is so serene. Its hard to imagine what 9/11 would’ve felt like when you’re there with a ton of friends on a pretty day with happy people hanging out on the grass.

My favorite adventure yet happened before all of that. On Friday night, a few of us were hanging out in our living room all worn out from the day’s activities. Then at around 12:30 a.m., we decided to walk around. David had heard about this awesome awesome thing called The Telectroscope and showed me its website earlier that day. Basically, it’s a tunnel that connects New York City to London. So you look into it from here and see the Tower of London in real time on the other side. We had vaguely looked it up on the map, but hadn’t planned on going there till later. Somehow though, at 1 a.m., we ended up taking the subway to the Manhattan side of Brooklyn bridge. Then there was nothing to do but to walk across the bridge and try to find The Telectroscope. I’m gonna be honest here, I didn’t think we’d ever find it. We got to Brooklyn all prepared to walk around for a while, asked some cops about it, and ended up at the Telectrosope, without getting lost once. It was unbelievably amazing. There weren’t too many people on the London side of the tunnel. It was around 6 a.m. there and people have to pay a pound to look into it. It’s apparently being treated as an Art display in Brooklyn and it is right on the river. So the view from there is that of Brooklyn bridge and downtown Manhattan, with lights reflecting in the water. Absolutely breathtaking! And definitely worth the long unplanned walk. I wanna go back before I leave.

Besides all of that, work also has been a lot of fun. I am working in a Developmental Genetics lab on little microscopic worms called C. elegans. The first thing I had to learn was moving them from one plate to another. I was pretty sad when I squished my first one, but now I’m used to that. C. elegans don’t have nervous systems so they don’t feel a thing. But, to avoid too many squishing incidents, I have stopped drinking coffee during the weekdays. Because these critters are tiny, we have to work with a very thin wire to maneuver them around. My hands are all jittery if I drink coffee and that doesn’t fly, so I can either drink coffee or be good at my job. I like being good at my job and almost don’t miss coffee anymore.

And now I have to go work on a short research presentation for tomorrow. Later.

I'm in New York!

2008-06-07T16:20:00.001-04:00

I wrote this post on Thursday night. It was very late and apparantly I was too tired to remember to put it on here. But here it is, 2 days later. I'll put pictures up shortly.

Hey folks! I have been in New York City for five days and Joel (Dr. Oppenheim) has already managed to spoil us a lot and show us a great many things. And, I have started working, and must say, my lab is amazing. So far I give my experience here a 9 out of 10. 9 because the weather has been muggy and chilly for the past two days.

Lets see…it’s after midnight and I have to wake up early tomorrow so I’m gonna write quickly about the past few days. I landed at the La Guardia airport at around 12 p.m. and then got a shuttle to University Hall, the NYU dorm that we’re staying at. The shuttle was over packed and, thanks to the terrible traffic, it took us over an hour to get where we wanted. Traffic was sorta like rush hour in Atlanta, but on a Sunday afternoon. Atleast there were cool things to stare at as the shuttle wove its way through the roads, going slower than a snail probably. I just don’t understand why anyone would want to drive around here, its effing expensive, takes up a ton of time, and has to be frustrating. Anyway, there was a guy in the shuttle who was also coming to U-Hall, and if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have had any clue about where we were. I got off the shuttle, not really knowing what I was supposed to do next, but Dr. Oppenheim was right there, at the stop, waiting for me! I gave him a huge hug, mostly out of relief and then he walked me to my room.

One of my suitemates, Nora, had already moved in, but apparently had gone out shopping. I met her later in the day and we went out to look for lunch. As it turned out, looking for lunch was much more exciting than actually finding lunch. We ended up getting take out food and eating it on Union Square park, which, by the way, is just across the street from our dorm. We’re on 3^rd Avenue and 14^th Street, smack in the middle of downtown Manhattan, with a lot of exciting things within walking distance. We met the rest of the SURPies later when Joel took us all out to dinner to a Vietnamese restaurant, which, I might add, had the best service ever. They had 25 people’s orders ready in about 15 minutes.

Monday was mainly orientation. We got a tour of the buildings that most of us were working in and then waited in a line for hours to get our IDs. Then my roommate Ugochi and I got take out food for dinner and ate it at a park bench beside some chess players. Y’know the street side chess players in all those movies that make a move, click the timer and do it very fast over and over again. Yes, we were sitting right beside them!

Tuesday we actually started working in the lab. And here, I got really really lucky. I fell in love with my lab as soon as I started. I’m gonna be honest here, although I have liked all my lab work, I did not enjoy my first few days in Scott’s lab and I definitely did not enjoy my first few days in Dr. Stice’s lab. Starting in a new lab is always frustrating, you have to read a ton of papers (a majority of which are incomprehensible), get used to all the lab members, feel comfortable enough to ask stupid questions and so on and so on. But here, everything fell together the moment I started. Ann, the post-doc that I work with, picked me up from the lounge that we were having breakfast at, gave me a pseudo tour of the building as we were walking to the lab, introduced me to all the other lab members and then told me about my project. And, I actually understood my project, every part of it. All thanks to my amazing Cell Bio class last semester!

In the evening on Tuesday, I saw my first Broadway musical!!! Spring Awakening. Wow! Everyone talks about how amazing these are, but I really hadn’t wrapped my mind around how amazing they really are until I saw one. I love good live music. Good live concerts are charming in numerous ways. Being at the musical, however, was almost better in the sense that it was like being at a good concert that also has a good plot! Y’know?

Yesterday we had dinner at the Katz’s Deli, the place where the infamous orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally was shot! The food was terrible. I still like saying I’ve seen the spot where Harry met Sally. On the way back we walked past the house where Will Smith lives in I Am Legend. Also, we walked past Times Square, the area where Bob Dylan hung out in the 70s, and where John Lennon and Yoko Ono lived when they first came to New York. Yeah, it was a big deal.

I think those have been the main things we’ve done so far. We have stayed very busy this week, and it doesn’t look like that will change anytime soon. I’m okay with that

I think I’d like to go to sleep now. More updates later.

Meet my Blog

2008-05-27T18:38:00.001-04:00

Well, here it is. My blog where I’ll be recording my summer in New York, New York (hence the title). I’ve never had an online blog before (usually I just keep a journal), but this seemed like a neat way of keeping everyone updated on my adventures in the big city. And this way, you can live vicariously through me if you want. I don’t mind.

So, I am going there as a participant in a 2 month summer research internship at NYU. The program is called SURP (Summer Undergraduate Research Program) and has 23 undergraduates from 21 different universities around the US and Europe. They call us SURPies and, apparently, we’ll be spoiled a lot for the entire 9 week period. The program lets us work full time in a lab of our choice. There are also other planned activities like broadway plays, a weekly seminar series followed by dinner at various ethnic restaurants around town, a bike trip around Manhattan led by Dr. Oppenheim, a concert in Central Park and more… Basically, this is gonna be pretty sweet. And, I get paid for doin it! I have yet to wrap my mind around the awesomeness.

I’ll be there from June 1st to August and will try to write at least one entry per week. There’ll be plenty of things for me to do and plenty of people for me to meet. New York is, after all, very diverse. Dr. Oppenheim, the dean of the medical school himself, ensured us that there is a whole slew of genders in New York. I mean, what more can one ask for? I am really looking forward to meeting all these people. Besides that, I really want to go to The Daily Show once, and maybe also The Colbert Report, visit the memorial thingy for John Lennon, run into Yoko Ono, go to D.C for a weekend, go to Boston maybe, and to the Brooklyn bridge thing where all those pictures that make beautiful posters are taken. Well, lets just say there’s a lot that can be done, and I want to do it all. Let me know if you have any suggestions about specific things.

I don’t know if I’m making myself clear here, but I am really really excited about this. It still feels unreal and I feel completely unprepared. But, Jessica Hunt gave me a 7 day unlimited subway pass, so I’ll be prepared once I get there.

And I'm totally psyched about getting real copies of The Onion for the entire summer!!!