Great idea for vaccine

Take stem cells from a person at birth.
Grow them into APCs/DCs with peptide in them
Immunise
Ideally only the peptide vaccine response should be elicited

The sluggishness continues

Didn't get as much done yesterday as I had planned or as I should have.Well...people take months to write the damn thing and here I am trying to finish it in a week. Wasn't really realistic, was it?

In other news, today was spent by taking another exam..My written driving test. I barely passed. One more wrong answer and I would have had to take the exam again. there were 36 questions and you needed 30 correct to pass. I got exactly 30!

My other rant today is about the inefficient and useless banking services in the US. They ply you with cards and leaflets but in terms of services they are terrible.

Firstly, it takes them 5 working days to make an international bank draft! HSBC Uk - 5 hours.
Secondly, their currency exchange counter has no board/screen/information about exchange rates. They assume that you don't care what rate they offer as you will have to take it or else they experience great pleasure in making you wait in a line for 15 minutes simply to ask them the exchange rate for the pound. Remarkable.

Oh..sorry, what really annoyed me was that they could take up to 3 working days to change my dollars into Indian Rupees. Three days, you cannot be serious!

To top everything off, I keep getting calls from Bank of America requesting me to purchase their fantastic life insurance offer. Bah, Take a hike, Vamoose, In your dreams are all choice phrases that come to mind.

Useless day.
I woke up early. Spent the morning doing PH250C. The whole afternoon was spent in mental masturbation as I tried to get over my Ch.5 stumbling block. Afternoon and evening whizzed by as no writing got done.

Its 5am and all I have to show for staying up close to 21 hours is:
1. Introduction to Ch.5
2. Jump over stumbling block.

Will spend the next three hours before I hit the bed on finishing all the figures for Ch.5 and 6.

I also think I have wound myself up so tight about getting this done by Tuesday that my body is experiencing some weird symptoms, i.e. I might be ill without actually being ill.

today, for the first time in my conscious memory (pre-senile dementia affected) , I was unable to finish a chocolate Brownie. I couldn't take more than two small bits of it before I began to feel nauseated and sick. It was my stomach revolting against any thing heavy...

Scary. Can you imagine me not being able to eat sweets and chocolate? I don't think I could live like that - might just be easier to commit suicide and go to Cadbury's heaven.

POA for today

I have a new reader..JM who is going to keep track of me from the land of the Amazon and favelas.

Anyway, didn't do much work yesterday except to write a draft of Ch4. discussion. I think I have it sorted except that I want to make it interesting and have lots of ideas for which I need to find papers that can back it up.

Its noon already and I have achieved a little bit. Finished my PH250C Final exam and subletting my apartment.

To do today:
1. Write Ch4 discussion final
2. Sort out figures of Ch5. (stumbling block needs to be hopped over)
3. Write up results and introduction of Ch5
4. Write up methods chapter (cut and paste mainly from transfer report and journal articles)

Its an all nighter today because tomorrow is packing and socialising day. The last time I moved, I had a wee bit of help from Mother and Little One. Any chance you want to fly out for two days to help me with packing again?

ok..now that I have spent five minutes procrastinating with this post, its back to Adeno/MVA.

am never going to finish....

Am totally depressed about writing this damn thesis. Have spent the whole of yesterday and today thinking about my stumbling block in chapter 5.
Having decided that I needed to have some concrete productivity, starting working on chapter 4 instead. I have been at work for the last 3 hours, only to have written my introduction.... 4 paragraphs (although annotated).

I hate this!! Am going back to being a doctor. No one cares whether you can write anything. Just need to learn how to scribble. Life was so much easier as a doctor, 18 hour days...no pressure...just needed to remember to give the right medicine.

(Sigh) I miss those days!

Bad week in the office

Doesn't seem like I am going to get any thesis stuff done till Friday. Have to finish off these two papers for classes I am taking.
Thankfully, they are both extremely useful as its the study proposal for the study I am doing this summer. I have realised that I still hate writing, although I loved planning the project.
Anyway, back to deciding on a budget!
Have 10 days from Saturday onwards for thesis writing. I reckon I can get a first draft done in 10 days? LA what thinks you???

Life can go on now!

Heard back from the BMJ, they are sending the article out for external review. Phew! Now I really can't do anything about it for the next couple of months so there is absolutely no point worrying about it.

Now, its either going to be rejected outright or be accepted with changes. Fingers crossed.

the day begins and writing starts.

Bad Day in the office

The day so far has been completely unproductive. Only thing I have done is finish homework for two of my courses. Tried taking a nap but landed up watching Kitchen Confidential which is a TV series, presumably based on chef Anthony Bourdain's book. The first season is over so am still catching up with the story.

I really seem unable to stop myself from watching any cooking related entertainment. I have even watched the terribly mushy romcom "No Reservations" with Catherine Zeta-Jones, which was such a let down after the delightful "Ratatouille".

Anyway, no thesis writing today. Its my study protocol for today. First draft today, final tomorrow, presentation day after, send to MGIMS on Thursday.
Damn,Damn.. Damn, Damn! (as 'enry 'iggins might curse)

The Scriver is back

Hello Thesis well-wishers,
I am back! Just finished writing 2000 words today. Most of it was gibberish that needs to be edited but at least I can edit from a base. I know, the most difficult part has been the first draft. I have found that I am a better editor than a writer. Seems that being a critic is easy, even if its my own stuff.

Anyway, half way through Chapter 5. tomorrow, will finish it although it might take longer than I think because I need to analyse my data a little.
So far so good. Decided to take a break and stop for today.Am now off to do two pieces of overdue homework, make a poster and edit someone else's paper! hah..that's never going to take as long as my 2000 words!

Keep those encouragements and dire warnings coming and read the blog to keep abreast of my progress!

Till tomorrow..

Westerns

I have always blamed my uncle and his stash of Louis L'amour books for my love of westerns and the west. I just assumed that everyone had heard about Louis L'amour and he was the best and only writer of the West. Seems very much like I thought he was God! Only, now that I am in California, which is as west as you can get, I have come to the realisation that there are other out there who also write westerns and about the wild west.

I have scoured the Berkeley public library for a few and got my hands on two writers this week.
One was Zane Grey who claims to have lived the lives of the people he writes about. I tried reading a paperback with his legendary short stories. It was about romance, relationships and stuff in the West. Terrible. I don't read westerns to learn about love, angst and relationships. I read westerns to read about MEN! of course, where there are men, there must be women, lust, love, feelings and all that mush. But, the plots of all good westerns are simple.

Man against the elements, or his enemies saving himself, or his family, friends or chance acquaintances along the way. Nothing else. Most importantly, he must remember that he is always going to die in the harsh country and his every move must be to prevent it.

Anyway, Zane Grey is going to be given one more shot and then its over.

The second author I read was Ed Gorman. He was far better. He does write about the modern west and his language is unable to disguise that he wrote the book about twenty years ago. He uses "F&*&" which I doubt was used at that time in the west. There were better ways to curse someone. Also, he often falters into language and makes historical mistakes in both his language and often the setting. I believe he writes his book with a modern plot set in the West, which is probably not the best way to write.

He at least gets a pleasurable second chance. The book was decent even if it was like a detective novel.

LL is still the best and now back to optimisation of dose of vaccination regimes.

My thoughts on writing

Am off to Au Coquelet, the cafe 20 metres down the road from my place to spend some isolated time writing. I have soooo much writing to do, that I don't even know where to start.

I realise my problem with writing. It usually has to do with not having something fixed in my head. I realise that I can write a lot quickly when I know exactly what it is that I want to write about or my ultimate message and the writing style required of me.

Take for example, this post. There is no particular writing style I need to adhere to except my own. I know exactly what I am writing about which allows me to write these rants in double quick time.

My research proposal on the other hand is taking hours. I know what I want to do roughly. I don't know the exact details and I have no clue about the writing style.
My thesis is a different matter altogether. I don't know what to write about or the manner in which to write it, which basically leaves me thoroughly bored!

Anyway, there are many who read this blog who wish me well by often trying to kick my butt..and I shall repay their well measured shots by finishing this damn writing by the end of May.

Off..now..for coffee, tea and my computer.

The Little One and I continue to have a raging debate about "Truth". I argue that social scientists don't understand truth, because they refuse to believe it exists. Scientists on the other hand understand truth, simply because there is only one truth. If a particular experiment (properly undertaken without any bias) is conducted, repeated and then repeated again,then if the result be the truth - should the same result irrespective of the number of times it is conducted and thereby the same conclusion irrespective of the person evaluating the result. In essence,truth cannot be subjective.

Anyway, thats the short story. We once spent over an hour and a half on an international call conducting a thought experiment which was a combination of Armageddon, War of the Worlds and I am Legend. Fortunately, it was cut short by a family member who was thoroughly perplexed by our version of a romantic conversation.

Anyway, today I came across a paragraph from a New Yorker article which probably encapsulates what I want to do and what the Little One can't. It is from a review of a book on World War II by Nicholson Baker (who I don't know). The book attempts to answer a rather simple question: Was WWII good? and answers it by providing us with documentary evidence of that period. Notes, letters, newspaper clippings etc. with no view of the author expressed at any point except the afterword.

The reviewer writes
"It’s an interesting experiment: Baker is trying to eliminate the historian’s interpretive gloss in the interests of respecting the rawness of the primary experience. He seems to think that the facts speak for themselves. But facts never speak for themselves. We speak for them. The historian’s gloss matters (not to mention all the facts that are left out): it provides the reader with intellectual traction, an ability to weigh the claims being put forward to justify the selection of facts. Baker’s presentation may seem empirical—these things happened, you can look them up, no varnish has been applied—but the effect is entirely emotional, because there is no nesting argument, no narrative, to give events a context. It’s a tabloid technique: a six-word quotation or a single image is all you need to understand any issue. The pretense of no manipulation is completely manipulative."

I think where the Little One and I differ is purely on the idea of "selection of facts". Surely, any selection undermines the fundamental principle of any experiment: that the initial conditions are unequal, controlled or removed of any systematic bias. Its like conducting an experiment of the efficacy of oral contraceptive pills on post-menopausal women and saying the drug doesn't work. That's not the truth - it cannot be. The result of that experiment is correct but needs to be justified in terms of its context - but it is not the truth!


Let me just make one last statement. I agree that the truth sometimes is impossible to achieve, but it doesn't mean it does not exist or that it is open to anybody's interpretation!

Paralysed

I can't work at all. I just submitted an article to the BMJ and am waiting to see whether they send it for external review. Then the reviewers need to accept it. I thought this whole process would take 3 weeks. However, its more like 3 months!

So, now I can't do anything until I hear from BMJ about their decision to send it to external reviewers. I ridiculously nervous. I can't be like this about every single paper I write. I hope it changes!

I keep checking email, the BMJ website every two or three hours. Yesterday was great. To avoid this, I tried watching End of Days (Arnie..yes, my governor). Its a horrific movie...went to sleep with it running in the background before we crossed the 30 minute movie barrier.

As you might have guessed, the reason for this post is...yes the BMJ. Hate them!

This is why Hayden will never be very high in my books

Hayden wants to get Ishant Sharma in a boxing ring??

Which international cricketer have you ever heard make this kind of public statement? He's 30+ in his umpteenth year of international cricket and he still gets involved in this kind of dog-fight.
He justs needs to shut up and get on with it just as he advises everyone else in the world to do.

Haven't blogged for over four months, which makes this post a re-introduction. I don't know what to blog about really.

Many things have happened since I last blogged.
Presented a paper at ASTMH conference in Philadelphia (where a long-distance call has changed many lives)
Spent 4 weeks in cold regions of North America (when I felled my reputation as a "man" with one act of detailed planning)
Spent 2 weeks in Canada (learning why kids love the Wii and vowing to have it installed in my first home)
Thudded into Berkeley and into the classroom (refused to indulge in any activity other than work for 3 weeks while writing my masters paper)
Copy-edited my first paper (never felt such excitement before)
Presently am trying to discipline myself into some sort of schedule (habits die hard...)

Anyway, I'm back now..be prepared for more regular bouts of self-indulgent rubbish.