November 23, 2008

Memento!

"I have to believe in a world outside my own mind.
I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can’t remember them.
I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world is still there.
Do I believe the world is still there? Is it still out there? Yeah!
We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I’m no different.
Now, where was I?"
-Memento


I felt I got an answer for a question which was bothering me for a while; I felt I got an answer from the movie memento. The above finishing lines of the movie were enlightening!

November 04, 2008

Damm ! Google ads.

Look at this! A screen shot of my gmail inbox with an ‘automated’ ad. message popping up! Damm! This artificial intelligence, which is putting me in sleepless nights!

Story of a Fruit fly, a Paris researcher and an Indian house wife!

This tiny fruit flies which we often find very annoying, annoyed the USA vice presidential candidate too. Not just these flies but also the people who do research on these flies in Paris, France. As a Biologist doing research in Paris, I thought it is my duty to explain how great we both are, the fruit flies and the researcher in Paris.
First about these Fruit flies, I got personally introduced to them in India by my friend Neha, who is doing her PhD on these flies, I have spent some weekends in her lab, just trying to make these flies mate in with their right partners, for a controlled genetic study. In French there is a saying, “F#@k a fly”, obviously only they know how difficult this job can be. Why then these annoying flies? We have to blame Thomas Hunt Morgan, an American scientist who did some genetics experiments with these flies and proved the mechanism of transferring character from the parents to the offspring through the genes in chromosome. Unfortunately he also got the Nobel Prize for Medicine, just working on these silly fruit flies. From that horrible day, these fruit flies which also share 75% human disease related genes, faithfully living under a controlled matting environment, in the biological labs as a faithful genetics model organism. All this scarifies because of its short life span, which makes it possible to compare the grandmother’s characters to that of the granddaughter’s just in matter of few weeks. Since The Madam, ‘potential president of USA’ is not so happy about these flies, maybe we should try to find and alternative, the closest alternative which strikes my mind is the “Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi” (Because a Mother-in-law was once a Daughter-in-law too), an Indian TV soap opera family, which is running for past 8 years around . The Protagonist, a melancholic Indian house wife has seen 6 generations along with her grandma, who is potentially 300+ years old. When Protagonist’s husband died in this soap, Indian house wives, who identify themselves with the Protagonist, went on road in protest (I swear this happened!) and got the character back to life! So maybe this family will be an ideal candidate for genetic studies after the fruit flies, Oh! No! Just this very month this soap is also forcefully terminated it seems, hope there is no riots in India right now! Forget the flies, now it is time to think about the Paris researcher and about their sacrifices. Living one of the world’s most expensive city with a tiny research stipend and with all the worlds sensual pleasures just at your door step, we have to control all our five senses and go to lab and follow the mating of fruit flies and diatoms. Now, who is making a bigger sacrifice, Fruit flies, Paris researchers or the Indian house wives? A very tough question to answer! So let us just say “F#@k a fly” to whoever mock our sacrifices.

November 03, 2008

Just one more day?

I don’t know if my recent amusement addiction will be just for one more day or 4 more years!


This is the cherry on the top! Well! I may miss you lady..may be not.. I have an equally amuzzing lady in my home state Tamil Nadu! Is it a lethal combination, Women and politics? Someone please prove me wrong!

November 01, 2008

Let there shall be light and colours!

Breaking the silence... I am back to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of my blog! The silent October passed by with few celebrations, but most of the days before my computer, just writing and writing. Well! Last 5 days, I didn’t step out of my tiny apartment in the 6th floor! I even don’t know if Paris was flooded by rain or not, I hope Monday when I will step out of my house, I will not find water till 4th floor and I can still use a bike and not a boat! Hmm! Never felt so focused about my work!

I am learning a new Statistical Computing language called R and took a resolution that until I solve my current problem using this language, I will not update my blog nor get out of my apartment! The weather was also favouring me, the work was to colour these dots according to some groups! finally I did it! I like to share the coloured plot too, but it is an unpublished data! Sorry! Blog! Need to wait to see that!

So these were some October celebrations!
  • Our paper got published in Nature! It was a great team work by 30 differnt labs may be aross 10 different countries! Here it is online!

  • One more paper got accepted in Nucleic Acids Research.

  • Andy's visit, had a fruitful discussion about the next publications!

  • Diwali and my blog’s 3rd anniversary!

3 years back, missing my friends back in India, I started this blog! Today! I have a similar lovable crowd with me! lots of colours and lights and reasons to celebrate! I will finish this anniversary entry with my childhood sweetheart’s quote “Why to fear losing in life we always win experience”!
PS: A big sorry for all those long list of unanswered mails! Hoping to be more active in the Internet this month!