Monday, July 25, 2011

What you say DOES matter...



Bandra station
1st Incidence: Time :       Sunday morning 7-7.30amLocation : Bandra station ticket line
 There is a believable but given the time and day unbelievably long queue for suburban (local) train ticket. I am one of those unfortunates standing in the line. Just one person ahead of me is a Cool guy(soon you will come to know why I refer to him as Mr.Cool) standing in the queue with his friend (I prefer not referring her as his girlfriend)Next what the girl asks is exactly what I was thinking about at that moment( which is pretty obvious given the above details) -
Girl: Why is it so crowded at this hour on a sunday?Cool guy: looks like all the people out here just want to get out on a Sunday morning and explore the suburban train network out there...waiting to get itself explored!Girl:laughsI : smile  2nd Incidence  Time :       Monday evening 7.45pm (today)Location : somewhere in Bandra A guy tweets about the insane traffic in Bandra@b50 Bombay AddictAvoid Bandra. Word's out that it holds the portal to leave this world which ends tonight at 8pm. Everyone's here.I: smile and it reminds me of the first incident and one thing common to bothHow it REALLY does matter what you say... When you are helpless there is nothing you or anyone else can do...in such situations a little sense of humor does much more than just letting it go it brings that unexpected smile and gives you a stress relief :)



Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Why I love doing what I do?

If you follow me on twitter or you have spoken to me or just happen to be around you will know
How F***ed up I am currently with my experiments...I am in the phase..yeah PHASE where things just go wrong or don't work for some unknown reasons and all you have is a horrible day/week/month -PHASE in the lab!!!

The irony is...still I want to write or I am in the mood to write yes! about the

"Pleasures in doing Science(biology)"

photos clicked by vidhi patel

I have been blessed by some truly AWESOME ( here even awesome is an understatement) moments for which I LIVE and do SCIENCE.

I may never in my Life win a Noble, I won't! But surely more than once I Win through some moments that make me happy amidst the situations when things are difficult! 

These moments may neither be big events nor be to be bragged about success stories...they are simple and yet they put a huge SMILE on otherwise tensed face!

The moment when-
  • the tube inside the electroporator doesn't arc...
  • after n rounds of cloning et al the plate shows the clones/mutants the sight of that off-white small tiny-tiny colony! :)
  • the gel picture has bands of perfect size (so perfect that the reviewers might suspect it to be Photoshopped)
  • positive and negative controls are picture perfect! Specially the negative control!!!
  • at one go I hit the bulls eye... pick up the right number of tubes and weigh the right quantity!
  • I start with a new project and it looks all interesting and the euphoria of looking at new things is like the one when you are gifted with a new toy!
  • I read an amazing piece of literature...listen/read to a logical and well reasoned argument!
  • when I talk to a biggie in the field! You always want to meet and talk to the successful well established peers in your field! 
  • when after an Eureka moment things START MAKING SENSE
  • I am satisfied (though never) and happy as to what I am doing!(mind you very few people fall into this category)

and THE moment for which all of us...every researcher works hard,contemplates,procrastinates 
INVENTION/DISCOVERY/FINDING (peer reviewed :P)
Such moments just "work" they are part of enjoying your job and its just not me it seems it happens to best of us... like my friend working in Computational Biology says 'The kind of joy and satisfaction he gets once he is through a difficult to code Code is surreal'

While we pursue the Questions we ask we also 
Cherish the Moments that lead to it!

And This is part of sharing 'those' moments -

(via twitter)
    Nascent Biologist 
    Meetings always re-energize me - they remind me why being a scientist is so much fun!

      Alec Ross 
    20 years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee published his proposal for the World Wide Web. The proposal