My 10 minutes of fame - I

My 8 10 minutes of fame

It all started in the end of july when I was making plans to attend my annual conference. This year I decided to to the UK, having already gone to Europe and US the last 2 years. So, there was this conference in Glasgow in September that I decided on. When I told my supervisor, he was quite happy coz he said he was going to this conference too. And I found that quite a few of my colleagues were going too. So, it would be a fun lab trip. That was that. It was decided.  I was going to Glagow!

How it usually works is that you send out your abstract (a brief summary of your research findings) and then the conference organizers choose a few of them for actual oral presentations and all the othes go into the poster category where you only present a poster, like I've been doing the last couple of years. So, quite certain that it would be the case this year as well, I submitted my abstract. Then we all started making plans for the trip and where we would travel afterward etc etc. A few days later, all my colleagues got their acceptance letters for posters but I didn't. I was just beginning to think that the unthinkable had happened and my abstract had been rejected (which almost never happens, coz they accept 98% of the abstracts). And then it came! The email which said my abstract had been chosen for an oral presentation. 

Ohhhh, the horror!! I have to make a presentation in front of a huge audience. I spent the next two days in shock, excitement, stress and then shock again. And there began my preparation of my slides, getting my data in good shape, presentation and practice. My supervisor was super proud and wanted to make sure I do a good job. He always said "You'll be fine. Just be yourself!". He made me prepare my slides well in advance , went through it in fine detail and then made me practice my actual presentation. The problem was, you see in such conferences, all the big shots get about 30 minutes to present but measly students/post docs get only 8 minutes. That was the tough part. Because you see, you have to give just a short introduction to your work, present all your good data, conclude and thank everyone, all in just 8 minutes. In all my practice sessions, no matter how many slides I cut down, how fast I spoke or how little I said about each slide, my presentation always took at least 10 minutes. I decided I'll take it as it comes and set off....

And then we came to Glasgow! Unlucky as I am, my talk was scheduled to be on the last day of the conference. So I had to bear the stress for 4 more days. And I couldn't actually enjoy Glasow much but I still did as much as i could, with the presentation in the back of my head. The day before the last day, there was a party which I had intended to skip, but my boss insisted that all of us go. And so I went. And I'm so glad I did. I had a ball. It's been a long time since I had that much fun at a party full of strangers. It's amazing to see all the scientists having so much fun. It seemed that they were actually for real. The serious speakers and sharks drinking, letting their hair down and having a good time. It was a fun party with 3 parallel sessions of different music, one of them of course being the Scottish pipes, with the band called the red hot chilli pipers. 

Did I mention I did the Scottish dance, with my boss and other team members and of course the kilt-wearing pipers. We had a roaring good time. I'm glad I went to the party for another reason, it took my mind off the stress for the talk. We partied until late and as soon as I went back, I was fast asleep. I had a dream though, that I went to present and my slides weren't showing as they were prepared on a Mac and we had to use windows to present. So I said I'll just use my own computer. Then I couldn't find my adaptor and by the time I ran around looking for an adaptor, they said my time i.e 8 minutes were up. So I couldn't present any more.

When I woke up in a sweat, I realized it is THE day. My first thought was OMG!! I was stressed. I had intended to do a few more practice sessions but that didn't happen due to the party. But I told myself I had done it enough number of times, so much that even in my sleep I was running through my slides.I was going to be ok.

More to come. Watch this space!

Contagion

When I started this blog, I had decided that I would not do movie reviews here. Don’t ask me why but that’s one of the things I had told myself. But after I watched this movie, I just had to write about it.

Contagion was probably the only movie, which was not only entertaining but appealed to my brain too. It was one sci-fi thriller I could actually watch without cringing once at the “science” involved. This movie was also special to me because it is probably close to the kind of work that I do. Ok that is not exactly what I do, but it comes quite close. 

Here's my take on the movie. Be warned, there are spoilers ahead.

Contagion has a star-studded cast: Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne to name a few. But the highlight of the movie is definitely not the cast.

The movie is about a deadly pandemic and how the CDC along with other international research organisations and public health workers combat the challenges that come along with a pandemic of such magnitude.

It was a very well thought out movie covering all aspects of a pandemic and very close attention was paid to all the minute details. I read about how Prof. Lipkin and his team built a 3-D model of the said virus and then worked out how it would spread and evolve and how vaccines would be developed. They actually worked with scientists to plan the movie, no wonder they got the science right.

 The mass hysteria, which is brought about by various situations during a pandemic and the collective behavior of people is well depicted in the movie. The helplessness, the ignorance, the panic and the outrage of the masses due to lack of communication from the higher ups and the loss of social order due to that is definitely something to worry about during a pandemic.

I was also impressed by the accuracy of scientific protocol in the movie. The protocols followed, the steps needed to identify patient zero, the difficulty and the timelines to generate a new vaccine and the characterization of a novel virus are all dealt with precision. It was so different from the general “Oh, I’ll have DNA evidence in a jiffy” kind of depiction mostly made in sci-fi thrillers.

I thought it was nice how scientists were projected as people with lives outside of the laboratory. The nature of researchers and their obsession with their own research is well depicted. Dr. Sussman, in the movie continues to experiment on a cell line in spite of being given orders to destroy his samples but he is the one who comes up with a way to grow the virus. Also, Dr. Hextall tests the vaccine that she comes up with on herself first, violating several protocols. Yeah, scientists love to break the rules.

Jude Law-very annoying: both the actor and the character he played. He played the guy that scientists love to hate. The amateur blogger making false claims about a homeopathic cure and spreading rumours about quack medicine. I would agree that there was some truth in what he said about pharmaceutical companies and their mission to make money. There was an amusing line in the movie when someone said to Jude Law- “a blog is nothing but grafitti with punctuation marks” LOL!

The movie kept the audience at the edge of their seats all through. It gave the audience a scare of what might come in the future. In fact after the movie ended, nobody dared to cough or sneeze. Even if someone did, it was not without getting stares from people around.

The movie ended with identifying how the virus infected the first human being (patient zero). A bat initially harbours the virus. The bat then drops a half-eaten banana in a hoghouse where it is eaten by a pig. The pig is then slaughtered and is being prepared by a chef in a casino in Macau. This is where patient zero shakes hands with the chef who has not washed his hands and she gets sick with the virus. 

The lady sitting next to me in the theatre exclaimed, “Oh, it was the pig, who was responsible”.

“No”, I wanted to tell her, “It was the chef who didn’t wash his hands.”

Tongue in cheek

So, I came to work on the weekend to finish some experiments. The lab was generally deserted and only a colleague and I were working.

As I was working on my lab bench, I heard some noise. It sounded like someone was chanting something, saying something over and over. I looked up to see my colleague at the other bench muttering some gibberish. I first thought she was talking to someone. But no, she didn’t have a phone. I looked closely to see if she had a Bluetooth headset? (It happens all the time these days! You think someone is talking to themselves and you realize they are actually talking on their headsets). But clearly, she didn’t have a headset or anything like that.

She can’t be talking to herself for so long, I thought. It was more like she was having a conversation with herself. But I couldn’t make any sense out of what she was saying. Didn’t sound like anything English or even chinese. But she kept saying the same thing over and over.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I walked up to her and said casually, “ Hey what’s up? Are you chanting a mantra to work magic on your experiment? “

Hahaha, she laughed.

“Oh no, I was just practicing my Portugese. I just came back from my lesson. So, I’m learning how to say some phrases!!”