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Lowell House, on the Feast of St. Godfrey
( Another self-analysis crisis )
My neurotic control-freak tendencies aside, I had a couple of observations to make:
1. It was snowing outside, when we came back from lab. Argh, not so soon! (I like snow when observed from inside a nice, warm room. Otherwise, I generally despise precipitation, no matter what the form.)
2. Jenny (not from kendo) and I went to eat dim sum in Chinatown yesterday, and the food was excellent! And cheap! We stuffed ourselves with delicious food and guzzled many cups of tea. On the way there, being the chemistry dorks that we are, we tried to come up with sex analogies for organic chemistry. No, we're not repressed, just incredibly bored. Actually, the inspiration was Prof. Myers who first used the term "the promiscuous proton" in our hearing last semester. We've decided that the carbonyl is the slut of all the functional groups, and since it's electrophilic and nucleophilic, it swings both ways. And unreactive groups like imines, are prudish, but just protonate them (hah, that promiscuous proton again), and they lose all sense of inhibition and engage in wild reactive orgies. I quote Jenny, "Wouldn't chemistry be so much more interesting if they talked about orgies instead of reactions? The Wittig Orgy. The Baeyer-Villeger Orgy." And to top it all off, today, Prof. Evans said in class today, "I'm going to draw this azide group in the most lewd and suggestive resonance structure possible." (Oh, and let's not forget the aggregating pheromones.)
3. Jenny (again, not from kendo) and I've also decided on our Halloween costumes next year. Be prepared to be blown away by our dorkiness: we are going to dress up as mRNAs! Caps printed with "GUANOSINE" (for the 5' GTP cap), tails strung with "A" (for the poly-A tail), loops hanging off our sleeves (for the introns being spliced). I think one of our friends volunteered to dress up as a spliceosome too. I know, I know, we're such science geeks...but seriously, molecular biology is the only class I really enjoy these days (well, outside of Korean, but that doesn't quite count). Where else can I stay awake despite my incredible sleepiness? Where else can we giggle over cool words like "snRNP" and "Okazaki" and "spliceosome"? Not to mention the oh-so-cool animations!
4. Today, in chemistry lab, we made CRACK! Well, actually, a cocaine derivative known as lidocaine (it is related to Novocaine, a common anesthetic), but doesn't it sound cooler to say "CRACK" (yes, in all capital letters)? ^_^ As my roommate and I have officially concluded: Harvard is really an international drug cartel. Now I just have to come up with a nifty acronym for it (HIDC doesn't quite roll off the tongue like HPTF did). Which reminds me--I realized today that I don't do crazy things as often as I did in high school. I mean, I feel more insane and unhinged every passing day, but it's more of a quietly simmering pot than happy lunatic escapades. What happened to the days when we'd do the Wizard skip down long Manhattan avenues? Singing entire musicals on the subway? Collective MST-ing? Lounging around after classes and making "your mom" jokes? Coming up with conspiracy theories and Sea Slug Universities? Not that I don't like my friends here--they're pretty crazy too--but it's as if we just don't have the time or energy to really do weird things. ;_; I miss the Hallway. And my inner child. We should all have a reunion (inner children included) this Thanksgiving.
5. I think I'm getting most of my news through the Daily Show. Sad, isn't it. Actually, the show has lately has become tragicomic, not because they're any less witty, but because they're just flabbergasted.
Yours &c.
Post-script: L.P., in her facebook profile, says, "A writer should not lay it all out for the reader." I've come to realize that I, on the other hand, do lay it all out (with a few notable exceptions) for the reader, and over the past year, have become even more prone to not holding back. I wonder what it is about me that is so willing to be candid and open in writing but not in person. Is it some sort of exercise in self-surrender? Or more egotistically, the fact that a blog is in many ways a one-way medium--me rambling on for pages and you, the reader, presumably helpless in the onslaught of it all? ^_^ What makes someone more willing to blog, especially about their personal life, than others? (Psst, not a rhetorical question. I know, people have discussed this issue ad nauseum already, but I haven't really thought about it all until forced to explain why I blog and why I like it.)
( Another self-analysis crisis )
My neurotic control-freak tendencies aside, I had a couple of observations to make:
1. It was snowing outside, when we came back from lab. Argh, not so soon! (I like snow when observed from inside a nice, warm room. Otherwise, I generally despise precipitation, no matter what the form.)
2. Jenny (not from kendo) and I went to eat dim sum in Chinatown yesterday, and the food was excellent! And cheap! We stuffed ourselves with delicious food and guzzled many cups of tea. On the way there, being the chemistry dorks that we are, we tried to come up with sex analogies for organic chemistry. No, we're not repressed, just incredibly bored. Actually, the inspiration was Prof. Myers who first used the term "the promiscuous proton" in our hearing last semester. We've decided that the carbonyl is the slut of all the functional groups, and since it's electrophilic and nucleophilic, it swings both ways. And unreactive groups like imines, are prudish, but just protonate them (hah, that promiscuous proton again), and they lose all sense of inhibition and engage in wild reactive orgies. I quote Jenny, "Wouldn't chemistry be so much more interesting if they talked about orgies instead of reactions? The Wittig Orgy. The Baeyer-Villeger Orgy." And to top it all off, today, Prof. Evans said in class today, "I'm going to draw this azide group in the most lewd and suggestive resonance structure possible." (Oh, and let's not forget the aggregating pheromones.)
3. Jenny (again, not from kendo) and I've also decided on our Halloween costumes next year. Be prepared to be blown away by our dorkiness: we are going to dress up as mRNAs! Caps printed with "GUANOSINE" (for the 5' GTP cap), tails strung with "A" (for the poly-A tail), loops hanging off our sleeves (for the introns being spliced). I think one of our friends volunteered to dress up as a spliceosome too. I know, I know, we're such science geeks...but seriously, molecular biology is the only class I really enjoy these days (well, outside of Korean, but that doesn't quite count). Where else can I stay awake despite my incredible sleepiness? Where else can we giggle over cool words like "snRNP" and "Okazaki" and "spliceosome"? Not to mention the oh-so-cool animations!
4. Today, in chemistry lab, we made CRACK! Well, actually, a cocaine derivative known as lidocaine (it is related to Novocaine, a common anesthetic), but doesn't it sound cooler to say "CRACK" (yes, in all capital letters)? ^_^ As my roommate and I have officially concluded: Harvard is really an international drug cartel. Now I just have to come up with a nifty acronym for it (HIDC doesn't quite roll off the tongue like HPTF did). Which reminds me--I realized today that I don't do crazy things as often as I did in high school. I mean, I feel more insane and unhinged every passing day, but it's more of a quietly simmering pot than happy lunatic escapades. What happened to the days when we'd do the Wizard skip down long Manhattan avenues? Singing entire musicals on the subway? Collective MST-ing? Lounging around after classes and making "your mom" jokes? Coming up with conspiracy theories and Sea Slug Universities? Not that I don't like my friends here--they're pretty crazy too--but it's as if we just don't have the time or energy to really do weird things. ;_; I miss the Hallway. And my inner child. We should all have a reunion (inner children included) this Thanksgiving.
5. I think I'm getting most of my news through the Daily Show. Sad, isn't it. Actually, the show has lately has become tragicomic, not because they're any less witty, but because they're just flabbergasted.
Yours &c.
Post-script: L.P., in her facebook profile, says, "A writer should not lay it all out for the reader." I've come to realize that I, on the other hand, do lay it all out (with a few notable exceptions) for the reader, and over the past year, have become even more prone to not holding back. I wonder what it is about me that is so willing to be candid and open in writing but not in person. Is it some sort of exercise in self-surrender? Or more egotistically, the fact that a blog is in many ways a one-way medium--me rambling on for pages and you, the reader, presumably helpless in the onslaught of it all? ^_^ What makes someone more willing to blog, especially about their personal life, than others? (Psst, not a rhetorical question. I know, people have discussed this issue ad nauseum already, but I haven't really thought about it all until forced to explain why I blog and why I like it.)
