The secret handshake

Finally my boss approved that I am worthy material and granted me the privilege of reading his treasured copy of "Academic Gamesmanship: How to Make a Ph.D. Pay" by Pierre van den Berghe (ISBN: 0200717154). The author's cynical view on the inner working of academic world was hilarious, which makes the reading experience some sort of a guilty pleasure. The level of sarcasm is truly astonishing; Bill Bryson's work reads like children's literature in comparison. Too bad the book is out-of-print now (1st edition was in 1970) and the price of a used copy is simply outrageous (ranging from $35 to $468 on Amazon), otherwise I'd want one just for the fun of it.

On being a good son-in-law

Because of my boss has joint appointment in different departments, and also because UA is doing some departmental reorganization to deal with the budget crisis, my appointment here gets transferred around quite a bit for accounting reasons. Within a year, I have been associated with three different departments. Fortunately, my boss told me to stick with the first one on my CV, so I don't appear to be job hopping like crazy.

My latest appointment, starting from this month, is in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. When I found out about this today, I thought it is quite funny. Everyone in Ann's family, with the exception of Ann, is a chemist. By being a postdoc in a chemistry department, I am truly becoming a part of her family, maybe even more so than she does. Ann got so excited and instantly called her parents when I told her about this, and they just couldn't stop laughing.

I wonder how many people out there has this kind of strange experience.

A powerful recruitment tool

A while ago Alyssa made a drawing of me and Howard sitting together at a table and has the words "best friends" and lots of colorful hearts on it. I thought it was pretty funny, as this is how she imagines what we are doing in the office all day, so I pinned it on the wall next to my desk in the office.



When Nancy saw the drawing today, she told Howard that he should use it to recruit new people, because "It is a proof of how good you are treating people in the lab. See all those hearts floating around in the air? If Chih-Horng is cursing at you all the time at home, his daughter wouldn't have drawn something like this.". I thought that this is a very interesting way to interpret the drawing, and even more so when I see Howard seems to be embarrassed by the praise.

The most embrassing event of the year

THE GOOD: got the page proof, made corrections, and sent it back on the same day.

THE BAD: I misspelled my boss's name, twice, in the references.

THE UGLY: I didn't catch the mistake, my boss did.

How I got hired remained a mystery

With the interview season upon us again, we have been seeing a number of people going through our lab and department. Just out of curiosity, I asked my boss why he decided to hire me on the spot when I interviewed for my postdoc here in his lab. Much to my disappointment, his answer was "Really? I did? I don't remember anything about that."

Well, at least I got the job and have been enjoying it a lot. I guess that's what really counts.

Don't mess with my pens

Thanks to a generous donation from my boss, now there is a guardian dragon watching over my pens in the office.

M+O Lab retreat

When you spend lots of time staring at strings of ATCG in the lab, it makes you want to scream AAAAAAAAAAHHH!!! (wait, I see a homonucleotide run here)



To prevent us from going mad in the lab, the bosses took us out to the Santa Rita Experimental Range to have a lab retreat over the weekend. I took this opportunity to have my first long ride in AZ.

Getting ready to go:


The ride down on I-19 was uneventful, although seeing all the km signs in the US for the first time got me a bit confused. However, after getting off the main road, I was surprised to find that there are a couple miles of unpaved road ahead:



It was definitely not fun to play motocross on a Ninja. Nonetheless, my bike handled the road okay and I got to the station without any incident.





After having a light lunch, we went out for a hike along the trail up to Mt. Wrightson:



We only spent about 3 hrs on the trail and did not make it all the way up, but we did enjoyed some really nice views along the way:















After the hike, we sat down and chatted about our ongoing and future research projects. I talked about my gene fossil hunt in bacterial genomes and the frustration with some bad gene annotations on some sequences that was done using 454 (homonucleotide runs are indeed a headache).

The dinner was incredible and I can't remember when was the last time I ate so much. Zakee's steaks are the best that I had in recent years and Gaelen's chocolate cake is simply delicious.

I am pleasantly surprised to find that Gaelen and Kevin are fellow boardgames nuts (we are a rare breed). We enjoyed a couple rounds of games (including For Sale and Bohnanza) well late into the night and had a lot of fun.

On Sunday morning, we all put on the lab T-shirt to have a group picture before we go.



Instead of going for another hike, I decided to go home early. On my way back I stopped by the San Xavier Mission:



When I get home the bike was really dirty after all the riding on unpaved road.



I don't mind riding a dirty bike and usually wouldn't spend time on washing my bike. However, the chain and brake looks really bad this time and I decided to give them a good cleaning. Fortunately that didn't take too long.

Boss found out about my addiction

Our conversation this morning:

Boss: What are those? (referring to a bunch of Reform 1745s on my desk)
Me: Pens. Why?
Boss: I know, but why so many? Isn't that a little bit obsessive?

Hmm, maybe he is right. But I need all my pens at work you know. :)