Had an amazing day today! Learning confocal microscopy was great, and then the Pharm class and the lab were awesome as per usual!...Now I will be looking at my controls, but pretty soon I will be transfecting my own cells, and assessing domain-domain interactions in the CFTR channel...can't friggin' wait to transfect my cells...in a few shorts weeks, I will have made recombinant DNA...my very first genetically modified organisms, babay!!! Until then, I will have to be satisfied with looking at controls that were made for me by RAs in the lab...no matter, confocal microscopy is really cool!
In lab today, Mansong, the research associate who's helping me learn all these lab techniques, was chatting with friends of hers from another lab, and they were all speaking Chinese, and I didn't know what the hell was going on...I mean I speak French, so if somebody speaks Spanish for instance, I get the gist of it, you know? I was trying to focus on my work, but really I just wanted to learn Chinese to know what they were saying...I really wish I could speak all languages...I am such a curious person, prolly why I like science so much...anyway, I shall learn Russian first, gonna get on that next summer before I start grad school! Or maybe I will pick up Latin again, learned it early on in high school, but lost it of course...it'd be cool to start a secret society of people who speak Latin, and you wouldn't be allowed to speak any other language during meetings, so Latin would be our secret code of sorts...my best friend wants to learn it too, but he's way too lazy to get on that...
Anyway, today in Pharmacology we talked about myocardial infarctions (heart attacks for the uninitiated), and it's really scary to think about what might happen if one gets a heart attack and one is not treated right away, and by ''what might happen'' I mean the damage to cells downstream of the blood clot that leads to the heart attack in the first place...and the class before that we were talking about angina pectoris, and so of course in the past two lectures we talked a great deal about plaques in arteries...there's not a whole lot that scares me, health-wise, but I think this is even more scary than cancer, in a society like ours...when Dr. Howlett talked about risk factors, obviously including diet and inactivity, I cringed...I used to work out 4-6 hours a day, have an 8-pack, eat flawlessly, and I mean, flawlessly...tons of fish and veggies and fruits, all the variety you can imagine, tons of water, and supplements like Brewer's yeast, coenzyme Q10, alpha-lipoic acid, collagen, etc etc etc...basically used to be a health freak. Now I have a 6-pack the odd week, but mostly the hint of a 6-pack most of the time...don't drink as much water, fewer, heavier meals, and much less gym. A lot of people think I am in great shape, but by my standards I know it could be way better, and I miss having balance in my life...miss running at 3 am till I collapsed, doing kung fu, climbing, feeling liberated by my body and in control of it...don't get me wrong, I LOVE school, I just wish I had more time for the gym, and even though I eat way better than most students and I cook tons, I wish I had all the time to cook whatever I wanted...Hopefully grad school will restore some of that balance in my life, and hopefully the summer will be filled with physical activity...Whoa! writing this just made me realize how much I miss being insanely active...Also, I want to take diving lessons as soon as I find the money/time...
Oh, and I wish video games were healthy!
hehehe yeah right!
Oh yeah, and I need advice on what you might call a social etiquette conundrum, or more aptly called a potential guy-rule transgression here...I don't know if I can do this or not, or if I should even if it's appropriate. There is this girl in the medical building where I do my honours, Sarah M., who is also doing her honours and happens to be uber ravishing...but more importantly, she is really fit, total genius, and is really diligent and works hard as hell on her research, as she is always in the lab...I research genetics, but I am in the physiology and biophysics department, because the research on the CFTR channel we are doing is more aptly classified as biophysics than classical genetics per se...but I digress. Point here is that she is doing some physio research, to do with the cardiovascular system (she is doing a prelim presentation of her research in the honours class in a few weeks, I am stoked), and I love that stuff. She was in my physio class a few years back, and a bunch of classes since then. I am just blown away by her work ethics, and what a driven perfectionist she is...LOVE. IT.
So what is the problem, you ask? Well my friend Jay, who happens to be REALLY smart and a great friend of mine, used to be right obsessed with Sarah, and a few years ago really wanted to go talk to her. Thing is, he friggin' froze when it came to it, and every physio class he'd muster the courage to go talk to her, but then would flake out at the last instant, and eventually just gave up. By now it's pretty obvious that he will never talk to her. I, on the other hand, have been noticing her more and more lately, as she is in two of my classes this year, and is also in the building where I do my research everyday...I am the opposite of Jay when it comes to talking to girls: if I like someone then I talk to them, no games or awkwardness about it. That is, of course, unless one of my close friends is in awe of the girl in question.
So on the one hand, I have this great guy friend whom I respect and hope to have a professional relationship with, and it would be silly to potentially throw that out the window for some girl I don't know so well...
On the other hand, EVERYTHING about Sarah compels me to find out more, and I KNOW she'd at least be a great friend and someone who would enrich my life by a huge factor...and of course the mystery adds to the equation; she keeps to herself a lot and dives into her work (which I LOVE) and seems to be more internal than you'd expect someone who looks like she does, but I am probably judging here and I know that appearances can be, and usually ARE, deceiving...
So my question is: given that my friend will clearly not talk to her, and that his interest started 3 years ago, is it wrong for me to talk to her, clearly with the intention of doing more than befriending her if she is the slightest bit interested (and of course that's a big ''if'')? And if it's not wrong, is it even worth it? Does it sound like I'm projecting my fantasies on this girl, as we guys tend to do?
Maybe I should wait a few weeks and listen to her honours presentation, see if she is as smart as she looks and sounds...I have sort of vaguely alluded to the possibility of talking to her by joking around about it with Jay, and he laughed it off, as Jay would..he would never put his own interest before that of his friends, that's just the kind of guy he is...I know this might sound like high school, but it's just that I am experiencing this inner conflict, between my natural tendency to just go for what I want, and that of protecting my friends...I value friendship more than intimate relationships (unless your girlfriend is also your long-time best friend) and even family, so friends are kind of a big deal to me, in fact they're EVERYTHING. So it's not high school, it's just a very delicate/sensitive situation, and I feel like I am too close to the problem to see it clearly, and an outside perspective would be most welcome!
Cheers!
Patty
In lab today, Mansong, the research associate who's helping me learn all these lab techniques, was chatting with friends of hers from another lab, and they were all speaking Chinese, and I didn't know what the hell was going on...I mean I speak French, so if somebody speaks Spanish for instance, I get the gist of it, you know? I was trying to focus on my work, but really I just wanted to learn Chinese to know what they were saying...I really wish I could speak all languages...I am such a curious person, prolly why I like science so much...anyway, I shall learn Russian first, gonna get on that next summer before I start grad school! Or maybe I will pick up Latin again, learned it early on in high school, but lost it of course...it'd be cool to start a secret society of people who speak Latin, and you wouldn't be allowed to speak any other language during meetings, so Latin would be our secret code of sorts...my best friend wants to learn it too, but he's way too lazy to get on that...
Anyway, today in Pharmacology we talked about myocardial infarctions (heart attacks for the uninitiated), and it's really scary to think about what might happen if one gets a heart attack and one is not treated right away, and by ''what might happen'' I mean the damage to cells downstream of the blood clot that leads to the heart attack in the first place...and the class before that we were talking about angina pectoris, and so of course in the past two lectures we talked a great deal about plaques in arteries...there's not a whole lot that scares me, health-wise, but I think this is even more scary than cancer, in a society like ours...when Dr. Howlett talked about risk factors, obviously including diet and inactivity, I cringed...I used to work out 4-6 hours a day, have an 8-pack, eat flawlessly, and I mean, flawlessly...tons of fish and veggies and fruits, all the variety you can imagine, tons of water, and supplements like Brewer's yeast, coenzyme Q10, alpha-lipoic acid, collagen, etc etc etc...basically used to be a health freak. Now I have a 6-pack the odd week, but mostly the hint of a 6-pack most of the time...don't drink as much water, fewer, heavier meals, and much less gym. A lot of people think I am in great shape, but by my standards I know it could be way better, and I miss having balance in my life...miss running at 3 am till I collapsed, doing kung fu, climbing, feeling liberated by my body and in control of it...don't get me wrong, I LOVE school, I just wish I had more time for the gym, and even though I eat way better than most students and I cook tons, I wish I had all the time to cook whatever I wanted...Hopefully grad school will restore some of that balance in my life, and hopefully the summer will be filled with physical activity...Whoa! writing this just made me realize how much I miss being insanely active...Also, I want to take diving lessons as soon as I find the money/time...
Oh, and I wish video games were healthy!
hehehe yeah right!Oh yeah, and I need advice on what you might call a social etiquette conundrum, or more aptly called a potential guy-rule transgression here...I don't know if I can do this or not, or if I should even if it's appropriate. There is this girl in the medical building where I do my honours, Sarah M., who is also doing her honours and happens to be uber ravishing...but more importantly, she is really fit, total genius, and is really diligent and works hard as hell on her research, as she is always in the lab...I research genetics, but I am in the physiology and biophysics department, because the research on the CFTR channel we are doing is more aptly classified as biophysics than classical genetics per se...but I digress. Point here is that she is doing some physio research, to do with the cardiovascular system (she is doing a prelim presentation of her research in the honours class in a few weeks, I am stoked), and I love that stuff. She was in my physio class a few years back, and a bunch of classes since then. I am just blown away by her work ethics, and what a driven perfectionist she is...LOVE. IT.
So what is the problem, you ask? Well my friend Jay, who happens to be REALLY smart and a great friend of mine, used to be right obsessed with Sarah, and a few years ago really wanted to go talk to her. Thing is, he friggin' froze when it came to it, and every physio class he'd muster the courage to go talk to her, but then would flake out at the last instant, and eventually just gave up. By now it's pretty obvious that he will never talk to her. I, on the other hand, have been noticing her more and more lately, as she is in two of my classes this year, and is also in the building where I do my research everyday...I am the opposite of Jay when it comes to talking to girls: if I like someone then I talk to them, no games or awkwardness about it. That is, of course, unless one of my close friends is in awe of the girl in question.
So on the one hand, I have this great guy friend whom I respect and hope to have a professional relationship with, and it would be silly to potentially throw that out the window for some girl I don't know so well...
On the other hand, EVERYTHING about Sarah compels me to find out more, and I KNOW she'd at least be a great friend and someone who would enrich my life by a huge factor...and of course the mystery adds to the equation; she keeps to herself a lot and dives into her work (which I LOVE) and seems to be more internal than you'd expect someone who looks like she does, but I am probably judging here and I know that appearances can be, and usually ARE, deceiving...
So my question is: given that my friend will clearly not talk to her, and that his interest started 3 years ago, is it wrong for me to talk to her, clearly with the intention of doing more than befriending her if she is the slightest bit interested (and of course that's a big ''if'')? And if it's not wrong, is it even worth it? Does it sound like I'm projecting my fantasies on this girl, as we guys tend to do?
Maybe I should wait a few weeks and listen to her honours presentation, see if she is as smart as she looks and sounds...I have sort of vaguely alluded to the possibility of talking to her by joking around about it with Jay, and he laughed it off, as Jay would..he would never put his own interest before that of his friends, that's just the kind of guy he is...I know this might sound like high school, but it's just that I am experiencing this inner conflict, between my natural tendency to just go for what I want, and that of protecting my friends...I value friendship more than intimate relationships (unless your girlfriend is also your long-time best friend) and even family, so friends are kind of a big deal to me, in fact they're EVERYTHING. So it's not high school, it's just a very delicate/sensitive situation, and I feel like I am too close to the problem to see it clearly, and an outside perspective would be most welcome!
Cheers!
Patty
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
You seem like a brilliant person yourself, so that acknowledgement coming from someone such as yourself is especially flattering indeed! I am glad you wrote this, because I too am sick of people without substance; you're a very interesting blogger and your posts actually have depth and substance, as opposed to the same old generic two-liners filled with LOLs and OMGs towards which I have developed a chemical aversion...I have meant to respond to a few very interesting posts of yours for a few days now (I am sorry for the loss of your father, by the way...) but have not had the time to write a proper response, so hopefully I can sometime this weekend. Nice to meet you, and glad to count you among my SG friends!
Patrick
Sarah was so enthusiastic and had no attitude whatever, and was very approachable, which was incredibly refreshing for someone as attractive and evidently brilliant as she is...guess I'll be sitting next to her now in class, and get to know her better...The best part is that I told Jay right away afterwards, because I did feel like I had to, and he was totally cool with it, so problem solved I guess!!! As much as he ''saw her first'', and liked her A LOT, he didn't go for it for something like 3 years now, so I guess it was fair that I go talk to her I suppose...I'm just really glad how that turned out...
Will keep you posted on further developments!
Cheers,
Patty