Falling behind on updates

For various reasons I haven't been able to update this blog for a number of days. One reason is that finals are now approaching fast and I allow myself less and less time for non priority things. We have an enormous amount left to do for our proteomics project and we just learned that it is due a week sooner than we expected. I am actually very concerned by now about possibly failing this class (and I don't mean it in the same way I thought I was gonna fail my classes last quarter ... ) I just don't feel on top of things and sometimes I have not the slightest idea what they are talking about in class. The thing is, we were told at the beginning of the quarter that there were no assumptions about any prior knowledge of biology and biochemistry, but this has simply not turned out to be true. To really get a grip on things I would probably have to read the curriculum of 3 years of university studies in the life sciences and I can't find the time to do it right now ...

The second reason is that we have been busy moving. We got the keys to our new place on Friday night, went and bought furniture for 2000 bucks on Saturday morning and transported it to our new house, packed our things and cleared out the old place and started unpacking. There's a lot of nick nacks still to be done, and we haven't completely finished cleaning the old appartment yet. Also, I am now without internet connection at home, until I get the cable guy hopefully tomorrow.

However, I'll put up pictures soon ... !

Foreign visitors ...

It is interesting, when you look at the reason why I started this blog page in the first place, to note that the visitors I intended this for are pretty sparse.

I began writing for C while he was away (he hasn't visited this page in over a year, but you could argue that he has my news every day now so why would he need to), then when I moved away from home my focus shifted more towards the people I was leaving behind. I thought this might be a handy way for providing people with updates on my life. However, as we speak, my log doesn't display a single visit from back home. Among the last hundred visits, 56 have been from the United States, 10 from Canada, 4 from the U.K, 3 from Israel, 2 from India and the rest from countries as disparate as Togo (Africa), Argentina, Netherlands, Ireland, Russia, China, Kuwait, Turkey, Thailand, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan and Mexico.

The sad part is that most people wander sporadically onto this page, looking for something different probably than they're ever gonna find. As an example, here is a list of last week's Google searches that led people to my page:

• 2006 year to date rainfall, joshua tree
  
• alabama hills
  
• beach party stuff
  
• california written drivers test in russian
  
• california-nevada-arizona
  
• caseinate artificial
  
• climb in the desert
  
• drinking toasts to girls
  
• far away is here
  
• hippie sedona campgrounds
  
• hottest temperature ever recorded in the world
  
• how to pronounce the french word tartelettes
  
• human anatomy english to arabic prononciation free
  
• idyllwild california wine tasting
  
• importance of recommendation of last postdoc boss in getting a new postdoc in usa
  
• information on lovebird in arabic language
  
• journal of fish bread crumb
  
• life of pi who i was family oriented
  
• long life coffee cream
  
• mammoth mountains mountain deaths, 2006
  
• naked beach holidays
  
• nevada driver's licence written test
  
• pros and cons of living in arizona
  
• receipts leg of lamb
  
• salton sea beach nudist
  
• sedona airballoons
  
• solutions of math olympiad elementary school
  
• toasts to drinking
  
• top rope climbs zion national park
  
• topless holidays
  
• tuolomne meadows campground
  
• vengerov february 2006
  
• 2006 arab fisherman guestbook
  
• what do the french mostly eat
  
• which stops does reds meadow shuttle stop in mammoth resorts area

You will remark that I don't have a lot of authority on any of these, and my page is unlikely to contain much relevant information, unless it be on the Tuolomne Meadows campgrounds that I recently visited ...

So, my conclusion is that even with the sophisticated internet search machines we have now, a good many searches still turn up with just crap.

And to those involved I heartily apologize for the fact that I have so little information to offer on the subject of nudist beach holidays (and now I'm gonna get even more hits, sigh!), driver's tests, arabic pronounciation and the importance of recommendation of last postdoc boss in getting a new postdoc in usa ...

Cheating on the rain ...

Since "winter" rolled in, about two months ago, I have observed one occurrence of rain here in beautiful San Diego. Actually, I didn't really "observe" it. To be truthful, I completely missed it. But I knew something had happened, because when I walked out I "observed" that the ground was wet. And there were no sprinklers around. (And no grass, for that matter ...)

Winter is supposed to be the rainy season, around here, so I can't help but being somewhat cheated on. I mean, nice weather is fine, but I do also like the "weather" part of "nice weather", just any weather, be it different from our standard sunny-and-breezy state of affairs.

Therefore, when I saw the weather forecast for this weekend, my heart kind of jumped. They predicted rain for both Saturday and Sunday. And it happened. Only, it happened during the night. Both last night and the night before, I swear I heard rain falling as I was lying in my bed. I felt almost compelled to get out of bed to verify that it was real. I mean, it could have been a dream. And it could have been. This morning there was no sign of a rain shower. And I feel as if I've been cheated on, again ...

A party at my teacher's house

It may seem sort of useless, but when you're taking a class that you feel you're gonna fail and the teacher of that same class invites to his house for food and drink, your survival instinct tells you that you should go! So, I went to this farewell party for a member of my group yesterday.

The teacher lives in this very nice townhouse in a gated neighbourhood for university faculty; marble floors, fireplace in every other room, pool in the backyard, ... in short: very nice! And their reception was great, wine, liquor, sushi, seared ahi, vegetarian dishes. I brought C with me, and he really hit it on with my teacher. I guess C is one of those rare people from the scientific community that doesn't feel socially awkward ... But, all the better. I don't know if it means anything, but it seemed to me that my teacher "almost" smiled as we bid them farewell after the party. "Good luck with your class project", he said.
(Chuckles ...)

How to Drop a Class That Doesn't Exist

Today's been totally wasted for me. I was faced with two problems this morning: First, one of the classes I registered for this quarter was registered under the wrong course number, so as such it doesn't really exist. Therefore, I can't take it, which means that I am required to "drop" it. The class itself is not fundamental for me; it's a journal club in my department I go to during lunchtime on wednesdays, just to check out what recent scientific papers might be worth reading and to get a free slice of pizza (the main goal of the journal club, of course). So, I don't even need to take it for credit, really, since I have a full schedule already. I could say I was just auditing it, because I don't have any papers to present myself this term. However, and now we come to my second problem, the brilliant brains at the Office of Graduate Admissions (or maybe I should say "The Office" ), after studying my diplomas and transcripts for several weeks, found a typo in one of them. A grade with the decimal point .60 was replaced with .00 and vice versa. This wouldn't seem like a thing of importance when you're looking at grades on a scale of 0 - 20, but for the admissions' office this completely invalidates the document. (I think they don't truly realize what a feat it actually is to even get a document from a french university inscription office, let alone a correct one ...) So, the bastards put a hold on my registration again. Which means that I can't register for the upcoming Spring Quarter ("Den tid, den sorg ..."), but more importantly, that I can not drop the class that doesn't exist. Only, I have to do it, according to the Graduate Studies Advisor's Office!

So, I was caught up in this dilemma all day. Went and talked with the graduate advisor, filled out some forms, got a signature and a stamp, got a letter from my supervisor (the one giving this class-that-doesn't-exist), went to the admission's office, then to the graduate studies office, where after a long discussion explaining how I could actually be enrolled in a class-that-doesn't-exist (they wouldn't believe me) they finally signed my form, which I then took to the registrar's office, that subsequently sent me back to the admission's office because of my hold, only for the admission's officer to discover that he probably wanted more documents for my admissions file, but when I argued that wasn't possible he convinced me that at least he would need more documents translated, but when I explained they had all been translated already he wouldn't talk to me anymore but asked that I come back later, I then returned to the registrar's office where they sequestered me for an hour, forbidding me to leave the office while they decided whether to actually allow me to do that "drop". And everybody asked me how I could be enrolled in a class that wasn't offered ... Heck, how would I know? I didn't do it!

They finally told me that they would have to give me a "W" grade for that class. A grade "W" means that I withdrew from the class after a deadline passed. Apparently it's very bad to have a "W" on your transcripts. How you can even get a grade for a class that doesn't exist is beyond me. But, that's not my problem, I guess ...

So, this is how I spent my workday today! And whoever thought paperwork was entirely a french invention was totally wrong. Americans seem to enjoy it at least as much ...

Post Midterm

Midterms are over, but things are not getting any better, I think. I'm not sure I like this quarter system, it goes so fast. You basically have two months to acquire a solid understanding of a subject, along with other subjects.

But, I did great in architecture, got a 91 on the midterm and full score for my first project, the branch predictor. Otherwise, things kinda suck here. I understood nil during my bioinformatics lecture on protein structure, as the teacher sped through his standard 200 something slides. Every once in a while he would skip a slide and say "but you know all this anyway, from your biochemistry class ... ". Like, not?! Duh!

My operating systems class is usually fun though. Even if it's probably the nerdiest class I've taken sofar. (There is however another girl in the class ...) The teacher has a lot of insights into the material to share with us. And it's interesting stuff: history of OSs, what are good features in an OS, why do some lacking OSs survive while others don't, why have some problems not been properly solved yet, why do some brilliant solutions not take foothold with us ...

Sometimes the teacher wears a poncho too! In case that matters to anyone ...

The Secret of the Pool

I discovered a new secret: C caught wind of the fact that they have some sort of a weightroom in the swimming pool building across the street. So, we went to check it out, for curiousity's sake. Now, the weight room itself is not much of a discovery, it's smaller than it looks like actually because of all the mirrors and has sort of a narrow range of utilities. But, the pool looks great. Even the older pool. (New pool doesn't look much bigger, really ...) And ...

... there's a hot pot! Now, why didn't they tell me so in the first place ?? And it's just across the street from my office!

Bye, bye, on my way to the pool ...

Crappy Valentine's ...

I'm not much of a Valentine's Day fan. My first one of the sort in America didn't convince me of anything else either.

I had two midterms to pass today (as if only one wasn't enough), Computer Architecture and Bioinformatics II. Been studying like crazy, yet without succeeding in preparing myself properly for either exam, splitting my forces between the two of them plus the three page project status report we had to write this weekend for the bioinformatics class.

As my classes are one after the other on Tuesdays, I had both exams in a row with a ten minutes break between them. And both exams were fiendishly hard. Well, the architecture one maybe not that hard, but really long and time consuming. Nevertheless, I managed to finish in time. My strategy this time: do the longest problem first! So, I hope not to have the same disastrous results I got on my midterm last quarter.

The bioinformatics exam was trickier, and I found myself very under prepared. Fact is, I didn't know how to prepare, because I had no idea what we were going to be tested on and how. I think I've come to hate this class, frankly.

As I got out of the second exam, I rushed to study for my operating systems class. Now, figure what, of course I didn't manage to read through all the articles on our reading assignment for today (we had some 60 pages of scientific articles, and that's heavy reading!), and guess what, of course I got called on the most technical question of the paper. And I didn't know the details of the answer ...

Then, as far Lover's Day goes, well, C's been in a bad mood lately, so, there wasn't much love there. First of all, he doesn't like it when I work long hours, or take my readings from school home with me, he prefers it when I stick to a 9-5 schedule (something that's not always possible, I think, in grad school unfortunately). Secondly, I think he's getting quite tired of being a post doc without any significant advancement. He got three papers out in the last year, one of which was in PNAS ("and that counts as two!", Bernhard says ...) , but he hasn't recolted the fruits of it yet, really.

After my long, shitty day at school we finally went to the gym, and C didn't even speak a word through our whole workout. And it's not exactly as I enjoy lifting weights per se ...

Fun day, ha!

Sushi Lost in Translation

We were quite tired yesterday as we drove home from campus, and I suggested we save ourselves some time and order sushi to go at the new sushi place on Garnet on our way home. I thought that was a brilliant idea, they still had their Grand-Opening offer on and the food we had there last time was really good.

Bad idea! The place was packed. Which would have been okay, but the staff is visibly very inexperienced, so they let us make orders, but then just ran off and we wouldn't see them again for the next 40 minutes. Nor would the people that were standing in line at the entrance. I noticed that the waiters would even avoid making eye contact with the people that were waiting, instead of simply walking up to them and explaining that there would be a long wait for a table. As we waited and watched this felt more and more comic. The poor Japanese! They really don't like to say no to people ...

We finally got our food, after sixty minutes of waiting. I thought it would be fitting to rent Lost in Translation to go with our sushi TV dinner, so we did. We cooked up our own Miso soup, then had a movie dinner, like I said. The food was awesome, though. Darn, I like those rolls ...

A new lease

So, I guess it's official: we are moving! For a moment I didn't think it would happen. The owner of the property turned out to be pretty serious about her business, calling left and right about us. I figured it would be enough for her to get credit references for both of us (those are automatic here in the US), salary and employment information, and the recommendations of C's last two landlords here. Especially, considering the fact that I am property owner myself, and we do put down $3000 as deposit. But no, she visibly wanted to know all about our lifes, so she's been spending the last few days calling up people and contacts we put down on our application, including C´s boss and my supervisor. She even called my office and left a message for my colleagues asking them to call her back to talk about me. Not much to my surprise my office mates decided to ignore her plea and just shook their heads. When she insisted that both C and I give her phone numbers for two of our latest employers up in Iceland, in order for her to call them up, C started trembling a bit at the thought of her always being that neurotic. I mean, we are going to be neighbours for the next few years and months ...

Finally, all her check-ups completed and last night we met to sign the contract. To my amazement, it took us a whole three and a half hours to go over the contract. (Yeah, like I was telling you, she is no ordinary landlady ...) I never saw a lease like that in my life. We didn't get our own copy yet, but it will probably be a matter of study for me for a few weeks. I didn't even understand all the legal jargon in it and had to refer to C for help every once in a while. But, it's done now, and we will be the proud renters of that little house pretty soon ...

What's with the creamers ...?

I just have to get this one out of my system: You know how it is when you move to a different country and all your assumptions are suddenly thrown upside-down? What you thought was obvious, what you took for granted, now just isn't? It's completely the other way around ...?

Ever since I came here, I've had this very frustrated relationship with coffee. Actually, coffee per se is material for a whole 'nother blog. What I'm concerned about here and now is the stuff that goes into it! (Okay, you'll tell me that Americans have come a long way as far as coffee goes, and that they now have this wonderful *Star-bucks$ coffee culture, but if you just give me a chance, I'll be able to explain to you how they've in fact gone completely haywire with coffee ...)

Now, what's wrong with plain old-fashioned coffee with milk? Just pour a cup of coffee, then add a dash of milk into it (to dilute all that bad coffe taste ...) Sounds so simple and obvious. Then, why is it that each time I buy one of those bad, lukewarm, sour, reheated coffee-in-a-papercup's from the distracted, obnoxious, self-centered, incompetent girls at that over-priced, coffee stand outside my office building, that I have to explicitly ask them if it's possible to get some milk with it? They'll offer cream (which I despise in my coffee), or even better: some icky hazelnut-cream, or some "powder somethin's", and cinnamon, brown sugar and cocoa powder. But milk, that's out of the ordinary "special needs". While, when they take my order they will ask me: "Would you like some whipped cream with that?" Come on, whipped cream? With my coffee? I mean, are those guys insane?

Thus, I've come to realise that milk is NOT what you put in your coffee here. So be it! But the weird part is, they put all this other stuff in it: There exist about as many different types of "creamers" here, as there are different types of cheeses in France. A creamer is basically a non-dairy product that looks like milk when you pour it into your coffee, but (don't be fooled) isn't. So, it doesn't contain milk, although I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly what it is that it does contain. Well, okay, the contents might say something like: sugar, hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil, sodium caseinate, artificial flavors, dipotassium phosphate, mono- and diglycerides, artificial colors. Actually, even worse, the description might contain artificial sweetener too, like that repulsing aspartame.

Examples of flavors would be: French Vanilla (the one I'm holding right now), Cinnamon Vanilla Cream, Cafe' Mocha, Amaretto, Hazelnut, Irish Cream, Fireside Coffee Creamer (with cinnamon, nutmeg and cocoa), Toffee, Orange (with dried orange peel, but why, why, why would you want orange in your morning coffee ...), Cappuccino, ...

Maybe this is all good, but how about just some normal coffee out of natural coffee beans with natural coffee flavor with natural cow milk and eventually natural sugar every once in a while ...

Maybe we will move soon

Spent the day working on bioinformatics algorithms. Finished a draft for my homework, but will have to write it up again properly, to turn it in.

We went to visit a flat up by Cass and Loring, and were a little bit tempted by that property, especially the fact that it was free of those ghastly carpets, had tiles and original wooden floors, and a very interesting (although unorderly) garden strip around it with fruit trees and rose bushes. It's a fun neighbourhood up there, a few blocks from the beach, but a number of little commerces and services within two blocks, including our favorite Fishery restaurant and a the quaint little coffee place we just discovered, that reminds me of those characterful small town cafés we sometimes find back home.

In the afternoon we then went to visit yet another place and, well, I think that one just might be it! It's a little "smallish" like everything in PB, but it is a house and it's got a tiny little backyard for the barbecue, private parking, a well tended frontyard and the cutest little porch to sit on. It's bright and clean and functional. And the bay, where we just love to run or ride our bikes is just around the corner. And it's not a through street.

I'm a little excited about it. We've been looking so long, it's beginning to seem impossible to find something decent.

Branch predictions

I spent most of the day today working on my project for computer architecture. Our assignment consists of programming a simulator for branch predictions. Actually, we are supposed to program three different predictors: one that looks at global history, another one that monitors local branch history results, and a third one that considers the predictions from the first two methods and makes a choice based on those and the accuracy history of each of those.

I had the choice between programming in Java, C and C++ and (much to my surprise) I decided to do the coding in C. (I guess that means I'm over the aversion that I developed during our Nachos projects last quarter.) I coded the first part before lunch and the two latter parts after lunch, only once got a segmentation fault(!) and then fixed that one without headache.

After work we went to the gym, where I added 10 pounds to the weights I was lifting and raised the bottom of the bench where I did my sit-ups up two notches. Now, who would have predicted that ...

Under pressure ...

I may be repeating myself (since last quarter), but it seems amazing to me that although the quarter hardly started (only yesterday) we are now cruising towards midterms already at a 100 miles/hour. It's homework mania this weekend. I have homeworks due next week in all my classes, plus the first project in Architecture and apparently we also need to show some progress on our bioinformatics project. By the way, our (Ines's and mine) got rejected and they assigned a spectrometry project to us on which I have unfortunately no insight and for which I have absolutely no inspiration (which is even worse).

So, another "un-fun" weekend ahead ...