NY, NY (Sept. 15) & New Paltz, NY (Sept. 17-18)
Good morning! So sorry to neglect you these past few days. The above pictures shows a summary of what I've been doing during the past weekend/this weekend. I've been a busy beaver. Saturday night I saw a band at Webster Hall (Lower East Side) called Tortoise - the picture shows the opening band (Future Islands). Both were fantastic. The evening was ended at a place called K&M in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with a little bit of get down. Sunday I slept in until nearly 11 (holy cow) so there was no "little dog, big park" action. I had to run and shower to meet my fellow 2nd year friends (and some) for a birthday lunch. I showered really quick, gulped down coffee and met them down at Hell's Kitchen for some Queen of Sheba (Ethiopian) followed by Coldstone ice cream. One thing that struck me as pretty insanely disgusting was the fact that at Queen of Sheba you eat with your hands family style. You don't technically eat with your hands, but you use the bread to scoop up the food like a spoon - Indian style. Now, this practice in and of itself is not so bad to me. I've eaten this way many times before - Moroccan you do the same thing. HOWEVER - when I went to the bathroom to wash my hands, I noticed that there was no soap. There was only a faucet. The sign on the bathroom mirror stated plainly: "Employees must wash hands before returning to work." Oh boy. "Well here's to inoculation," I thought.
The next few pictures show my time at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, NY. I left at 6:45 am Monday morning with the rest of the Computational Biology community for the cBio retreat. It was GREAT! I had a blast. New Paltz is upstate - only about a 2 hour drive - from NYC. It is absolutely gorgeous. I was there last year for the Immunology Retreat so I knew what to expect and was not disappointed. We were greeted with a beautiful breakfast spread followed by several hours of talks and lunch (which was incredible and included far too many dessert options). After this, we went for a short hike, then got our rooms around 4pm. We ran upstairs, quickly changed, then headed back to the soccer field to play. Now you may be thinking, soccer? Computational Biologists? That had to have been ugly.
It actually was the most intense game of soccer I've played since about 5th grade. Most of the people there are Europeans, South Americans, and Indians - meaning they KNOW soccer. They're raised on soccer. Or should I say...football. Grégoire (my boss) and his son even joined the game. We ended up playing against the Mohonk staff - and we beat them 6-2. I was drenched in sweat at the end. Around 6pm we ran back to the hotel to shower and then had dinner in the dining room. It was fabulous - there were lump crabcake appetizers (I declined...I have bad experiences with crab). There was a beautiful arugula salad with shaved root vegetables (beets, turnips, and other crunchy things). There was warm bread with sundried tomato and garlic butter spread. There was vermicelli with summer vegetables, NY strip steaks with garlic mashed potatoes and bernáise sauce, and roasted chicken with polenta. For dessert there was NY cheesecake with raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries. After dinner we went to a poster session, which was mostly a wine drinking session. It ended at 11pm, which sent us back to the bar for some ridiculous drinking game pictionary/telephone sort of hybrid. We were in bed sometime around 1am. The end to an incredible day.
7:30am and I was up for breakfast. By breakfast I mean that I ate everything within sight. Waffles, eggs with tomato and parmesan, breakfast potatoes etc... It was raining and blowing hard outside so that was a bit of a bummer. It was completely socked in by fog - you couldn't see a thing. We went for a few more hours of talks followed by lunch and then free time for the rest of the day.
I should mention something about the talks. They were very cool, but a lot was pretty over my head. I'm new to comp bio, so this was pretty intense for me but that is a bit liberating. In immunology/molecular biology/cell biology there's more of an expectation to "Know it all" because that's technically my field of "expertise." In computational biology, however, I'm not really expected to know anything, so I can ask any question without feeling foolish. Everyone was very nice about explaining to those of us who don't have a heavy math or physics or computer science background. The talks spanned an immense breadth of topics. From machine learning, to optimization of drug design using computational models, cancer therapeutics, T cell activation and cell-cell communication (my lab!), models of genetic regulation, modelling of 3D protein structure, and even a guy from Google who came and talked about a project he's working on getting going with Harvard historians. They're writing programs to chart the use of language in newspapers and other sources back in the 19th century. He was a cool guy, but the talk was a bit less interesting to me because it was mostly about how he's setting up the program (i.e. hardcore computer science). One of his examples was showing the use of the word "pneumonia" since 1900. I mean, it's not surprising you get a spike around 1915 (the time of the Spanish Flu epidemic). It was still neat to be exposed to new things, even though the computer science stuff is pretty over my head.
After that I sat down to read on the porch. It was raining and I didn't have anything to do outside. Then a labmate named Guillaume found me and was looking for some adventures hiking. I would totally go. Yes, absolutely. Just let me change. We found some buddies to accompany us in the rain and fog and wind and went out for a hike. We got soaking wet but it was very invigorating and exciting. After that we went in the pool and ran around the hotel in bare feet at which point the staff told us we needed to settle down. We wanted to get in the Jacuzzi (or "cha-cuzzi" if you're Italian, like Vanni) because we were cold but it was $25 to go to the spa. We got changed and went to the porch just in time for tea & cookies (Mohonk is so old-fashioned). We grabbed some then got on the bus home. I slept the whole way. Then I got home and ordered Indian food and set my alarm for 6:00pm instead of am. Woops. This morning was a little interesting because of it.
Either way, I'm back to the grind today and grateful for a job that facilitates such funs.
Have a great one! More little dogs in the big park tomorrow :)
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