The world needs Bill Maher

So quoted the New York Times (who else would write such nonsense?). I have little comment, except to ask that you take a look at the new hairstyle topping the host of Politically Incorrect. Didn't quite believe it myself when I first saw it on HBO.

Anyhow, what a crazy 24 hours it's been. Still sore from last night's bout of tennis, I'm currently busy figuring out what to get with my Amazon.com gift certificate. As luck would have it, it turned out that Leo and I did much better than expected at the Korean tennis tourney. Yep. For a pair that couldn't glue a win back together even if it hit them in the head, we managed to string not two, but four wins back to back. That landed us in the final where we simply played on fumes. For a pair that ran out of gas, we sure got burned. Nonetheless, it was a brave effort put in by Leo, who's brick-wall effort at the net helped the cause. And of course, credit goes to our mascot/target the turtle, who is now everyone's hero.
Unfortunately, Matt and Eliza did not fare quite as well. In the process of blowing their opponents off court, Eliza sustained what is best described as an upper right body injury which will derail her for the next few weeks at the least. Nonetheless, they put in a valiant effort, and helped eat some kimchi. I will also be searching for Tennis for Dummies on Amazon...

And to cap off the evening, I will once again recommend short stories by Fred Waterman. Having flown on United so often the last 10 years, I must say that I've enjoyed his stories enough to want every plane to be stocked with his Row22, a/b collection commissioned by the airline. Here's a recent one that will give you a taste of what I've enjoyed - and maybe have you hooked.

And for every winner, there must be a loser...

Let's hear the boos

While the turtle was a huge success last night, google has proved to be a bust. Due to the shear enthusiasm of all of you (I owe you all a big hug, or not), they have actually shut down my ad revenue account. Yep. It was hard to believe at first, but then again, not all that surprising. After all, with no adult content, online gambling, or offers of making big money, the concept of making a few bucks a day was a little too idealistic. Oh well...

Until I read the Terms and Agreement of use. Nicely tucked between #9 and #11, in typical fine print, #10 states that Google adsense may cancel at anytime, according to its own discretion, any account. I'm sure this is quite convenient just before a payout is due...Hmmm. Most interesting though, is that "incentives of any form" to bring extra clicks are prohibited. I wonder why anyone would click any ad, without an "incentive of any form". Typically, I've been schooled again, though I wonder how other disgruntled bloggers will react. While we are unlikely to revolt in the same fashion as unemployed French college students, perhaps something interesting will come out of all this.

But in these times, I've learned to be resilient. Don't buckle, and just take everything in stride. The resourceful solution? Simply shift ads from elsewhere. I'll keep you guys posted on the new developments as soon as they, well, develop! In the meantime, I'm looking forward to this weekends big ass tennis churn featuring our favorite sluggers. Go turtle!

In the end, the turtle wins

Tonight, I had the opportunity to witness a couple of little miracles. Let's call them positive events, for safekeeping. First, was Leo's rapid improvement in his tennis game. This seemingly occured in the span of about 5 minutes, where he transformed himself into a beast. With the wonderful results we achieved at the Korean tennis HQ tonight, we have decided to make the target turtle our mascot. Thus the turtle wins, and will get a free trip to the sweet 16. The second positive surprise was to see Matt and Eliza pair up, size up, and then stand up to some pretty stiff opposition after a really really long layoff. Of course, convenor Jihong really really respected the newcomers, and it went down quite well. A few more practice rounds, and this pair is ripe for action. The only shame was that no one brought cream chesse for the bagels served. Unfortunately, there are unlikely to be anymore come Saturday's tournament.

All this caps up what was shaping up to be a really depressing day. Having to do had to do something I have always loathed, I now know that it isn't easy captaining the ship. In the end, the both crew and officers persist or perish together in the great storm that is career - and the bigger one that is life. By day's end, I ended up giving two tutorials today to two very different minds on very different things (you can now appreciate the difficulties, if only through the vagueness). I hope both realize and seize the moment that's been put before them and thrive. I really do.

Oh marmalade!

The theme of yesterday's brief photo essay was in fact many-fold. Actually, I wasn't quite astute to pick it up myself, but after looking over some of the comments, I realized that many messages were said with, yes, a single rotten orange. Thus, a picture proves itself well worth a thousand words. My original take upon finding that my beloved after dinner treat had more in store for me than expected was not to worry. Inside the fridge, there were another half-dozen oranges, all waiting for me, me, and me. Always have a backup. I have often thought about this. Given the orange situation, a single backup is normally enough. But what about the other things in life? Do I have sufficient backups for different aspects of my life (this is beginning to sound like an insurance ad - or worse, a reverse mortgage pitch)? And what needs to be backed up anyways, and what can one be sufficient without? Hmmmm.

Theme 2 was a little more interesting as Eliza suggested that things may not be all that they appear. Very applicable to fruit, and many other things like jobs, second hand cars, hot dates. What lies beneath that thick skin can always be a surprise, though common sense tells us that it's reasonable to pick up a bad orange or chick on occasion.


But the one that really hit home, came to me when I opened the fridge door for x th time tonight. Last night, I had been tempted to take a quick bite out of the original O regardless of the little grey spots. After all, if it had infected 5% of the flesh, there was still another 90%, with 5% as a buffer zone. Taking the straight road, I opted for 100% abstinence, and 0% risk. Staring at me with an obvious smirk this evening was my half-empty bottle of citrus tea gunk, which is basically hammed up marmalade. You get the image. When things aren't perfect, be resourceful. Someone sure was when they opened up their oranges one night to find that they were only 95% fit for consumption. And they managed to convince us that this would still make a nutritious mellow drink for dry winters, packed with vitamins. Hook, line and sink, I now realize I had paid a handsome sum for what I had in my fridge week in, week out. Kudos to these industrious people.



While on the topic of fruits and vegetables, I came across this in my fridge as well, sitting next to the oranges. In my keen drive for a green diet this week (one supplemented with plenty of beef and fish), I purchased a few zucchinis. Everything seems very tame, until I considered the size of this thing. And no, the zuch has not been tipped for services rendered. Rather, it serves simply as a scale bar.

Speaking of $, I was a little saddened to find that I am in the bottom half of all the March Madness pools entered this season (2 in total). While mathematically there is still a road to victory, I'm afraid it will not be the trodden one. Nonetheless, I was buoyed by a) it's only a few bucks, unlike that stupid Slovakian hockey fiasco and b) Matt and Eliza have paired up for Saturday's super showdown!

Strange but true

New game for tonight. The above is obviously an orange that's gone south. But what is its significance? The answer tomorrow...

The madness continues

If there's one reason to spend 3 hours an evening glued to a TV, rooting for colleges in parts of America I've never even heard of, it's to watch these dogs slug it out. And with all the upsets in the first two days already, it's truly madness out there. One thing learnt today is that the fittest survive, and the best fight to be the fittest. Practice, set plays, clutch runs, and some saavy coaching makes a winning team. Lack any one of them, and the recipe for victory is ruined. Thus, Ivy will never beat river state schools, though they may come close. In the end, though, Ivy still wins because they beat the betting lines and get to collect once they return to the green. Plus, in the pretentious realm of lawyers and investment bankers, one could always put on a resumé: played in NCAA tournament, Dallas. No one will bother to ask if it was only a day trip...

Like many things in life, the law of the jungle can be applied to both sports and everyday life. Thus, banks are like teams, although there is little room for upsets as the only ammunition competitors have against each other is cash. Since big and small fight with the same weapon, the size matters and the bigger one wins. Shockers still occur infrequently (say in the form of Elliot Spitzer, a price-fixing scandal, boneheaded Fed chairmen), but with a big enough reserve, the big boys can take a good licking and still stay on their feet.

In science, things are a little more like the tournament, a little more unpredictable. And while teams and players alike are compared and ranked daily, the chances for an upset are quite high. Size still matters as large groups and established researchers leverage their larger resources and effectively box out the smaller players. But like March Madness, it's always the seeds just beneath who get reamed. A new investigator coming off of a hot postdoc stint may be shut out by a second year graduate student working on nothing but a whim passed on to him by a drunken professor. Watching Iowa, Kansas, and Syracuse whimper out sent chills down my back, if only for the fact that my bracket has taken yet another hit. To put this into a more egocentric perspective, it's time to hustle hard, play more defense, and score a few more field goals. March is here, now and present. It's time to sink the opposition...

"Hey, I saw your PNAS paper. Too bad some dumbass from Bradley published it in Cell last week."

"Well, at least this will still look good on my med school resume, right?"

The Pimp shows his goods

After Eliza's posting yesterday, I thought it would be appropriate to post another picture of a pimp, though not in the context of medical school. In this case, it is the porn-esque visage of Adam Morrision, who dug the Bulldogs out of a quagmire and cushioned the pool disaster that unfolded on this first day of the tourney. Unfortunately, the crew at Iona and McNamara were more zeros and my dream of Seton Hall reaching the final four are a little dented. Oh well. Worse things have happened.

Now that the madness is in full swing, it'll be interesting to see what develops. Apart from us all staring at Chi's computer screen every three minutes on updates (which for just over a hundred bucks, actually seems quite funny), there's been a general buzz in the lab this week. Of course, it could also be that the bosses are away. Or because it's spring, and spring is, well, spring.

Pimp: Once upon a time, we knew this guy called John, who resembles Morrison, but was a real pimp. He had pimp girls, a pimp ride, and that pimp hair. Yep.

M is for clutch

March is all about clutch plays. The Oscars, Champions League, UEFA Cup, thesis defenses, interviewing for medical school etc. Now March Madness is upon us as well. With the office bracket officially unleashed, there will soon be the long nights in front of the tube. Cheering, cursing, and lots of wiping off tortilla crumbs and salsa off the floor. Neighbors screaming, lots of sports pubs, and way too much ESPN. We'll see who are heros and zeros soon. As long as the Huskies go deep, things should be OK (yikes!).

In better times. Speaking of the AA (Academy Awards), whatever happened to Rachel Weisz? It wasn't long ago that she was the eye candy served with the bland Mummy and Mummy II: The Mummy returns. While her performance in the Constant Gardener was notable (then again, who doesn't look good with Ralph Fiennes?), EC has definitely flown out the window.

Just a little more colour

Because nasty American Idol is on, House has been postponed until next week at the soonest. While Walt and co. are likely enjoying a wonderful evening, I have been forced to resort to other entertainment. A.I. annoys me for two reasons. Firstly, having odd people sing in what equates to a cheap Manila band shouldn't be considered quality entertainment. That they represent the cream of the crop of a country probably explains why Coldplay, Franz, and the Pussycat Dolls are so popular (they're Brit). And there's that dude Blunt as well, who recycles lyrics better than Aerosmith. Oh, and the second reason? William Hung. As the individual who has made the most money and amassed the largest fan base of all the previous contestants [combined]. With nearly a hundred commercials running across Asia, two albums (including the classic I'll be Hung for the holidays - now proudly owned by Ken), this guy does it all. William Hung...what more can I say.

Better than Fobulous - this guy even has his own cartoon strip.

My alternative for the evening was Scrubs. Watching it for 40 continuous minutes made me think about its popularity. Was it a Hung-like phenomenon? Or are other crazy cultural forces at work? Turns out that we have a brilliant microcosm: my workplace. Take something interesting (medicine) but worn (ER), and spice it up with a few pretty faces, an insane plot, and you have an instant cultural icon. By parallel, take a worn and tired concept (neurodegeneration), add in a few pretty faces and hot storylines (um, getting there), and we should have a winner. Let's wait and see. Hopefully, my mullet will bring me fame.

It's Lobsterfest!

Hurray! It's Lobsterfest again, which seems to happen every three months if you watch enough ESPN. With nothing noteworthy on the tube today, I resorted to picking my time brushing up on subjunctives, the present perfect tense, and how to eat a lobster. My original intent, though, was to go onto itunes to see what music would be worth buying (subjunctive) with my still-to-arrive credit from the Apple store. That effort was thwarted after failing to remember the name of the female sitar player who performed at the 2004 Jazz fest in Montreal. Or that one year where they tried to pass Norah Jones as jazz...

No man is his own blog

If you've ever explored beyond what's in front of you, there's always more. In this case, clicking the next blog button has led me to some pretty far flung places out there. And while I have little taste for Malaysian chicks with bad teeth on how the centre of the earth is engraved with the initials L.V., I did come across one devoted entirely to, of all things, blogs.

Yep. Apparently, this dude's done more research than I have (as have about 99% of the blogging community) and has compiled a shortlist of keywords and their advertising value. As an experiment [that will also earn revenue], I will list it here to see what Adsense makes of it. Let's see what develops.

alcohol rehab 8.25adult friend 7.14adwords 5.78amex 2.97advertising 2.15asbestos cancer 19.25anti spam software 14.50airplanes 1.25adult 0.91auctions 0.95buy domain 8.98buy a domain 10.76consolidate loans 19.65cars 1.85car 1.86cheap flights 1.71domain lookup 9.90home equity loans 20.15merchant account 9.7mega life health 19.66phone system 5.1reviews 0.48songs 0.24xbox 0.8

From now on, I shall write more about mesothelioma.

In the meantime, temperatures have suddenly hit around the high teens or just slightly below T-shirt weather for those on the F-system. Springtime means being able to walk in the sun, eating Korean food in parking lots, and getting a glimpse at who's been working out, who's been making an effort, and those who should dress as if the groundhog never woke up. Of course, on this challenged campus, it's ironic that sightings occur during spring break when most students are in fact out of town. Go figure. Speaking of spring break, um, I'd rather not.

HBO nights

Circle the date. June 11. I will be clearing all appointments for that night. No dinners, no bowling, no experiments. Just pure unadulterated TV time as the third season of Entourage rolls out. Matt said they wouldn't last, but not everything that Matt says is true; which means that what he doesn't say isn't necessarily untrue.

But there is still joy in the world

Today was not an entire disaster as my shoes finally arrived in a big brown box with all sorts of other goodies. While they would have been useful last night when I got another licking on court by the Kontingent, they are still a welcome sight. After yeast, new tennis shoes are the best thing to sniff.

The paté keeps them happy

Congratulations must also go out to Deepa who is now only a university stamp away from being Dr Deepa V Dabir (or Dr DVD). While it was a joy to watch her review years of data, I still didn't get the final slide. In particular, the connection between her parents -> coming to America -> finding a husband was a little blurry... Nonetheless, we are all happy for her and wish her all the best as she moves to sunny California where the wonders of technology will still allow her to read this blog and click the ads. Hurray!

Sick of Spinach

Things have a way of falling into their own place. At the bottom of the ocean, this would be called sediment, and in a million years form sandstone and oil. Here at the surface, it's called life and dictates much more of what happens everyday than most people would like to admit. In other words, we are not always (rarely would be a better word) in control.

Take for example my run in with spinach this week. In my overeagerness (a somewhat disgusting sounding word) to be superficially Korean, I bought an exceeding amount of spinach. So much that it comprised over 80% of the green in the fridge as of the weekend, as well as 80% of my green intake. Ironically, my tofu burrito at lunch was also loaded with spinach as they ran short on something I couldn't really make out. Thus I am done with spinach for the remainder of March.

Another thing that I am done for (the next while) is feeding the homeless. As Lauren-I-deserve-to-be-in-San-Juan pointed out, these are technically not street people in the normal sense (i.e. hobos) as they often have jobs - just somehow not enough money to pay rent, or presumably make their own dinner. That they would eat Mac'n cheese with some foreign sausage (referred by the line as meat) indicates their predicament is genuine. That they each managed to eat so much and keep coming back for more reflects a surreal sort of desperation, though the firm thrust of plates towards my serving spoon suggests that they are far from resigned.

Everybody has a story / that will break your heart. Of all things, Amanda Marshall comes to mind. In addition to the soup kitchen where no soup was served, I stumbled into a long afternoon chat with Neelima our EM operator. What started as waxing about the boss turned out to be a treatise on politics, culture, and an introspection of her family spanning three generations. Yep, heavy, but in a lighthearted kind of way which is only possible in dimly lit rooms with a two metre high electron gun, where the magnetic field is nearly as hot as the room where the thermostat has been broken for the last 3 years. She is now not only the mutha of EM, but also an ideological heroine.

German engineering mein arsch. At first I thought it was a Mazda







Sitting at home, full from more spinach, I made a terrible mistake in choosing my recreation. Of all the options availble, such as watching college basketball or watching basketball, I chose to visit www.bmw.com instead. [Riff] And the taxi driver / Has a PhD.

Spread the word

No, not the gossip. Tonight's message is one for the masses - keep clicking those ads. And so, the 100th installment of nbse starts off by selling out. Looking back, this hadn't always been the case and commercialization did not come about until a mere 6 months ago, when I realized that it was possible. Today, readership has hit an average of 55 per day and should continue to grow as even my mother and her colleagues have been lassoed into the fray, despite them reading English at a level lower than some of my students at the South Philly centre. And a special mention to Xiao, who continues to be a strong patron. Nonetheless, I am glad to report (though there are no shareholders present) that the empire continues to grow (i.e. it is not shrinking) and that better days lay ahead (as if things could get worse).

It'll be interesting when I have to look for a bicentennial photo

The work portion of today was both long and short. Thanks to a meeting, followed by another meeting, the effective amount of time spent on work proper was no more than a few hours. Add to the normal waiting time encountered in a busy lab, and this shrinks further into an abyssmal statistic. Which is unfortunate because things were just beginning to look up, and given our recent dismal spell, we could really use some data.

A more pleasant surprise has been the resumption of wagering. As you may recall, this ceased after I threw the remainder of the pot onto the Slovaks to beat the Czechs (they lost 3-2). Ironically, I had long planned for a day like this well in advance (so much so that I'd forgotten), and had tucked away a significant portion of the pot in another offshore account. It was only when trying to close the main account that I'd found this little wad which will no doubt prove to be my muse for weeks, hopefully years, to come. Like finding dollar bills in the laundry, it was a nice surprise.

Finally, to round things off, Eliza has started her own blog, which is now linked on the side. Don't let the name fool you; the contents are much more bizarre. Also added is Clare's blog, which will looked a little funny at first, until I realized she was typing in another language. As a reporter for some economic journal in Hong Kong, Clare is sophisticated and insightful. Take a look, and judge for yourself.

The weight of pleasure

It's been yet another long busy day. Started the morning with Rina ranting about a mutiny of two at the Neuro, being overwhelmed by mice, and carrying the workload of three. Next were meetings, experiments, and other things which went by in a blur. The real breather was lunch when Eliza, Ian, and I made it all the way to the wayside by the gym to grab some lunchboxes. Lunch with Ian (as if it were a BBC serial), is always an educational experience. Apart from pointers regarding which way to look [eye candy alert], he is probably one of those few who know the art of more for less. In this case, it was an extra 4 oz. of Mountain Dew for 25 cents less. In this dog-eat-shark world that is Penn, these little helpers may just save your life.

The afternoon was spent in a really hot dark room which houses the electron microscope. There, looking at protein magnified to the size of a mouse dropping, I gave another 3 hours of my life to science, sweating of course. And to finish off the day, I was reminded by the friendly plate reader upstairs of what has become my recent motto: failed experiments bite. I'll have to think of how to put that nicely into a powerpoint slide for tomorrow's meeting.



Today's recurring vision happens to be, of all things, a box kelp. At the very front of the fridge, this box has been sitting quietly since Saturday when I acquired it from H-mart. Too gelatinous and spicy for consumption in one go, but too much to eat over the entire week, I've been plotting all day as to how to devour, yet savour, this treat. Indeed, kelp has been on my mind for the last 6 weeks, ever since having real sushi in Montreal, and then again at Breck, where the Magurodon was a little rough, but true. Looking more closely, though is that this stuff costs $5.99 for a half-pound. That may not seem much, especially just before throwing a cool hundred for a pair of shoes (which is still less than some peoples' hairdos). However, that still works out to nearly $12 per pound. As Ian might have surmised, not many things cost $12/lb. Milk is about $0.50 per pound. Ribsteak goes for about $5-6, while even really nice tuna rarely tops $15. $16 will buy you 28 oz. of a Chateau Latour (though not a vintage year), while a high class call-girl at $400/hr, will only cost $12 per pound for an entire afternoon. Apparently, raw african rubies (scattered ones) go for about as much, a little less that on the black market. Thus, this kelp is really expensive, and I should focus my energies around it for the next few days.

Conspicuous consumption

While strolling through the grocery store yesterday, Eliza and I nearly broke out in a fight. It could have been over whether an entire durian would be overkill. Or whether one needs a single foot or a full two-feet of dried kelp to make cucumber soup. Instead, we were trying to get Leo's attention, who along with Sophie were mesmerized by the choice of pork belly vs pork butt. Instead, we simply shouted in unison something that in retrospect didn't make much sense, but still managed to startle the hapless Leo. This was the afternoon of the H-mart, the Korean (Han) equivalent of K-mart, which would have been just as appropriate had some hicks not first used that name. Now some 50 bucks poorer, I am a proud operator of a full fridge and a few kitchen cabinets stacked with cookies, noodles, ribsteak, seaweed, and stuff that I'm still trying to identify. No doubt it will be raided by the resident mouse who has been frequenting, of all things, my canola oil. Perhaps he finds natural gas too expensive this winter, like many in the state of Pennsylvania.

On our way out of the normally impenetrable Maloney building, we were accosted by a big black dude with a big badge which read State of Pennsylvania. It turned out he was hospital security who would go on to cite us for exiting from a fire exit (nevermind that such was the precise function of exits in general). Taking down our names, departments, and credentials, I thought I would be issued a Penn ticket with mention of a PhD. I guess undergrads get tickets with Class of '08 at the back.

Speaking of tickets, apparently, good pal Anthony from the CHOP was also pulled over for speeding last night, but was freed without incident after a pile-up developed up the road and required the attention of nearby officers. What were the chances of that? Our other friend Ricky the friendly social worker, was less fortunate having run into a garbage truck and pretty much totalled his ride. While it's insurance, we estimate that the replacement cost is actually below his policy's deductible. However, despite being the only person to laugh out loud at my ride being stolen last summer, sympathy is warranted here as his silly error was largely due to being up most of the previous night trying to prevent one of the kids under his charge from getting the whip from an abusive parent. Just for the record, my bike cost roughly the same as his car...

Cravings

Boring March friday evenings are a recipe for cravings. With the fridge emptied and the betting pot depleted by a mad push for the Slovaks in Torino, there leaves little else to occupy myself. There's a party across the corridor, but the music is horrendously blase and the crowd rather shady. Instead, my mind is now set on an avocado milkshake which I am determined to have tomorrow.

Durians need not be jealous. You, too, are wonderful.