Off beaten path off beaten path off beaten path

When I was heading out to California for the summer, I must admit feeling rather like a pioneer. Granted, millions made the journey out west before me (most in conditions far more perilous than economy class), yet the parallels are there: the search for new opportunities, the step into the unknown.

Back then, what started as a blitz for gold persevered as a promise for a better life - something only the most American Americans dared pursue. It's amazing that after trailblazing immigrants had settled, a handful went off that beaten path and blazed further to the west. Treading in their footsteps, I can imagine how they must have felt.

Long before poet Robert Frost aggrandized the road less traveled by, people have been taking it. But what if that road turns out to be a detour? Or a dead end?


As July rolled in and the week-long, company-wide July 4th shutdown arrived, none of that was my concern. After a frustrating set of experiments showcased my gremlins at their best (those critters that sneak into lab and ruin things for you when all's going well), I was glad to hit the road to San Francisco with a few friends.

Arriving in SF, it was none other than my buddy Kerim and a group of (bum bum bummm) Genentech interns with whom I toasted the start of an incredible week. We went salsa dancing with my roommate-in-spirit Raquel and used the Straßenbahn-style BART to travel across town. SF public transport really came through; we took a ferry to Sausalito and bussed to Muir Woods, a redwood forest across the Golden Gate bridge left unlogged due to inaccessibility (note: forest also very inaccessible to buses).

The redwoods are incredible, enough so that everyone in SF wanted to come out and see them! That's why Kerim and I opted for the path less traveled by. It was as steep as it was scenic, and there were far less people. Soon enough, we encountered yet another fork, this time even steeper and more secluded. We saw one band of hikers weaving confusedly through the brush, and elected to go yet another way. There we reached a small clearing and snacked on unsulphured apple crisps, pondering our next move.

I voted to return to the path less traveled (by this time we were traveling the path less traveled off the beaten path off the path less traveled). Kerim wanted to press on. I wavered.


"Are you scared, Mark? Afraid of the unknown?" he contested. I hesitated, glancing back, and pushed past him into the wilderness. Kerim thought and had a change of heart.

"It's okay. You don't have to prove anything."

My fist tightened and relaxed. An internal struggle ensued between rationality and that infectious spirit of courage rampant in the Golden State. We turned and leaned back as we descended to reality.

Sometimes it's wise to push romanticism aside and not get lost in the woods. That decision freed up the rest of my week to check out San Fran's finest. There's way too much to see and I'll definitely have to return someday. Maybe even for grad school?


It was tough to leave San Francisco and tomorrow brings another week of work. I don't know where the road ahead leads, but rather than hoping for tests to work out, I'm ready to focus on what I can control and stop blaming things on gremlins. Science is our machete - time to blaze a trail!

June

How odd to think we'll see seventy Junes;
Some more, some less, that only a fool would
Dare squander thirty endless afternoons
And not be lost at sea or winding woods.

When summer's effervescent breath beckons
And hazy lights adorn the crowded pier,
Reflecting fuchsia waves that every second
Deliver bottled message souvenirs.

A month with wild subtleties and wonder,
Its beauty often hid beneath a mask;
Without the telltale fireworks and thunder
All too often evades our dazzled grasp.

So now we wait another dozen moons
To feel the fleeting lover that is June.

Official Blog Ditty

The highly anticipated Blog Ditty is finally here!

Log Phase

Four weeks ago, I arrived in California and entered a room with a lot of deep freezers. Removing a vial of cells from their liquid nitrogen resting place, I thawed them, bathed them in yummy media and I nestled them among other flasks in the incubator at a steamy 37 degrees.

It can take some time to adjust to a new environment. Coming from the tundra of Michigan to the banks of the golden state, I felt like I needed to do some thawing myself. It was jarring to be removed from my chilly surroundings and thrust into the most notoriously Californian state ever. It's no surprise that, like my little dish of cells, I didn't exactly hit the ground splitting. First, I needed to answer the questions: Where am I? What is this "beach" you speak of? Where can I get falling coconut insurance?

As destiny would have it, I managed to mess up experiments in increasingly creative ways. First, a flask (or, erm, incubator) full of unhappy cells...ok, dying cells. I can't even remember what happened after that, but let's just say I had to fake an earthquake to get out of it.

Thankfully, I've managed to gain a foothold on those mudslid banks and am progressing with both research and life outside of work.

I checked out the Conejo Valley Botanical Gardens a while back and got to know all the little critters with whom I've coexisted lately...though it often required a sharp eye. Chilling to know there are jackalope lurking in the shadows.

But while microscopic observation has its place, it is refreshing to once every now and then step back and see the progress you've made. And from the steps I've taken in lab to the many friends I've made so far, I can look upon this big picture and be happy with the panorama.

Having resided in California for about one month now, I can finally say we've moved from acquaintances to good pals.

And if the experiments are any indication, my cells and I might be getting along soon as well.

The Greedy Algorithm

If viruses could think more clearly, maybe they would realize why they've failed so miserably to achieve their goal of world domination. Okay, it's a given that cold-causing rhinoviruses are ubiquitous and that HIV has wreaked some havoc. But then again, our bodies conquer the sniffles in a matter of days, and HIV has irked enough people that researchers are bound to foil it someday. And then there are bugs like smallpox and polio that have been nearly erased from the planet.

Biologist Paul Ewald points out that doctors used to believe all infectious agents would evolve toward benignity. It seemed logical at the time: If bacteria or viruses killed everyone, who would they have left to infect? But if you think about it, viruses with more voracious appetites for human flesh can beat out more benign versions when inside a person. Think of it like your hungriest cousin eating all the food at the Thanksgiving dinner table - no pumpkin pie left for anyone else! So instead of evolving to be harmless, viruses strive to be as nasty as possible (provided they keep you alive long enough to make it to someone else).

It's too bad viruses feel that way - if they wouldn't be so virulent, maybe we'd stop making vaccines and they could spread to everyone on Earth! They're just too short-sighted and insist on racing each other to eat our insides.

Obviously, viruses don't attend electrical engineering courses. If they did, maybe they would have learned about the Greedy Algorithm. As my buddy Tyler once told me, it's a programming strategy that always chooses the next closest point, or easiest solution at that point in time. At first it seems like a decent strategy, but imagine: If you take a roadtrip to visit all the state capitals, you might be able to plot a nice sweeping path that minimizes distance to save gas money. But if you always insist on traveling to the next closest city, you could end up going from Indianapolis to Columbus straight to Charleston, West Virginia. That means you've skipped Lansing and need to cross back into Ohio before heading through Michigan. Bummer!

It should be easy to avoid using the Greedy Algorithm when any electrical engineer can tell you it doesn't give the optimal solution. All you need is a little foresight. But we might repeatedly fail to have that kind of will power in our daily lives. We eat McDonald's because it's cheap and pay hundreds for gym memberships. We stay up cramming for tests and sleep in class. We save time by speeding and are stuck in traffic when someone crashes.

It's not just you and me - our whole world seems to apply the Greedy Algorithm for way more purposes than counting change. This (rather depressing) website chronicling the world's biggest problems suggests that it's not inter-species conflicts, but rather intra-species conflicts that are plaguing humanity. Massive debt, our demand for oil, unsustainable water use...it's not surprising that short-sightedness causes our biggest problems when it's the very nature of nature for us to be climbing all over each other to get ahead.

It's hard to compete against our instincts, but that's what our brains are for. Personal responsibility, compassion, and great ideas can help. Like this one about a new pump-operated water filter. It has 15 nm pores that are smaller than even the miniscule polio virus.

So we can beat microbes. But can we beat ourselves?

Heading Home

5 o'clock tocks,
The pedals are starting blocks,
The road a runway,
To run away,
Nay, to fly away.
A fly-way
From the work day.

The rattle in the shift
From deskclerk to legwork.
Some rift from lurking,
A gift
To not be working.

Some cars startle
Me passing by.
I pass by
Passersby
Like they're on standby,
Asking why,
Marveling.

Glide by side streets
Downtown, upbeat.
Downhill slipstream.
Sunshine thrills me.
Back pack tucked back,
Straps of that rucksack
Flail like exhaust gas.
Dual mode smokestacks
like baby, baby, baby, oh,
5 o'clock,
heading home.

Big State, Small Taste

If I may begin with an analogy:

A young man 21 years of age walks into a grocery store. After passing the watermelons and cabbage heads, items much too bulky to fit in his small, red backpack, he pauses among the wine selection. He scratches his head a while and buys a bottle for two dollars. That evening, he uncorks it with a small "pop", and watches the burgundy flow into his chalice. He wafts its curious aroma and sips. Judging by its price, he knows it must be déclassé, yet when sloshing this first taste around his tongue, he's captivated by its sharp attack and appeased by the slight quiver in his head.

This purely hypothetical illustration synopsizes my first two weeks in California. I arrived in L.A. on the day of the rapture, and wasn't surprised to see business as usual passing through Hollywood on the way to my summer apartment in Thousand Oaks. The city, affectionately known as T.O., or even Toaks from some of its more playful residents, is home to biotech behemoth Amgen and presumably many oak trees. From what I could tell initially, that was about it. And so, departing from Michigan's warm, mitten-clad grasp, I watched the world crumble beneath me and set foot into a blank canvas: "Summer 2011: California".

It feels like a daunting task - seizing a golden state opportunity that desperately calls to be enjoyed to the brim. Yet what can one do in a completely new region when without friends, a car, or a key to his apartment? Well, first was to call a locksmith to make keys to the apartment. But what then? Though my imagination had been saturated with sandy beaches and west coast parties, I had to start small.

My first day, I found the thread I was looking for - the final leg of the Tour de California bike race was set to occur in downtown Toaks! I haven't seen so many guys hauling ass on bikes since I watched E.T.!

I also had the chance to meet my roommate Reuben, from Houston. He, much like the other Amgen interns I've met so far, is easy to get along with and slightly obsessed with chemistry.

On the first day of work, the head of Amgen University Relations led me and about 40 other interns to a windowless room and told us to take a seat. At each place, sitting ominously above a small folder, was a Rubik's cube. At that point I knew their "orientation session" was merely a charade, and that the cubes would likely self-destruct if not solved in under ten minutes. I was relieved to realize that the cubes were just for fun, and whoever solved it first was to receive a small dufflebag. I made decent progress, solving one side as the staff proceeded to welcome us and lecture us on company issues, yet failed to win the grand prize. Reuben slyly attempted to color his cube with a permanent marker, but was aptly sniffed out by the staff - after all, it's any drug discovery company's biggest challenge to avoid false positives.

Since that first day, I've completed hours of virtual training, acquainted myself with the lab and its nefarious incubators, and even managed to have some fun with friends. Travis, Eddie, Reuben and I went to L.A. for some delectable Korean BBQ, and Adam, Helen, Nick and I braved the Santa Monica mountain passage on our way to a windy Malibu beach. Add a few large eBay packages to the mix (a bike and guitar), and I'm feelin' pretty good. Sure, I'm not exactly living the California Dream quite yet, but the first few brushstrokes have been deftly applied.

And for someone who's never exactly uncorked a fine Chateau d'Yquem, this $2 stuff tastes pretty good.