Po(o)p culture

Looks like it's not just moms who obsess about baby poop. 

All I did was ask if everything was alright, since I heard concerned voices on the phone. Although I am so glad I do not understand German.

"What is the big thing you do?", she asked, trying to explain.

"Research?", I asked proudly.

"No, big thing in the morning."

"Umm... potty?"

"Yaaa, potty!"

So looks like kitty isn't shitting right. The potty looks somewhat like, "Kuchen. Cake. Kind of flaky."

The potty sample went to the vet, who called to say that everything looked fine. But kitty started throwing up too. She suspected that the breakfast "grain" might be causing all this. So now, she is trying a different "grain" every day, collecting the potty, and describing it to the vet.

I mean, I didn't even ask for details. Friday nights, when people are busy attending kitty parties, I am writing about kitty potty. And looks like I will not be able to bring myself to eat cake for a long time now.

Bhashkor Banerjee, I can feel your spirit hovering around me!

sunshine

Of research, and resolutions, and other miscellany

This is a write up about this and that, specifically the “this and that” that has happened over the last two weeks. I continue to get many emails from many of you (thank you for that!), but it seems like some of you wrongly thought that I am depressed and in need of help. Trust me, it is nothing like that, and I am not in denial. Usually an upbeat and positive person, I am doing great.

I usually have this argument with a close friend of mine. The friend’s point is, people are better off not knowing when they will die, because that will spoil the rest of their life. And I wholeheartedly disagree. I think that I would be able to plan my life much better if I knew my expiry date. That everyone will be dying someday is a universal truth; there is no doubt about it. Now given the current state of things, I would prioritize my life differently if I knew when I am dying. If I had 1 more week, I’d straightway drop everything and go visit Peru, because that has been high up on my list. If I had a month, I’d do Peru, Scandinavia, and visit India just in time. If I had a year, I’d spend it traveling most of the time. But if I had 30 more years, I’ll continue with my job search, publish more papers, etc. Now since I don’t know when I am dying, I have no clue how to prioritize things.

Not convinced? Most food we buy, milk cartons, cheese, eggs, juice, etc. come with an expiry date. Don’t know about you, but it helps me plan my grocery, money, and space in the fridge better. I feel cheated that I just know that I will be dying someday, but I was not told when.

So why am I talking about dying? Because these days, I am prepping for a different kind of goodbye. Goodbye from the current research group. I figured that I have 16 more weeks now. Time is finite for all of us. And now that I know when I am departing, I am able to plan my 4 months of remainder work so much better. At some point, I realized that instead of working the usual 40 hours/week, if I can ramp it up to 60 hours /week, my productivity will increase by 1.5 times. Which means that I will be able to publish more papers before I leave. Which will help my CV look better, and will help me find a job in the long run. But given how many of us complain that time is a constrained commodity, how do you find those extra hours? I came up with a very simple strategy.

No opening laptop at home during the weekdays.

It is as simple as that. This plan works like wonders for many reasons. Earlier, I used to come home, open my laptop, and spend hours looking at people’s awesome lives on Facebook (and feeling worse about myself). And being a big movie addict, I’d start a movie while eating dinner, watch it until late hours, go to sleep at 3 am, wake up at 9 am, and lose time and productivity. Now since I have no laptop on weekdays, I strangely find that I have not much to do at home. Hence I go to sleep by 10 pm. I am not kidding you. I don’t remember the last time I did that, but this plan works wonders. When I sleep by 10 pm, I wake up by 6 am, without an alarm clock. I not only wake up early, I wake up with my batteries fully recharged. So I have more energy to work now. I get to work by 8 am and spend the next 12-13 hours working. Now since I know that I will be at work for long, I don’t hesitate to take a break, go on a walk around the campus, and take some time off. Earlier, I would be constantly looking at the clock, trying to finish as soon as possible. Also, since I do not Facebook from work, my Facebook time is mostly restricted to when I browse on my phone. And how much time can one spend on phone browsing Facebook? The other thing is, alone at home, I keep thinking about all the things that will go wrong for me next. Mostly unhappy, negative thoughts. So the longer I am at work, the less time I have to think negative thoughts at home. Overall, this “no laptop from home on the weekday” is a win-win situation (which also explains why most of my blog posts and the replies to your emails happen on the weekends). In fact, once you get into this habit and rediscover the value of 8 hours of sleep, you do not even miss your laptop much. Notice that restricting the time you spend online is way effective than cutting it out totally.

I have had an awesome time practicing this the last two weeks.

This strategy helps me in another way. I think that research work (or any work for that matter) consists of two kinds of skills, lower-order and higher-order. The lower-order things are those that do not require much thinking, and is done mostly with practice. The neurons in your brain follow a fixed trajectory. For example, interviewing a research subject, transcribing a research interview, supervising the undergraduate student, looking up mail addresses, posting gift cards, etc. These activities are needed for research, but do not need specialized skills. And then there is higher-order work. Like designing a study. Writing a paper. Running a statistical model. These challenge your brain to think.

Now ever since the boss gave me the marching orders, they have also been dumping lower-order menial jobs on me. And I can see why. They know that I am leaving, so no point in spending their time training me. The boss doesn’t want to give me any higher-order activity that might not be finished during the last few months of my stay here (understandably because after I leave, they will have to depend on me to finish it). So the boss has started dumping lower-order work on me. I was recently asked to transcribe 35 hour long interviews, and I have no idea why I am doing the work of an undergraduate. It’s brain dead, mind numbing, menial work. It is not research, it is the preparatory work that leads to research. Now in an 8 hour work day, I am spending 8 hours doing menial jobs. But if I increase that to a 12 hour work day, I now have 4 extra hours to do higher-order work. It makes a hell lot of difference, being able to do those few hours of challenging work everyday.

So anyhow, this post is more about me babbling, because I am on my laptop after five days of hiatus. Now you might be wondering, if a 12 hour day makes people more productive, why don’t people do it more often? The answer is simple. Working such long hours is not sustainable. You can do it in spurts. Now that I know I am leaving, I have real motivation to get as much done as I can. Because I have an incentive of publishing more papers. If I knew I would be with this group for years, I would not feel the push. It is the same analogy of why most of the studying happening during the last week of the final examination. Students don’t study seriously everyday. For better or for worse, 90% of the studying happens in the last 10% of the remaining time.

So I have taken a hiatus from everything else for now- laptopping, photography, travel, socializing. Someone told me that I should socialize and seek a support network, and I respectfully disagree. Now is the only time to get some work done, for initiating some real research-related action. Socializing can happen during old age.

Anyhow, I got two job rejects this week. And next, I am tempted to write about my interview for another two jobs, and how interesting they went. Sarcastically speaking, of course.

sunshine

City with a Gender

I must admit this idea was given by my friend during a conversation while driving through Philadelphia downtown. I am merely wording what has been told to me, which I thought was very interesting.

A city is like a living being with a gender. The bigger and busier the city, the more emphasized the stark difference in the gender is.

The city is a male in the mornings. Busy, powerful, strong. Think of the noise. Action. The hustle and bustle. Traffic snarls. People commuting to their work place. Dust and dirt. Sweat and hard work. Concrete. There is something masculine about the activities denoting power, business, and strength. Action is the very sinew of the city during the daytime.

The city is a female during the evening. Calm, rested, beautiful, bright, and shining. The lights of the tall downtown buildings like jewelry reflected beautifully in the water. It seems the city is all decked up, ready to go to an evening party. Softer compared to the day. More beautiful, more peaceful.

Strength, power, and action being the main attribute during the day.

Beauty, softness, and calm being the main attribute at night.

Some people would have objections with the stark gender differentiations here, but I thought this was a very interesting observation. Men in general are strong and women in general are softer and petite. I have never really seen inanimate objects as living beings with certain characteristics, but come to think of it, it does make a lot of sense.

What do you think?

sunshine

Body Of Knowledge

I experience what I think as, for lack of a better word, an obsession about knowing my body inside out. And I am not talking about the basic details like the number of bones that help me walk or keeping track of the number of milk teeth that went missing due to dental carries. I am referring to the very minuscule and the not so important details, like the individual functioning of my cranial nerves, my tactile skills, the percentage by which my lungs decrease in capacity every time I exert myself, or the angle that my tibia bone makes with the tarsal bones.

I think this obsession has taken wings ever since I got into the habit of roaming aimlessly around the corridors of my department. For I keep running into flyers describing weird studies where they need volunteers. And instead of bullshitting that I participate in these studies because they give me free goodies or pocket money, or because I have the cause of furthering science and research as a noble interest, let me tell you the truth. I volunteer for these studies because I am very keen to know about those silly and unnecessary details of my body.

Like yesterday I found out that I belong to the 20% category of humans whose middle finger will not twitch even if you passed electricity through it. Now what was that supposed to mean? I read about a study where people tie you up to a chair (okay, not really) put electrodes around your hand, and pass electricity through your hands to see your fingers twitch and thereby measure muscle fatigue. Now any sane, rational human being would have stayed miles away from this study. But like the usual me, I had to express keen interest in the noble cause of furthering science and research, and had to volunteer. The very next moment, I see a heavyset, dark man sticking electrodes around my hands. And instead of screaming murder and running away, I find myself staring with fascination into my fingers to see them twitch. Ironically, they kept increasing the current till every finger in my hand was twitching. But this heavy middle finger totally refused to move even a nanometer. Ultimately, I was discarded from the study. But at least I know now that I belong to those 1 in 5 people who cannot make a career out of being a middle finger twitching volunteer.

This is not an isolated incident of craziness. While people tell me that they love their bodies and thus keep themselves away from all these weird studies, I have participated in things like this before. There was a study where all I had to do was blow air out of my lungs as fast and as deep as I could. They were measuring the forced expiratory volume of the lungs or something. So for one whole hour, I kept taking deep breaths and blowing myself out like a balloon every 3 minutes while they plotted how much my lung efficiency decreased over time. Don’t ask me what’s the big deal in that. Now I can add this useful piece of information in my resume, that my lungs had an average of a 10% reduction in blowing capacity after blowing out air for an hour or so. If nothing, I can even make a living out of selling balloons.

Then, I have let dentists pour water on my tooth to see how sensitive they are to change in temperature. I have participated in studies to find out what angle my feet bones make with the tibia. I have found out that one of my cranial nerves, called the vagus nerve is weak in nature, hence I might faint if I ever push too hard. I have learnt that there is something a little weird in my parasympathetic nervous system. And I have answered all kinds of weird interview questions for studies. I once remember how the lady asked me on the phone if I have been sexually active for the last 3 months for a study on caffeine intake and migraine that she was conducting. I proudly tell her that no, I am an Indian woman with oddles of cultural values and all that, and no, no alcohol, beef, or sex for me, thank you. The next moment, she tells me that I am not eligible for the study and hangs up. So much for celibacy !

I am sure you have your own little obsession stories, of things you like to do that would otherwise be considered inappropriate or unnecessary by most standards. And that is why even though we all have 206 bones and 12 cranial nerves and 33 vertebrae, we are all so different.

sunshine

Hidden Treasures.

I was clearing up the table of a professor to make some lab space. This meant papers needed to be filed, files needed to be put neatly into cardboard boxes and put away someplace where they could be retrieved when needed. It took me longer than I anticipated, and I was covered with dust and grime. Anyway, a few hours of toil and aching muscles later, the files were put away, boxes shoved elsewhere and the place looked more in order. It is then that my eye caught on something. Something extremely mesmerizing that was hidden behind the files by the walls for God knows how long. I hesitated only a bit, wondering if it would be proper on my part to go and talk to the professor about this. I mean, I was not really eight anymore.

Debating, I finally went up to the professor and told him I had found this behind the files. I asked him if it was okay for me to take them home. The professor gave me a look of utter surprise, wondering if this was the right age of be excited about things like this. However, he gladly let me take them home. And every morning, I look at them mesmerized, wondering how different and yet how enthralling they look. For many, these are nothing more than few pieces of junk. For me, it is like a treasure hunt.

This is what I am talking about.

sunshine.

The Cycle Of Crime.

A picture is worth a thousand words. And a gesture is worth a thousand warnings. Was taking a stroll in the campus when I came across one of the many cycle stands. I saw this.

And this.
And finally this !!!!

Amazing idea, whoever’s it is to get rid of the tires to carry while leaving the cycle frame behind.

There are so many things to see and learn in life. Beyond the text books I mean.

sunshine.