Med school or... what?

Forbes.com: Richmond, Calif.-based Sangamo Biosciences announced after the close on Monday that data from one of three midstage trials for the company's drug candidate SB-509 failed to deliver. The drug, which is meant to treat the lower-leg nerve damage caused by diabetes, showed no more improvement in patients than the placebo. It proved, however, to be safe and well-tolerated during repeat dosing.

More...

And with that, my Plan B, namely to stay at Sangamo if I don't get in to med school, went up in a giant fireball. I have the utmost confidence in the power of zinc-finger technology; however, with the market as it is and with the failure of SB-509-601, the company will not be hiring interns to research assistant positions anytime soon. And lets not talk about the possible layoffs that loom large on everyone's mind...  

Text Twist... for the blind?

Halfway through a game of Text Twist, Flash crashes and I can't see the letters; I can only hear the pops when I hit keys on my keyboard. So I proceed to go through a few more rounds just hitting all the keys to figure out what the letters are, and then unscrambling them in my head. Awesome.

Cosmic energy

Interview in St. Louis on Friday. It was pretty fun. What's not fun was the fact that my digestive system seems intent on promptly expelling everything I eat. It started Saturday morning and is still kind of bothering me. The worst point was Saturday night. I felt really sick, so my dad tried channeling "cosmic energy" into me to help get rid of the toxins that were in my body. Maybe five minutes into this, I started feeling really dizzy. When he finished, I ran to the bathroom and promptly vomited. Cosmic energy, ftw.

"...in sickness and in health, until death do you part?"

For most of high school and college, I was worried that my parents only stayed together because of my sister and me. After my mom found out that my dad had had an affair during my freshman year of high school, she had prepared all the papers for a divorce, but ultimately decided to give my dad a second chance. In college, my sister and I would often wonder how things were at home, now that we were 400 miles away in northern California. Were my parents okay? Were they fighting again?

Now that I see how my dad is taking care of my mom, I realize that my parents still do love each other, and that they meant every word of their marriage vows.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, my dad's answer to the question was, "Sure!"

Wow...

Today at work, I was finishing up my first ELISA, or Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay (Yes, I knew what that stood for without looking it up -_-;;). My boss turned on the computer attached to the plate reader; I saw the Windows 98 splashscreen and exclaimed, "WHOA!" Then I put my 96-well plate in and let the machine do its thing. My boss turned on the display and told me I could watch the live data analysis. I was like, "Oh yeah.. I'm sure that's exciting -- O MY GOD! WE HAVE AN ORANGE!" (Orange on the software reading corresponds to high protein levels.) We were both like, "WHOA!" Yeah, that was the highlight of my workday. Sad, huh? Yeah, you wish you could be me. :D

Only one thing...

could make me rethink this medical school thing. No, it's not the monstrous application fees nor all the essays I'll have to write for the applications. No, it's the thought of spending the next four years of my life with all the uptight need-a-life-and-a-clue self-absorbed premeds I've spent the last four years of my life hating. -_-

Dot dot dot

On my way home from work, I was following an old Mercedes station wagon. Facing backward was a little girl and a baby in a car seat. The little girl was playing with a pair of full-size handcuffs. Uhh, makes you wonder what kind of stuff her mom is into...

Since we last spoke, I've...

eaten 32 oz. of steak for dinner:



watched Ingrid Michaelson at Alice's Summerthing in Golden Gate Park:



taken a picture while driving:



I also shot my coworker in the face with a super soaker (oops!) and had a little too much EtOH when I was supposed to be the DD (I didn't drive, don't worry..). But let's forget about those :D

Life after College/Parker

So I've finally moved out of the craptastic excuse for an apartment that I and the other Jeffs and Andrew have called "home" (questionable usage) for the last year. The landlady is being a little bitch again and dragging her feet on returning our deposit. If that weren't enough she's also bullshitting us and trying to withhold some of our deposit. But on to happy thoughts: I'm living on MLK/Dwight now, and my room looks very spiffy after Jieon helped me decorate. Pictures will follow when I actually get my files loaded onto my computer again.

Which brings us to the next topic: my desktop. The hard drive got corrupted, so I tried reformatting. But that is a pain because I have to go find the SATA drivers so it can detect my hard drive in the first place. So I ended up just restoring it to the factory state which is pretty much the same.

There is a large palm tree outside my window. I hear rustling sounds every once in a while. Maybe there is a possum living in the tree. "Why a possum? That's so random, you say. Why not an elephant?" Because I didn't find a dead elephant by my car on Sunday, I found a dead possum. Yes. A dead possum. It was rather large. Bigger than a very fat cat I'd say. I thought it was playing dead, but it was in fact very dead.

I graduated last month... with honors! Are you surprised? I am. I remember when I went in to declare MCB at the end of sophomore year, Prof. Lecar was telling me that I should do the honors program. I remember thinking, "Wow. This guy is crazy." Hehe. In all graduations were pretty fun. Lots of eating at Great China and other miscellaneous restaurants. Yay for Peking duck and tofu and pork! :D

So I've started my internship at Sangamo BioSciencees. Sangamo designs zinc-finger proteins that recognize specific DNA sequences, then attaches different functional domains to allow changes in genes or gene expression. Pretty cool, considering no one else in the world does this.

Speaking of work, I need to sleep so I can go to work tomorrow. Good nite! :D

10 hrs before my last final ever...

... and I have not started studying. :D

Fail

Hey Jude

Baaa!

Beat my score, and I'll buy you a cookie! :D

Who would have thought...

that I'd be so busy my last semester? I sent my poster off to print today. It should be done in time for MCB poster session on Friday, which runs from 3-5pm in Toll Room of Alumni House. Stupid SVC had to go and decide to not take appointments and thus make the minimum turnaround times for orders go from 1 hr to 24 hrs. I better have it by Friday morning (*crosses fingers*).

O well. School has been fun, as has lab. I got everyone in my lab doing the Daily Cal crossword puzzle! I am awesome! You know what isn't awesome? IB 132. That is still the second biggest mistake I made at Berkeley. Jieon, if you're reading this, don't take IB 132. It makes you dumber. Seriously.

In case you were wondering, the biggest mistake I made at Berkeley is deciding to live in this lame excuse for an apartment.

On a slightly related note, weekly barbecues commence this weekend and will run until the termination of our lease at the end of May. If you chip in (in terms of cash and noise), you are more than welcome to come; just give me a call.

Also, Jeff Chang's birthday bash will be held on Monday, May 5, 2008. It will begin promptly at 12am (yes, midnight!) and will run until whenever the heck I decide we've sufficiently disturbed the landlady (probably sometime around 3am). There will be a barbecue, loud hip-hop music, RockBand, and yes, sweet sweet revenge for all the late night parties the landlady has thrown all year.

I should start on homework, so I will leave you with these gems:

Kandel on the Beach

I went to Corona del Mar with Dorothy today. She brought Foucault and I brought Kandel. I finished reading one of the monster chapters on the auditory system, but I got my book all sandy. The water was painfully cold though, so no swimming till summer.

If you can guess what the title refers to, I'll give you a cookie. Chocolate chip.

Umbrella

On the way back from the airport, Irene was telling Elaine to stop saying, "That's legit."

I brought up the fact that Irene didn't know Rihanna's "Umbrella" song. Elaine thought that Rihanna should come out with her own line of umbrellas, and she said, "That would be legit." Then I said, "F'shizzle." And then Irene let out the biggest sigh ever.

Happy

If happy had a taste, it would be orange creamsicle.
If happy had a soundtrack, it would be this:

99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall...

After a semester and half, I finally took all our bottles to recycling. 70 lbs of glass, and all we got was $6.98.

Elephant

Look what Christina found! Sooo random. I love it. :D

Spring!

I say hello to the animals I see when I'm walking. To dogs, I'll say "Hi Doggy!" or "Mung mung!" Today, I saw a robin and said "Hi Robin!" Spring is almost here! :D

I'll take you for who you are...

If you take me for everything.



Robin Williams was at Children's Hospital today! But we weren't allowed to get autographs =(.

We had a concert at Berkshire Retirement Home on Saturday. We were packing up and getting ready to leave when one of the ladies who I sat with turned and asked us when we were going to start playing music for them. I think she had Alzheimer's... sadness =(.

Because I can't sleep...

Descartes is finishing his drink at the local bar. Bartender asks him, "Care for another?" Descartes replies, "I think not." And he disappears.

I <3 long sentences!

Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location (NYTimes)

One of the school system’s most notorious graduates, David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam serial killer who taunted police and the press with rambling handwritten notes, was, as the columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote, the only murderer he ever encountered who could wield a semicolon just as well as a revolver. (Mr. Berkowitz, by the way, is now serving an even longer sentence.)

Let's all LOL at the '90s

Hello.
I wish I was a little bit taller.
I wish I was a baller.
I wish I had a girl who looked good; I would call her.
I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat and a '64 Impala.

Bananas... in yo' pajamas!

Walk around with a banana in your pocket. When people see you, they'll probably ask "Why do you have a banana in your pocket?" To which you should reply, "I'm just happy to see you!"

Ba-dum *ch*

Football and Yogurt

Yesterday's shift in the playroom was really slow. Volunteers outnumbered kids 5:2. Which is to say there were only ever two kids in the playroom at a time. So the staff decided to close half an hour early. It was pretty awesome. Before that, though, there was a kid who was perfectly happy playing with another volunteer in the corner. Her aunt was bored, so I ended up playing NFL Blitz on the N64 with her. She was pretty gangsta, and I got a beatdown.

On Monday, Caroline and I were standing in the kitchen, drinking those Asian yogurt drinks in the little plastic containers. I was talking when all of a sudden she starts coughing and I get a fine mist of Lactobacillus in the face. Very refreshing.

Stupidity, thy name is freshman!

I was in the MCB Undergrad Affairs Office today to turn in some forms. As I was talking to an adviser, I hear the following conversation from the next cubicle over, where a girl is talking to another adviser:

"I really wanted to do Neurobiology. You k now how hard Math 1B is? I thought about switching to Math 16B and doing IB , but I didn't because I wanted to do Neuro that much."

wtf? Math 1B was hard, but not that bad. STFU and deal with it. Everyone has to do it. Get over yourself. Anyway, she continues:

"I really wanted to do research. I emailed 10-15 professors asking for a lab position, but I haven't heard back from any of them. I really want to work in Professor Presti's lab."

O_O Well, you're going to have a hard time doing that, because the adviser tells her now what everyone in Neuro knows...

"Are you aware that Professor Presti does not have a lab?"

I had to fight very hard not to start laughing then.

Ingrid Michaelson - The Way I Am

I love this song and especially the video. I like how it flips things around -- someone who's "normal" loving a clown because he takes her for what she is. Plus, the little kids clapping are so cute.

Snoopy Come Home - It Changes

I used to watch "Snoopy, Come Home" a lot when I was a kid. This is possibly the saddest cartoon clip ever. So depressing.

I've realized that I don't make friends in my classes because I can't stand most MCB majors. I dislike people who take classes only because they're requirements for medical school. (Seriously, if you don't think it's interesting now, what makes you think you'll suddenly like it 4 years and $100,000 later?) I hate people who think everything in life is a competition. (Chillax dude!) I am disgusted by people who serve others just so they can get a letter of recommendation. At the same time, I am sad that they might actually get into medical school. I have a real admiration people who go for PhDs or careers in academia because that is what they love to do. I realize I'm idealistic in my expectations of others, but why should I have to be the one to change?

Anyway, I hate change. I am terrified by the idea of growing up. Growing old? I can deal with that. Growing up? Not so much. I don't want to face the "real world," where elephant jokes aren't funny and money actually is more important than knowledge and good deeds.