An update after a long absence

It's been almost six months since the last time I wrote any blog. Just like you suspected, loads of things have happened in-between, so the lack of update from my side is rather a symptom of laziness than eventlessness.

My last entry was on March 31st this year. Second week in April, me and my significant other flew to China on vacation. It was more of a vacation for her, since I was unemployed and enjoyed de facto holiday almost everyday. We went to her hometown, a city in southern China known for its entrepreneurial spirit and significant role in business sectors. I must say that over the past 6 years, I have taken many things for granted. I never even thought China would be so different than how I remembered it. The differences also go both ways, the good and the bad. Sometimes it was amusing, like when you see an elderly person making himself instant noodles in a metallic tea cup using the plane's tea water, when it turned out the takeoff was postponed. But when you see another senior standing up, digging through luggage in the overhead locker seconds before the touchdown despite the crewmen's insistence, that was just outrageous.

There was one week between my last entry and the trip to China. To put it short, the problem I encountered, as recited in my last entry, was due to liabilities with a job (PhD) offer. Always playing safe, I talked to two more PIs to make sure I won't suddenly find myself stranded in case everybody retracts their offers. With the SCIENCE paper in my portfolio and other materials to complement, I managed to get myself two meetings with two PIs in one week. Both guys expressed strong interest in adding me to their roster, and we decided to arrange interview sessions after my trip. Other than these two guys, one more invitation to interview came along the first hour I landed in Beijing. It felt absolutely fantastic to be on the choosing end again. Securing my position also secured my vacation, otherwise I might very well end up spending three weeks away in constant anxiety.

I have to say in academia, going for many job interview helps a lot. It gets you familiar with the people. Especially in Switzerland where scientific communities are not densely populated, collaboration between groups and even universities in different cities are common. Researchers sometimes work with e.g. one group in Bern and another in Zurich. Considering it only takes 1 hour to travel between most two cities in Switzerland, scientific collaboration is possible, and very commonplace (conversely, lack of collaboration within Swiss scientific community usually implies underlying problems of the group). Interviews can provide you with valuable "unpublished information" about the group. This is about understanding their research better than from reading papers and knowing how they relate to other groups and external players, e.g. companies. Even if you can only accept one job offer in the end, what you learned from the interviewers may offer insights for future collaborations. Nevertheless, I wouldn't advice anyone to apply to 100 groups within the Swiss border. Words get around quickly, it leaves an impression of being extremely unfocused. Besides, every PhD interview takes about one day and it is tiresome. If you want to find offers within a reasonable time frame, you simply have to go for your 1st tier choices, which usually aren't that many anyway.

Other than science, I have seen political factors at work. I'm going to mention a few. I applied to two PIs within one department, one received a prestigious research grant and was aggressively expanding. The other guy was more laid back, or passive. I strongly suspect the "aggressive" PI made a deal with his "passive" friend, since he decided to let go of me. What's more, during one interview, a Nobel Prize laureate who founded the department came to hear my presentation. The founding father/laureate even came to congratulate me afterwards. Without proof, I can only speculate that my interviewer invited the laureate to impress me. If so, then it was a flattering and surprising move to woo me. To other young, aspiring scientists out there (well not necessarily younger than me), I can only stress the importance of politics even in science. It matters who you work for. After all, wherever there is people, there is "Jiang Hu".

In the end, I picked one offer in ETH Zurich. It's true that my first PhD experience left me a not-so-slight grudge against the ETH system. My girlfriend encouraged me however, she said that given my qualifications, I could even aim higher (than ETH) if I wanted. Considering the pros and cons with each offer, I picked one that would make me happiest. A rainy day in May, I received an envelope with ETH logo on it. I quickly tore it up, it contained a card and a letter. The first line said "welcome back". From that moment on, I knew for sure I was back into the ETH system. The 2nd chance was for us both. Due to somebody who gave me terrible recommendations, the deal I got started with a probational period of 6 months. This time, I will make it work!

海阔天空

这周发生的事情太惊心动魄了。

我正在申请博士位置，这其中有些事情还是不要公开太早的好。在倾诉欲望的诱惑之下，我有点想把一部分内容用中文写出来，也算是小范围内地吐槽吧。其中最中心的内容我还是要留着我下一个博士位置有着落之后再开始撰写。为了安全起见嘛。

我这周得知我的博士申请受到了一些影响。影响的来源吗，各位可以自己猜一猜。如果你跟我足够熟悉的话你可能已经知道了，或者猜到了。总之，我这周一从瑞典那边的好友处获得了一些内部信息，并且在这些信息的基础上预料到一些申请过程中的隐患。我急忙尽我所能排除这些隐患，希望能加快面试方对我进行个人评价的过程。周三的时候我以为已经把问题处理妥善了，周四的时候得到了一个坏消息。虽说我前面的操作并没有直接带来令我满意的答复，但至少也把申请程序向前推动了。周四一天本来打算出去购物，但因为这个坏消息，我和女友花了一天的时间竭力挽救。庆幸的是我们当天很快就得到了答复，申请程序总算可以走下去了。挽救过程中，她给我的帮助以及精神支持非常重要。周四晚上我们经过了一天的紧张，根本没有心情打火做饭，于是破费出去吃日式火锅。这顿饭是我们到瑞士以来最奢侈的一回。

周四的事情又让我注意到了找工作中两个很重要的因素。人在成长中，成功的经验和失败的经验必须要平衡。我之前可能是前者太多，老天爷就特意给我上了堂课，让我体验一下不好的经历所教会人的事情。既然我的博士申请还有希望，到目前我觉得上天还是很给我面子的。

用某歌手的话来说，我这几天，“很惶恐我的未来”。也许你猜到了说这话的人是信乐团的Chris。我对这个乐队其实并不了解，只是几年前听过他们一首《One night in 北京》。最近的紧张，愤怒，担忧和压抑，我很想寻找个途径发泄。跟亲朋好友倾诉是一种方式，但诉苦诉得多了对别人也是负担。我非常不想让自己的怨天尤人把自己心理状态放置在受害者的角度，这样只会令人丧失斗志。于是我翻出来了信乐团的《海阔天空》，跟着原声学这首歌，熟悉了之后自己K歌。一方面是倾诉，另一方面是寻找我能在KTV里面唱好的歌曲。

我不会说无病呻吟地认为自己没有实现自己的梦想，从小时候的IBO，后来的美国之旅以及我在SCIENCE上文章的发表，这都是我实现的梦想。只是此时的我处于一个生活和职业生涯的低谷期，有时看不清自己的未来。这就像得感冒一样，虽然是小病，但脑袋烧得厉害的时候很难想象几天后痊愈时的轻松。这首歌里我最喜欢的歌词，是那句“日落是沉潜，日出是成熟，只要是光一定会灿烂的”。我现在不就是处于日落的沉潜期吗？另一首我这两天发掘出来的歌曲，是加拿大歌手Billy Klippert 的《Death & Love》。你也许听出来这首歌的旋律是信乐团的《死了都要爱》。这两首都不是原版，都是韩国某歌曲的翻唱。相对于国内某些213的狂热歌迷，我不会为了包庇自己喜欢的歌手而愣把翻唱说成原唱。而事实上翻唱太多缺乏新意是我几年前决定不听华语歌曲的原因之一，后来听到了周董等人具有中国风的原版创作，我才恢复了对中文歌曲的兴趣。

相比信乐团的翻唱，我更喜欢Billy Klippert的版本。英文版唱的是战争，Billy的声音比阿信浑厚许多，歌词也成熟多了，总体感觉歌曲的人格更加完整。我试着用音乐伴奏唱这两首歌。几天前，每次唱到一半我总忍不住流泪，发泄的目的算是达到了。这半年多来的委屈，无助，误解，狂喜之后的低潮，大半都伴随着歌曲化成泪水流出来了。每次流泪我都无法继续唱下去。我此时终于明白了为何职业歌手能被称为歌手，而我这种业余的只能是麦霸。几周前看《我是歌手》里面黄绮珊等人含泪表演，每一首歌都能感动场上无数听众。那时的我精神还麻木，有些无法理解为何场上那么多歌手和观众都被唱哭。现在终于明白把人唱哭得并不是歌曲本身，而是歌曲背后给人带来的回忆和思绪。而且我也知道了在哭泣的时候还能唱好一首曲子有多么难，只有多年的演艺生涯才能给歌手们如此过硬的本领。

在我得到好的offer之前，我应该不能在KTV里面唱《Death & Love》了。相比《海阔天空》，这首歌十分消极，它的目的是纯发泄，毫无振奋可言。希望有一天我能把两首歌唱好，融入自己的感情而又不影响演唱。但愿那天能早点到来！

Praying for good karma...

I'm so restless these days... Because I'm waiting for an important answer.

Almost three weeks ago, I had a full-day interview in Zurich, with two professors whom my Swedish supervisor Prof. A recommended for me. Both are good guys conducting very interesting research. The day looked like this: I traveled to Zurich from Basel in the morning. By the time I arrived, it was 11 o'clock. The professor who welcomed me told me they had a small program just for me. First I was going to have lunch with the other professor (since he was busy with teaching assignments that day), followed by approximately 1 hour each with two of the experimental researchers (these two perform biological experiments, the other half of the group is doing in silico computer modelling work). Then I'd get back to my host, discuss a bit about the science. The day would finish with me giving a presentation in front of FIVE research groups! When I first booked in my time for the presentation, I thought it was for two groups only, namely each PI will bring their own group to the talk. As I found out later, the presentation was actually a joint meeting between five groups with very tight collaboration. One group was sort of a spin-off from another group. The PI was recently granted professorship in Zurich, before he was a junior group leader on SNF-grants. To show the relations between these five groups, I'll just number them as 1 to 5 for now. Group 1 hosted the PI of group 2 some years ago, while the spin-off group (call it number 3) I mentioned is from group 2. Group 4 is led by a seasoned professor who is about to retire. They hope to let the guy running group 5 to take over the full professor spot once the group 4 guy leaves. By the way, the group 5 leader has only been in Zurich for one year. My day was reserved for PI 1 and 2, I've also met PI 3 in February.

So my day began. I really enjoyed the conversation with everybody I spent time talking to. Especially when I spoke to the professors, they were able to have intelligent and scientific discussion while still giving me the decent share of attention. This is quite important in my opinion. I believe how your future boss treats you can be hinted by his/her behavior during the interview session. To be honest the interview for my last PhD position was a bit strange. There were clear signs that something was not right, but I didn't pay attention. After a whole day of activities, I think I liked what I saw. The group was doing interesting things, they had very good collaborations as a science lab should do. I believe I made a good impression overall with my presentation and chatting with the fellow researchers. One of the senior researcher I talked to, if I'm not gravely mistaken, I think he likes me. To make it sound overly optimistic, I feel the team chemistry is already there even before I start. My heart tells me I would like to work there.

Now I'm still waiting for the professors to come back to me and tell me they'd hire me. Even though this is not the only lab I'm applying to, this is certainly one of the best. Everyday that went without them giving me an answer is driving me crazy. I want to ask them about their decisions, although I don't want to push them in any way that makes me disservice. If I still don't get reply within the next few days, I'd send them an email to ask. In the meantime, I'm asking you, my reader, to give me your blessings. Wish me luck and wish me have enough good karma to get an excellent PhD position!

Thank you!

Les Miserables the Movie!

I'm writing this to take a break from job-searching, or PhD-searching, whatever it is. Should have posted it two weeks ago. Well, better late than never.

First of all, I prefer the pronouciation "le miz", it's short, neat and sounds beautiful compared to the "le meeser-a-bles". Anyway, I watched the movie last week and liked it. For musical movies, you really need to love musicals to appreciate them. I know when some people (e.g. my father) watch musicals, they only think about how silly it is to see people singing all the conversations instead of talking, even at moments of life and death. I agree that some musical movies overplay the drama and stuff in scenes where time freeze so the vocalists could express their momentary thoughts vocally (a.k.a. High School Musical). These instances are stupid indeed. Musical overall however, is an art form, and as art, it has the freedom to detach itself from reality. It's an acquired flavor, you need to appreciate it before you can enjoy it. Some people do, some never do.

Spoiler warning here!

The movie has quite a hype of itself, most notably Anne Hathaway's portrayal of the character Fantine. She cut off her long hair during filming, as demanded by the story of her character. Her painfully emotional version of the song "I dreamed a dream" is widely heard since it's featured in the movie trailer. Since I sometimes measure success by details, with my standard, Anne has proven to be an admirable actress/singer combined. Take this example. When she was singing a verse about how Fantine still wishes her past lover (the father of her illegitimate daughter Cossette) to come back and so they could "live the years together", in the extremely short-lived instant through the sad song, her face was suddenly full of spirit and optimism that her eyes literally glimmered. In the next moment, she lamented over how some dreams could never be fulfilled. By then her hope was completely replaced by despair, as she closed her eyes and let tears cover her face. The total screen time of Hathaway was shorter than I expected. Not even halfway into the movie, her character was dead. For her portrayal of Fantine, Hathaway has secured her numerous prizes as well as the nomination of Academy Award for best supporting actress. Although I'm still skeptical as to how short her role was in the movie, I agree that the recognition of her efforts in Les Miserables is completely understandable.

Hugh Jackman did a splendid job as Jean Valjean, you'd never expect anything less from this great actor. A little gossip about the guy: his wife is 13 years older than him (which makes her 57). He's not the typical womanizer-type of a famous actor, which makes him even more special. The problem with Jackman is, since he's known to be great, any great work from this guy doesn't come out as a surprise. Therefore, you'd be more amazed at how some previously unknown actor/actress rise up to the top. This brings me to my next topic, the character Eponine.

Eponine is played by Samantha Barks, an English actress who sang in theater, but never appeared in any movie before Les Miserables. Her portrayal of Eponine basically stole the show with her strong presence and touching performances. Eponine is the daughter of the Thenardier family, a bunch of thieves, burglars and fraudsters. Eponine however, turned out to be innocent and kind-hearted. She had an unrequited infatuation with Marius Pontmercy. Marius on the other hand, was in love with Cossette and even had Eponine running errands so he could meet Cossette. Dressed as a street girl in rags, Eponine was pretty for her crowd. She was good-looking, her voice stunning, and her story of a heart-breaker is something most people could relate with. All these factors contributed to the popularity of her character. Eponine later died at the hands of a Parisian soldier as she took a bullet for Marius. Her death-scene was a bit strange, from the camera angle, it looked like she was actively committing suicide by placing the soldier's musket on her chest. Then the weapon fired and she suffered a mortal wound. Couldn't she have just pushed it away, so she could save her loved one without sacrificing herself? Now think from the soldier's perspective. If you are the man on the firing end of the musket, you got your aim on your target, but suddenly another enemy combatant came and tried to grab your weapon. What would you do? A natural reaction would be fighting off the sudden assailant with your gun. So Eponine didn't try to get herself killed, she was just not powerful enough to wrestle with a well-trained soldier (or maybe she did want to die, but then the scene could have been played better). I think Eponine is a better supporting character than Fantine, partly because she leaves a stronger presence in the story.

Having Russell Crowe playing Inspector Javert was another good decision. From other works I've mostly seen Javert portrayed as a shrewd and cruel figure. Although I believe that Javert is not necessarily evil, it's his uncompromising devotion to the law in contrast to Valjean's kindness that made him spiteful. When the antagonist wears the face of the noble gladiator Maximus Decimus Meridius, it really blurs the "black and white" morality of the story. The struggle between Valjean and Javert is never about good and evil, they are just two men with different perspectives. It's another symbolization of the friction between the upper-class society and the commoners, which is basically what Les Miserables is about. The story is very sad at times, the narrative however, makes you focus on the unyielding, positive force of life and of love. Even if you don't like musical, this movie is still a must-see. The real musical-lovers should have watched it before reading my review.

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of the people
who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
echoes the beating of the drums,
There is a life about to start
when tomorrow comes!
     - Enjolras, Do you hear the people sing?

Met a friend yesterday...

Lucky me. I got myself this friend in Zurich a year ago during the interview. We exchanged a few emails over the past year, but didn't do much more than that. This guy, he works at an institute that seems somewhat interesting for me at the moment. I asked for his advice, explained my situation to him. He suggested at once that we should meet and he would try to help me. How fortunate that the world still has good people around.

My friend, he totally recommended his institute as a good workplace. As our conversation went on, more and more was revealed. The epicenter of our talk was nevertheless about how you survive as a PhD student, an universal topic in academy. I realized, although with some initial shock, how trivial and commonplace it is for people to not complete one's first PhD. To be precise, how trivial it is to change group, if you are doing your PhD outside Sweden. Maybe the word "Sweden" can be swapped for "Scandinavia", but since I haven't involved myself with PhDs from Denmark, Norway and Finland, I cannot say the latter for sure.

So my friend got his master degree a couple of years before we ran into each other. During the time lapse between his master and the good PhD he enjoys so much nowadays, he tried a first PhD somewhere else. It was the first time he told me about this particular experience. I don't want to reveal his identity, so let's just say his first PhD was in an native English-speaking country. My friend doesn't wanna start talk about it, because once he starts he can't stop. The biggest problem of that place, as he told me, was corruption. The corruption came from the higher echelon of the institute. They tried to attract skillful people to their place, give them the resources to expand the area of expertise of the overall institute. Once the establishment phase is over, the institute kick you out, so they can take over your stuff. My friend's old boss from his first PhD got fired eventually, sometime after my friend left the group. For the professor it was not a big deal, he quickly secured another professorship in another country. Doing PhD in that English-speaking country required visa, even for EU-citizens. My friend had to wait for more than six months to get a visa. He left the group six months after entering the country. This practically means that he "lost" one year in the process.

Every scenario like this teaches you something valuable about life. My friend became much more careful after coming back to Europe. He walked carefully among the would-be employers, watching out for signs of misdeeds along the way. During one lab visit in Zurich, he was interested in the scientific methodology of the lab, but one hesitant answer from a seemingly traumatized PhD gave him second thoughts. As it later turned out, his suspicions were right. Nowadays he is enjoying his daily work in the lab that he carefully sifted out among the ones he applied. What about that lab in Zurich, did they find somebody? Yes, my friend said, a girl from his group got an offer, but from what my friend saw happening afterwards, she didn't stay there. He reminded me about some other guys we knew from the interview, let's call them Mr. K and Mr. M. They didn't stay in Zurich either. M was not heard from again. K started PhD somewhere in Germany, but he got into trouble with the guy shortly after he started and was forced to leave. He was on a short visa in Germany, before the visa expired he tried to apply to the same institute as my friend. It didn't work. After that, my friend has not heard from K. The last example he gave me was his postdoc supervisor, who sort of left the research field for good. She also went to two places for PhD, the first didn't work out and she graduated from her second. She was my friend's hands-on supervisor. Before she left the lab she taught him very well, a good supervisor.

The more stories like this I hear, the less I worry about myself, although you would say that my worry is completely unnecessary. The conclusion is, outside of Sweden, it happens that PhD candidates change places in pursuit of finding what they truly want. Turning the statement around, it also implies "in Sweden, it's rare that PhD candidates leave". Right now I don't want to explore further to explain why this disparity exists. To be frank I don't even know why I wrote this blog entry in the first place.

How I made a successful master thesis

This story recounts how my name appeared in SCIENCE in October 2012. With the information I have disclosed in my blog, it should be extremely easy for you to find out my real name, unless you already know me. Hint number one is that you don't need to look up "Leo Kinmann" in PubMed. Nevertheless, if you really want to read it, I leave it to you to find that paper online. It should be obvious enough after reading this entry.

During iGEM 2011, I heard from a PhD supervisor of our team, Erik, that his boss (hence on refer to as Professor A) is a resourceful and agreeable professor. Indeed, one of the professors who organized the team claimed that Prof. A is so rich that he literally swims in money. Donald Duck's rich uncle anyone? By the way the rich uncle's name is Scrooge McDuck. Perhaps due to the difficulty of making the name sound native in other languages, it is often translated into something that completely lacks resemblance to the original. In Swedish for example, the name became "Joakim von Anka". 

Stop right there! We are off-topic. 

Anyway, initially I wanted to work for another guy whose field of interest was much closer to synthetic biology. This guy had problem of his own, since he moved to my university very recently, he had yet to mark his own turf. Funding was not his strong element at the moment. My past experiences has taught me to avoid under-funded research groups. Since Prof. A combined plentiful grants with benevolent leadership, I made my choice easily. It wasn't difficult to walk away from synthetic biology back then, because the entire university did not have any good lab in the field. I'd rather take a good deal in terms of research group than joining a group that works on something remotely closer to synthetic biology but lacks the necessary resources to do good research. Going for the group rather than the research direction proved to be crucial.

I contacted Prof. A during November, having Erik as my reference person. Thanks to the good words he put in for me, Prof. A picked me. I could choose from two small projects. One was in the field of evolutionary biology, the other involved antibiotic resistance. Since I had not prior experience in either field, I had no preference. I did have my thoughts though. First, antibiotic resistance was bread-and-butter to Prof. A. It seemed promising in the long term, the group just published a fairly groundbreaking paper. If I wanted to stay in the same group for PhD, it might be a wise choice. Erik warned me that working with antibiotic resistance could become very repetitive, and I wouldn't like it. The evolutionary biology project was more of a leap of faith, I knew next to nothing of the field. The work seemed more stimulating though, and the postdoc who would supervise me was extremely competent. With Erik's advice and some consideration, I picked the project in evolutionary biology. I wanted to try something new. In retrospect, I think I might have heard from Prof. A or my postdoc supervisor that they were going to publish the work of which my thesis is part of, but it was never a conscious choice from my side to jump onto an almost-finishing project. It was more of me trying to avoid something that Erik told me I wouldn't like, I trusted him and I still trust him today. I don't know if I can give any advice on how to choose master project, perhaps some of it was "avoid something you know you won't like", some of it being pure luck, and finally, "if you can, try to be as much of a freeloader as possible"? Be opportunistic, be lucky and think smart. But remember, none of them would matter if you don't work hard.

So I started, my postdoc supervisor Jocke helped me to write the thesis plan. He knew exactly what experiments needed to be done. Basically, my work was to characterize around 30 mutant variants of a gene by seeing how each genotype influenced the growth rate of the bacterial host. Having a detailed, realistic plan that you can actually follow always work. I ran the final phase of experiments so Jocke could focus on summarizing his data from the past 2 years and writing up the manuscript. I always tried to challenge my thesis plan by seeing how many days I could get ahead by working fast. Needless to say, not every experiment worked on the first try. In the middle, we lost more than one month on technicality issues and tried some side experiments that turned out to be fruitless. Luckily, Jocke was good enough to figure out what went wrong, so we could proceed as planned. I'm not lying here when I say that I worked my ass off for this project, especially when it became clear to me that my name could appear in the subsequent manuscript if I manage to have publishable data. For many weeks I tried to look ahead of what lies before me, to see if there is still enough time for me to finish with a good amount of data before my relocation to Switzerland for my PhD. I didn't take any breaks during Easter (although I did take some days off the week after to spend with my girlfriend in Paris), worked everyday of the week during the last two months, just to make sure I can get things done on time. My biggest fear was not managing to start the most relevant experiments that produced data, or not getting enough data to qualify for authorship. The more towards the end, the more I pushed for insane working hours. I remember one evening I dined with my girlfriend at a downtown restaurant. She left for choir rehearsal afterwards, and I headed back to lab. When the rehearsal was over around 10pm, she had to wait for me because I was barely finished. Another day, she had a gathering with her soprano friends. I had dinner myself after 11pm in a shabby downtown Subway, while people outside were roaring in the nightclubs. I got home about half an hour earlier than her, which was around midnight. Next to the final month I fought my way to the most relevant experiments: measuring bacterial growth rates using a machine called Bioscreen. Bioscreen is an extremely convenient tool. It upgraded the standard growth curve measurements with high-throughput, enabling the researcher to closely monitor the growth of 200 bacterial samples at a time. Since my bacteria grew slowly, each run in Bioscreen took two days. Furthermore, the preparation before loading into the machine could take up to three days. I scheduled my work so I could prepare for the next setup while one experiment was running. That machine? I occupied it for more than one month. It didn't get much rest, neither did I. I was glad that Prof. A actually purchased such an useful equipment. If he asked me to do the standard growth curve plotting, it may have taken me years to get the same amount of data that I obtained within less than two months. Advanced machinery exist for a reason, they are essential components of any arms race that turns the tide of war, academic as well as military. My master thesis presentation was held on June 5th. Prior to this date, I should have handed in the first draft of my thesis. The tricky thing was that I had no spare time to just sit down and write, away from experiments. I had experiments running during the daytime; evenings were dedicated to data processing; bulk of my thesis were written during late nights and weekends. Everyday I felt I was a fully stretched bowstring, pulled out to its absolute maximum. Any more force and I would've snapped. I pushed myself to achieve co-authorship; Dr. Jocke pushed me to perform scientifically strict experiments; Prof. A pushed for publication of the paper. Our synergy put together has pushed forth the ultimate result we wanted, I'd say that was the way of good science.

To summarize it all, I want to say the following:

1. people is more important than research topic. Join a lab where you can focus your mind on science and not money is crucial. Also one must choose supervisor wisely. Good people brings you success, as it has brought me. I have seen examples where the opposite worked out very bad. What the hell, I'm one shiny example of both theses! But don't go to the other extreme and replace competence with nicety!

2. if you can choose projects, be opportunistic if you can, but always be smart! The factor you cannot control is luck. The choice you make is the chance you seize, the other half is what you do with the chance firmly held in your hands. Hard work is a necessity or prerequisite to success.

3. design your experiments so you can plan ahead and follow the plan. If future experiments don't seem that obvious, you should make them that obvious.

4. advanced machinery can turn the tide of war, just think about how tanks ended WWI, and nukes WWII. I believe the same thing can be said for competitions in academia. With good equipment, experiments that takes years to finish can be done within months. The time-scale difference is rather exponential. Imagine how many competitors you can scoop by getting ahead years of time running the same experiments.

I finished my last piece of work on June 15th 2012. I left the lab that day, having compile all my data and given them to Dr. Jocke. I was saddened by the fact that I would hardly see the place again. Our manuscript was finished my Prof. A and Dr. Jocke. My data was presented in the paper in figures and tables. Out of four authors, my name was behind Jocke's. Prof. A submitted the manuscript to SCIENCE. It took almost four months from submission to publication. The reviews were excellent, so Jocke didn't have to do much extra work. For publishing in SCIENCE, it was as fast as it could get. I count all my blessings to thank the higher power of granting me such fortune. Two other guys who started their master theses at the same time as me, they weren't so lucky. Not until I was on my way out did I realize how good Prof. A's group was. I could've stayed, and I heard that Prof. A really wanted to keep me for PhD. But due to the circumstances, I chose another path. Another thing that saddened me a bit was that I spent too much time working so I barely got to know the people I worked with. Erik said I would've blended in very well. Right now, this lone wolf have yet to find another herd. 

PhD and Aloe vera

Hello, I'm back.

I really shouldn't write long blog posts. For me I tend to put too many details in them, resulting in posts that never get finished, and thus, never get published. So this time, I'm gonna keep it short.

My last entry was about PhD interviews in Zurich. I passed the interview, and got a job offer. The lab of my employer is located in Basel, Switzerland. I started the PhD on July 1st this year. 5 months later, I'm leaving the group and have to find a new place. Lots of things happened in between. To keep my promise of keeping the text relatively short, I'll have to skip them for now. Basically, things didn't work out between me and my professor, that's why I'm leaving. In my life so far I have made a few good decisions, and some of them were based on walking away from things that didn't work. One example is the Math Olympics in high school. Despite the efforts I put in after more than 2 years of competing in mathematics on a national level, I knew I couldn't make it to the national team and be happy at the same time. Math competitions brought me nothing but misery. So I decided to go for Biology Olympics during the last year of high school, by then I had less than one year to prepare. With renewed effort driven by the genuine interest in this new-found direction, my result was ranked the highest among all Scandinavian countries in the International Biology Olympics that year. I also earned a silver medal. From then I learned that walking away could be equally important as seizing opportunities. Sometimes you really need to stand and fight, just like other times when you really need to run. Walking away is not a defeat, it's a tactical retreat that lets you fight another day. In fact, if you never walked away from what you dislike, you will not have the space and availability to discover true happiness and success. Leaving this lab, I think, will turn out to be one of those "walk away" victories. I have started applying to other labs already. Furthermore, in October I officially became a 2nd author of an article in SCIENCE. With this in my hand, there is nothing I fear. The story about how I managed to put my name in this prestigious journal of scientific community, will also be told another time. Not today.

I once got curious as to how difficult it would be to manufacture your own antibiotics, I mean home-made antibiotics. The things I read on the internet showed me how difficult it is. You need to have sterile equipment, sterile water, media and sterile air for ventilation. Besides, the handling procedure required makes it almost impossible to try at home. While penicillin cannot be made easily, other options of antimicrobial treatment were readily available. Silver for example, kills almost any known microorganism. I recalled stories from childhood, of how ancient people found treatment for diseases by drinking water from silver containers. Aloe vera on the other hand, is a true natural replacement for many antibiotics.

It's hard to remember when I first saw people using it. My grandma (mother's mother) seemed to have used the plant her whole life. She used to put leaves or branches of Aloe vera into hot water, making it an easy tea. Whenever kids like me hurt ourselves, she would come around to pick a leaf, tear it open, and apply the juicy interior of the thick, succulent branch on our wounds. She knew all the tricks long before Aloe vera made commercial successes, sold in supermarkets as gels, creams or drinkable juices. In places where state-of-art medicine is scarce, Aloe vera can make up for the lack of technical advancement. Since Aloe vera is essentially a desert plant (originating from northern Africa), it's very easy to grow it at home. My mom got some branches of the plant from her mother. They grew so fast in flower pots so she had to constantly buy new and bigger pots to split the plants and let them expand. I think next time I go home I will pick up some branches from my mother and try to grow them at my home in Switzerland.

And finally, a funny picture. If you don't understand Chinese, the captions say (from left to right, up and down): before becoming a grad student; dreaming of life as a grad student; in grad school; looks like this everyday; supervisor comes to check; being asked of recent work progress; thinking back to bachelor graduation; imagining life after grad school.



It's not that I see the life of PhD as something horrible. Although there is no doubt that every PhD student must have recognized themselves in these pictures at some point of their time.

Restarting, again.

I am in Zurich right now.

I have come here for an interview that will possibly set the course for my life the next few years.

I will write about it shortly, but just not right now.

Stayed tuned.

Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road!

The title is just a line I found from the back of my head. Don't get too serious about it. It's also the title of a song by Elton John, one of my favorites.

It suddenly occurred to me that I haven't updated my blog for ages. Recently a lot of things came to my mind. If you bother to read my blog, then you deserve to know what have happened to the blogger for the past few months. I hereby sincerely inform you.

I decided to stay in Sweden for a few more years. Not because of career choice, but relationship. I met a girl in November last year, after coming back from iGEM 2010. Initially, me and one of my friends are supposed to start some sort of A Capella choir, and that's how I met our soprano singer. However, to make the long story short, we formed bonds of love over exchanging our hearts' voices.

I still remember that night in late November. It was merely two weeks after knowing her name. I somehow sensed how she was interested in me. We could chat online for hours every day. The most notable sign she gave me, was even when the conversation had gone cold, she'd come back to me after the long silence, to tell me that she's going to bed and say good night. Maybe it's not that much of a big deal to you, but if you were in my shoes, you'd know how it felt. Between me and her, we had this running joke that she should punch me whenever we meet. That night, it was already past midnight. Suddenly she came online and told me she forgot to punch me. I joked about going over to her place right away to get punched. After exchanging a few more sentences, the joke became more and more serious. That's when I decided to run over to her place.

With my fastest pace I threw on me my jacket, and jumped into my giant winter shoes. I ran the whole 500 meter or so, with my heart thumping like pistons in a truck. I knew if I started running, I just had to at least kiss her that night. Or I would go home defeated, not feeling as a man as I was expected to be. Fortunately, I did it. I remember how electrifying it was when our lips first touched. Until this day, I remain thankful to whatever higher power in the universe, of not only granting me a woman I love, but also a woman who loves me back in return.

During my wildest moments in the states, with my thoughts crammed with pick-up techniques and carnal urges, I never thought this would happen this way. In the end, I have to say that the highest level of picking-up women is not about pick-up, but to love and respect women from your heart. Only then you will built a genuine connection with your would-be right one, only then, you can find your true soul mate without going through that much trial-and-error. Considering all the missed opportunities, times I tried but messed up, I'd say I have deserved it coming.

So, what do I mean by "Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road"? The Yellow Brick Road is an image taken from the 1939 movie "The Wizard of Oz". The road is to be followed, if you are looking for the magical Wizard of Oz. It leads to an Emerald City, often seen as a metaphor for "the road that leads to life's answers". Our heroes in the movie followed the road, only to find that they had what they were looking for all along. So tell me, do you see a connection there?

Safety questions from iGEM Uppsala 2010

Safety questions from iGEM 2010. Four of us stayed up til 3am in a hotel room in Hyatt Cambridge to finish them. As iGEM Headquarter informed us, we forgot to submit them. Luckily they still gave us a bronze for breaking one of the easiest iGEM rules.

1. Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of:
• researcher safety?

During the design process of this project, it was decided that the project idea involved only well-characterized, documented bio-bricks, and non-pathogenic, well-studied bacteria strain. No mutagenic experiments for making new bio-bricks and no pathogenic bacteria strain were ever involved. In the laboratory where the project was carried out, strict safety rules were employed for ensuring the well-being of the project participants. The rules include usage of lab coats, gloves, goggles and other necessary safety equipments. All the lab works were conducted under the supervisions of senior researchers. The project students were not allowed to work alone or without supervisions.

• public safety?

No pathogenic bacteria strains or virulent genes were involved either as precursor material, intermediate or final product. The laboratory where the project carried out is a closed environment. Safety rules were painstakingly followed to prevent the dispersion of, and to ensure the destruction of any lab waste. Autoclave was used to prevent any GMO from leaking out from the lab.

• environmental safety?

No mutations were designed in any of the constructs. The cells which incorporated the artificial plasmid do not secrete toxins as a result. They were destroyed to prevent any form of leakage into the environment. The bacteria strains used in the project possess no selection advantage over their wild type counterparts, other than antibiotics resistance. Although engineering bacteria metabolism through editing antibiotics resistance is a conventional feature.

2. Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues? If yes,

There are no safety issues with our BioBricks. The constructed BioBricks consist of well-characterized parts without any intended mutations. They are only capable of expressing naturally occurring gene activators, repressors and harmless fluorescent proteins. All laboratory procedures were carried out under general microbiology and molecular biology lab regulations.

3. Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?

In Uppsala University there is a bio-ethics group. One of the advisors, Daniel Camsund has taken a bioethics course taught by this group. Every stage of the project was closely monitored and approved by Daniel Camsund. Furthermore, under the guidance of Dr. Thorsten Heidorn, the project group complied with the established and applied biosafety regulations of Sweden.

Coming up: the recent incident at UU

Hello everybody!

The character of this blog entry is: sarcasm! If you can't handle that then please don't read any further. Intolerance of sarcasm can be expressed as seizure, heart attack, brain damage and blablablabla....

I will write a blog entry on the recent small incident between me and the Dept. of Cell and Molecular Biology (ICM) at Uppsala University. At this moment, I just sent an email to the prefect, vice prefect and secretary at the ICM. Incidentally, I found out that the vice prefect of ICM is one of the professors I contacted earlier, before this incident started. Well I guess he must've been too busy to look into this matter. Hopefully my email will be well-received. Also, I posted a status update on my twitter to make sure that people know I sent the email. To tell you the truth, when I heard from my sources that people still follow the event by checking my twitter, I felt honored. I mean, when so many professors and faculty members put down their work to make sure a poor little student like me can receive so much unwanted attention, how can you not feel you are in the center of all the spotlight? Just like a Hollywood star! And guess what, one of my friends who happened to have a law book next to his hand, showed me this:

Tryckfrihetsförordningen 2 kap §1

Till främjande av ett fritt meningsutbyte och en allsidig upplysning skall varje svensk medborgare ha rätt att taga del av allmänna handlingar.

Tryckfrihetsförordningen 2 kap §14

Myndighet får inte på grund av att någon begär att få taga del av allmän handling efterforska vem han är eller vilket syfte han har med sin begären i större utsträckning än som behövs för att myndigheten skall kunna pröva om hinder föreligger mot att handlingen lämnas ut.

Tryckfrihetsförordningen SFS 1949:105

If you don't understand Swedish, use Google Translate. Basically it says that since I am a Swedish citizen, I should be able to get all the information per request. And the government is not allowed to speculate what I am doing in a broader-than-necessary spectrum to try to stop me from obtaining the information I'm after. University is a governmental organization, thus, it is bound by offentlighetsprincipen. Theoretically, all the documents are public, even the emails circulating inside the ICM can be accessed by me whenever I want. For instance, one of my friends at KI even told me that it's not recommended to write down personal stuff using the work email, because everything can be seen by any random person. At KI, it's said that some journalists ask the institute for more information than necessary, just to test if KI staff knows the law. I have a feeling that UU should also be put on the test, and I do worry about the performance of UU staff relative to KI staff.

Anyway, when I have time I will collect the information and write down a timeline for the events that occurred. If there is anything that I demand of ICM, it's a formal apology. I want the person who wrote down my twitter "Leo Kinmann" to step out, and apologize to me for exposing my privacy in front of the whole department. I dare to say this, now that I know my rights as a Swedish citizen.

An email to one of Uppsala University's professors

Hi professor,

I understand your concern. I have heard that my email was seen with skepticism from Prof. Stefan Pålsson of the IT department. Somebody thought that my request was a fraud and as a result, dug up my twitter account. Some faculty even urged people to "search further", which could totally compromise my anonimity on the internet. I know the thing about not registering the student's nationalities after asking all the Uppsala and SLU faculties and international master programs for similar information. After living in Sweden for 10 years since my childhood, I am aware of the Swedish way of handling things. However, my duty as the president of Chinese Student and Scholar Association in Uppsala sometimes forces you to walk the line. The reason I asked for the name list is because the system won't register the nationality. So I figured if I could read the name list, I can pick out the number of Chinese students with ease. My true intention is not attempting to breach confidential information, but simply reducing the amount of work for the university staff. And on the legal matter, one of the many coordinators I asked took advice from the university's own lawyer, and he came back to me with the numbers I needed. SLU even sent me a 38-page document with the names of all the students admitted into their international master programs for the past 3 years. I never expected my emails could stir up so much trouble. However, I can assure you that I will contact the university staff in orderly manner and clear the misunderstandings. Thanks for your concern and we might run into each other another time! Until then, I hope you will do well.

Thank you again for everything!

Best wishes,

Leo Kinmann

今天是个好天气吗？

我有时候，心里有些不平静的想法，就会来这里写几行字发泄。

今天请了一个朋友吃午饭。我事先跟她做了一笔交易。我给她跑腿，帮她一个小忙。她回头要做我安插在某人身边的耳目。从波士顿回来之后我一直都在感情问题上纠结。最后跟这个朋友约好了，她今天代替我问某人一个重要的问题，我作为回报请她吃饭。

其实在她转告我答案之前，我就已经猜到了。只是从她口中听到会帮助我下定决心。按她说，某人对我没有感觉。某人自己认为她已经把态度表明得很明白了。同时她说也怕伤害到我，所以没有说死，没有给我一个 full-blown rejection 的拒绝。我跟亚洲女孩相处的时候，最讨厌的就是这一点。相比之下，白人女孩更加直白。如果她们喜欢你绝对不会让你如此猜测，不喜欢你也会立马说明。喜欢就是喜欢，从第一次见面起几个小时内可以进行到底。不喜欢就是不喜欢，话不投机半句多，上来一句“我已经有男朋友了”，“let us just be friends”，简单明了。男生很快就会知道自己有戏没戏，不会在一个人身上浪费时间。从这点来看，我其实更喜欢欧美人。

当然，什么话都不能说死。我找朋友看的是性格，不是年龄人种肤色身高体重三围。这次喜欢上某人就算是被她成熟气质加天真的组合吸引了。我那位朋友当初听我问起某人，她第一印象就是：“Leo Kinmann的眼光不低啊”。可惜啊可惜。

上面那句可惜是说某人，不是说我。我在波士顿给你买的礼品也要送给别人了。

我这个射手座最阴暗的一面又要亮出来了。人人都说射手男花心，其实不然。射手男是见十个人爱一个，而且两人好起来以后会很专注。很多人们见到的花心射手，其实正是属于寻找模式的。他在与十个人来往之后才能决定谁最适合自己，从而选出那一个进行追逐。那另外九个女生以为自己也被人家看上了，等到射手转移目标才发现，原来醉翁之意不在酒。这下好了，九个女生以为射手欺骗了她们的感情，不专一，花心等种种名号被冠在射手头上。还有一点是射手男事业心很重，这好比当年我在康奈尔忙着找科研实习，仅仅两周就使得Selina被别人先下手为强抢去了。我从那以后就成了现实主义者，不相信什么“总有一个人适合你，你只是还没等到”。因为我知道，即使在两人性格兴趣爱好等等都很般配的前提下，也会因巧合导致阴差阳错而走不到一块去。什么事情都是要人去争取的。只有打了该打的电话，约出去了该请的人，才能有进一步的发展。尤其作为男人根本不能等待天上掉馅饼。何况周围还有那么多竞争对手。

唠叨这么些，我也烦了。末了再说一句话：你要是给我rejection，当我的面直接说。自己心里没那个胆儿面对我还说什么“不想伤害人家”。难道人的心都是纸做的吗？担心会伤害我这个行为本身就是一种对我的侮辱，认为我没那个承受能力。你要么跟我好，要么直接拒掉我。拒了我，跟我做朋友是完全可以的，我接受。但是，不给我任何明了的解释让我等待的所有这类中间行为都是玩弄感情。要把我逼急了，后果会很严重。

The first weekend after iGEM

I'm back in Sweden and things seem to be back on track again.

The day I came home, I slept for over 12 hours and woke up at 1pm the day after. I was going to have lunch with an old friend at BMC that day. But since I overslept so much, there was nothing to it. I have had a few very unproductive days recently. In my opinion, I should deserve some of that for working so hard before the Boston trip.

The iGEM Uppsala was not entirely hopeless. We received bronze medal, as I found out once MIT posted the result on their iGEM website. Forgetting to write down the safety questions on wiki wasn't that detrimental to getting the bronze. However, considering most of the teams got gold and there were fewer silver, fewer bronze, and even fewer non-medalists, the bronze is well-deserved but not something I would brandish.

Aside from the academic experience, I met with quite a few Boston-residents that I planned to meet. Allen, Sophia, Mengxiao, and of course my mother's old colleague Jifa. I'm still glad I managed to meet everyone of them during this short visit. After having lunch with Mengxiao in a Harvard dining hall I went shopping. Macy's was a gold mine. Copleys Place and Prudential Center sold mostly expensive stuff for the rich. In the end, I bought a pair of Converse for 45 USD, two shirts and two pairs of pants for 120 USD in total. On top of that I had great food in New England: clam chowder, 1-1/4 lbs lobster times two, great Chinese food, Mexican burritos, and more. In fact food almost got me miss my flight back home. I went away from the boarding gate at Boston Logan airport to buy some takeaway from Panda Express. By the time I was walking back all the way with my fried noodle, kung pao chicken and walnut prawns, my name was called by the staff. They said if I failed to board the plane within 5 minutes, they'd leave without me. I had to rush with my 5 kilo bag and finally made it in time. Although the food was so good it certainly made up for every second of stress I went through.

Back home, Sweden was covered in snow. Compared to Boston's autumn colors, one could imagine how a flight trip can bring you from one season to the next within hours. Quite a few things happened when I was gone. For example, one of my friends got himself involved in quite some drama. But for me, it's time to start working on that damn report and paper. Duh.

At 2:31pm, Randy said: "iGEM 2010 will be over in just a few minutes."

When you read this text, iGEM 2010 is over.

How did it go for us? Not good I'd say.

The night before the award ceremony, after all the presentations and poster sessions and talking and preaching, MIT sent every iGEM kid they could find to Jillian's in Boston, a sports club specially reserved for iGEM social. As we saw how the people were dancing, bowling and having such a blast, those of us who went there just weren't in the mood for it.

Because we were all too tired. The road to iGEM Jamboree 2010 of hard labor, late hours in the lab, in-fighting between group members and communication issues made the project anything but enjoyable. Reaching the end of the road wasn't much of an accomplishment. It was more like the end of hell. I have had two loyalties: the CSSAU community and iGEM team of Uppsala. Bouncing between these two wasn't easy, especially when the long hours in the lab consumed all of your time. One day I missed two calls from a diplomatic attache when I conducted experiments. He got angry. It took both me and Mr. Shi considerable amount of effort to quell his anger. And it was just one of the many instances when my two duties clashed.

After coming back from the party, it turned out our team didn't submit the safety questions. Me and three others finished the questions at 4am. The day after, well, I mean later that day, the iGEM award ceremony was held in Kresge auditorium, after the six finalists did their project presentations for the second time. The awards were delivered soon after. Team Uppsala didn't have much to do with it. Since the medal requirements for iGEM was criteria-based, meaning by fulfilling certain criteria, one could get a gold, silver or bronze medal. The number of medals weren't necessarily skewed, with fewer gold than silver. In fact, a lot more teams received gold than silver this year. As it turned out, so many of the teams who actually put their effort into the project were bloody serious about winning. There were also awards for each track and aspect of the Jamboree, e.g. best project in environmental science and best presentation at Jamboree. This year the winner of the iGEM grand prize was Slovenia, the team who streamlined BioBrick production and submitted 151 finished genetic constructs as a result. The 1st runner-up was Peking University. They tried to genetically engineer a bacteria to fight water pollution. They were also the winner of the Environmental track. The 2nd runner-up, or third place was Bristol, who constructed bacteria for agricultural purposes. The other three finalists were Imperial College London, Cambridge and TU Delft. Aside from their gold medal, they were all winners of their respective track or specialty.

Bing had to leave earlier to visit her relatives in New Jersey. Hsin-ho and Imtiyaz also left for New York City. Me and Antonio went separate ways. I ran into Sophia at the entrance, must to my amusement. We exchanged a few words, and she told me how little I changed since 2006. She recognized me right away. I ate lunch with Allen, who happened to be a judge for the Human Practice aspect of various projects. On Tuesday, I'm meeting Mengxiao. My mother's old colleague Jifa invited me to dinner. I told him to pick me up at my hotel, because I had to get my gift for him. So I walked the same way me and Antonio did on the first night of this event.

Without the excitement and anxiety of my iGEM anticipation, I felt like I was drained off all the energy. Without any glory or honor in competing against the other teams, I was just another visitor lost in Boston. Or Cambridge. Back in my hotel room, I called my parents and told my friends about what transpired here. Also, I've been thinking about the next year's iGEM in Uppsala. This time with a regional qualification round. You have to beat more than half of the European teams to make it to the iGEM final in MIT. The scale of iGEM Jamboree is growing out of control so MIT won't even have a big enough auditorium to gather all the participants. Hence, this decision is a necessary pain. If Uppsala is to make it to the final round, the information from this iGEM must pass on to the next. Furthermore, the organizational structure, team dynamics, interaction with the university, company and social sector must undergo major improvements. At the moment there is one guy at the X program who's involved himself with the iGEM 2011. But he has no prior experience. In my opinion, many of the guys who are currently recruited don't seem like the kind of people you'd expect to see in the lab. After the iGEM Jamboree, I have lots of ideas I'd like to try with iGEM 2011. If my ambitions of iGEM 2011 are to be realized, first I have to find myself in a position where my experience can come to use. I suspect it requires more aggressive negotiations than I like. One of the possible obstacles is the influence of a certain person. But that we'll have to see. In order to get the International student coordinator involved, initially our team discussed the possibility of showing our image as a way to help recruit foreign master students, countering the drop with the fee introduced. However, right now I've got reasons to worry that it might not turn out as planned. For personal reasons, I'm not going to disclose this part further.

When Jifa was paying for the nicest dinner I ever had in America, I took a fortune cookie from the table and opened it. The paper strip said: If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it. I saved this paper to remind myself in times of difficulties and doubt, like this one.

The first days at iGEM Jamboree, Cambridge MA, hosted by MIT

Let me tell you what happened these two days.

I flew with Antonio to Boston via Amsterdam. The landing at Amsterdam felt extremely dangerous. It started with the wings shooting two jet streams from below the wings; next you knew, the plane started to bounce randomly like it was caught in a turbulence. Well one could've believed it was indeed turbulence, before seeing the plane was actually 50 m above the ground, at most. Then came the landing. The first touchdown pushed the plane right back into the air, like an athlete's final step on the ramp when doing the long jump. Fortunately, this time the athlete didn't fall over. It was the worst landing I ever experienced.

The flight to Boston from Amsterdam had its AC turned a bit too low. I couldn't help my runny nose. Once we landed, Antonio was "random selected" by the border control. I waited for him outside, and he was angry why I didn't try to find him. Well, I said, if he got sent back to Europe, I don't wanna follow him by claiming to be his friend. The road from Logan airport to Hyatt Regency in Cambridge was long and painful. The hotel turned out to be 15 min from the nearest public transport and food. So strategically located, I thought. Now you have no choice but to buy their expensive food, like the 20$ breakfast buffet.

On Friday, me and Antonio got ourselves haircut. I also bought the iPad for my friend, draining my HSBC bank account almost empty. In the evening we tried to practice the presentation at MIT, and saw another group having their presentation. To our horror, our presentation lacked a lot of information. We spent hours correcting them all. Today we finally got over with the presentation. It was alright.

Actually it was not "alright". One day ago, I thought that me, Antonio and Hsin-Ho are the only ones representing Uppsala. However, Bing and Imityaz got their US visa approved last-minute. The pity was, Nagarjun who made the modeling couldn't come. We convinced Bing to take part of our presentation. Imityaz was persuaded into explaining the modeling. And he got so nervous during the presentation that it was almost funny to watch. When being asked a question that was expected to come from the judges, he tried to point at the huge screen 30 meters away with his fingers. I'm not saying my part was flawless either. I got a bit high in the midst and dragged out my part like always. If things stopped there, then we would've thought our presentation was "alright".

When the next team took over, we were totally stunned. At least I knew I was.

Imperial College London tried to create a biosensor for fast detection of Schistosoma parasite. It was done through a simple protein-protein interaction mechanism. They incorporated engineering designs and modules into the project, something Prof. John March at Cornell also taught me. The most scary part was, by the end of their presentation, they showed a "prototype" of their biosensor. Actually it was just a fake prototype, a wooden model showing how the product should look like. With their over 50 slides, we wondered how they could keep the presentation to less than 20 minutes. When I saw how the guys were alternating paces from fast to slow to fast, I realized how much they must have practiced the entire speech and timed it perfectly. Maybe they even planned ahead as much as knowing which minute shall finish with which slide. Their over 50 slides finished almost exactly on 20 minutes. My first impression of the overall project along with its presentation is summarized in one word.

Flawless.

Yes flawless indeed.

Compared to Imperial College London, our presentation looked like a pathetic attempt to sneak into this prestigious International competition. It was like a kid showing the mother the first poem he wrote, while your brother just composed something Shakespeare-ish. We looked like a bunch of fools.

After the break, an even stronger Cambridge showed up. They submitted 20 parts, recorded stunning footage of what their genetic product was capable of, and wrote a RFC for future BioBrick standards. On the way to Jamboree, they wrote three biochemical calculator and file conversion tools. Other than software, the Cambridge people even invented a device for bioluminescence measurement. The Cambridge team of iGEM 2010 is pure awesomeness.

After all the presentations, it was poster session. To cut the diary short, I'll just explain what I found out about the other teams. Things that the future iGEM team of Uppsala should know about.

Rumor say Heidelberg ran a 4 million SEK project. Each member gained 20 000 euro for completing iGEM, and they have 20 members. Uppsala's budget is around 2 % of theirs. Heidelberg's studies involved testing of viral strains on mice, which in itself is expensive enough.

Slovenia submitted 151 new parts to the registry. They won iGEM twice already. Uppsala this year: of the 6 parts to be submitted, only 2 got submitted.

Cambridge got most of their funding directly or indirectly through the university sector. One of their advisors is a lab director with extensive connections to the biotech-industry (my guess is he's Gos Micklem). He could personally get all the sophisticated equipments borrowed from companies to campus for wetwork over the summer. Our lab certainly didn't have all the equipments, nor the same kind of connections.

BIOTEC Dresden came up with a smart reporter system to normalize the fluorescence expression to a reference. They made a construct where the expression of YFP is induced; on the same construct, they inserted a constitutive RFP generator, using the red fluorescence as the reference value to the yellow fluorescence. The result was great. Apart from the companies they contacted, the university department offered them frequent and free sequencing. The Rudbeck lab at Uppsala was such a bitch about sequencing and getting the primers. While they agreed to sequence our construct, they did not want to make the necessary primers for us. So we had to ask some company to make our primers. In the end there was so much hassle that we never sequenced anything.

Imperial College London had all the company contacts taken care of by the university administration, as well as all the lab equipments. Furthermore, they received money for working and living over the summer.

Students from UCL had to contact the companies on their own, as told by a person from Imperial College London.

Chris Andersen of Berkeley is a judge at iGEM this year. His students worked on a cool project, and an open source program called Clotho. A super-senior of the Berkeley team told me how good it is for coordinating group works in synthetic biology. Uppsala students used Google Wave. The useful information was easily drown among the useless information. Mostly it wasn't up-to-date.

It seems like Cornell did something relatively trivial this year, they used a few somewhat non-conventional fluorescent proteins so they could contribute to the parts registry. We should have submitted all our intermediate parts, if they weren't in the registry already.

That's all for now. Tomorrow I'll check out Slovenia, UCSF, MIT, Harvard and some other big shots in this field.

Multiple Man

While in Cornell, one of my best friends said he admired me for living a three-men-life: Asian, Swedish, and American. This dude saw me as an Asian-born human being, cultivated in European values and moral, while learning the American attitude to find success. There are some truth in it after all. While in Sweden, people see me as just another immigrant dude, in US, I could sell myself labeled as Asian European in America, and people would buy it.

Living like this however, is not always that easy.

Sometimes it's all about choosing your side(-s). It could be from the smallest thing of who to hang out with on a Friday night, to big issues such as forming relationships. For example, if I were to pick the wildest party animals to get most out of partying, in Uppsala I might end up with some exchange students. For the long term benefit however, going for the Swedes is better. But the party won't be as wild, besides, it also takes some time for them to relate to you. The Chinese students usually never party in nightclubs, instead, casino nights, game nights appear periodically on their calendar. It's fun from time to time, but it won't give you the same adrenaline kick.

Since I have the options, choosing becomes a problem. Sometimes I envy the average dude who grew up in one place, and never moved outside his country. If you can't speak Chinese, you don't even think about hanging out with Chinese. That somehow forces you to only meet the locals, and in the end, you don't have as many "what ifs" in your mind.

Before finishing this post, I need to clarify something. What defines if a person is Asian, European or American? To be an Asian, you somehow have to know a lot of Asian stuff. Like what kind of pop singer is on the chart today, what Korean drama is on the air, etc. Your real-Asian friends wont bring up Bossa Nova with you. Likewise, the Swedes don't know anything about Jay Chou. However, if you find yourself having so many commonalities with all the groups of people, will that make you a many-faced person? If I'm with Swedes, I can sing drinking song with them, they see me as one of them; when I'm with my Chinese friends, I can talk about the trendy personalities on the Internet, they also see me as one of them. If this is the case, then what am I? Am I half Swedish, half Chinese, or neither? Maybe I'm a Swedish undercover in the Chinese, or an Asian undercover in the western culture?

I remember when we were kids, we dreamed of having superpowers. Forget teleportation, flight, eye-beam, or time travel. If there is anything that I can get good use of, it is self-duplication. I'll make clones of myself, sending one into the Asian crowd, one to chill with Swedes, and one more to pursue my California dream with the American attitude. Once in a while, all of my clones return to me to share their experiences. Maybe then and only then, I can finally figure out a way to live in the present.

It sounds crazy eh? Hahaha you don't have to take it seriously.

今天看到的消息...

今天下午在实验室看到facebook上一条新闻。刚开始只是感觉有些意外，然后心里稍稍高兴了一下，告知几个好友，说我今晚要把新买的Beaujolais红酒开封畅饮。回到家了，看看冰箱里储存的红酒，想想还是没喝。

坐下来后，感觉又回来了。跟康奈尔的“老大姐”聊了几句，她叫我设想一下如果自己还在美国Ithaca，那么今天的生活完全就是另一个样子。白天上课，晚上学习，有空出去见见朋友，到处跑跑。而且，那样的话如果熬到今天就不会是孤身一人了。有些事情明摆着的，自己迷在局中才看不见。我原先就说有些事情不会长久，果然被我说中了。可惜老天总是给人玩一个时间差的游戏。也许是年龄还小涉世未深，对于生活的点点滴滴没有经验，就像是给个孩童一只整鸡，尽管饿极，这个鸡还是大得让他不知从何处下手。有人天生就会吃鸡，有人后天摸索出来吃鸡的方法，还有人是从别人那里学来的。如果这个孩子的父母一直把鸡撕开给他鸡腿，那么恐怕这小孩长大后都不知道鸡是何物。饥荒的时候即时抓到了一只鸡也不知道如何把其变成盘中餐。这人很可能守着食物而仍然饿死。想想至今所有错失的良机，也只能继续走下去了。毕竟生活的脚步是不会停下来等你的。

今天要申请奖学金，与SKS开会商讨这个学期的活动，又是忙碌的一天。

Thriving like a cockroach

Saturday night was Uppsala cultural night, an annual event hosted by all the activity clubs in town.

I went out with some friends. We took a drink at Upplands Nation, we went to an improvisational salsa lesson, and hanged out with some exchange students for a while. I was the one who brought groups of people together, and it was fun.

All of the guys who went with me to the salsa lesson thought it was an excellent idea. To them it meant getting intimate physical contact with scores of beautiful girls with hardly any effort. To me it wasn’t anything new. After all, it seemed like a smart idea to attend that dance lesson that night. Luckily the jousting show wasn’t as long as I thought would be. So I could make some positive adjustments to my plan. After the salsa lesson, we checked out over a hundred people dancing in circles on the square in front of the train station. A girl in our group suggested we should join the circle. So I ran over there with her. Then a funny thing happened: it took us like two minutes before we realized the dancers were all Iraqis, except us two Asians. We crashed the gathering of a local Iraqi community. But we were high, we were excited and in that moment, nothing in the world could stop us. We danced for a while before going back to our friends, who were still shaking their heads in disbelief of our little adventure.

Enough report on cultural night, let’s get down to my epiphany.

Mr. Hu the president of CSSAU once said to the graduate freshmen, that one ought to live like a cockroach in order to get used to the Uppsala student life. Roaches are die-hard creatures. You stomp on them a hundred times, they can still get up and crawl away flattened. They recover miraculously fast. To all the SC2 nerds out there, you know what I’m talking about. Just to make it clear, I deal with computer games only in past tense. Roaches even live through atomic blast. When all other sophisticated life forms perished in the nuclear winter, roaches remain, ready to dominate the earth and direct a new round of evolution in its own image.

Roaches are tough. So should men. Remember the Asian Playboy article I posted? A pickup artist should have thousands of approaches, with the number of rejections in the same order of magnitude as the approaches. Only then can they achieve their goal. In the seduction community, there is a saying that the best PUAs have had more failures than the average men. An average frustrated chump have never tried, thus, his statistics could potentially look better, because his number of rejections are zero. In the end, no matter how many battles you fight, you will only be remembered for the ones you win, and not the ones you lose.

Well, I’m not here to talk about seduction community. Getting rejected in clubs is nothing compared to those rejections for life. One of my friends at Cornell went on probation for failing numerous classes in one semester. He wasn’t dumb or lazy. That time, he took on too many projects and was way over his head. He spent half a year studying at home, fixing credits from summer school, and finally returned to Ivy League. In my opinion, he will accomplish great deeds, simply because he recovered from such a blow and learned his lesson. For someone who has always been successful, he/she won’t possess this potential. Well, if the winning streak never ends, then luck can be seen as ability. However, once the walls fall around you, some people just won’t walk around with the same confident stature as before.

It’s not about never failing, it’s the recovery. To realists, “failures” occur when things don’t go your way. They are bound to happen. You just have to live through them. Remember Mystery once brought a fake cigar to bars and night clubs. It was just another prop he wanted to try. Unfortunately, within minutes of conversation, his targets could always realize the cigar wasn’t real. They asked him why he brought a fake cigar when going out. The first time it happened, he didn’t have any good answer. He was like “uh, I don’t know…” Whenever somebody looked through his trick and confronted him about it, it was like catching a pig in a bag. No thrill, just slaughter. However, Mystery came up with an excellent way to recover from his blown cover.

He said: smoking disgusts me. Then he would puff the cigar as if it was real. This line made a humorous turn and his status was reinstated.

In real life, you don’t always find a fast and easy recovery as Mystery did. But you have to recover anyway. When Boston Celtics were facing off the Kobe-led Lakers, their head coach told the Celtics: Kobe will always score. He’ll score no matter how far away the hoop is, he’ll score with your hands in his face, and he’ll score with you performing a perfect block on his shot. You just have to take Kobe’s hits and hit back harder. In that game, Kobe scored a game-high 38 points. However, the Lakers lost with almost 20 points. It’s your right to get whatever you want, but it’s the right of the universe to grant you failures. Countering failure is like stopping Kobe Bryant from winning a game. They’ll always hit you, and sometimes hurt you. Just stand up like those hits weren’t real, and try again.

Nothing goes according to plan

A brand new semester, back in Uppsala. New friends, new faces and new allegiances. Also, a new set of plan of my last academic years. At one instance, it seemed like everything is fitting into a perfectly knitted grand scheme of things to come.

Only if the things went according to my plan.

Scenario one: finding a housing in Uppsala this year is difficult beyond belief. The youngsters born in the 1990s have graduated from high school. Due to the worldwide recession, those folks who didn't choose academia, ended up jobless. This year is the time when everyone turned their eyes from the depleted job opportunities to higher education. The university officials, incompetent as they are, admitted more students than what the local housing options can possibly accommodate. Also being the last tuition-free year for master students coming from outside EU, the influx of international graduate students is at a historic high. With my 1700 days in the line at a major housing company, I only got an apartment after three rounds of selection. The move-in was set at September 1st, two days since the semester start. During my first ten days in Uppsala, I lived at a friend's place. He was kind enough to let me sleep on a comfortable mattress in his living room. This guy and me, we were in the same class since freshman year. Now he's doing his master thesis. It's like living a life connected by three dots: BMC, the institute where he works; home; the ICA store where he purchases grocery. Life is boring and it sucks.

Scenario two: most of the people I knew since earlier are either taking a year off, or working on master thesis. There are few familiar faces in my classes. My social circle in Uppsala is facing a decline. My friend Anna with astonishing prowess in Chinese, went to China; Sven the nice dude from Chemical Engineering chose one year in Shanghai after losing a student board election; A clique of girls in my major either transferred to Gothenborg or remain in Adelaide on exchange. Other than my friends who departed, more are on their way to leave the town. Mohammad my IBO-alumnus is going to Chicago for his master thesis in a few months. Without the company of my closest friends, I'm yet again a new guy in town.

Scenario three: I finally moved into my new apartment. It seems like the previous patron from either India, Pakistan or Bangladesh abused the condo badly (his name was still on the mailbox). The wallpapers are completely greased. The doors are full of dents. The funniest part is, he even removed the light bulbs from the kitchen, the bathroom, and the closet. Something you definitely shouldn't do in a Swedish apartment for rent. This apartment came unfurnitured. The first few weeks in school are totally wasted on buying furnitures and making my home look good. Whenever I'm cooking or just hanging around, I keep finding new traces of past abuse. I don't wanna act like a racist. Though I strongly encourage people to not live into their own stereotype, giving the true racists reasons to justify their actions.

Scenario four: One of my best friend is supposed to write his bachelor thesis in Economics. However, due to a misunderstanding between him and his faculty advisor, he failed to register the thesis-writing as a course. This semester, he got no course registered. Which in turn meant no study aid from CSN, the Swedish Board of Study Aid. Initially we were supposed to share the apartment together with a third patron from China. Since he got no money, he had to back out. To fund his living, my troubled friend must find a job. I can't blame him, although I sincerely hope this transpiration won't disturb our perfectly maintained friendship. I'm sharing the apartment with two Chinese graduate students now.

Scenario five: it's gonna take longer before I can graduate. If I insist on having my master thesis in US, I must wait. Mohammad is going to Chicago in January, and he was accepted as early as in May. Two people from my major started their own iGEM team. Both of them got projects to work on stateside. They were admitted when I was still in Cornell and they are going in January as well. The lapse of at least one semester is required from the point one gets admitted til the actual visit. I realized when I was indulging myself with the Cornell experience, my Swedish classmates weren't sitting around doing nothing either. Since they stayed for a prolonged time in Uppsala and obtained experience within the local research sector, they gained an upper hand. Even with the valuable trainings Cornell offered, I ended up "in their game". For example, the iGEM folks would never peer into iGEM if they went abroad. They wouldn't know enough people in Uppsala to build a team and get financial support. In some sense, it's better to stay at one institute than moving around. It's good to get new experiences, but if you want to accomplish something, sometimes you have to settle down and let time fullfil its promises. I have no clue of what's gonna happen to me next semester. It would suck so much if I can't make it to USA before summer. I'll become a super-uber-senior who takes too long to graduate. Besides, I won't even have those friends with master thesis around me anymore. They'll be graduating in spring and leave the town.

Even with a few difficulties in my social as well as academic life, there are a few things I haven't lost my grip on. I'm mostly interested in synthetic biology. Unfortunately Uppsala has no research program or courses offered in the field. I want to find a lab in US working on it. To prepare myself, I signed up for a literature project course. You are to read articles on a given subject and submit a review. I chose synthetic biology. I want to read up on the subject so I will know for sure what I'm gonna work on. Also, it's a chance for me to prove myself for my future lab supervisor that I know a great deal about synthetic biology even without having worked in a synethic biology lab. My friend who offered me housing earlier suggested since Uppsala has no synthetic biology, I can perhaps bring it here. After working and gaining enough experience from my future research abroad, I should try to lead my own synthetic biolog team in Uppsala and become a professor. When that day comes, I must hire a bunch of good-looking babes as my students, and put my friend right in the middle of all those wonderful creatures. "By then, you can finally repay my favor!" He gave out a laughter.

Tomorrow is a big day. My parents are coming to help me furnish my room. After that it's an important meeting. I still love US much more than Sweden. Hopefully I'm going to see the "land of freedom" again in the near future.