miketionary

Why renting in London is absolutely ludicrous

2009-09-12T21:11:00.007+01:00

This probably not the latest discovery, but there might be the slightest chance that things change if enough people nag about it (and may it only be in a parallel universe).

Every year - often in lovely Autumn -, thousands, millions in the UK capital decide they are bored with their place and it's time to commit to London's favourite past-time: flat-hunting. Accordingly, there's a bazillion of crappy estate agents all over the place. With their offices in fierce competition for the shabbiest design. Occasionally (well, actually always), I wonder if these idiots haven't quite understood the benefits of an inviting, modern office space. If the point of entry looks sub-standard, why the hell would I expect the properties to be any better? In a normal country, any self-respecting landlord trying to advertise would probably turn around on the heel.

Today, I had the joy of seeing the completely desolate place, in the company of an overly joyful agents. «Those lights, the space, isn't it wonderful?!?» *joyful grin, grin, smile* And why the hell is the wall moulding in the bathroom? Is this silicon, or is the mould keeping the water from running through the wall? Paint was the only thing keeping the windows together. But hey, «it has central heating». Any huge building has bloody central heating! What's the point of heating, if the warmth's first thought is swish out and away through the gaps and creaks in the rotten frames anyway? [1] I don't even want to start about the floors, curtains and bed...

Alright, at least at the top end, one would imagine the flats to be good, if not even spotless? Wrong. Imagine a ~80sqm flat near Old Street in a redeveloped building. Top floor, a penthouse, over-seeing a sizeable part of the city, only minutes away from Moorgate, Liverpool street. Bright, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, open-plan kitchen-living room area with a large balcony. Ahhhh, can you see it? Brilliant, isn't it? Well, for a booming price-tag of £550 per week I would expect it to be perfect. Quite surprisingly (not!), that wasn't the case.

The sink is moulding away.

And so is the wall next to the skylight. Presumably, because it doesn't close properly.

The plaster and paint jobs were done terribly. What is it with the nation-wide lack of masking tape? At all the doors I could see wall paint on the door-frame or vice versa door-paint on the walls. I've come to see paint on the glass of windows to be an English hallmark.

Of course the floors were completely scratched, scraped, grated, clawed, splintered throughout. Must have been quite an effort to get this job done.

I fully understand that there is a degree of wear and tear in any flat. What is beyond my understanding (and tolerance) is the fact that agents actively conceal these shortcomings and that is it generally accepted to rent out accommodation in plain-awful conditions. Why not repair things?

[1] Has the UK signed the Kyoto protocol? Solid iron frames aren't the smartest thing to reduce energy consumption. Oh and then are those regulations to maintain the outside appearance of a building uniform and 'pretty'. Hu? If the whole complex has more similarity to a decaying Russian power plant than a housing estate, do you think anyone would give a rat's ass if one flat's windows were slightly different? No, no, let's just put another kilometer of paint over the rusty ancient things.

Post scriptum: Fantastic, being all absorbed in ranting, I've burnt my food. Anyone for smoky homemade Ramen?

My cyborg acronym!

2009-06-21T18:22:00.002+01:00

Totally me! Seen on Lars' Fischblog.

So ... uhm ... sorry Mary, you're virgin pregnant

2009-06-15T22:45:00.005+01:00

Even though this web-comic is completely dorky and I don't understand any of the toy-related jokes, you got to love it for goldies like this.

Wow, it took me a few attempts to get the HTML code for an image right. It's been a while...

Dark Room

2009-06-12T13:21:00.003+01:00

Damn microscope setup! I'm 1.85m tall (6'1" for those with imperial measures) and I believe the table is built for midgets. Even with my chair on the lowest height, the microscope would need to be another 4 inches higher up, just to keep my neck straight. And «thankfully» there are pipes somewhere near the feet on the floor, so I can't even stretch them out. By the end of my PhD, I'll be a hunchback, will chronically lack vitamin D and be as pale as ... well, I guess I can't get much paler [1].

[1] Thank you England!

The council is full of morons

2009-06-03T23:16:00.003+01:00

In London (and I assume that applies for most of the UK), people have to pay council tax according to their housing standards. Why this isn't done less annoyingly by an equal spread and through the general tax is beyond me, but it exist nevertheless. It wouldn't be such a big problem, if the people in the council managed not to cock up.

I'm happily sharing a flat and I'm also happily tax-exempt being full-time exploited as research-bitch. To my knowledge that relationship has been confirmed by this neat letter of student confirmation when I moved last year. Then, out of the blue sky, a council tax enquiry letter asked for details [1]. Not nicely, but with the bold threat [2] that I'd have to pay £50 if I didn't reply on time. Being a good EU citizen, I complied, not knowing that those idiots had already closed my flatmates account (which comfortably ran via monthly direct debit) and started billing me for the complete previous year! Imbeciles.

Three phone-calls [3] and half an hour (!) later, we (the moron and I) had finally established the above status quo. Sigh, now I'll have to send them another student status confirmation...

[1] The form was full of typos and errors. Who's typing these things? Monkeys?
[2] I should have ignored it. After some time the TV people stopped sending us letters as well. I presume they ran out of red ink, as the letters turned progressively more colourful.
[3] To be fair enough, only one made it successfully past the automatic band machine. Funky music. Word of advice: don't call, if you only have 10min time between some wash steps in the lab.

Boredom has come upon me

2009-06-01T22:01:00.004+01:00

Looking at my latest post date, I guess I have neglected my weblog «a little». To my defence, I've finally come to a time in my studies where can't write about my work without either disclosing publishable information, or without seriously annoying the people I work with. No wonder most high-spec bloggers in academia are incognito, unless they have endless amount of time to ruminate about sensible matters [1].

This afternoon at the cryo-stat - as a rare boon all sectioning went through without problems - I started to contemplate my future career. On the one hand, I thoroughly enjoy my part in biological science [2]. At least all those moments of experimental success. (In fact, I've started to have tiny celebrations for each successful immuno-staining.) Then on the other hand, I'm pondering whether I can see myself for the next 10 years, chasing one limited-term job to the next; post-docing around the world, no real place to settle, always on the verge of finding new friends and a suitable community. And that every three-or-so-years?

Well, and just a second ago I got bored of watching Family Guy and decided to alter my blog design, which to my utter disappointment, isn't as easy as expected. All those new blogspot features require me to start from scratch ... not now.

Right, I'm off. Got to catch up with the «latest» Star Trek movies before I hit the movies. Toodle-pip everyone.

[1] e.g. PZ-whatever at Pharyngo-whatever writes so much that I can't even be bothered to read it (at) all.
[2] How many people do you know that work on photoreceptor transplantation, ha?

PS. After re-reading all this, I believe I've set a new record in random post composition.

You know it's Christmas when...

2008-12-24T10:04:00.002Z

... your family is about to kill each other. My charming little sister has already successfully driven my gran to tears, which was concluded with the usual talk about «not comming any more», «drive me to the train station» and a slamming door.

Bleedin' Christ, even I am targeted. Not sure why, but mom doesn't seem to be in the best mood. Possibly as I preferred to stay in bed for an extra half hour, after my brother's cursed ringing phone woke me in the early hours of the day. Evasive strategy number one is camping it out in the basement with a good cup of coffee and a little blog entry. Hmm, I can still hear the shouting.

An interesting day is to come. At least I have presents for everybody. Ohh, my I am being called, better leave.

Can't believe I'll be going to a dork convention

2008-10-24T20:36:00.001+01:00

Okay, a second ago I thought it would only be about Japanese Manga comics (and similar embarassing stuff). Turns out it's the London MCM Expo, which is also about media and movies. Darn, I wanted to try out my new Sailormoon costume.

And before you know it, the day is gone

2008-10-05T01:48:00.003+01:00

I believe today (yesterday) was my most lethargic Saturday ever! Now that my girlfriend is on a four-month secondment at distant shores, I suddenly have plenty of time at my hands. Today (yesterday) proves that this isn't necessarily a good thing: I'm falling back into my lazy youth habits - I started playing computer games again. Oh sheesh, after finishing Oblivion last week, I've spent the whole day downloading and installing modifications via my friendly neighbour's internet connection [1].

My whole plans for swimming and having a movie night went down the procrastination drain. At least I managed to cook dinner, though I have to admit the fridge is craving for food.

Well, this is my low, it can only get better tomorrow (today?).

[1] Yepp you guessed it, a hijacked unsecured WLAN. Who can hold that against me? I haven't had internet at home since the big move on the 5th of September.

The wrong way to start a week

2008-09-29T12:09:00.003+01:00

Every other Monday our group has to partake in joint meetings in our institute. This generally means 9am talks, which used to drag along until 11am. Less sleep, less productive work hours and tons of in depth neurodevelopment, hard to comprehend in the early hours of the day.

Today was «slightly» different. Upon arrival at 8.45, the sirens of the fire-alarm greeted me and I saw hospital staff wheeling patients out of the wing. Strangely, no evacuation attempts for anybody else at that time. Very much to my displeasure all cafes were locked up, so I made my way outside to the evacuation point. The fire-brigade finally joined the party and things got more structured - shouting police men, hysterical fire marshals, the whole parade was out there.

It turned out that there was a serious explosion in one of the patient wards, two floors below our lab. Apparently and luckily, no-one got injured. Due to unknown structural damage, the whole wing is now off limits until an investigation can or cannot attest its safety. The latter case would be quite devastating for all the labs. I don't imagine the move of all the material to a replacement venue to be an interesting past-time [1].

Many people still have their personal belongings on the floor. They are now being issued petty cash, so they can at least make their way home. My current main concern is that the power circuits aren't cut, otherwise loads of precious samples in the freezers, fridges and cold rooms might go down the scientific drain.

Everyone has heard those stories about whole departments not recovering from fire, I just hope we won't be affected. The institute issued an emergency number, I got to call tomorrow morning to check whether the wing will be accessible again. Keep your fingers crossed.

[1] I just moved house and it was a huge pain in the neck - literally, because I did it manually.

Barefaced technician

2008-09-12T17:07:00.004+01:00

After buying a simple USB print server from LinkSys for one of our USB printers:

The Linksys printer server is also a switch and we do not allow switches on the network except professional switches such as the ones managed by ISU. If you want to plug anything into the network or want to buy anything computer related then you need to speak to us first and we will tell you a suitable product that we will allow. I'm sure you wouldn't be too impressed if we bought your lab equipment for you.

Damn cheeky monkeys, they seem to forget why they have a job. That last statement should be printed as a book and whacked across their heads, several times. Besides, 30 quid for the LinkSys device or a ludicrous £170 for the HP print server our lovely technicians suggest?

So you want an informative title as well?!?

2008-09-11T19:36:00.005+01:00

Isn't it enough that I grace everyone with my blogging presence once more? Frankly, I'm bored, currently sitting in front of my new work PC with my new 24 inch Dell screen (yes I'm boasting, so what), waiting for my girlfriend to pick me up for dinner. Almost every sane person has left our floor, thus it's only me and the feaverishly completing research students. Nevertheless, it very quiet here at night and for once it's possible to concentrate in the office. Besides, at night no-one cares about time-slot at machines. Although, the other day the damn cryostat started its defrosting programme in the middle of sectioning.

Well, I just remember that I should check on my genotyping. Cheerio.

cough dusty here

2008-05-31T16:04:00.003+01:00

Almost half a year. Sheesh, I'm really getting caught up in my PhD and I'm damn enjoying it [1]. My actual project carries the fancy title «Towards retinal stem cell therapy - transplantation of photoreceptor precursor cells». In other terms this means in-vitro differentiation of adult stem cells into photoreceptor precursors and their transplantation into adult retina.

The foundations for my project were laid out in 2006, when my group published revolutionary findings [2]. Long story short, post-mitotic photoreceptor precursors from a defined ontogenetical state can link up with the existing neuronal circuits of the donor and improve vision in mouse models of retinal disease.

Okay, gotta go swimming now.

[1] Which is only partially thanks to being paid three-months in advance.
[2] MacLaren, et al. 2006, Nature 444, 203-207

Christmas, a summary

2008-01-09T20:54:00.000Z

Eventually, I found a peaceful moment to bring my recollections of the festive period to paper, ehh, electrons.

I don't understand why many people turn into completely different persons during the advent time, with loads of (often futile) attempts to charm others into the same christmassy mood. Frankly, Christmas had lost most of its magic ever since I found out that present weren’t brought by the Christ-child and – more importantly – that family gatherings usually end up with dispute and drama [1]. Besides that, Christmas shopping is probably the most absurd invention of modern society. You receive stuff you don't need and buy stuff which you’re not appreciated for since a magic, invisible somewhat incarnation of Christ has brought them. Oh we poor fellows, that we have to indoctrinate our children with such BS [2].

But I’d better start at the beginning. This year was slightly different as my girlfriend joined the Mike-clan. However, as we are both working full-time [3] we could only go for the hardcore «everyone wants to fly to bloody Austria» period from the 21st to the 27th of December. Not surprisingly, all direct flights were exorbitantly expensive and my contingency plan was to evade via Munich, where my brother makes a living.

The outbound flight from London was quite enjoyable, as for the first time in years I actually used the high-class of the low-class airlines, AirBerlin. Where the seats are only marginally too short and tight and one is – surprisingly – served food. However, last minute shopping was awaiting me and during the day I was feeling gradually more sick, which culminated in my ultimatum that I’d puke into the next shop, shouldn’t we make our way home. My stomach eventually freed itself of all containing burden during the night - twice.

The only real reason why I still every year look forward to going home over Christmas is the food - loads of delicious food. This year’s «appetiser» was wild boar, which my Dad had shot a couple of days before and turned into an incredible ragout, so tender that I didn’t have to chew, but merely mashed it with my tongue. Apparently, the critter weighted – without its innards – more than 90kg. The «main course» on Christmas Eve consisted of bread, butter, smoked salmon as starters and a whole slowly stewed back of a cow as the big deal. As «dessert» we had the ceremonial fondue on the 25th.

While we comfortably went to Austria from Munich by my brother’s car, the train turned out to be the transport of choice on the way back. So seventy-something Euros poorer and five hours later the Munich airport came into sight [4] and with a total journey time of 12 hours home sweet home had us again. How have I missed my freezing flat with the single glassed windows.

[1] Of course not different this year.
[2] Many parents even go a step further and morph into pediatric sadists: «There! The Christ-child. Didn’t you see it?», «Where?», «Aww, I’m sorry sweetie you just missed it by a second. Maybe next time you’re lucky.»
[3] My request for holiday was answered with a hand-wave symbolising «Why are you asking anyway, just go as you please». It's good to be a scientist!
[4] «Sie steigen in den Hauptbahnhof ein ...»:

The tube delusion

2007-12-10T11:11:00.000Z

I had a peculiar encounter this morning on the Jubilee line. I luckily conquered a seat and flung out my usual morning reading - this time Dawkin's The God Delusion. Seconds later people on the opposite side of the carriage started smirking and almost couldn't hold their laughter. I started looking around, examining myself (one never knows, there might be toilet paper hanging out of your jeans), and only when I saw what my neighbor passenger was fiercely studying (plenty of many coloured bookmarks), it all made sense - he read a bible.

DNA maxi-preps shan't happen

2007-12-05T11:45:00.000Z

The day before yesterday I forgot to add ampicillin to the overnight cultures. Yesterday I used LB agar for my supposed broth and was wondering about the block of gel in my flask. Today, well today I'll give it another try. Darn, two embarrasing mistakes within such a short period.

The devil takes the hindmost

2007-11-21T15:56:00.000Z

Half an hour ago I made a whole pot of coffee and now all is gone without me having a single drop of it... *sniff, bohooooo* I'm such a poor thing.

Sorry, but you're too fat to live here

2007-11-20T16:33:00.000Z

The British Telegraph dug out an amusing story about a couple and their troubles emigrating to the Kiwis. Way to go, I'm also strictly for less free flight luggage for people with a vastly greater BMI than mine [1].

Quite intruiging are the misconceptions by the couple's doctor.

My doctor laughed at me. He said he’d never seen anything more ridiculous in his whole life. He said not every overweight person is unhealthy or unfit.

What? Every overweight person is unhealthy - fullstop [2].

[1] 19.86 (1.85m, 68kg)
[2] Personal experience (former BMI being 26 three years ago)

I tapped the keg of education!

2007-11-16T20:19:00.000Z

Mike was awarded a PhD studentship! Success, after all the distress. What a relief!

Arch-linux, not for beginners

2007-11-07T12:36:00.000Z

I'm a somewhat technical geek and I occasionally like to experiment with diverse operating systems. Windows does most of the jobs anyway, but my computers have aged with pride and even though I stripped most functions off WinXP [1], it gives me headaches when it takes tea-break in the middle of a process [2].

Whilst rumaging through the web, I read that arch-linux can be completely fit to purpose (alternatively gentoo linux is equally good?). I manage to install and configure the kernel and even a graphical user interface (Xfce), but after this point the FAQ and guides become utter rubbish and they only talk in a linux-gibberish speech no life-scientist will bloody ever understand.

So back to Xubuntu, which will hopefully work properly on my dusty Athlon Thunderbird PC, with a mere 256MB RAM.

[1] I can only recomment nlite
[2] Just like Cricket

The most enjoyable pastime

2007-10-31T09:07:00.000Z

Alright, admittedly the second most enjoyable pastime, but cooking definitely is unimpeachably on place two.

As I'm currently in the situation most people may call «unemployed», however which I prefer to dub «extended application period» [1], I have plenty of time for (a) applications [2] and (b) the creation and refinement of dishes. By the time I eventually get my studentship I could probably hire as a chef.

So yesterday's dinner was *ahem* «Pork chops in a mustard-white wine sauce severed with fresh parsley potatoes and seasonal vegetables [3]». As far as one can refer to anything shopped in Sainsbury's as «fresh» - well, the temperatures are for sure «fresh» [4].

To the recipe. We need: Pork loin steaks (preferably with bones, as it keeps the meat juicy), salt, pepper, flour, thyme, marjoram, white wine, Dijon mustard, cream, waxy potatoes, butter, parsley, carrots and leak (our «seasonal» vegetables).

Pork chops and white wine sauce:

Season the pork chops from both sides with salt and pepper, then flour one side. Start frying at high heat in some oil with the floury side down until nicely golden. Depending on the thickness of your steaks this takes 2 to 3 minutes per side. You should have a close eye on it, as heated flour tends to stick even to non-stick pans.
Put the steaks on an ovenproof plate, cover with tin-foil and transfer to a preheated oven (80-100 centigrade will do).
Now pour a glass of white wine into your frying pan (do not clean in between!), add a tea-spoon of mustard, some thyme and marjoram. Let it simmer until the alcohol is evaporated, then pour in a small cup of cream and leave with an occasional stir at low heat until the sauce thickens.

And our side-dishes:

Peel the potatoes (unless you want to make mash you should use a waxy brand), cut into reasonable chunks, place in a pressure cooker with a tiny amount of water (5-10mm high) and heat until the pressure-meter reaches the second ring. Turn down the heat and leave at high pressure for seven minutes. Since I've never boiled potatoes normally, I'm afraid I can't advise you on this. I suppose if the boiled potato slides off a fork easily it's done.
In a pan/pot melt some butter, add chopped parsley and sway the potatoes gently in the mixture until they are covered in a tasty butter-parsley coat (they shouldn't be green though!). Season with salt.
The rest is even easier: Chop carrots and leak into little wafers and rings respectively and fry gently in some butter until soft-ish.
If you are eager, also boil some green-beans in salted water. Alternatively, peas, sugar-snap or any imaginable vegetable will do as well (okay, I wouldn't recommend aubergines as they tend to sponge up all the grease).

Unfortunately, my camera was out of battery. You'll have to use your imagination for the looks of the dish.

[1] My BHF application failed on the project, so I'm on the market once again.
[2] Cover letter or CV anyone? I am a pro by now!
[3] Hooray for globalisation! Wonder where they are in season right now.
[4] For anyone who's now confused due to a lack of delightful British shopping experience: the refrigerating units don't have doors and thus supermarkets turn into a cold-distribution centres.

Some more responses to «Pretty girl wants to marry rich guy» - still a bad trade

2007-10-23T18:26:00.000+01:00

In response to my post about a (apparently extremely gorgious) girl with the wish to marry a rich guy someone dropped a comment I found worthy to be republished and I also found one more in an email. Enjoy

Dear Whore;

I appreciate the honesty in accessing your true occupational purpose. At 500K a year, you've tagged your coochie at an astonishing $1369 a day! Quite modest, aren't we! But I admit, I'm still intrigued at what such an astonishing figure might offer, and would hate to miss out on what must be the best lay in the world. So I'd like to go for the daily rental plan to satisfy my curiosity before taking the big plunge on a nominal lease plan.

But before I commit to a rental though, a few questions, dear.

Having seduced and rented an embarrassingly large number of women, I must say you really need to explain your pricing. You humbly find yourself spectacularly beautiful, but really now, that's just your opinion. Just last month at the Novahotel disco in Bangkok, I had 25 different Russian Anna Kournikova look-a-likes offer a rental price of $150 a night.

As a man, I imagine my beautiful meter is far more subjective than yours. Since you're American, the odds are miniscule you're even close to as beautiful as them, let alone ten times more beautiful to justify $1369 a day!

So is it your sexual performance? Just last month in Thailand and the Philippines I've donated $30 a night to at least half a dozen girls who could star in porn today. Are you 45 times better to command $1369? Hmmmm.

Is your snapper gold plated and does it shoot fire? If it only shoots darts and smoke cigars, I've already seen that for free at Long Gun in Bangkok.

Maybe you have some magical pink taco that changes transmission fluid, carries my golf bag, baits my hooks, and morphs into a different 21 year old every night? That might be worth something, I imagine. $1369? Well...

Also, you seem naive to the game. Men don't pay for sex, we pay for the women to leave. It sounds like you expect to come back every day! Good grief!! The excitement of newness fades quickly, sometimes in an afternoon, so surely there must be some decelerating price scale as the days add up. Please advise.

Lastly, you don't speak do you? I don't like to talk to whores, and avoid cocky ones like the plague, which you clearly are.

Maybe you're actually some package deal. Do you have a fleet of hot girlfriends that give great BJs or something? When it's not free, I pay just $60 in Thailand for threesomes, and some of those girls sucked it so hard my ears wiggled and the bed sheets went up my butt. So what does a $1369 hummer feel like? Really. I'd like to know.

Geez, prostitution can be so difficult at times. This is hard work.

Warm regards, Brett Tate

Response number two has a slightly more cultivated choice of words.

I also came across your posting with great interest. I am a 28 year old Wall Street trader who qualifies as an eligible suitor under your $500k/yr rule. In fact, I make over a million and can usher a woman into a comfortable, true middle class lifestyle (not like those 500k lower-middle class chumps who have to make do with the junior two-bedroom).

I am sympathetic to your goal in finding a rich man to marry. The milk needs to be sold by the expiration date. But since this is premium milk, why would you settle for less than premium prices? I would like to address some of the questions that were previously missed by the other gentleman and provide constructive advice on where to find your match.

I also do believe in the efficient market theory, and am surprised that $500k hasn't found you yet. There are plenty of rich lawyers, investment bankers and hedgies to go around in this city. What gives? I think the problem might be that you have not been sufficiently focused in your search efforts.

The culprit, I believe, may be that you are also looking for qualities aside from money - such as looks, personality, and a sense of humor. However, men who have those qualities learn at an early age that they do not need money to attract quality women. As the saying goes, if you can get the milk for free, why pay up for the cow?

What you need to look for is someone who is long money, and short the other aspects. They are not easy to spot, since you are biologically wired to overlook and ignore them. However, the next time that you are at a expensive black tie event, and you are introduced to the short, bald, overweight man who fidgets nervously whilst making conversation with you, pay special attention to him.

Here's an inspirational story for you. An acquaintance of mine who was also an classy and articulate woman as yourself was able to land that guy - who also happens to be one of the top ten guys at Google. This is the type of stuff that gold-digging moms read to their gold-digging daughters at bedtime. Perhaps you need to make a location change to Silicon Valley - miracles like these happen almost everyday in a land where you can randomly throw a rock and hit a rich nerd squarely in his Kim-jong Il glasses.

And as far as his deficiencies go, they turned out to be not so bad. With hundreds of millions in the bank, she's been able to clean him up and give him a little sophistication. Think of it as a fixer-upper project with a massive budget (and yourself as a visionary real estate developer!). Although, I must warn you, it is a fine line you are flirting with - you must not overdo it lest he begins to attract younger women who are hotter than yourself. The trick is, you need build him up enough to be presentable, while simultaneously manipulate him into believing you are the best that he will ever do! That and having kids will be your insurance against your depreciation (or as I prefer to use the term, milk going sour).

I wish the best of luck on your sales project. As for me, I am also available for a short-term lease. However, for marriage I wouldn't consider a woman unless she can bring beauty, brains and self-motivation to the table. I do not want to dilute my gene pool and end up raising a bunch of Paris Hiltons.

Employee evaluations

2007-10-23T18:19:00.000+01:00

I love it when I get things like these per email.

These are actual quotes taken from Government employee performance evaluations: [1]

"Since my last report, this employee has reached rock-bottom and has started to dig."

"I would not allow this employee to breed."

"This employee is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definite won't be."

"Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap."

"When he opens his mouth, it seems that it is only to change feet."

"This young lady has delusions of adequacy."

"He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them."

"This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."

"This employee should go far, and the sooner he starts the better."

"Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic things to hold it all together."

"A gross ignoramus - 144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus."

"He doesn't have ulcers, but he's a carrier."

"I would like to go hunting with him ."

"He's been working with glue too much."

"He would argue with a signpost."

"He brings a lot of joy whenever he leaves the room."

"When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell."

"If you see two people talking and one looks bored, he's the other one."

"A photographic memory but with the lens cover glued on."

"A prime candidate for natural de-selection."

"Donated his brain to science before he was done using it."

"Gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn't coming."

"He's got two brains cells, one is lost and the other is out looking for it."

"If he were any more stupid, he'd have to be watered twice a week."

"If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you'd get change."

"If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean."

"It's hard to believe he beat out 1,000,000 other sperm."

"One neuron short of a synapse."

"Some drink from the fountain of knowledge; he only gargled."

"Takes him 2 hours to watch 60-minutes."

"The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.

[1] No idea which government, I'm just passing on an email which has probably circuited the world roughly two million times.

Random phone call

2007-10-17T13:19:00.000+01:00

Someone just called me for a ticket enquiry. First I was bewildered and wondered whether one of my flatmates had ordered some tickets and they called to get some more information. So both of us were asking questions the other person couldn't answer. Reminded me about that radio sketch where the moderators connected two take-away Chinese restaurants and asked one of them beforehand to repeat the order. «So when are you commin' to pick up?» «Pick up? You pick up, we are take-away!»

Best of luck for the random caller, may you find your ticket-hotline number.

Pretty girl wants to marry rich guy = bad trade (a banker's perspective)

2007-10-08T10:48:00.000+01:00

Something I picked up from the ether. The original source is some networking portal called Craiglist (such as Xing).

The question

What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I'm tired of beating around the bush. I'm a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I'm articulate and classy. I'm not from New York . I'm looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don't think I'm overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200 - 250. But that's where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won't get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she's not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

Here are my questions specifically:

Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics- bars, restaurants, gyms

What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won't hurt my feelings

Is there an age range I should be targeting (I'm 25)?

Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east side so plain? I've seen really 'plain jane' boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I've seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What's the story there?

Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows - lawyer, investment banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?

How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for MARRIAGE ONLY

Please hold your insults - I'm putting myself out there in an honest way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I'm being up front about it. I wouldn't be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn't able to match them - in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth.

The answer

I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament. Firstly, I'm not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here's how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a cr@ppy business deal. Here's why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here's the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity...in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won't be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you're 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold...hence the rub...marriage. It doesn't make good business sense to "buy you" (which is what you're asking) so I'd rather lease. In case you think I'm being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It's as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So, I wonder why a girl as "articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful" as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K hasn't found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn't need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you're going about it the right way. Classic "pump and dump."

I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of lease, let me know.

Mike is a demonstrator

2007-10-01T18:14:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow I'll be looking after second year undergraduates in their molecular biology practicals. Unexperienced students have the tendency to make all kind of embarrassing, yet amusing, mistakes, such as using piston stroke pipettes without tips [1], or trying to punch DNA solutions - still in their plastic vials - into the wells of an agarose gel whilst wondering why they float in the buffer.

Let's see what the students in my designated supervision area have in peto.

[1] Proudly stating that they put «the little blue hat» back on after usage.

Locked

2007-09-30T20:09:00.000+01:00

Turned out my key does not unlock my flat door, when someone locks it twice. It took one Italian dinner (mmmh Capricosa and garlic bread) and a couple of phone calls until one of my flat mates unlocked it, looking rather puzzled why I couldn't. Hmpf, Mel and I spent fifteen minutes twisting and turning the key in the key-hole - anyone remember the scene of Disney's The Rescuers Down Under, where the funny lizard animal tries to unlock its cage? «... and then you turn it a little to the left and pull it out a bit, with a faked twist to the right you then push...»

My first scam email

2007-09-27T11:28:00.000+01:00

This glorious outcry for help just landed in my gmail spam (well done for that google).

Letter of Relationship and Establishment Aid.

From : Nkomo Kamara
Abidjan Cote d' Ivoire West Africa.
Tel+22507924282
For logistic reason contact me on e.mail:(nkomartka@yahoo.fr)
Attention: Respectful

Yada, yada, blah blah blah, dead father, blah blah blah, 9.5 million bucks [written as $9.500.000.000.00, hmmm], yada yada, legally inherited, blah blah blah, gold and diamant mining, yada blah yada, need your bank account details, yada yada, really really good investements, yada yada, interest for you, blah blah blah blah [editorial comment: slightly abbreviated, important stuff highlighted]

Does any one wants to contact him? Any scambaiters around?

How you shouldn't open a subwoofer

2007-09-21T14:09:00.000+01:00

Here you see what happens when instead of handy screws, glue is used to hold things together. Mike gets enraged and makes use of his 500 gram hammer to destroy the item of annoyance. In this case my old Logitech subwoofer, which had a loose contact I wanted to fix. After removing all the (well-hidden) screws I still wasn't able to dismantle the case and after half a second of consideration I smashed the cursed piece of plastic. I wanted to buy a new set of loudspeakers anyway, since the already mentioned cable contact was loose and there were always a bazillion of cables hanging all over my desk.

Yet again

2007-09-19T10:59:00.000+01:00

8am, the alarm on my mobile phone rings. The first step onto the floor *argh*, cold. So I tumble by random movement - though keeping as little floor-contact as possible - into the bathroom to take a shower. Optimistic as I am assuming that there will be hot water again, but I couldn't have been any wronger. The salvation comes in form of putting on yesterday's clothes and another half hour in bed. The rule of thumb that any chemical reaction will slow down by 50 per cent as soon as it cools down by 10 centigrade is apparently applicable to Mikes morning reactions as well. Once more a cold shower.

On a different note: I've been contemplating about launching some kind of GRE survey, asking university professors for their opinion on the GRE, how important it is in the application processes and what information they can extract from the results. I'm not sure anyone would reply, especially since I'm a GRE-grieving graduate, but I might give it a shot.

No hot water

2007-09-18T12:57:00.000+01:00

I really like my new flat, but I grinds my gears when there's no hot water to shower in the morning and the regulators on the radiators are jammed with paint and rust. I hope they switch on central heating soon, since temperatures dropped below 10 centigrade and Mel has the tendency to air the whole flat over night.

Time to be back

2007-09-17T14:17:00.000+01:00

It's been quite a while since I've written my last entry. I'm sitting in Andrea's lab and the only thing I can do right now is translating some e-learning tutorials from English into German. It pays part of my rent, but is not particularly thrilling when all you do is think about how you may restructure a sentence in German so that the variable included by the server-sided code is still at the end of the sentence. Sometimes an impossible quest and often boring.

But I better start at the very beginning (make sure you sit comfortably, here comes the probably longest entry ever): In the middle of last summer I started revising for the graduate record examination general test (GRE), one bullshit compilation of exercises that should evaluate a graduate's academic capability [1], which I was due to take at the latest by end of October. As idiotic as this test may appear to assess academic virtues, it still is employed by virtually every American postgraduate institution and suddenly some British colleges show the tendency to trust the «,test» results as well [2]. Considering that I'm no native speaker, nor did I grow up in an English-speaking nation, I believe I did an excellent job in the verbal part scoring more points than most American graduates [3]. The mathematics part was a breeze, but I screwed up badly in the essay section and therefore laid the foundations for the failure of most of my US applications.

I'm now the proud owner of six rejection letters from six Ivy League universities. I'm a first class student, I've collected three awards throughout my undergraduate degree, was twice on the dean's list and have a bunch of other useful qualifications that make me stand out, but I wasn't even invited to the interviews. Yet strangely, I was on the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory [4] interview list and I also attended the European Molecular Biology Laboratory interviews, with unfortunately unsuccessful outcome. In case of CSHL this was especially sad since many of my interviewers hinted that I would be accepted. In the end there were probably some hidden quotas as one of my friends here at UCL was offered a place.

Personally I don't believe that Ivy League and other elitist universities per se carry out better research than the «normal» institutions do, but getting into the high class journals is definitely easier with a big name including a big publication record behind you. Even though that means you follow the stupid «everyone comes five minutes before the professor and leaves the lab five minutes after the professor» rule for four to six years.

After receiving the last rejection letter extremely late (I'll never forget the fourth of April), I was clinging to the last straws such as going to the EMBL labs in Grenoble [5], or the DKfZ labs in Heidelberg [6], but none was to become true. While I was away for interviews the Medical Research Council deadlines passed and the professors I approached directly didn't have any interest in replying. Put yourself into my position, having all the ambitions to stay in higher education but no funds to do so.

Luckily, a professor (Jim) who lectured on my cardiovascular disease course sent out a circular email about a British Heart Foundation funded PhD on gene therapy of ApoE knock-out mice. As Jim made a little reading mistake the application is still pending and I'll have to wait until mid-October to be informed about the outcome [7].

Narf, thus I spent the summer searching for short-term research appointments so I could afford living in London from September onwards. There're plenty of RA positions with a duration of one year and longer, but there's nothing with less [8]. So my knight in the shiny armour turned out to be Andrea who offered me some money for finishing my BSc project and some other lab work. Additional funding would be coming from the translation of e-learning tutorials now destined for medicine students, which I should translate into German, or rather which I'm translating right now (I keep swapping between the blog window and the word window).

I'm sometimes wondering whether I should start collecting information on how rubbish some application systems are and publish a book about it.

Cheerio, there's a blood pH tutorial waiting to be fully translated. But I think I'll have a cup of coffee first. Coffee? Ehm.. I mean the brown stuff the common room's machine extrudes in exchange to 30 pence.

[1] There are plenty of post by me nagging about the GRE and a bazillion more sprinkled over the web, treat yourself.
[2] Namely, Cambridge. Some finance master courses if I remember correctly.
[3] Can you believe that?!?
[4] CSHL is led by James Watson and offers probably the best PhD programme for biological sciences.
[5] The trip to Grenoble is an entertaining story on its own, with myself not capable of speaking French and the French not willing to speak English.
[6] That kinase lady never came back to me after I set up a whole presentation and wanted to book my flights. Andrea always told me that kinase people are different; I should have listened to her.
[7] Should you hear about an Austrian going berserk in London around mid-October, you know my application was rejected.
[8] To be precise, there was one, but instead of hiring me as a well qualified person they chose to rehire someone they've already worked with. That's the simple outline, it was actually a little more complicated with wrong application deadlines being posted and Mike being utterly pissed off for many hours.

PS. isn’t it malicious irony that exactly now, after writing this entry, I receive an email from the GRE service?

I'm happy

2007-06-07T02:20:00.000+01:00

Had an awesome birthday. Good night folks

How to survive in a black hole

2007-05-21T18:32:00.000+01:00

Longest road, shortest road, free fall, singularity, dead, dead, dead. In case I ever get into the situation, this information will allow me to make the best out of my black hole experience. Hey, I might even move my space craft's furniture into position and put on a suit. I wonder what happened to the good old «you-get-spaghetti-fied» effect. Physicists ...

Done

2007-05-21T13:51:00.000+01:00

No more undergraduate exams for as far as I can anticipate the future!

Nostalgia

2007-05-18T10:56:00.000+01:00

As my UCL account is going to expire soon and I was using IMAP throughout the last three years, I thought I'd download all my emails. And there you go, I kept emails from first and second year. Some of which concern my course choices for second year [1] and a couple are about a job application as a «fly helper» (sorting Drosophila). The good old times.

[1] Yes Chris, I was probably the most annoying (some may also call it eager or enthusiastic) student you've met in years, haha.

Short intermezzo

2007-05-16T14:45:00.000+01:00

Mwhahahaha, I love Shortpacked:

Alright, back to herpes viruses.

Ruminations about exam papers

2007-05-14T18:54:00.000+01:00

Today I finished my third exam this year for the course having the nice title «Biochemistry of Health and Disease». For the convenience (or not) of students the course was quasi split into two half course units; one half about cardiovascular disease and the other about cancer biology (some information about Prions was interspersed). Obviously this is quite a workload, especially if you don't simply want to scratch the surface, as most lectures did.

What upset me was the exam format. Theoretically (which was also clear from past exam papers), it would have been able to complete the exam with only revising half the course content (i.e. either CVD or cancer biology). In my opinion, this is the wrong way to set an exam, as it only encourages students to leave out half the content, or in my case confronts them with the dilemma of wanting to achieve good marks and having a thorough knowledge of the whole course content.

The European «Song» Contest

2007-05-12T23:25:00.000+01:00

Despite my deep revision phase, I had to point out the following:

Any similarities are pure coincidence and I of course fully approve of the European «Song» Contest - the British moderator was ace!

Save the cheerleader, save the world! Oh, Serbia won. And it's a woman [1], by the way.

[1] I think. The male moderator didn't kiss her.

Addendum: The only song I considered worthwile winning was Roger Cicero's «Frauen regier'n die Welt» (women rule the world), but I'm generally a fan of his music [2]. Apparently, there's an English album out as well, which I haven't listened to yet.

[2] Jazz and swing combined with an outstanding (German) voice. On the contrary to his Eurovision song, one of his other albums is called «Männersachen», which casually translated means «men's business».

They stole my RedBull can!

2007-05-02T10:44:00.000+01:00

(Sob) That's exactly what happens when you leave your room for efficient revision (Remember, I'm living in the dark ages). The window-cleaners leave your desk in a layer of dirt AND they steal your preciousssss RedBull can off the roof. It was shiny, we needed it, we wanted it! We musssssst get it back!

Google Tisp (beta)

2007-04-24T12:12:00.000+01:00

Enjoy.

Notice the "PhD" on the sewage dude.

My middle-school biology teacher died

2007-04-23T13:58:00.000+01:00

I haven't seen him for almost nine years, but getting notice today still sent a shudder down my spine. Thanks to his enthusiasm I always enjoyed biology and he was probably the first who encouraged me to study a biological science subject.

Farewell Prof. Kydlicek, you've been a true friend.

Silent protest

2007-04-23T13:09:00.000+01:00

A picture says more than a thousand words.

«The apple experiment» is finished

2007-04-20T20:42:00.000+01:00

Since the little bugger wasn't moulding after a considerable time-span (5 months!), I eventually ate it last week in a peculiar hunger attack [1]. Luckily, I was smart enough to collect photographic evidence about my mission, as «some» folks have taken my alleged secretiveness as a serious affront.

About the culinary experience: admittedly, it was a little to sweet for my taste, but what do expect after somewhat more than 5 months of ripening?

[1] I can see the next Sun headline: «Poor student had to eat decaying apple! Authorities are shocked!»

We just had a fire-alarm

2007-04-11T17:44:00.000+01:00

... in my place. This is a pure procrastination blog entry. Thesis word count: 3300. Days until deadline: 12. Motivation: dependent on caffeine levels [1].

[1] That I'm writing about adenosine receptors is obviously a macabre joke. Well, at least I now know that it makes no sense to excessively drink small portions of coffee; gulping down a whole can is much more effective from a pharmacological point of view.

Update: It's now 2am and I managed to add amazing 500 words within the last two hours. Someday I'll have to work out the intricate relationship between the lack of daylight, excessive but concentrated caffeine consumption, and why my productivity increases by the factor ten when those criteria are met [2]. Good night, I'm going to listen to whatever story my matress is willing to tell me.

[2] Another hypothesis claims that it may have something to do with my roommate usually playing computer games during the day.

GM crops: insect resistance

2007-04-06T13:41:00.000+01:00

Insect pests of the corn borer or the cotton boll worm represent a major threat to maize and cotton farmers respectively. Both insect’s larvae feed on the inside of the plant and are therefore difficult to reach by sprayed insecticides.

The Gram-positive soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis has been long known to produce a range of crystal (Cry) proteins. These proteins - commonly known as Bt toxins – become cleaved in the insect’s midgut bind specifically to cell-surface receptors. The cells are lysed by pore formation via an oligomerisation step after recognition. Subsequently, larvae stop feeding and starve. Due to high specificity the Cry proteins are toxic to a very limited range of insects and are harmless to other organisms; no toxicity to mammals, birds and fish.

In the pre-GM era, Bt toxins were used as a biological alternative to chemical insecticides, however, the costly production prevented a major breakthrough. The introduction of Cry genes into plants circumvents this problem, and a Cry-protein content as low as 0.1% of the total cell protein suffices to protect cultivars from certain insect pests. Accordingly, Cry genes were engineered into cotton and maize, and found successful application in the US (29% of the maize, 41% of the upland cotton), Australia, China, India and the Philippines, known as Bt variants.

As an unexpected positive side effect, the grains of Bt maize contain lower amounts of mycotoxins such as aflatoxin and fumicosin, which are risk factors for liver carcinoma.

Another approach to achieve insect resistance is based on protease inhibitors, which are produced by some plants protecting against animals. The protease inhibitors disrupt digestive processes leading to starvation, enabling broad insect resistance. On the downside, protease inhibitors work on a variety of species and the plants needs to be cooked before consumption to inactivate the protease inhibitors. This may also have a lot of ramifications on the surrounding fauna when bred outdoors.

The exasperating issue of GM plants

2007-04-03T13:09:00.000+01:00

As I have reached my revision period, I might as well contribute to public education and write about some of the topics I tackled in this year's lectures. One of the most prominent and controversial issues in the modern era of genetic engineering revolves around genetically modified organisms, mainly plants.

The public debate is going nowhere, because protesters always have the loudest voices, usually only spreading their misinformed ideologies of general devastation and death. Yes, if we are not getting killed by an upcoming ice-age, volcano eruption or nuclear fallout triggered by a bunch of terrorists, plants are going to wipe us off the planet. Nature is cruel.

Now that we considered and ignored the general gobbledygook [1], we can face the facts. Genetically modified plants hardly differ from their «normal» pendants' genotype; meaning that they typically carry one to a couple of additional genes. The big advantage to conventional breading is the possibility to introduce specifically a single gene, which may be of any species as long as one can get a grasp on the cDNA and it can be expressed in plants.

The most frequent traits embrace herbicide tolerance, insect resistance, virus and fungal resistance, modified nutritional value and several other traits that exploit plants as bioreactors for the production of e.g. pharmaceuticals [2,3].

A widely used herbicide is glyphosate that interferes with plants' shitimake pathway, which is responsible for the production of many aromatic metabolites, including some amino acids [4]. As animals don't have this pathway, glyphosate only exhibits low toxicity for animals; it is also cleared quite rapidly by soil bacteria. The herbicide has found extensive application in e.g. killing plants off rail tracks even in the pre-GM era. In GM plants tolerant to glyphosate, an additional EPSPS gene from the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens has been introduced which isn't affected by the chemical. This allows selective growth of the GM crops, decreased the use of herbicides applied in tillage, improved the soil quality and therefore enabled crop rotations [5]. Other common herbicide traits include tolerance against bromoxynil and gluphosinate, whereby both approaches rely on the detoxication of the compounds by the transgene product.

Herbicide tolerance has been engineered into many crops and is by far the most successful GM trait. To show some figures: 81% of the USA's soybean crops in 2003 was glyphosate-tolerant [6], facilitating effective cost-cuts in herbicide expenditures (and therefore environmental burden) which easily amortise the additional technology costs for GM seeds.

More about GM later.

[1] Thanks Dr Colquhoun for that great word.
[2] I haven't heard anyone crying out that we abuse Escherichia coli for the production of insulin.
[3] This list is not supposed to be comprehensive in any way and only provides a rough outline.
[4] The exact target is EPSPS, 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase.
[5] Normal herbicides are not cleared quickly enough from the soil and would kill crops different to the ones grown.
[6] Benbrook, CM. 2003. Impacts of Genetically Engineerd Crops on Pesticide Use in the United States: The First Eight Years. BioTech InFo Net Technical Paper Number 6.

My apologies for not providing all the references, but this is merely a blog, not a scientific journal.

Thou shall gel-purify PCR products!

2007-03-28T17:32:00.001+01:00

Because otherwise you might just end up like me learning it the rough way. Admittedly, it involved the interplay of several «unfortunate» properties, but nevertheless it eventually made me streak 320 colonies and even worse cost a lot of time. You may wonder what my story is? Here it comes.

It all started off with happily glaring PCR products bands implying that 99.9% of the DNA in my solution should be my product. The strategy planned an extra cloning step in very handy TOPO blunt vectors (Invitrogen). This is where my first fault occured: I decided not to gel-purify the PCR reaction due to the high product content. My second fault was to use ampicillin instead of kanamycin or zeocin plates as the manufacturer's instructions would have suggested [1]. Combined with an extremely high transformation efficiency (10 billion per µg DNA) of the Mach1 E.coli cells (Invitrogen) in use, this perfectly selected for the few ng of PCR template. To my defence; I didn't know at the time that my template was a mammalian expression vector carrying genes for ampicillin and neo/kanamycin resistance. A round of weird digest, however positively confirmed inserts by internal primers, and a couple of maxi-preps later I had a huge amount of template DNA, with - in my eyes - still very weird digest patterns [2]. The testing continued, extended to the restriction enzymes and their according buffers, and culminated in a freshly ordered batch of them. The results stayed unaltered though.

Redoing transformations on kanamycin strangely didn't provide any better results. In this case, I think Fortuna refused to guide my colony picking hand and I ended up mini-prepping template plasmids once more. After the flaw eventually became apparent, I played streaking-slave and had a lot of fun with roughly 320 pipette tips, the same amount of E.coli colonies, a grid, and 4 zeocin plates [see picture]. Plasmid DNA purified from the fittest cultures finally led to correct digest patterns. Oh, the joy of trouble shooting.

The morale of the story? Always gel-purify your PCR products! It saves you a lot of troubles. It's better to invest more time and money to do something completely right, than loosing time, opportunity, and money by having to redo something.

[1] This is the reason why one should always read that damn thing, or at least skim it.
[2] As I still believed I had my TOPO vector with the appropriate insert.

I make people think!

2007-03-24T13:22:00.000Z

You can hardly believe it and I'm surprised myself that I'm not a major cause for headaches. But I've been awarded a thinking blogger award by Ψ*Ψ. Nevertheless, I'm not going to participate in tagging blogs and linking to the originator. Besides, I linked to my most frequently read pages anyway. Be asured that they all make me think; mostly that my chemistry knowledge is rather limited.

There's life in the old dog yet

2007-03-23T23:09:00.000Z

My internet connection was recently as reliable as the London tube and therefore the lack of random entertainment from my side. I even bought a wireless PC card to upgrade my laptop to the state of the art of wireless computing. However, the nearby UCL access point is strangely still out of reach. Now it appears as if my halls IT manager [1] sorted out the connectivity problems.

Rather enjoyable were the recent articles in Nature and The Independent [2] about some British colleges awarding science degrees for pseudo-scientific subjects, such as homeopathy. A prominent figure in these discussions is David Colquhoun from the UCL Pharmacology department. The introductory paragraph from his website «DC's improbable science page» promises a couple of entertaining hours browsing it [3]. Enjoy!

This page is devoted to giving publicity to assorted dubious, erroneous, nutty, or downright fraudulent claims about drugs and other sorts of treatment. It includes, but is not restricted to, so-called Complementary and Alternative Medicine (acronym, SCAM). In particular, it is about the incursion of such ideas into universities.

Another interesting article about «Why do women remain curiously absent from ranks of academia?» was published in last week's Nature - on the last page [4].

[1] Or idiot, that's a synonym in this case.
[2] Scanned for your convenience.
[3] I'm especially found of the AIDS goat serum «cure».
[4] Pure coincidence?

Happy Birthday to someone special!

2007-03-11T17:15:00.000Z

Another year has passed and Alex became a little wiser (espcially regarding stress in combination with being a medic). This song is only for you, my muse:

Miss you.

What does one do when the supervisor is in a meeting?

2007-03-09T23:11:00.000Z

Given that digests are running and there's nothing else to do [1], the following:

Overture: playing with dry-ice.

Act I: The glove of unfailable polymerase chain reactions.

Act II: Mr & Mrs Glove.

Epilog: Facebook.

[1] Admittedly, that sounds overly keen, geeky and freaky. All that responsibilty talk must have influenced me more than I wanted (Mum, I don't wanna grow up).

Party steaks

2007-03-07T21:57:00.000Z

Persistently reading literature about the almighty and almost immortal [1] green fluorescent protein while simultaneously stumbling across the idea of making party jelly with fluorescein initiated another Mike-patented string of random thoughts. And in the end I saw it as clear as the back of my head: I'll have to breed transgenic GFP-cows (or pigs) to provide the ideal meat for black-light BBQ parties [2]. I already visualise a whole series of products available as GPF, YFP, CFP or dsRed variants.

In case I can't find a market in Europe, I'm quite sure the Japanese culture would be suitable to create a hype for my ingenious «invention».

[1]GFP resists temperatures up to 90°C and ignores proteases.
[2] Well, maybe not BBQ as the temperature shouldn't rise above 90°C, but the meat would certainly be suitable for poached dishes such as Tafelspitz. That would be a freaky Christmas dinner.

Sodium source discovered in a biological laboratory! Discoverers aver to be innocent bystanders and gainsay any involvement in the debacle.

2007-03-05T21:01:00.000Z

Anyway, the UCL Darwin Building has been subject to frequent lab-relocations as long as the complex exists [1] and the remainder of a more recent move was a shabby rusty old bottle of elemental sodium under paraffin oil. Of course my first intention was to throw the bugger off London Bridge and have a little fun with the gurgling hydrogen, but Andrea was strictly against any of my superb ideas. Eventually, someone from the chemistry department is going to pick it up and use it for more «useful» things [2].

[1] Already Darwin himself frequently moved his chest of drawers! Therefore, we merely stick to a very old tradition.
[2] I bet they wanna throw it off the bridge as well.

My first meme ever

2007-03-01T16:18:00.000Z

Only because po8 asked me to do so [1]. So I'll list 6 of my idiosyncrasies.

As a toddler I worried my parents, because I refused to talk until I was two years old. However, when I eventually started I spoke in whole scentences (yeah, I'm a perfectionist).
I never separate my clothes for laundry day. Dark, whites, coloured, all washed in one go.
I'm absolutely anal about my books. If you borrow one and the back is buckled on return, I buckle you.
Unlike po8, I need at least 8 hours of sleep or I'll get grumpy. I actually fell asleep in the world-cup final last summer, as I was doing an internship that forced me to start working at 7am.
I learned crochet, knitting and sewing. One of those things you'll always hate your grandmother for (besides weeks of succini cream soup).
I hate public toilets - call me Finch.

Your turn Ψ*Ψ or Excimer. And I guess propter doc wouldn't be disinclined to add another meme to her collection. Hepp, hepp, bugger off meme, fly away like a bird into the vastness of the blogosphere.

[1] In case you don't understand German you'll have to take my word for granted.

Addendum: I sometimes get caught cooking topless. The half-naked chef.

Irradiation rocks, or «the apple experiment»

2007-02-28T21:10:00.000Z

It certainly rocked whatever microorganisms had lived on my apple before the procedure. The ultimate proof you are asking for? Last year, I bought some tasty [1] UK apples that all but one got consumed by moi [2]. Cleaning and emptying my fridge isn't especially one of my favourite pastimes and I don't stick to expiration dates anyway [3]. Hence, the apple stayed in my fridge for a «good deal» of time - in fact, roughly four months by now. And thanks to the wonders of modern fruit treatment it still looks more or less appealing. If the apple was similar to the flavr savr tomato and had no pectinases I bet it'd be crunchy as well.

I am actually contemplating taking some smears from the surface and incubate them on plate count agar. Very tempting ...

[1] Let's claim they were tasty.
[2] Yes Emily, I also ate the cores.
[3] Unless as there's a green layer of moulds on top or the food starts moving it falls into the Mike-category «eatible».

From cells to plasmid

2007-02-27T22:08:00.000Z

Over the last days, one of my laboratory quests was carrying out a couple of maxi-prep plasmid DNA isolations via alkaline lysis and a Caesium Chloride ultracentrifugation. Today - eventually, after a dialysis and phenol-chloroform purification step - I bore the fruits of my hard work when I precipitated the relatively pure plasmid in ethanol. And merely for the matter of showing you the beauty of a «snow-storm in an eprouvette» I signed up at YouTube and uploaded a little movie-clip I made. You have permission to be amused by my Austrian accent.

Slim-Fast your Western blots

2007-02-22T16:23:00.000Z

Uli Müller from the University of Berlin suggest the dietary wonder-drink for blocking Western blots. One to four per cent Slim-Fast and 0.05% Tween in PBS or TBS buffer allegedly does the job better than any dry milk or BSA solution could do. Thus far, Müller only tried chocolate taste but is confident that banana and strawberry will be equally suitable.

Enough of random science. The PCR gods were benign and blessed me with loads of product without further optimisation and I'm currently experiencing the Midas-touch as everything works out immediately. Now, if I were behaving analogous to Rugby players on a winning spree I wouldn't change my underwear for the next week. Because I'm only an ordinary student, I'll simply celebrate this boon with a nice chilled pint.

Caught in routine

2007-02-21T22:49:00.000Z

Almost every day appears to be the same since I've started my research. Despite daily lectures and steady progress in my research project, days become more similar as time passes by. A usual day starts with a lecture from 10-11am, followed by a rapid sprint to the lab to check transformation, set up digests, control PCRs etc. just to find myself in another lecture from 12-1pm and eventually do more plasmid construction work intercepted by many coffee breaks and gossip with my supervisor [1].

After a busy day of work I always leave the good old Darwin Building with a broad smile, happily whistling to my iPod music. The fact that I'll have to leave this great place in June casts a little shadow on my mind (sob), but I'm looking forward to (hopefully) getting to the US (and closer to my girlfriend).

I better get going on Oxbridge applications, otherwise I'll never get them finished. Cheerio!

[1] She's truly an exhilarating source of entertainment. Of course there's also Chris and his «girl research gang» that spice up the coffee breaks.

Goddamn London prices

2007-02-15T12:56:00.000Z

I just spent 5.77 pounds on a lousy 30ml bottle of contact lense rubbing fluid. Now I know there's a correlation between income and prices and therefore most things are more expensive in the UK, but this product is produced here and the price in Munich was only 1.5 Euros! If I haven't missed a recent roaring increase of salaries an at least fivefold difference isn't justifiable - bloody blood-sucking bastards (what a nice alliteration).

Airport security

2007-02-11T18:21:00.000Z

While I was reading «Genes, Girls and Gamow» by James Watson, I realised that I use quite an unusual bookmark [1]. Scrutinising the little carton told me it's from the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) someone must have slipped into my bag after they searched it for whatsoever dangerous items.

Now the peculiarity/effrontery is the following paragraph.

If the TSA security officer was unable to open your bag for inspection because it was locked, the officer may have been forced to break the locks on your bag. TSA sincerely regrets having to do this, however TSA is not liable for damage to your locks resulting from this necessary security precaution.

TSA won't be viable for vandalising luggage?!? Doesn't that mean that any airport worker could easily abuse his/her power for cracking open suitcases and slipping the carton into the bag afterwards? «Sweet», certainly increased my trust in Airport services. I'm not sure whether it's still prohibited to take Laptops into the cabin as hand-luggage, but I would consider abusing the trick with the replica weapons [2].

I had seriously considered buying little pad-locks for my bag before I went to the US. Phew, lucky once more.

[1] I use whatever piece of paper that crosses my way.
[2] Unfortunately, it slipped my memory where I read about this. However, weapons and even replica weapons are (for obvious reasons) not allowed in the plane cabin and must be locked away in a checked-in suitcase. Not surprisingly, people were abusing this law to protect their valuable equipment they weren't allowed to take to their seat.

Snow

2007-02-08T13:31:00.000Z

It is always amusing to notice how two to three inches of snow can drive a whole metropolis into chaos. The tube and trains are late, higher incidence of car accidents, nothing is working properly. Consequently, it was not surprising that our first lecture at 9am didn't take place (due to «severe» snowing, as the blackboard claimed). In such situations I only chuckles under my breath and wonder what London would do in case global warming decides to turn into an ice-age.

Nevertheless, it is rather annoying that the English and especially the London Transport people aren't capable of coping with the slightest amount of frozen precipitation. Two weeks ago, when I started my trip to New York (and later Germany), all but one Heathrow Express train were cancelled due to «technical difficulties» caused by a slight shimmer of snow on the rails. The Canadians on the train were going mental (and I chuckled once more).

My primers are delayed

2007-02-07T14:37:00.000Z

First, they've been in quality control for ages and now one of my twelve primers needs to be resynthesised («Germany efficiency», pfff). I haven't even started my work properly and I'm already behind my imaginary schedule.

Change of topic: One of my core modules this year is «Biochemistry of Health and Disease», which includes a lot of lectures about cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer biology. To utterly confuse students (exactly my category), the course was split into two half course units allowing folks other than me to attend either section of the module. This leads to a peculiar timetable, having cancer biology only on Thursdays and Fridays and CVD during the rest of the week. The in-course assessment includes a MCQ exam on next week's Friday. «Overly» enthusiastic as I am, I started revising two days ago (also trying to catch up with the lectures I missed during my time in the States and Germany), not realising that this test only embraces the cancer biology stuff. «Great», at least I won't have to revise platelet coagulation for my finals any more.

On another issue: I read on Po-eight's blog (german) that the Pope has been reminding scientist to be more open for the «non-provable» truth and embrace both faith and evidence, while working. I totally agree with Po8 on this point; I wish there would be more folks like Richard Dawkins around pointing out how ridiculous the whole church business is. In case you haven't seen Richard Dawkins' last masterpiece of amusement yet, I strongly recommend you check it out on google.video.

The latest addition to the miketionary

2007-02-04T20:25:00.000Z

Look what flew into my mailbox (thanks Aurora).

Oxford Dictionary's latest definition of the following words

Boss

Someone who is early when you are late and late when you are early.

Doctor

A person who kills your ills by pills, and kills you with his bills.

Divorce

Future tense of marriage.

Cigarette

A pinch of tobacco rolled in paper with fire at one end a fool on the other.

Lecture

An art of transferring information from the notes of the Lecturer to the notes of the students without passing through the minds of either.

Conference

The confusion of one man multiplied by the number present.

Compromise

The art of dividing a cake in such a way that everybody believes he got the biggest piece.

Tears

The hydraulic force by which masculine willpower which is defeated by feminine waterpower.

Dictionary

A place where success comes before work.

Conference Room

A place where everybody talks, nobody listens and everybody disagrees later on.

Classic

A book, which people praise, but do not read.

Smile

A curve that can set a lot of things straight.

Office

A place where you can relax after your strenuous home life.

Yawn

The only time some married men ever get to open their mouth.

Etc.

A sign to make others believe that you know more than you actually do.

Committee

Individuals who can do nothing individually and sit to decide that nothing can be done together.

Experience

The name men give to their mistakes.

Atom Bomb

An invention to end all inventions.

Philosopher

A fool who torments himself during life, to be spoken of when dead.

Diplomat

A person who tells you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.

Opportunist

A person who starts taking bath if he accidentally falls into a river.

Optimist

A person who while falling from Eiffel tower says in midway "See I am not injured yet."

Miser

A person who lives poor so that he can die rich.

Father

A banker provided by nature.

Criminal

A guy no different from the rest.... except that he got caught.

Politician

One who shakes your hand before elections and your confidence after.

EMBL and my interests

2007-01-31T16:33:00.000Z

I like signal transduction and doing fancy light microscopy [1]. Hence, I looked forward talking to Philippe Bastiaens, who did a great deal of sophisticated fluorescent life imaging (FLIM) to elucidate pathways and make useful assertion about physiological levels of proteins, substrates and in one recent paper even about a gradient in vivo [2]. To my displeasedness, Bastiaens was too good to stay in Heidelberg and was offered a leading position at the Max-Plank Institute Dortmund, staying at EMBL only as a visiting group leader. «yeah!»

Fortunately, there are a couple of other quite interesting groups. One of which, led by Carsten Schultz, collaborated with Philippe on several occasions and provided the nifty underlying protective chemistry of the substrates he used [2]. A proposed PhD project leads deeper into signal transduction and by neat approaches allows to more or less dynamically switch parts of a pathway on or off [3]. This would enable analyses of the pathway branch without screwing up the physiological levels.

Other research units are concerned about chromosomal organisation and Matthias Hentze explores the mechanisms of translational repression by RNAi, having a paper submitted for review recently that elaborates on pseudopolysomes being observed on repressed mRNAs (hot stuff).

[1] As I currently do in my final year research project, by exploiting Tom Kerppola's wonderful bimolecular fluorescent complementation assay.
[2] Yudushkin IA, Schleifenbaum A, Kinkhabwala A, Neel BG, Schultz C, Bastiaens PI. Live-cell imaging of enzyme-substrate interaction reveals spatial regulation of PTP1B. Science. 2007 Jan 5;315(5808):115-9.
[3] Sorry guys and gals, detailed information not to be disclosed. However, some research is aiming to produce switches that may be genomically encoded.

I'm in Germany!

2007-01-29T11:22:00.000Z

First of all, (the interviews in) Cold Spring Harbor has been absolutely awesome. I had eleven one-on-one conversations with bright minds ala Jim Watson, Gregory Hannon, Nicholas Tonks, Leemor Joshua-Tor and many more. I think the best part was this morning (well NY morning) when Dr Watson took me and Ralph (college from UCL) on a tour across the campus and even into his house, showing us his art collection and talking about the near future of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He is certainly a very interesting character and surprisingly fit for his 79 years. Did you know he played tennis since he was four?

This morning (NY night?), I reached Frankfurt and merely and hour ago I arrived at a hotel near EMBL Heidelberg. I'm slowly but steadily turning into a globe trotter.

Long Island here I come

2007-01-23T22:43:00.000Z

I'm leaving good old Britain to participate in the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory interviews. These people are amazing, they even set up a complete itinerary for my stay and organised a limo to pick me up from JFK.

Just in case you read a post with a big «YIPEEEEIO» in the headline, this means I got an offer.

I want this article, grrr

2007-01-20T12:52:00.000Z

The New Scientist reported about a cure for most cancers by a dichloroacetate as a magic bullet and mentions the Michelakis group report in the current «Cancer Cell». The article isn't e-published on PudMed yet and this drives me up the walls! I want to read the details and not the populist New Scientist yada-yada.

The PubMed-abstract:

A mitochondria-k(+) channel axis is suppressed in cancer and its normalization promotes apoptosis and inhibits cancer growth.

Bonnet S, Archer SL, Allalunis-Turner J, Haromy A, Beaulieu C, Thompson R, Lee CT, Lopaschuk GD, Puttagunta L, Bonnet S, Harry G, Hashimoto K, Porter CJ, Andrade MA, Thebaud B, Michelakis ED.

Pulmonary Hypertension Program and Vascular Biology Group, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2B7, Canada.

The unique metabolic profile of cancer (aerobic glycolysis) might confer apoptosis resistance and be therapeutically targeted. Compared to normal cells, several human cancers have high mitochondrial membrane potential (DeltaPsim) and low expression of the K(+) channel Kv1.5, both contributing to apoptosis resistance. Dichloroacetate (DCA) inhibits mitochondrial pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase (PDK), shifts metabolism from glycolysis to glucose oxidation, decreases DeltaPsim, increases mitochondrial H(2)O(2), and activates Kv channels in all cancer, but not normal, cells; DCA upregulates Kv1.5 by an NFAT1-dependent mechanism. DCA induces apoptosis, decreases proliferation, and inhibits tumor growth, without apparent toxicity. Molecular inhibition of PDK2 by siRNA mimics DCA. The mitochondria-NFAT-Kv axis and PDK are important therapeutic targets in cancer; the orally available DCA is a promising selective anticancer agent.

Update: The article is online on ScienceDirect.

Mister Deity

2007-01-19T16:35:00.000Z

This is too hiarious to be kept secret: Mr. Deity. (Seen at Sandwalk)

Some more heresy: God, Inc. by Francis Stokes.

Economic models explained with cows

2007-01-17T19:59:00.000Z

I received this by email today. Thanks, Mel.

SOCIALISM: You have 2 cows, and you give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, then throws the milk away.

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.

A GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION: You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION: You have two cows. Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION: Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No-one believes you, so they bomb the sh*t out of you and invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy.

A WELSH CORPORATION: You have two cows. The one on the left looks very attractive.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION: You have two cows. Business seems pretty good. You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

Counselling Service

2007-01-15T22:31:00.000Z

Dear Student,
The Student Counselling Service is running a series of workshops and training programmes this term on the following:
1. Confidence Building;
2. Overcoming Procrastination;
3. Stress Management & Self-Hypnosis.

yada, yada

«Overcoming Procrastination». Hmm, let me think about this one...

Guess what came per mail today

2007-01-15T22:05:00.000Z

Wrong! It was my GRE Powerprep software. Let me contemplate this: today is the 15th of January 2007 and I sat the exam on the first of November 2006. I registered for the test one month prior to the test-day, on the first of October. So the CD was only one and a half months late to reach me before the exam [1]. Strangely, it was delivered by Deutsche Post and its journey apparently took it through Frankfurt. Even more confusing is the French postmark.

[1] Not that it would have been useful at this time any more.

The bitterest compound (for humans) ...

2007-01-13T12:03:00.000Z

... turns out to be Denatonium. So if somebody keeps stealing your food from the communal fridge, try to season it a little with this unique ingredient [1]. Adding some of it to the saltshaker might result in peculiar/amusing situations as well [2].

[1] We tried everything last year to put off our special friend. However, even laxatives and nasty letters pleading to the thief's social pride (people from Singapore are sometimes so naive) showed no effect.
[2] I doubt anyone would notice here at my halls. Dinner is rubbish most of the days anyway.

World of Warcraft Nerd arrested

2007-01-12T13:09:00.000Z

This looks pretty fake, nevertheless it amused me. «I wear boots of escaping!» I wish they produced the boots of unfailable lab-experiments.

Fancy a laugher?

2007-01-11T14:23:00.000Z

Then click the following links.

Do you remember the Never-ending Story? If not, refresh your memory here.
Out-fart Michael Moore

Research started!

2007-01-10T18:22:00.000Z

Well, at least the preliminary work. I'm trying to analyse G-protein coupled receptor heterodimerisation [1] via reconstitution of two (enhanced) yellow fluorescent protein fragments. This means that I'll have to construct plasmids for fusion proteins of the appropriate receptors with either the N- or C-terminal part of YFP. In close proximity due to receptor interaction, the two YFP halves should re-associate to form a functional fluorophore. Right now I'm busy with primer design and which restriction enzyme sites to implement. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?

[1] to be precise: neuronal nucleotide and purinergic receptors.

Aero-Chaos

2007-01-10T11:31:00.001Z

By how much time have you ever missed a flight? A minute (indeed), an hour (certainly), two days (unfortunately). Yes, I managed to miss my last flight by two days. How did I managed that, one might want to ask. Take an itinerary add a good proportion of self-confidence and season with a splash of dyslexia. Et voila, suddenly «Fri, 05Jan07» reads as «Jan07» – «seven zero»... oh yeah, must be 07/01/07 - Sunday. It was not until the day of the alleged departure, when my luggage was packed, the car loaded and ready to leave for the airport that I took another look onto the itinerary and realised my tremendous mistake [1]. I think this falls into the category «You cannot outsmart yourself».

Luckily I managed to get a cheap flight the next day, but I missed two lectures.

[1] Echoing yells of “NOOOOO!” were reported in whole Austria. The epicentre was calculated to be my basement.

Mobile phone dependency

2007-01-07T09:29:00.000Z

I planned a small reunion night out with my friends before I fly back to London today. I arranged place and time to meet. Now one bad thing about all my mobiles is that they are pay-as-you-go phones, which is usually a pain in the ass, but the cheapest way of maintaining one UK and one Austrian number. Consequently, this means that I regularly run out of credit [1] and have to top up the damn thing. Actually no biggie, because nowadays one can do this directly at cash-machines by punching numbers.

However, on my way to Vienna I placed my mobile in the middle console of the car, because I hate fumbling the phone out of my pocket while driving [2]. Naturally, I forgot the cursed thing in the car when I used the «tube» [3] to get to the centre. At the meeting point, I realised my forgetfulness and had two problems: my friends weren't there yet and they couldn't call me. Thus, I decided to go back to the car and to fetch the mobile. Now, having a phone without credits and 8 missed calls is another problem - how to call back [4]? Fortunately, people kept calling me, so I had a chance to explain myself and why the hell I was half an hour late [5].

[1] Those text-messages to the US are bloody expensive.
[2] Having calls without a handsfree-set is illegal anyway - hah, I'm a badass outlaw.
[3] Austrian underground (U-Bahn), cheaper, smaller but quicker, more reliable and one can stand upright.
[4] Yepp, I wanted to top it up at the meeting point, outside a Bank.
[5] It's obeying Murphy's law that the underground train is always late when you need it the most.

Latest time waster

2007-01-06T14:43:00.000Z

That's what I do instead of finishing my RNAi essay: Laser

Holiday rhythm

2007-01-04T00:07:00.000Z

I always fall back into my holiday routine of staying up until 3am and sleeping until at least 1pm (or even worse after nights out). Bad, bad, bad, I need to break free! I've got three more days to adapt to my London rhythm again. Gosh, I'll need intravenous coffee for the 9am lectures. These are the situations when I regret not «borrowing» that bottle of caffeine from my old organic chemistry lab.

Prosit Neujahr!

2006-12-31T23:23:00.000Z

Only a couple of minutes left in good old 2006. I changed my usual habit and avoided the rocket-dodging atmosphere of central Vienna. So I'm still at home but in almost no time I'll grab the sparkling wine, some flutes, my granny and wander off to my uncle's place (a step across our property border) to drink to the old or new year.

Happy New Year! May your dreams come true in 2007 (wow, that was cheesy).

PS. If some of the documentaries I watched are right it could be that Christ was born 2000 years ago. So for everyone who believes in this Armageddon bullshit: go and get especially drunk within the next half hour. Although ... if Jesus was born in Israel it's already too late anyway. Or do we have time until Christmas again?

Telephone terror

2006-12-30T01:36:00.000Z

Someone just called my landline, at 1:30am. Of course I didn't reach the receiver on time (tell me why this doesn't surprise me). I really hope that was no American university, because that would imply that they are not smart enough to figure out time-differences. On the other hand, I just finished filing applications, so what would they want? And why would they work over the Christmas holidays?

Don't watch Eragon!

2006-12-28T21:45:00.000Z

I had the «pleasure» of watching almost two hours of boring hackneyed conversations and battles with an easy-going, predictable plot. In addition, either someone bolloxed up the German localisation, or the dragon sounds like a desperate, horny, eight year old girl in the original version as well [1]. One of my friends made the amusing remark that it would pep up the film when the dragon would screw our blond little hero.

That's the last time I went to the movies without reading critiques first. However ... I'm somehow tempted to watch the second part, just to ensure myself that the third part will be absolutely nonsense.

Rumours claim that the books are much better.

[1] What a combination. Paedophiles will love it.

What the heck?

2006-12-27T09:35:00.000Z

Without words.

Forgetfulness' consequences

2006-12-27T00:33:00.000Z

Remember? I forgot to upload my CV. Just received the following email in response to my kind request of attaching my CV afterwards. Darn, now I'll have to print and post the bloody CV. (Sob)

We are not able to open email attachments at this Webmail address. We suggest that you mail your CV to The Graduate School:
For express mail service (DHL, FEDEX, UPS), please use this address:
Harvard University
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Holyoke Center, 3rd Floor
1350 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA

It's fondue day

2006-12-25T12:23:00.000Z

Yes, Christmas is already over in Austria. And following a long lasting family tradition, today is the feast of a thousand tiny pieces of meat, forks and hot oil. As far as I can remember back (and that's about 20 years), we've always had the same friends coming to our place for fondue on the 25th of December. We don't even need to invite them, they simply knock on our door at about 2pm.

May the feast begin!

Merry Christmas everyone!

2006-12-25T01:06:00.000Z

What a day, including: family dramas [1], hardcore cooking [2], awesome presents [3] and eventually loads of fun [4].

[1] As soon as my control-freak granny is around my uncle and mother go frenzy. The result is typically a granny leaving in a huff and parboiled mum. And Mike collecting pieces.

[2] Starting at 10am to get a Tafelspitz with red cabbage, roasted potatoes and apple horseradish sauce done at 6pm. A nagging granny scurrying around, knowing everything better.

[3] AKG K141 headphones, my suit and some green notes.

[4] Playing golf and baseball on my cousin's new Nintendo Wii for more than two hours. It's unbelievable how intriguing the new game pad principle is.

My trip home

2006-12-21T21:46:00.000Z

I actually wanted to write about my small Odyssey from London to Munich. However, the apparent lack of an internet connection of my brother's place impeded my plan.

Anyhow, once again the Stansted Express was replaced by a bus service. I completely disagree with the concept of not telling the customer before the ticket purchase about the replacement service. I don't like spending 15 quid for a short train journey either, but at least it guarantees some punctuality.

Stansted Airport decided to check shoes for dangerous items. Although I like cheese, the area around the x-ray machine certainly overexcited my olfactory senses. They also hat a «small» water bottle collection at the first security check point.

I hate the RyanAir Boeing 747 seats. They make me hunch and I always feel as if a whole football team ran over my back after the flight, besides that those seats make it impossible for people taller than 5'8" to sleep at all.

The rest of my trip was fine. I finally arrived at home yesterday after 3 days of extensive Christmas shopping in Munich.

Shopping frenzy

2006-12-21T20:50:00.000Z

I'm broke now. I spent more than 450 Euros throughout a whole day in a designer outlet. Now I'm a proud owner of a anthracite Boss suit (three parts), two pairs of blue jeans, Adidas shorts, a white Tommy Hilfiger double cuff shirt and orange v-collar pullover.

Please Santa [1], bring me money.

[1] For my British and American readers, as the Christ-child brings the presents in Austria (and hopefully in Germany as well).

PS. I need to remember to finish my CalTech application and start with the British universities. Funnily, I requested an Oxford graduate prospectus roughly 4 months ago and it hasn't arrived yet. Same applies to the GRE test training software.

Christmas is ...

2006-12-21T08:51:00.000Z

... stressing? I'm not sure whether it's the correct term, but I haven't found time recently to write. In fact, I have to run again to go shopping in a minute. Where the hell can one buy a nice silk-scarf without three million colours in the pattern? Seems like my granny's present is the toughtest...

Cheerio and merry pre-christmas-days.

Need to recover from sugar intoxication

2006-12-16T11:52:00.000Z

Dinner at friends yesterday, yummy, too much desert (frozen alaksa, plaska, ...?), too much sugar, blb.

Besides, the early awakening throughout the last months showed its effects in an utterly sleepy Mike. I started to hate my mobile alarm-clock. Where is my damn coffee?

They violated the showers

2006-12-15T00:10:00.000Z

And ruined one of my favourite thinking spots (sob, nag). Yes, they were leaky and needed refurbishment, however, the way it was done very much reflects a British idiosyncrasy: «If something is broken, don't try to fix it and chuck a new layer on top». According to one of our maintenance guys here in my halls, the water was leaking into the wall and down into the ceiling. I always thought that those brown water marks on the walls were a crucial part of English design and architecture - how much was I mistaken. Following their motto, the builders just glued another layer of plasterboard onto the leaky surface and laid new tiles on top, making the shower cubicles even narrower [1].

So far, nothing bad happened, but then they reduced the water pressure. Before the showers were strong and had power (!) [2], now I feels more like someone peeing on my back. Well, at least the water is still hot, so what am I complaining about? Yet, I'm still a naggin' Austrian with the right to do so.

[1] Dropped soap stays on the floor until you leave the shower.
[2] Try to imagine Tim Allen grunting.

I'm so proud of myself

2006-12-13T23:24:00.000Z

Because I managed not to forget about the 30 quid cheque I was carrying around for over two months. I paid it in this morning. Apropos paying in cheques: do you have the same problems with those HSBC paying-in-slips? I remember that they sent me a personalised version in my first year. However, who the hell uses them anyway when there's a 0.001% chance of actually having to pay in a cheque. I will never understand what numbers on my debit card constitute my account number [1], so I keep asking my mates. Maybe I'll post a «How to: HBSC paying-in-slips».

Yesterday, I received a - in lack of a better word - «funny» email by the Illinois Institute of Technology. Apparently, I have agreed to get advertisement sent to my email address by taking the GRE test. If universities have to send out commercial emails to beg for students, something must be wrong with their reputation.

[1] Memo for myself: the last eight digits Mike, goddamn keep it in mind!

Notable molecules

2006-12-12T18:43:00.000Z

Many of my friends who visited my first year «shelter» will immediately recognise these drawings by nearing zero, as they embellished the walls of my humble residence for a long time.

Finally, two short movie-clips I think are quite entertaining.

How to draw a car in paint
The key ingredient for a christmassy soup is?

Update: Forgot to mention, Stanford is done. Only two more to go before end of term.

Graduate application costs

2006-12-10T22:53:00.000Z

I thought it might be interesting for all prospective grad-students to know how much they are going to spend, or in fact how much I will spend. Let’s see:

160$ GRE general test [1]
45$ GRE transcripts [2]
60$ Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
90$ Upenn
90$ Harvard
105$ Stanford
70$ MIT
80$ Berkeley
80$ CalTech
60$ Mark transcripts
20$ Posting

This adds up to 860$. It’s probably a bit early to think about interviews, however I hope the flight costs will be refunded (though I would happily cover the costs if I receive an offer from any of the above listed institutions).

[1] I have no clue why I had to pay 40 bugs more than the American test takers. Moreover, only 4 transcripts are included in the test costs.
[2] Makes another 15 bugs per transcript. They must have been sent in golden envelopes or similar. From my angle this whole ETS business looks like an education-mafia.

About raffles, pens and blogger beta

2006-12-08T21:25:00.000Z

I am a generally lucky fellow. If you were able to look back on what I achieved and when Fortuna pointed me in the right direction, you would be astonished. Besides my little Harvard incident, yesterday was an enjoyable day and guess what: I won in a Christmas-party raffle [1]. The prize wasn't quite what I expected [2], but you don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I was also taking bets that I'll complete my finals with the pen, however, no one wanted to agree with my conditions. Lucky me again [3], because I wrote a couple of lines with my new nifty pen and noticed that the wiggly top bit is very annoying.

Blogger eventually decided to let me transfer my blog to the beta. I'm not so sure whether this was actually a wise decision, but I wanted to check out those fancy post-labels and the easier edit-function [4]. I like it so far, nevertheless I don't see the logic behind introducing new blogger-tags for the source code? I'll have to work through my whole template again ... maybe I'll be bored later tonight.

[1] just in case you were wondering why I waffled about luck.
[2] see picture and annotations.
[3] see?
[4] Not that I used any of them yet, as my template isn't compatible.

Forgetfulness in action

2006-12-08T13:52:00.000Z

I am a big moron, stupid, stupid, stupid. Yesterday, I submitted my Ph.D. application for Harvard. Having spent a considerable amount of time on fine-tuning and proofreading my statement, curriculum vitae and additional information, I was glad I finally saw some reward for the effort - the confirmation email. Then at 5am I bolted out of a lovely dream and it came to me that I didn't attach my CV to the application, ahhh! No need to mention, I emailed the admissions this morning (day of the deadline), begging that they'll still accept and attach my resume.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. So stupid! Arrghh!

It's Sankt Nikolaus day

2006-12-06T15:56:00.000Z

In Austria the guy who inspired the creation of good old Santa - Sankt Nikolaus (or affectionately called Nikolo by little kids) - walks the streets and gives his blessings. Yesterday, his grumpy companion - Krampus - birched naughty children [1]. Today, the nice kids get sweets and fruits. Dudes and dudesses, put your boots or socks outside your doors and hope for the best.

I always loved that tradition. According to stories from my grandmother I used to be terribly afraid of the Krampus [2], nevertheless, behaved quite cleverly when one of the dressed up Nikolos asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Well knowing that he was carrying around a sack full of sweets I replied: «Ein Zuckerl, bitte» (candy, please).

[1] Isn't it a funny coincidence that December 05 is also my brother's birthday?
[2] No wonder, look at the embedded picture.

My friend got mugged ...

2006-12-06T11:46:00.000Z

... outside our halls this night. The security guards from the opposite building where watching happily while having a fag. The robber was peculiar himself, as he demanded to give my friend her SIM card back, after he stole a mere 20 quid and one of her mobiles. I live in NW1 of London, that's supposed to be a safe area. Why was there no security guard at our reception, as he should be?

I bloody hate the people on my corridor

2006-12-04T18:20:00.000Z

Not only that those bastards manage to turn the kitchen into a battlefield regularly [1], now they target the loo as well. Accordingly, the notice on the left appeared. Over the last two weeks, the drains were routinely blocked as if it was their daily objective to analyse how much tissue they could flush down. Morons! This culminated in the morning when all three toilets in proximity to my room were blocked and all toilet paper was «used» or spread across the floor.

To fuel my anger a little bit more, my today's gym experience was worse than I hoped. I suppose one can expect a 10% loss in performance after an involuntary 4-week break (sob).

[1] I was threatened today that it's going to be locked soon. Why the hell do the cleaners knock on my door? Every day they see me carrying my pan from my room to the kitchen, meticulously cleaning it after I'm done and returning it to my room. Would you suspect someone who takes pedantic care of his equipment to «harm» the kitchen? I'm deeply emotionally hurt.