dr_nika

( There's ) no ( place ) like ( home. )

here you go, sarah...

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
V
Nika
Fish (no kidding.)

THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
that i never use?
deiski06
aznjoogrl
(and the one that i won't mention cuz i use it to check up on you.)

THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
ability to stay calm when things get crazy
inhibitions? what inhibitions? (almost)


THREE THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
i'm kinda annoying
hairy arms...not that i'm doing anything about it
i wish i was a little bit taller (i wish i was a baller)

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
Ukrainian
Californian
Contrary to popular opinion, I am not Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
knuckles/backs/other joints cracking
nuclear war
botox

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
loud music
salad from Usdan
dance shoes

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
a hand-me-down sweatery shirt with a hole in it
jeans
no shoes or socks. maybe that's why my feet are cold?

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE BANDS (or artists (at the moment)):
Bjork
Silverchair
Salvador Dalí (HA! you asked for ARTISTS!)

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS AT PRESENT:
Bush - Letting the Cables Sleep
Sting - Mad About You
Adriano Celentano - Pensieri Nascosti
(Can you tell I don't listen to the radio?)

THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS:
not screwing up orgo
dancing in silver!
new recipes

THREE THINGS YOU WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP (love is a given):
dancing, or willingness to at least try
sincerity
no boring people, please.

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE:
i got an A in orgo
Tahoe is superior to both VT and NH in all ways
i'm going home tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX (or same) THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
2 legs: no more, no less
green eyes
lack of self-centered-ness

THREE THINGS YOU JUST CAN'T DO:
lie well
stop eating
listen to certain people without laughing

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
dancing
skiing
like straightening my hair like all the time like cuz it's really pretty that way.

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
go home
ski
finally put on some socks (damn my feet are cold)

THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING:
Trauma doctor for a ski resort in the Andes
AIDS researcher/other virologist
professional ballroom dancer (i hope not, but it's a last resort...)

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
San Francisco
Thailand
South America (everywhere)

THREE KID'S NAMES:
Alvin
Simon
Theodore

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
live in Latin America for a year or two
go to med school
run a marathon

THREE PEOPLE WHO HAVE TO DO THIS, OR ELSE...:
i don't have enough LJ friends. the ones that would do this already have.

if anyone cares, sorry I don't write anything. i'm at brandeis, doing my work, dancing my dance, etc. and i'm reading everything you write. um...yeah, i've never been good at keeping these things up. i guess we wait until my next epiphany/rant.

For those of you curious WTF I did last weekend, look: www.kabh.org.  We won, we were funny stuff - and we went to NYC for it.  Too bad nobody 'round here knows Russian...

(added later: for the rest of you)

I'm tired of being hassled when I walk outside. I'm sure street heckling is not new to any women. But I'm tired of it. It was funny, disturbing, entertaining, complimentary, and confusing the first 47 1/2 times. Now it's become insulting.  I'm not a prostitute, nor do I dress like one. If I'm wearing shorts, it's because the weather is warm. If the shorts are...short...it's because that's the only style that sells nowadays. My bare legs, shoulders, back or whatever is not for you.  I'm not walking on the streets because I want to be seen and noticed. I just don't have a car. If the bus wait is longer than it takes me to walk, I will walk.

That's it. Leave me alone. 

There's no need to wave, call me sexy names, honk, or slow the car down. There's no need to stop the conversation you're having with your friends on the front porch to allow your gaze to slowly trail my footsteps.  I don't need your attention, because I don't know you.  If I want to feel pretty, I'll be satisfied with hearing it from my friends, my mother, my boyfriend, my husband, my roommates, or anyone else that I know.  Just because I'm walking alone doesn't mean I'm lonely.  It doesn't mean I'm available, or up for grabs, or interested, or loose, or too confident, or that I need an ego-boost.  Just because you see me for a split second, it doesn't mean I need your approval.

Why should I think twice about what I wear before appearing on the sidewalk?  If it's 75 degrees outside, why should I worry about covering the tight excercise clothes I'm wearing so that you'll ignore me?  Why do you think you need to offer your opinion?  Why, after decades of womens' rights movements, don't you get the point?  Why should I, in bright daylight, think about asking for a ride home so I don't need to be ashamed of my body?

I wouldn't do it to you, because I respect your privacy.  I don't know where you came from and what sort of life you're coming home to.  I don't know who loves you, I don't know why your car is beat up, or where you got that great haircut.  If I met you at a bar, I sure as hell wouldn't sleep with you that night.

It's not like me to wear a scowl instead of a grin, but that's what I do when I walk.  I'm not a bitch, I just don't want to be visually undressed every three minutes.

Stop it.  I'm not your Barbie doll.  Don't pose me on your perverted little shelf.

Yesterday we went out to dinner after work to say goodbye to the lovely lab tech Mike (who is incidentally leaving for grad school at UCSF, in SAN FRANCISCO, CA). Free food woo!

Today we went to visit the new location the lab's moving to, which was having a picnic. So I had a lobster for lunch. Free food woo!

Sigh, life is hard as a scientist.

Maybe I'll post more details about my trip to Brazil...if not, just know it was beautiful and tons of fun.

 

For now, to see pics from the Rio Negro in the Amazon rainforest ( go here. )

yeah i've been back since saturday. more later.

As long as I don't pull a "my mom" and miss my flight, I'm taking off for Brazil in 4 hours. See ya on the 24th.

Been working steady now for 3 weeks, I think I'm getting the hang of it. I dont' have my own project, Tanya just conducts some of her experiments through me. She still says what comes next. Overall I'm doing pretty well. I don't contaminate things, and if I carry something through to the end I normally get pretty good data. If I make a mistake though, it's a big one. For example: She asked me to make some LB medium broth, so I counted out the correct numbers of capsules for each flask, lovingly autoclaved them into solution. Next morning, there's a beautiful even gel in each of my eight bottles and flasks. Gel does not = broth. There are two kinds of capsules - LB & LB Agar. LB Agar is for making plates. Guess which one I used. So I found that out on Thursday morning, and spent the first half hour of work getting all the gunk out. Then, that afternoon, I was doing a Maxi Prep (isolating DNA from large-scale bacteria growth).  At the very last step, I forgot to put tubes under the filters, in order to catch the perfectly cleansed and precipitated DNA. So it filtered directly into the waste bucket. That was two days work down the drain...sigh. So as you can see, if I screw up - I do it grandiosely.  People expect worse from undergrads apparently, so I just got lectured and that's about all.  Apart from my boss's constant jabbering about the shortcomings of her colleagues and her own perfection, I'd say I got myself into a pretty sweet deal...as long as my paychecks make it to me (the people at HR think I work in a different lab...um...).

For the past 2 weeks I've been spending almost every weeknight and most of the weekend days at rehearsals for a Russian sketch comedy competition (KVN for those in the know...) that was supposed to happen in NYC this weekend.  I don't really have a huge part on stage, but I have to help dress one guy backstage and move curtains and stuff.  Or rather, I would have been doing that.  Thursday night we found out that the captain of one of the other teams in the league passed away.  There was a lot of late night discussion among the various team captains and administrators and so both semifinal games were cancelled for this weekend.  SUCKS.  It's very tragic of course (he was only 31 years old) but we'd spent so much energy on the preparation it was just a huge let down.  They're planning on rescheduling for August/September.  I'm hoping for August, so it's not during the school year.  I just don't think I could put in the time, what with Ballroom stuff, and um...classes.  I did it first semester freshman year, but I wasn't quite so busy back then.  I'm still happy I got to do it, because I'm started to become friends with the team.  It's a very fun and intelligent group, with quite a variety of ages.  Everybody but one girl is older than me, some of them are close to 30.  I don't mind, I haven't quite felt my age in a while.

Yesterday I finished reading Lust for Life, by Irving Stone.  Put quite simply, it's a biography of Vincent Van Gogh.  A detailed, emotional, powerful biography.  If you ignore the fact that all the poverty, brilliant passion, years of toil and complete ridicule by most of the world were actually part of a real man's life - then it's quite easily just an amazing book of fiction.  This guy put his painting supplies and models and an entire town of impoverished coal miners above food, and was bedridden and feverish of malnutrition at least a dozen times, getting well each time only when someone happened to discover him.  He failed miserably at so many occupations (including painting, since he only sold one picture in his lifetime), only because his better instinct would not allow him to work the way rules dictated in order to make money.  Makes me feel like a spineless fool.  I can only dream about finding something I can be that enthralled by, something that defines my very existence and that I would readily sacrifice every comfort in the world for.  On the other hand, I don't think I've ever personally met anyone who actually lives by Van Gogh's standards.  Seems like occupations are more of a commodity nowadays, and most people find something that doesn't completely disgust them while still bringing in enough money to keep them comfortable.

I've always had a sick desire to know what's like to really suffer, not just emotionally, but to be completely miserable and cast aside.  I'm sure it's only glamourous in books, and that I should be grateful for everything that I have going for me, and for the fact that I have plenty of people behind me for support if I need help.  But if I really had nothing, if I really had to pour my heart out to survive, if most of my family and friends thought I was a failure...would I end up with anything meaningful?  Artistic suffering seems great, but it's just as likely that poverty is just that - common poverty.  How do you know which one you'll get?

Van Gogh died of delayed suicide attempt.  After his most productive period, he spent about a year in an insane asylum.  Towards the end of his life, he had a nervous attack (or what they called "epileptic fits") full of hallucinations every three months.  It took him so long to recover inbetween that he could hardly even work up enough motivation to paint by the time the next one was due.  Mostly, his fits came on during a period of incredible creativity.  He found the purest form of work, and it drove him crazy.

Was it worth the trouble of feeling so much pain, in order to create art that will last centuries (if art in general outlives our automated obsessions...but that's another question)?

Back in Waltham for the summer as of last Sunday.  I'm all moved in to the apartment, and I started work on Tuesday.

The lab I'm working at is part of Partners HealthCare which is a big conglomerate of Boston hospitals and related institutions.  Somehow my lab is also connected to Harvard (I dunno how), but so far I've heard the following lovely things about Harvard:  "I've interfaced with some of the undergrads, they are the cockiest people I've ever met," and "In terms of money and equipment and endowments, they have a lot of resources.  But the people they attract?  Meh..."  Haha.  That's all I have to say.

It's an AIDS research lab.  My boss is doing kinda genetics work - expressing genes on viral envelopes, SIV plasmids, sulfation on some sort of receptor...I don't really see the big picture yet, but hopefully I will later.  She likes me so far and the only little mistake I made didn't really make any difference in the results.  The lab has a lot of money so they get to order pretty much whatever they want and all the equipment is shiny and new and up to date.  No plain ol' pipet bulbs for them - automatic suction thingies that run swimmingly.  But the place produces more plastic waste than...than...most places!  A lot, anyway.

Seem's like I'll get along just fine around here.  Apart from the fact that my boss is a big fat racist (doesn't get through a day of work without a total volume of three fucked up comments about her coworkers, or reminding me of our superior "Russian breeding," etc.).   But I have fun, there are actually some cool people.  Also, she has no intention of me coming in at a particular time every morning, and continually sends me home at least 1/2 an hour early.  I don't know how long this will last, but her parting words to me this afternoon were "Are you coming in tomorrow?" as though I had the choice, while being paid for 40 hrs a week.  Whatev yo.

There's a 31-year-old German M.D./Ph.D. (his name sounds something like "Yentz") who was under the impression that he wasn't "that much" older than me who seems to have taken a liking to me...I think people have actually noticed, there were some funny smiles.  Dude, it's only been three days, lay off.  He seems quite amiable and our sarcasms get along very well, but um, I'm gonna have to go with...not really.

I've danced the past two nights - it's good to be back, but oh shit, I'm terrible.  We took two group classes at Supershag last night and Peter seriously kicked my ass.  My technique wilted over my two week sabbatical.  But it's a great way to get rid of the chronic headache I've had this week during the work days.  15 minutes of good dancing does the trick.  Georgi is leaving for a month and a half on Saturday, so I'll probably dance with him again tomorrow too. :(  Sucks in a big way, I was just getting used to having a partner to practice with.  I suppose Gwen and I will have to commiserate and practice alone together while our partners are out of the country.  Or form a new partnership!  Yeah right.

In order to stick to my regimen of <i>trying</i> to be in bed by midnight, I leave you here with the following quote from Yentz regarding medical school rotations as I was leaving the lab today:

"The four month gynecology rotation was horrible.  My libido went *insert choking noise, nasty expression, and thumbs down signal*.  Have a good night!"

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

Born in England sometime in the second decade of the nineteenth century, you carved a notable business career, in South Africa and later San Francisco, until an entry into the rice market wiped out your fortune in 1854. After this, you became quite different. The first sign of this came on September 17, 1859, when you expressed your dissatisfaction with the political situation in America by declaring yourself Norton I, Emperor of the USA. You remained as such, unchallenged, for twenty-one years.

Within a month you had decreed the dissolution of Congress. When this was largely ignored, you summoned all interested parties to discuss the matter in a music hall, and then summoned the army to quell the rebellious leaders in Washington. This did not work. Magnanimously, you decreed (eventually) that Congress could remain for the time being. However, you disbanded both major political parties in 1869, as well as instituting a fine of $25 for using the abominable nickname "Frisco" for your home city.

Your days consisted of parading around your domain - the San Francisco streets - in a uniform of royal blue with gold epaulettes. This was set off by a beaver hat and umbrella. You dispensed philosophy and inspected the state of sidewalks and the police with equal aplomb. You were a great ally of the maligned Chinese of the city, and once dispersed a riot by standing between the Chinese and their would-be assailants and reciting the Lord's Prayer quietly, head bowed.

Once arrested, you were swiftly pardoned by the Police Chief with all apologies, after which all policemen were ordered to salute you on the street. Your renown grew. Proprietors of respectable establishments fixed brass plaques to their walls proclaiming your patronage; musical and theatrical performances invariably reserved seats for you and your two dogs. (As an aside, you were a good friend of Mark Twain, who wrote an epitaph for one of your faithful hounds, Bummer.) The Census of 1870 listed your occupation as "Emperor".

The Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, upon noticing the slightly delapidated state of your attire, replaced it at their own expense. You responded graciously by granting a patent of nobility to each member. Your death, collapsing on the street on January 8, 1880, made front page news under the headline "Le Roi est Mort". Aside from what you had on your person, your possessions amounted to a single sovereign, a collection of walking sticks, an old sabre, your correspondence with Queen Victoria and 1,098,235 shares of stock in a worthless gold mine. Your funeral cortege was of 30,000 people and over two miles long.

The burial was marked by a total eclipse of the sun.

Things I did today:

1.) Yellow Fever Vaccine shot, and got Typhoid Vaccine pills, and a prescription for Malaria medication, and a prescription for heavy-duty anti-diarrhea antibiotic medication (just in case we eat something!), and a lecture on everything we must and mustn't do in Brazil so we don't die.
2.) Immediately following 1.), paid my first visit to my new doctor...who has been my doctor for over a year...but that's ok. Had 2 vials of blood drawn, and discovered yet another thing my old doctor failed to do. Woot.
3.) Made banana/strawberry/raspberry/cherry and b/s/mango smoothies and french toast for lunch for two.
3.) Organized my mom's sewing supplies. No kidding: Elastic in one bag, ribbon etc. in another bag, spools of thread sorted, all the extra buttons matched, grouped and sorted by color. Never knew I was OC, but I guess it's never too late to start.
4.) Dropped off prescriptions.
5.) Attended Beginner and Intermediate level classes in Argentine Tango. It was actually a workout, as I can feel a few hours later. Feet have that familiar OWWWWWWW! feeling. Impressed myself and others, even though I really don't know what I'm doing. I've only had 4 classes, I've just had lots of practice following. Managed to fall on the floor while dancing with an instructor - what constitutes the beginning of a dip in Latin apparently does not mean the same thing in AT. But still. You're an instructor Ed, haven't you learned the quick-grab method of saving an overly-ambitious follower from embarrassment in front of a large group of people clearly belonging to a "wiser" generation?

And that was my day.

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     Whee!  I have an LJ!  I am so cool.

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