My boss decided to let me supervise a summer student from India. As a "slave-driver," I teach him how to do experiments. One funny thing that I noticed about him is that he shakes his head to mean "yes." At first, I didn't realize this cultural difference. When I asked him if he understood what I was saying, he shook his head firmly, with innocent eyes and a smile. So I explained my points again. And he shook his head more confidently. I was confused. Then he started asking brilliant questions. And I was totally lost. Later, he told me that you can either nod or shake you head to mean "yes." If you want to say "No," you have to say "No" while shaking your head.

Haven't been updating my blog for a while... because my laptop died just before my committee meeting. If I hadn't had backups on the server, I would've killed myself.

I ordered a new laptop--ThinkPad T61--about a month ago. On the estimated shipping day, I received an email saying the shipping had been delayed. I called Lenovo immediately, and was told the entire T61 production line was down, and they wouldn't be able to make the laptops, and more than a thousand orders had been delayed. They also told me if I don't cancel the order and be patient, I will receive a leather bag worth about $50 as a compensation. As a loyal customer of Lenovo (my old laptop is ThinkPad T41), I decided to suck it up and wait to death. Now, the estimated shipping date is Aug. 9. How loyal I am!

The committee meeting went all right. I had to drop or "de-emphasize" one of my projects again. I had been working on that project for 7 months. Emotionally, it's hard to accept. But anyway, I just have to learn to let it go...

I am going to the worm meeting next Wednesday. I will present a poster at the meeting about a project I started merely 5 months ago. Now when I look at the abstract that I submitted 3 months ago, it is so vague and has nothing, because I didn't have any data back then. Although I don't currently have enough data either, at least the figures can fill up the space.


I am gonna finish this blog with a quote from my labmate: "When I was in college, I had this philosophy about girls: 'everyone is looking for a one hundred dollar bill on the street, but when they find a quarter, they'd pick it up too.' "