What was I thinking?

I was going through my old files this afternoon to get rid of things that I don't need any more. A mid-term report from the Evolutionary Genetics course that I took during the first year of grad school caught my eye with the following paragraph:

"Godzilla godzillus is a large reptile species endemic to the Hollywood Desert in southern California (Emmerich 1990). Due to its popularity on pet market, human collection caused extinction of several natural populations during the past decade. Of the five remaining natural populations, three of them have very small population size (N<=60, Figure 1). To preserve the species, a captive breeding program was initiated at the Hollywood Fantasy Zoo (Emmerich 1998). However, the founding individuals used in this breeding program were all collected from one population (A1). This raises the concern that future restoration efforts will greatly change the genetic composition of the species. To access the level of genetic variation and pattern of genetic structure in remaining populations, this study collected samples from all five remaining populations in the Hollywood Desert."

I honestly don't remember doing such silly things. Good thing that they didn't kick me out of the grad program.

Officially in-between

After cleared out my office today, I am officially out of a job and an affiliation.

I have some mixed feelings about saying goodbye after 5 years. Getting a Ph.D. is REALLY a long journey, only the elementary school took me longer than this (you can argue that it was more useful though).

One more week to go @ UGA

My last day at UGA is less than a week away. As this draws nearer, my anxiety level seems to be rising steadily.

On one hand I can't wait to move on to the next stage of my life. After all, five years in the graduate school is quite a long time. That said, a part of me kind of wish that things can continue just as they are. There are still so many thing that I can do here. Just last night I got so excited when thinking about a possible project and worked till 1AM. Really bad sign of turning into a research junkie.

Alyssa's group recital

Alyssa and her friends had their end of semester group recital today. All the kids did a great job and it was a very enjoyable show. Also their teacher Mr. Rafael Ferronato said something quite interesting during the recital:



Being a non-native speaker myself, I can understand how sometimes it is difficult to express oneself for all the language and cultural issues. If I am not mistaken, I guess he was trying to explain the importance of maintaining the mindset of a beginner if you became an expert. Or 初心, as Mr. Suzuki might have put it in Japanese.

Monsters come out in spring

With the start of another riding season, I no longer have the whole motorcycle parking lot to myself when I come in to work. In fact, it's getting so crowded sometimes I have to park outside of the designated area. Interestingly over the past few days I always parked next to a Triumph Rocket III. With that huge exposed engine on the side, that monstrous thing looks more like a tricked-out truck than a motorcycle. My tiny ninja feel like a toy scooter in comparison.

Life is fragile

I read the obituary for Scott Williamson on EvoDir today and feel really sad about this news.

I met Dr. Williamson back in 2006 when he gave a talk in our department at UGA. I remember him as a brilliant (but shy) theoretician who works on some very interesting questions. I am quite surprised to find that he is so young. Life is fragile and I feel really sorry for him and his family.

Final submission of my disseration

The third chapter of my dissertation is published in BMC Evolutionary Biology today. This one describes the characteristics of lineage-specific genes in some apicomplexan parasites. With this citation info, I happily updated my dissertation and send it out for the final submission. Needless to say, that pretty much made my day (or my week for that matter). Really look forward to relax a bit over the coming weekend.

Faculty chamber concert at UGA

I took Alyssa to attend her violin teacher's concert this evening and it was really enjoyable for the both of us. I am really surprised to find that Alyssa can have such a long attention span to listen to the whole program.

While listening to the beautiful music, a couple of thoughts crossed my mind. When I was growing up, classic music has some kind of "upper class" aura to it and I never thought that I'd learn to enjoy it. Seeing Alyssa doing so well in her Suzuki Violin Class somehow transformed my attitude toward this. Moreover, I started to have the temptation that I want to learn an instrument myself. Going to Short Road Home's concert at library a couple days ago really got my interest in violin peaked. It's funny that this evening's concert features a string quartet and a piano trio, and somehow all I can focus on was the sound from violin.

My temptation of learning violin is so strong that I am surprised by myself. I don't remember ever having such strong desire of learning something that's not "useful". Yet I am also scared of making the commitment to myself and jump right into it. I still worry about this may turn into a huge frustration and disappointment.

Smitefest MMVIII

Our lab went out to bowl this evening to take the challenge from Dave Hall's lab. It was a very fun event and quite unexpectedly we managed to defeat our unbeaten opponents.

I am quite surprised about scoring 96 points myself. Considering that the last time I play bowling was back in high school, that was pretty good.

Defense party and goodies

Jessie and Daniel kindly hosted a party for me after the defense. It was very enjoyable to chat to everyone and hear the "Congratulations!" over and over again.

I also received a bunch of books from Jessie as my graduation gifts, including two Tucson guides (very thoughtful and practical) and a "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" by Edward R. Tufte (looks like a really interesting book).

I'm done!

Well, actually not quite but almost.

I had the final defense today and it went really well. There are some more paperwork that need to be taken care of and some corrections that I need to make in my dissertation. Nonetheless, I managed to convince all 6 people on my committee to sign the forms for me. Pretty soon I'll get my degree and I couldn't be happier.

After my defense we went to our local Olive Garden and had a very nice dinner. All three kids ate very well, which made Ann and I very happy.

Looking back, it's kind of amazing that how long it took for me to get here (mom did make the comment that I've been away for so many years when I called her this evening). All these reminded me of a joke from Austin Powers. When a therapist addressed Dr. Evil as "Mr. Evil", he got very mad and screamed "I didn't spend all those frigging years in medical school to be called a Mr.". While I don't want to be addressed as "Dr. Kuo", I can relate to that.

A very stressful dream

I don't think it's really that bad but it seems that I'm really stressed out about my upcoming defense (at least subconsciously).

The dream I had last night was that only one person from my committee showed up at my defense. We kept waiting and waiting but there's just the two of us sitting in the room. And then suddenly a bunch of Fedex guys came in, each with a package for me to sign. After I got all the packages, I was horrified to find that they are corrections of my dissertation from my other committee members. The worst one had a whopping 478,659 comments (I even remembered this number hours after waking up). My response in the dream was "C'mon, the word count of my dissertation is not even close to that you know".

Sigh...

It's done, it's gone

I finished my dissertation and sent it off to my committee today. When I hit the send button, the thing that came to my mind was a scene from the end of The Lord of The Rings, when Frodo escaped from Cracks of Doom after the One Ring was destroyed. Frodo muttered "It's gone. It's done." with a blank expression. I guess I share the same feeling of relieve, only that I have to get it done before I can have it gone.

You lucky Hobbit really got off easy.

Did I mention that I'm a theoretician?

Received the formal acceptance letter from the Journal of Theoretical Biology today regarding my paper with Vanessa and Daniel. Guess that means I am entitled to pretend I am an evolutionary theoretician from now on, isn't that cool?

Good news and bad news

After nearly three months of waiting, the editorial decisions for two of my manuscripts came back today within 12 minutes of each other during the lunch time. I was pretty shocked when I got back from lunch.

The first one was very good. Essentially I only need to correct a couple typos and fix two figures. Which makes me really happy.

However, the second one was really disheartening. We had very high hope for this one but had great difficulty to even get it send out for review. The first couple submissions came back as "it's good and interesting, but probably not here (i.e., please go away)". Finally the manuscript went out for reviews, but the results were quite negative (at least in my view, Jessie doesn't think it was too bad). Anyway, probably will need to think about what to do next in the next couple days.

Well, at least I am not alone in this endless frustration.

Mini-Monimo or Mini-Momomo?

Vivian is taking a music class at UGA's Community Music School. She really enjoys this chance to sing and dance. Today I asked if she remembers the name of her music class and she just couldn't remember what it is. So I teased her if she's taking Mini-Monimo or Mini-Momomo and she suddenly remembered what it was. She got very serious and shouted "IT IS MINI-MOZART! You silly daddy!"

Scientists as humans

Edward Larson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science historian, gave an excellent talk at the Genetics seminar today about Haldane, Fisher, Wright, and the emergence of population genetics.

I found that the stories about outstanding scientists are always fascinating, maybe simply because they are extraordinary people. But because they are such legendary figures in science, it is easy for people (even we as scientists ourselves) to forget that they didn't start out as such giants, science wasn't everything of their life, and they may have quirky personalities.

Manipuri Dances of India

The Department of Dance at UGA had a Manipuri Dance performance by Jhaveri Sisters' group this evening and we took all three kids there. The performance is very good and we really enjoyed it. The costumes are really amazing and the style is like nothing that I've seen before.




One interesting thing that I noticed was that Alyssa was imitating the hand gestures of the dancers while she watches. I am not sure if she was doing this consciously or not, but she looked like she was really concentrated in watching the performance. No wonder kids are great learners.

And it's not just Alyssa. In one of the dances the dancer was doing some hand gestures to express that she is picking flowers, and David also picked that up and started to practice grabbing things in the air. So dance really is a powerful and universal language that everyone understands.

Graduate school reception

The graduate school held a reception today for the graduate students that received some award or fellowship from them this year. Dean and the invited speaker both gave a very good speech about how we should be grateful for what we have received to get to where we are at now and how we should think about giving back and make a difference. It is a very good opportunity for me to reflect on some things in my life.

Also I got a chance to chat with other graduate students from several different departments. It was very interesting to learn some really cool studies in the fields that I know nothing about.

One more interesting thing is that I found the evolutionary biology program at UGA was ranked 10th in the US. Now that's a pleasant surprise.

Earthquake or tsunami?

The elevator in our building has an "Earthquake" button on the operating panel inside. Since we moved into this new building last year that button has been an endless source of jokes. Everyone speculates what'll happen if we press it but we haven't gotten a brave soul to try that yet.

This morning someone put a sticker on the button and changed it to a "Tsunami" button. Looks like more jokes are on the way.

Speaking of the elevator I've to rant a little bit about it here. Our building is the newest one on campus and everything is state-of-art. However, the elevator is not working about two days a week, one for "preventative maintenance" and the other time is simply "unscheduled breakdown". I thought the elevators are a proven technology and can be made more reliable than that. Yet even space shuttles have better reliability than our elevator. Maybe I should stop complaining here, at least it haven't exploded yet.