Asha 5K Charity Walk/Run

Asha for Education - Ann Arbor chapter is having a 5k charity run/walk to help underprivileged children in India.

What: Stride With Asha, 5k charity run/walk (run/walk at your own pace!)
When: Sunday, September 14th, at 9:00 am
Where: Gallup Park, Ann Arbor

More information and registration at:
www.ashanet.org/annarbor/stridewithasha

Come and spend a Sunday morning with family and friends, enjoy the breeze, and help a child's education.

Thank you very much,
Stride With Asha coordinators

the eighth day of creation

I am totally hooked onto this book titled 'The Eighth day of Creation' -Makers of the revolution in biology by Horace Freeland Judson. I seldom read books in my graduate school though i know i should be spending more time with them than for instance say writing this blog. This book is truly one of a kind and irreplaceable. It talks about that golden era of molecular biology where the structure of DNA was elucidated and it proved that the genes are composed of it. It is not just a scientific account but one that details how the life and fame of those scientists during that period was intertwined. I have just been through the first 50 pagea and excitement is mounting. The book in brief talks about the three significant plays each contributing to a fundamental discovery. The dissection of the structure of the DNA, recognizing mRNA as an intermediate in protein synthesis and the genetic code that set of three contiguous bases in the messenger RNA code for a single amino acid in the resulting protein molecule. I am excited to finish it soon

dslr suggestions?

Its a long 'shot' for me now. I am planning on buying a digital SLR camera. I was looking at the Nikon D40 with a 18-135 mm AF-S lens. Any suggestions or your experience in choosing/buying your camera is highly appreciated. Please comment!

the best gift to most women

I am leaving to India after almost two years since i left home for my graduate studies in ann arbor. It is a special occasion for me and my family alike. As is tradition and also of extreme importance is to show your love through material gifts. so i have my mind running for different people going through what they are like, what would they like and so on. so i ask my friend Chamaree what she thinks will be a good gift for my sister and she tells me 'its a handbag, get her a nice handbag'. I get the same answer from my lab people, my other friends in India, almost everyone. interesting.

Chicago trip

It is hard to believe but the first time i went to chicago, i did not step out of my car even once. Wondering How? long story cut short i just went there to drop my friend and went to urbana-champaign to meet another college friend from my undergrad. Anyway recently , we made another trip, an exciting one with my friends includes Chamaree, Krishnan, Akash and Sethu. Some pictures are below. Personally the millenium park and pizzeria uno and the dolphin show were the highlights of this trip. and what else, dreams do come true as they say, however long they take. i got to drive the prius! hmm what is this prius? yes it is a cool car made by toyota. i am totally impressed with the hybrid technology.
Two full days at chicago, what to do? first day was filled with walking the magnificent mile, going to pizzeria uno-the original deepdish pizza, navy pier and millenium park. We then took the subway train to Econolodge and the next day went to the brookfield zoo and the dolphin show (which was another of my favourites from this trip)

preliminary exam

It has been two years into my ph.d program. ahhh, time really flies past so soon. Now is the time of year when there is a ritual called the preliminary exam when your advisor and atleast two other faculty in the department which you choose try to evaluate whether you are capable of doing a dissertation research. This ritual is done at the date and time you choose and for me the D date was on 17th of may. The two stages before and after this exam are termed the pre-candidate and candidate stages respectively. It is a big thing apparently it affects every aspect of your graduate life including the fees that you pay as tuition so your advisor is keen that you pass this exam. And, you get the reassurance that you are capable of investigating a subject of interest independently, doing a literature review on the topic, knowing the technique you have to use, the limitations and so on and put up a really good coherent story. You do a write up on the topic you have chosen and make a presentation which you show it in front of the three people you have chosen-the committee. They then listen to you, interrupt you, ask many questions and finally ask you to get out and make the decision after a long discussion among themselves. It really is a wonderful experience nw that i think about it. Though at that time i was pretty tense and really nervous. I actually happened to have not included many experimental details, so i had to resubmit my revised proposal at the end of the same month which i did and now i am clear. The committee is finally satisfied with my efforts on the subject. They infact gave me wonderful reviews. The problem that i chose was pretty tough in the first place, there were lot of unknowns and the literature was confusing because of the existence of many different orthologs of the same protein that i was studying. There was a time i thought of proposing something staright-forward, a logical next step in the ongoing research in many different fields that were hot right now. But the time i realized this, i was very much engrossed in the current work that i chose, that there was no going back. Though my department does not want the preliminary exam topic to be related to the actual research conducted in the lab. It was very clear that almost everyone in my batch had chosen related topics or even the same as they had been working on in their lab.

I have respect for very few exams that happened during my academic life and this one definitely ranks among the top. It is really a sorry state that most exams do not make you learn, they just made you read which is totally different from learning. As one of my professors once told me, when you see an question on the exam paper for which you do not know the answer you are supposed to feel deliriously happy. Those are the exams which make you think and lets you show inference rather than merely testing if you can remember facts. I do not however say the latter is not important.

cancelling my phone

how difficult can the process of cancelling a service contract with a mobile phone provider be? it turns out as i have experienced yesterday to be highly complicated. They first don't trust us so much so they give a line only when you have proved that you can pay the bills in time(understandable), the way they check this is through your credit history. as is easily guessed i di not have one when i first came to this country so i got one through my senior who had lived sufficiently in U.S to maintain a healthy credit score. so the phone is his name and i use it and pay my bills correctly in time. this goes on for more than over a year which is also the duration of the contract. now i want to cancel this phone and get another new line under my name. basically cancelling that number/account and opening a new one. Now i just have one concern or request---i wan to keep the same number to avoid the hassle for me and my friends to update and get used to my new number. so i ask them cancel this number under this account and open one under my name and give this number to that. Their system cannot do that which after a long time i try to convince myself saying that once you cancel, the number gets recycled and goes into a pool where anyone can potentially choose it . okay fine. but this so called 'change of responsibility' is not an exception. customers will most likely want to do it....say like a person getting a phone for someone who does not have a good credit score or none at that time of getting the line (as in my case) or a father wanting to give the phone to his son after he develops a good credit. this case ceases to be a exception atleast in my head, so if the system cannot handle it, the first i would do is to change the system to accomdate this ability to do this transfer without any trouble.

after a hour and half or so of arguing and conversing with dozen customer care (nuisance) representatives finally they say my account has been cancelled. i am very happy (uffff...finally done it)

i go home...sleep and come this morning...i get a mail saying the account is still active and they were unable to transfer the same number to a new phone that i ordered online immediately after terminating the old account under someone else name.
what? so all my energy of terminating the account yesterday and the person on the other end nodding..what was all that. such seemingly efficient country with a bunch of inefficient and dumb people. what can i say? all this computerized techie stuff and rigid procedures and protocols is fine. but you have to introduce some how a level of common sense into the system. at times instead of a electronic mediator (which can be efficient and fast most times) i need to interact to someone who is flesh and blood. and the only human being (flesh and blood) in front of me who was a "customer care represntative" at the mobile phone outlet in a Mall could do no more than dial the number to this computerized tech support call center.
i am pissed off

Happy New Year 2007

yes, here it is again. another year with full of surprises and good memories to be formed, many things to be learnt, nice people to meet and critical advances to be made to people' standard of living all around the world. the new year is supposed to instill a sense of excitement, a freshness in mind and for people who have been having a great run this year to continue on same note or to better it; on the contrary for people to whom it is been little disappointing, to make a pause and put back all bad memories and look ahead for a fresh beginning. It is always with this cheerful attitude that i have welcomed new years or any other festival or special day'. I like to take these days in that spirit for i believe in it and see it makes a difference. It breaks the mundane activities. It is not like the only day when we think of friends and family or the only day(s) when we shower them with gifts--that to me is a wrong way of looking at things (i feel sad for those who do so). We love them (friends and family) always, it is just convenient to pick one random day to put them on a pedestal , so lets say jan 1st is that chosen random day. I see that corporates make money with these festives but it is a side-effect and i don;t feel these days were created with the intention of giving these stores some business; BUT there is a big 'but' i do not agree to other hundreds of days all thruogh the year saying some watermelon day, skateboard day, crossing road day etc. ofcourse i see little if any reason in it. So I think these days are as meaningful as the amount of meaning you are willing to put in it. So what you put in these days- the belief- is what you eventually get. Like other things i believe these things (days) exist for a reason (for so long after the world came into being) and lets take them in good spirit and celebrate.

HAPPY NEW YEAR :)

email checking

It has not escaped my notice but rather i came to this shocking realization in the recent past that i am so restless in checking email. thanks to my friends Akash and Chamaree for pointing this out. as soon as i get up in the morning, inbetween strokes of brushing my teeth, i am actually moving the mousepad on my laptop, checking my mail. in fact, i realise that my last living wish on earth will be to check mail... OOOOOOH GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
how did things come to this?

no longer do the passing of the seasons interest me... no longer does the smell of flowers brought to me by the gentle breeze make me happy... there is a deep dark evil inside me which pushes me to check mail at every given hour and beyond.
how did things come to this.

ok, gotta go, i haven't checked mail for a whole five minutes!!!