The Gnomes have arrived

Hi everybody. Somehow, the gnomes got to San Francisco. For those of you that do not read my blog often enough to know what I am talking about let me explain.

So there are these evil gnomes that come by whatever lab I am working in and they mess up my experiments. They don't touch other peoples experiments just my own. In another words I am cursed. Because of these gnomes sometimes my experiments just DON"T work!

Three days ago I was in the lab until 11:30pm because I wanted to get everything done so that I wouldn't have to stay late the next day since I had to help Sheri with her Qualifying. So anyways I stayed that late working on the LSR (flow cytommetry machine) and I thought everything looked awesome and great and I transfered my results over to the other computer. I was really anxious to look over my data cause it was exciting stuff going on but I decided, "No I must go home get some sleep and eat, not in that order". So the next morning I was so happy cause I was going to analyze my results and see what happend. Except that the two sets of data I acquired had exactly the same percentages. I didn't believe that 2 sets of results under different conditions could be SO the same so I ran back to the LSR thinking I had transfered the wrong data 2x's. So I went back and my Data dissapeared!!!!! I went over to Jason (the LSR master) I told him "Jason, I am either going to kill myself or I am going to shoot the LSR" He said, "Well the LSR is worth $40,000 please don't shoot it I need it next week."
We went to look over it and Jason said, "I am sorry Isa, there is NO hope. Somehow the program just didn't get your stuff."
There was a tear stuck to the corner of my eye lid. Jason could see that I was loosing it. He said,"Go take 3 deep breaths" And I just yelled, "BAD LSR BAD VERY VERY BAD."
I wanted to die! That was all yesterday, I am still depressed over it.
I am mourning my data. The data that was going to save my presentation. Now instead of relaxing for the weekend I have to come into work eventhough the bridge (Bay Bridge) is goin to be closed and I am going to have to take 3 million different trains to get here.
Yeah, so i have to come in on Monday and start the experiment ALL OVER AGAIN!

The gnomes have arrived, and they manipulated the innocent LSR into eating my data.
It is just such a sad story. There are starving children in Africa that know how I feel right now.

Chill kitties.

1st Week of (2nd Year) Grad School

Hey Kitties! How is your PI treating you these days.
Today I caught my PI playing a little golf in the lab. Can you imagine a PI that cool. He had his ball and stick (I do not know anything about golf so...) and everything and was swinging, my you very gently, at the ball.

So my life has turned even more complicated because the semester has begun and because I am doing research at UCSF instead of UC Berkeley. I haven't been able to register because Berkeley somehow messed up my account so that I would be owing them $5,560.05.... Yeah I love the way they added that extra 5 cents, it is artistic really. For a whole 2 months they've had me call every department on Earth to see if it is that department I owe. Like if I have nothing to do.

In the mean time it is only the first day of classes and I got to lab at 3pm and will probrably be here sometime after 9pm.

I don't know what is going on with me but I've been having anxiety attacks. No really. My heart pumping like if I were in the middle of a 30 mile race, my body sweating, my head hurting like if I were about to get a migrane, my chest tightening. Carlos keeps telling me to go to the Doctor, but I hate going to the doctor and these attacks only happen every other day. Yes I do admit they only used to happen every 3 years. But whatever.
What may be the cause of these attacks, well it is definitely in part the fact that I have my first lab presentation next week, the fact that classes started and therefore I have NO idea how am I going to get any decent work done, and then there is this $5,560 mysterious debt.
Last week, in order to have my western blot complete and to be able to attend a GSI mandatory meeting I woke up at 4 AM. At 4:30 I drove to San Francisco and washed my membrane, placed it in primary antibody and then in the cold room. Then I split some cells, made sure everything was okay and went back home for breakfast and then drove to my GSI meeting. I met up with Maria and we had tons of fun making fun of all the speakers and reading primary papers. Sometime in the middle of the meeting I looked around and her and I were the only ones reading papers. We met some of Tania's friends. We had a little chit chat. The GSI meeting lasted until 4pm. By then I wanted to die. I went home thinking I could get some shut eye but I had to meet with a new 1st year student. I didn't get shut eye. I barely had something to eat.
By that time, everyone who saw me told me I looked tired. I freaked out the 1st year by telling her that I had woken up at 4am that day and then by telling her all the truth about our lovely little academic department. All the nitty gritty details. I have to admit that some where in the middle of me telling the 1st year everything and teaching her how things work at Berkeley. In the middle of that I smiled inside. Not because I was killing Berkeley but because I was preventing her from feeling as lost and confused and misplaced as I felt last year. Carlos complimented me for going the extra mile and going to re-assure the new student. That felt preatty good too. I went home and I don't remember what I did, but it wasn't sleep.

How can I be feeling so anxious and yet so excited all at the same time? I am sure if they would try this experiment (in-vivo graduate student role) on a monkey the monkey's hair would fry and it will turn into a zombie? Did you guys get that?

It is a well known fact that the later in the day you work, the more tired you are, the worse you'll fuck up your experiments? Can I defy the law of fucked up experiments?
Stay tuned......

Graduate Student Joke

The other day I was thinking of killing myself but I have so much work to do that I couldn't fit it into my schedule....

Family Drama Part II of 1000 Parts.

Uhm, so last weekend I was remembering this cousin of mine. We call him Frank Junior. I was remembering how funny and nice he was. One of the only cousins that always comported himself properly with me. I didn't even get to see him that many times but in the few times I saw him I marked him as a good cousin.
Anyways I was remembering him and thinking of how I was going to invite him to my wedding in Dominican Republic. Thinking how he would enjoy the party and the family being together. Then all the sudden, on Monday, my sister text me telling me that my cousin was shot to death. When they found him he didn't have any ID on him. His wife had to identify him at the morgue.

At the time that I received this messege I was in the middle of doing 12 Mega Preps (extracting DNA from bacteria). I got so hysterical but instead of showing it I just swallowed it all in. What bothers me the most is that sometimes when something terrible like this happens and I can't cry. I can't seem to bring enough tears to cry.
I kept wondering, how could I be in lab acting like if everything in the world is great going on to do 12 preps and in the mean time a "good" cousin of mine has died? How many of these things are going to happen? Within the last year I've lost 2 cousins. One died in December to a heart condition and this one to murder.
How many painful strange huge family events am I going to have to go thru? How many does any one individual go thru in a life time? I mean am I past the limit? Not even close? What is life trying to teach me? When I was a teen, something like this would have either not bothered me at all or depressed me for weeks. What am I supposed to learn from all these events that just keep happening?
Anyways...
Frank was great at dancing Salsa. The family used to call him Che Che Cole because when he was a little boy, that was his favorite song. Frank was almost never serious about anything, he was a kidder. His parents had had a nasty divorce. During and after the divorce, he took it upon himself to take care of his little brother and not let the drama hit him too much.

Virus con Salsa!

I watched “El Cantante”. I had heard that Marc Anthony was trying to make this movie like 2 years ago, and ever since then, I’ve been waiting for it. My waiting for it had nothing to do with Marc Anthony or Jennifer Lopez. It only had to do with Hector Lavoe and music.

I love Latin music. There is nothing that tops it for me. It is like a drug. It enters my ears, enters my bones, and the rhythm just forces the cells in my bonemarrow to jump to its command, and then, then I don’t have a choice, you see, I need to dance and I do it, til I can’t anymore. Sometimes theres is this hunger that enters my body and no food, no drink, no fucking, no smell can fill it, then I hear the drums in the background somewhere in the streets, I dance for 12 hours and I am back to being a normal human being. Sometimes dancing merengue, bachata, salsa is the only thing that can calm my demons.

I didn’t always like Salsa. I could dance Merengue before I could walk. That’s what I always tell my friends cause that’s the truth. I would hold on to the cushions of the sofa and dance, moving my butt covered by pampers. There are pictures. But once you learn the steps and you listen to the words in the old salsa, the words just reach in thru your trechia, like smoke, and roll around your heart and they stay there for days at a time.

With that said, I hope that now you can get a glimpse of why I wanted to watch this movie and that it is true that I don’t give a crap about the actors, but the story itself. So before going to see it I heard the critics, I read some interviews. I thought this was going to be a horrible ridiculous movie with bad continuity, no focus…etc

Thank GOD I was wrong! And that the critiques were Wrong! I sat down, I laughed, I cried, I danced in the theatre. My favorite thing was seeing the words of the song in English, so deep those words. I could see the Americans open mouthed at the meaning of the words being sung in Spanish. People say the movie focuses way to much on drugs. I disagree, you have to remember this was the 60’s the 70’s. I wonder if any of the people saying this have watched Dream Girls or Ray? There is a lot more drugs there.

I went to some websites where the most they gave it was 3 stars and it was rare. I think the reason why they give it so little credit is because they don’t understand it. This is not an American version of Hector Lavoe’s story. This is a Latin 1970’s version of the story. This is as true as it could be. This reminded me of my parents in New York in the 1970's early 80's. They say there is too much focus on the drugs...I laugh! Uhm who the FUCK was not on drugs in New York in the 1960's, 70's, and 80's?! What the hell is the matter with you people? They say that it didn't show enough of the music, well, this is not an MTV video excuse me. I liked the dialogue, what Pushi was saying in this movie scene by scene, is exactly what a latin woman would say, as a wife, and as a mother. We are supportive, we'll tell our husbands that they are better on their own that they are the best, even when they are vomiting into a toilet bowl. We'll demand our kids to stop saying, "I don't know". And we'll push our husbands way too hard, to the point where they have to yell at us. Thats the way it is. Thats all I've ever known as a latin woman.

I get the feeling that the latin critiques are not in favor of it because of Pushi. Because it is his wife’s version of the story, not theirs. All I have to say to them is that if they’ve got another version they should make the other version. There are so many ways this movie could have been done.

Yesterday, I was sooooo depressed. I tried to talk myself out of it. I tried to shake it off. It was not close to what I had been before, but it was how I usually felt at the beginning of a bad one. So today, this morning, I got myself some Yali’s coffee and put my IPOD in my ears as I drove to work. Yalis is in Berkeley so it was counter intuitive, it made my trip to San Francisco a longer drive. But I needed Real coffee. I need it the good stuff. So I put my IPOD blasting in my ear. I didn’t even know til this afternoon that the movie was playing in theatres. The first song in my IPOD is “EL CANTANTE”, the second song is “MI GENTE”, the 5^th song is “Periodico de Ayer”…
By the time I got to work, my depression was gone.

It is funny how I always feel like being a scientists and being a latin carribean Domincan woman are two different lives. Most of the time I feel like the two lives are trying to tear me apart and I don’t know what to do cause I need them BOTH! I need to be both at the same time.

Today I realized they are not so apart. Yesterday, I fucked up many experiments, today the experiments worked and time flew. And it was all due to the fact that listening to Salsa brought true smiles to my face. It energized my “Chee”!

So I need to listen to salsa and move my hips once in a while so that I can do all of these crazy molecular experiments so that I can bring this world just one micrometer closer to helping with AIDS.

Maybe I should put my earphones closer to my viral cultures, see if that will ZAP the virus out of the CD4 T cells. :)
I am not a fan of Jennifer Lopez, I am indifferent to her, but I got to say, Congratulations girl you did it GOOD!

La Nostalgia girl La Nostalgia....

Surviving UCSF Lab Meetings

I don't know if I have explained it yet, how lab meetings work in my new lab. Yeah, so basically anywhere from 3 to 9 people present their most recent results, what those results mean, how they compare it to the papers in the field... Yeah. 1 person can go on for 2 hours and still the other 8 people will also present. In the mean time everyone asks questions, suggests other things to do... blah blah blah. In the mean time I sit there trying to keep up, and eating away all the cheese!

Many things have occurred since last time I posted, specially in lab.
First off, I got results. Things are really working here. But the bad side to that is that now I have to do a presentation. A presentation in this lab is extra extra scary. Everyone knows everything and everyone (except for me) has a million questions. So i know that it will not just be a regurgitating presentation. The good side to that is that if I survive the presentation my self esteem in the lab may actually increase.

Second off, since I never talk in lab meeting the PI has decided to start this trend of directing questions to lab people that are under 25 (He thought I was 22). There are only a handful of people under 30 in this lab. I haven't answered any of the questions he has asked so far. Last week he caught me off guard and I didn't know what he was even saying. Because also one thing you must realize is that he waits until very late in the meeting, like the last 30 (of a 3 hour meeting) minutes to ask. I usually hold for the first 2 hours but NOT for the third hour! Well now he is giving me a reason to stay awake. The only thing is that during the whole meeting I am sweating and stressing instead of just enjoying the presentations.

Third off, my Post Doc has pushed me into a specific project. The one that I wanted, she kind of doesn't want me working on. She says that it is too risky, and I agree but I didn't like being excluded out of it. This has pushed me to searching for a post doc/ project in the lab that I would work with instead, once I accept, if I accept, and IF the PI still wants me after this.

Most of the time whatever these people say sounds to me like Mongolian. I just dont understand 75% of what they say. :( I feel so lost and overwhelmed. I miss having Maria next to me so that I can ask her the stupid questions. She was my stupid question filter. I mean she would answer the stupid questions and then I could ask semi-smart questions. Yeap NO MORE. In the mean time I have forgotten all of my immunology and cell biology. I have even forgotten arithmetic... They say that if you fail the QUAL you get a masters... A masters is not so bad right? :/
My mind is SOOOO exhausted and classes begin in 3 weeks. Some one shoot me please!