Beauty in the Broken

Productive Rest

2012-01-30T23:08:00.002-05:00

For some reason I have learned and cultivated the notion that being busy is a good thing. And that's the way I lead my life. I find myself running from place to place occupying my "free" time with more and more things to do.

Don't get me wrong, I am not promoting idleness as something to try out or try to live by (even the Bible warns against it! , ie:Prov 31:27, 2 Tess 3:6,11); but there are times in which a good and intentional break is needed. Some quality time to just relax and enjoy the little things that pass us by when we are rushing to our next destination or as we struggle to achieve our next goal.

I need to reprogram my brain to understand that a well-deserved break is part of a productive approach to acquiring the skills or achieving the goals that we set our minds to.

Resting at Schloss Heidelberg during my vacations (Oct 2011)

Normally, my rest times are filled with guilt. "Why aren't I reading some recent articles?" or "Why am I wasting my time sitting down or laying down and doing nothing? I have so much to do!" Hasn't this happened to you? Maybe I'm just wired differently, but what I have realized with time is that rest helps me become more productive! It clears my mind, it satisfies my exhausted soul, it gets me closer to the One who asks us to be still and know that He is God (Psal 46:10).

So when you find yourself craving for some down time among your insane schedule, satisfy your craving and take some time to rest. If you're like me, you'll feel restless at first but then you will reap the rewards of this much needed rest!

Yikes!

2011-09-13T11:04:00.003-04:00

Don't you ever feel life passes you by so quickly that next time you check, another year has gone by?

Well, that's exactly how I feel right now...
Currently preparing everything I need for a wonderful 23 days abroad in Europe, this day felt so remote some months ago when I agreed to go to a conference on Cancer Genomics in Heidelberg, Germany. And just like that, in the blink of an eye, I'm printing my poster, ironing my blouses and wrapping up presents for my friends in Europe.

But it's not all fun and games. As I said I'm going to present my research project at the conference and also receive some training on analyzing a brand new event in the field of cancer genomics: chromothripsis. I'm so excited for this opportunity and I feel like it was such a God-thing... everything just fell in place at the right time. Definitely a God-thing.
I will be taking some time-off to travel and meet some friends in Geneva, Zurich, Munich, Bonn, Frankfurt, etc. God's been so good as everything has gone smoothly in the planning of this trip and he has provided the much needed funding for this trip. SO GOOD!

Alright, I will try to upload some lifecheck pictures soon, but rest assured dear reader that I am indeed, still alive.

Cheers to life and its extremely fast pace!
GB

War Canoeing!

2011-06-06T22:56:00.003-04:00

Wanna try something new this summer?

Why don't you war canoe?

A couple of weekends ago, I went to my local MEC Paddlefest and was able to attend a free War Canoeing clinic. Before this cloudy Sunday, I had never heard of such activity and when I was approached to join the clinic I was a little hesitant... I wasn't ready to get wet while at war!

So just as I asked myself that day, you might be asking yourself: What's War Canoeing?

Wikipedia explains it well... "A war canoe is a watercraft of the canoe type designed and outfitted for warfare, and which is found in various forms in many world cultures. In modern times, such designs have become adapted as a sport, and "war canoe" can mean a type of flatwater racing canoe." and "War canoe is largely a Canadian sport". Who knew?

I would compare war canoeing to dragonboating. Big canoe for about 15 people, big paddles but instead of sitting down to paddle, you kneel and thus use almost all your upper body to paddle and keep yourself balanced.

This experience was quite interesting. First of all, it's exhausting, especially when you first start, as you are basically kneeling on a swaying boat and need to focus to keep your balance and keep the proper paddling rhythm. You definitely notice when someone's not paddling at the same rhythm... it throws the whole boat off! Second, you not only use all your back, core and shoulder muscles as you paddle but after you've been at it for a while, you definitely feel pain in your quads (thighs), gastrocs (calves) and of course, your knees! It's indeed a whole-body commitment! Lastly, it's a very social sport! Everyone gets to interact before, during and after the workout, and since you need more than a few individuals to get the war canoe going, you're always surrounded by people that support you or inspire you to keep up the pace!

Unfortunately, this little post doesn't really show how great an experience I had at the war canoe clinic. All I can say is: TRY IT! If it's your thing, you'll love it! If it turns out that you're more of a lone-paddler... that's alright... at least you can say you went war canoeing, and that just sounds cool!

The evidence:

You can't really see me in the last picture... and that's cause I'm a "right paddler"! They figured this out by observing the leg I stabilized myself with after I was pushed by a bully... Ok, she wasn't a bully, but I wasn't expecting for this old lady to push me as I turned around!

The power of a good pun

2011-05-07T18:43:00.002-04:00

If you think puns are not funny, I urge you... please think again.

Puns, or play on words, are stimulating jokes that not only satisfy the one who makes them, but also those who get it. For those unfortunate enough to not be on the same wavelength as the one who just cracked the pun, well just accept the fact that you don't get it. It is not recommended to go asking for an explanation... the joke is over and you will survive without it. Once the pun is explained, it looses all its magic, all its spice... the joke is void.

Pun topics range from the very specific- for example those you don't get when you are among a group of friends that unlike you, share a common passion (ie. Star Wars)- or quite broad, the kind everyone gets due to a common understanding of daily-life issues (ie. Politics).

In my opinion, puns can restore relationships, turn a sad face into a smile, and a frown into a guffaw. Puns help individuals discover common ties, make them feel part of a group, display an individual's insight and intellect, and release stress in such a healthy way! Did you know that doctors recommend laughter to decrease the risk of some diseases and improve quality of life? (laughter improves cardiac function, review of the benefits of laughter and humor).

Perhaps indirectly, but puns may save your life!

So next time you hear a good pun, don't brush it off immediately! Give it a chance, realize its potential, let go of all your inhibitions and just laugh out loud!

Not every pun is the same, but if you let yourself be taken by it... you'll end up in a good place!

Late April dream...

2011-04-25T11:57:00.003-04:00

I recently had the chance to go to Orlando for a scientific conference (more on that soon). Since I had "accumulated" hours at work, I was able to take a couple of days off and visit a friend in Ft. Lauderdale. For those who are rusty on your Florida geography, Ft. Lauderdale is right on the shore, while Orlando is a couple of hours inland. Needless to say, I enjoyed of a day in the beach were I soaked that Floridian sun like a Tropicana orange. It was great to re-charge in the sun, especially when you live in a place that deprives your skin of the sun's rays for 4+ months.

When I came back from my Floridian excursion, I was hoping to find a warm Toronto turning into Spring heaven: flowers blooming, fresh green buds, sun, etc. Instead I found SNOW! (I should have taken a picture of that).

So here's a picture I took of an unnamed man, taking life one day at the time by the ocean.

Take it in slowly and may it last you until the weather decides to change...

Back... again

2011-04-25T11:29:00.003-04:00

Dear BintheB readers,

I am sorry for this outrageous hiatus, but it's been nuts in "real-life" and as such I've slacked off in the blogosphere.

Unfortunately my life hasn't gotten any easier or less hectic recently, but I understand the importance of keeping this blog going, if not for your reading pleasure, then for my own sanity and for future reference. That's why I have decided to continue writing and filling up the web with interesting and quirky posts.

Since it would be extremely challenging to update you on what's going on in the last 6 or so months, I will start anew with new umphs and tales to be told.

So here is to you dear readers (and future me), to new beginnings and staying on track with self-imposed disciplines.

Hope you all had a fantastic Easter and were able to meditate on such a wonderful sacrifice... a sacrifice that could only come from He who loves us more than we can ever imagine, He who knows our inner most secrets and still chooses to forgive us, He who have given us victory over death and the sin that ties up to the tombstone. Thank you Jesus! You are SO worthy!

I had a remarkable time with my family in which I was able to yet again be reminded of Christ's sacrifice and place my life into that perspective: I am no longer lost, no longer doomed. My life finds purpose on the cross!

Glory to God!

Foreign Body

2010-10-27T23:19:00.007-04:00

Even after I saw it I found it hard to believe.

So many questions inundated my mind:

how?...

why?...

HOW?

What am I referring to? There's no point in describing it. So take a look for yourself.

This is the case of a 35 yr old Mexican man that presented with rectal bleeding, abdominal pain and an altered mental status to a local hospital. I mean, that's the least you can experience with - yes... that is a - BOTTLE inside your rectum.

Fortunately for this man, the bottle was spotted via this X-ray and removed in its entirety. The journal article didn't specify whether the man fully recovered, but if he did, I think he would be bragging right now and telling his kids about the tale of the "missing bottle".

But seriously... HOW?

The answer: SHOES!

2010-10-27T17:32:00.002-04:00

Earlier this term I posted a note on the harsh dilemma of dressing appropriately for school/work as a commuter grad student.

I argued that my long commute (about 1.5 hours one-way) across the GTA exposed me to two different cultural groups: white-collar workers (aka. "the Go Train Riders") and economically struggling students with inventive minds (aka. "the Uni Studs"), and as such, I had to dress appropriately for these two completely different environments.

On these last two months, I have come to a conclusion that one cannot be slave to two masters, so I cannot expect to please both of these fashionably different groups. One day I find myself dressing up as I had an important meeting to go to (which I most of the time don't) and other days I find myself wearing creatively colourful outfits with lots of home-made jewelry. After all, I love both styles and feel comfortable in both.

However, I have recently noticed that the answer to my dilemma is in the shoes I wear. I have realized that if I wear fancy looking shoes (ie. high heel boots) for the train commute and then change to more comfortable and practical shoes (ie. flat-ish leather closed-toed shoes) while at university, I fit a bit better in both crowds and I don't feel like the reject who didn't know what to wear.

Thanks for letting me (keep) rant(ing) about this preoccupying issue!

Last master's note... Convocation!

2010-10-17T00:22:00.004-04:00

Today was a gorgeous fall day. Wonderful fall colours inundating the streets as fallen leaves accumulate on the sidewalks, a marvellous sun warming up the air, and a fresh breeze playing with my hair... and my skirt.

What better day could I have asked for to celebrate the (official) culmination of my master's degree.

Yes! Another year has gone by and I find myself wearing the ceremonious black robe again, however this year it just felt different.
Perhaps not as commemorative?

I finished my degree in a year so it's been only 14 months since my last graduation. Is that maybe why graduation feels strange?

Although I do agree that the close proximity of my convocation ceremonies may have played a role on how non-commemorative this day felt, I think that the fact that I'm celebrating this academic accomplishment a couple of months after I started my new career makes it feel just like another formality.

But dear reader, don't get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed my day!

The ceremony was short and sweet. I got to WarMem, got into a robe (after a $25 robe fee! never heard of before! PREPOSTEROUS!) and chatted with my great "colleagues" like we had seen each other the day before, the same casualness as usual. We walked into the hall to the melody of a melancholic scottish bagpipe and were greeted into the room by many smiling fans.Our speaker, Dr. G. Walker is a distinguished educator and researcher at MIT, and his words may have touched me more than any other individual in that room because I related very closely to his passion for both science and mentoring.
One the comments that impacted me the most referred to on leading a balanced life and making time for the people you love. As a (science) researcher striving for success (whatever that may be-I will leave that discussion for another post!) one has to invest a lot of time into one's work. However, some people become hermits or lab gnomes that push people away and prefer to be left alone with their cells or microbes than with those who care about them. I agree that to achieve real success you have to lead a balanced life, becoming involved in more things than just science, making time for your loved ones, and having a thick skin and a matching good sense of humour.

After we received our degrees we went outside to meet with friends and family. I was glad to see my mom and brothers with me (even if they missed the ceremony) and I was glad to see my friends: awesome people, great students and promising leaders of tomorrow. I was happy to take pictures with Christine, Shannon, Blair and Sabrina (pictures to come!) and capture our best master's moment. I was also happy to take a picture with my supervisor (yet now according to him: colleague) David. He has been such a great support and inspiration during my year at Guelph that I have much to thank him for. I was glad he could make it to the ceremony but kind of disappointed that he didn't get to wear a funny hat!

Yes, today's ceremony didn't feel as commemorative as previous ones but it accomplished its purpose. I was so happy to remember my days at Guelph with the help of my friends and colleagues and to celebrate the amazing accomplishment and blessing that was to start, pursue and finish my master's degree. Glory to God!

Better late than never: A day in the life of Diana's marathon (plog=picture blog)

2010-09-26T22:55:00.018-04:00

Ok, I didn't really run an entire marathon... I ran a charity 5K run during the Toronto Waterfront Marathon.

Here are some pictures!

I got downtown early in the morning to absorb the entire atmosphere!!!

Such a great experience... everyone was cheering for each other!

And I checked the half marathon runners... so intense!

Then, I checked in my bags and took the shuttle to the 5K start at the CNE.

I met with the rest of the A Run For Liane group (my charity of choice) and went to my coloured corral (purple!)

Waiting for the line to move... chilly!

Running and trying to get away from the crowds at the CNE

I found this sight very funny...

Water/Gatorade break... very slippery!

Oh my gosh, only 1 km left! Already ran out of E!

Running on the middle of Bay St... when else would you get to do this and not get killed?

(gotta love the benefits of a marathon!)

Somehow, I started to pick up the pace at this point...

I figured, if I had already made it this far, might as well keep going, plus everyone's cheering really helped bring the E back up! 200m to go!

SO CLOSE! Can't stop now... this is where I start "sprinting"!

MADE IT! Victory pic after crossing the finish line!

such a wonderful day for a marathon!

Group shot with A Run For Liane folk!

Group shot with some of my lab members!

FINISHER!

Get dressed for success!

2010-09-15T23:18:00.005-04:00

(beware of outrageous generalizations!)

As a commuting grad student, I find myself torn between two different fashion worlds.

For once, most individuals commuting to the city on a weekday morning are white-collar working folks who need to dress up for work. You see it all: expensive suits, expensive shoes and expensive purses [aside: as well as iPads, TONS of smart-phones and other technological gadgets that people probably don't really need]. Dress code: business formal

Yes, it's true. There are others riding the same early morning train who do not display the same fashion sense simple because they believe that feeling comfortable in their clothes/shoes trumps looking like a million bucks on those hot heels that make your face squirm in pain.

Now, on the north end of my commuter journey, University-ville, a place for individuals with growing minds, innocent (and sometimes naive) hopes and dreams, and a "student-budget"=empty pockets. I might be generalizing, but the contrast from the commuter train to the packed downtown subway is quite clear, worthy of a p-value of under 0.05 (aka. significant), and robust enough to be making these types of allegations in this reputable and scientifically accurate (most of the times) blog.

Students dress like students because (a) they are under a tight student budget (which prevents them from purchasing quality garments, or laundry detergent), (b) have just rolled out of bed, (c) they are trying to stick it to the man by dressing in an unconventional manner than goes against everything our society (ie. the corporate white-necks that ride the commuter train) establishes. Again, this may be a generalization, but please agree with me for the sake of my post's argument.

Here comes my dilemma.

Although I am (still) a student, I feel like I have to dress in a manner that doesn't get me any stares or visual "put-downs" from my commuter kin, but that it doesn't scream out "corporate wannabe" to my fellow grad students. I mean, no one expects a grad student to look like a res-living frosh who cannot be seen wearing anything but their single pair of sweatpants and hoodie. Grad students are part students, part workers; thus, a fine balance must be achieved when it comes to our clothing choices.

Add being a commuter to this recipe and you could perhaps visualize my current fashion style: businessy Einstein

What's this PhD about?

2010-09-11T13:40:00.007-04:00

I started working in my new lab this week.

I have to say how ecstatic I am with this fantastic opportunity and how excited I am of the research I will be pursuing there!

During my PhD degree I will be examining the role of genetic variation on cancer predisposition and prognosis, which basically refers to how/when the cancer will develop. I will be studying childhood cancers, although I do not know exactly what type of cancer(s) yet.

The DNA tree

(If you think this is complex, just imagine the real thing!)

This is a fascinating field for which I feel very passionate about. For the past ten years, I've been personally aware of the devastating consequences of this ubiquitous disease and its impact on the lives of the kids who have to deal with it. Similar to many types of adult cancers, childhood cancer is spontaneous and haphazard, for children would have not been exposed to enough environmental carcinogens in their short lifetime to accumulate mutations that cause some types of cancer in adults (ie. lung cancer, mouth cancer).

That is why I find cancer genomics so interesting!

The findings obtained from this type of research will be able to give us clues regarding the genetic causes of cancer in children and will empower the medical community to make clinical decisions based on a patient's genetic code. Indeed, a patient's genetic variation has been associated to how they will respond to a particular course of treatment (Tabori, J. Clin Oncol, 2010) or how young they will be when they develop cancer (Tabori, Cancer Res, 2007), among others. Therefore, if you are able to analyze patients' genomes, more personalized treatment or screening options will be available for them.

Unfortunately, cancer cannot be prevented. But identifying people that might be predisposed to this desease and providing them with the appropriate screening tests necessary to catch cancer at an early stage, might help reduce the mortality rate associated with it.

This is what I will be studying for the next little while. I still don't know the specifics of my project, but I will make sure to update this blog once I have a better idea.

To a fantastic PhD career, Cheers!

I'm done and officially in!

2010-08-24T00:51:00.009-04:00

This is just a quick post for some overdue updates:

I finally finished my MSc!!! WOOOHOOO!

finding primers and ordering them
diluting primers (preparation of working solution)
validating primers and checking for dimerization and non-specific hybridization
analysis of expression of genes for which we created primers on different tissues (eg. day zero preadipocyte cDNA, day 7 differentiated adipocytes, etc)

I have been officially admitted to the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto!!!

Advanced math vs. Basic math in grad students

2010-08-18T15:58:00.001-04:00

I found this cartoon on one of my favourite sciency cartoon sites: PhD Comics (Piled Higher and Deeper).

Here it is:

I laughed so much when I read this because I could strongly identify myself with this situation. It also reminded me of an earlier post.

TOUCHE!

These are a few of my favourite things

2010-08-17T23:23:00.002-04:00

I am out of words.

It's true... I've been writing several papers for more than a month now and I feel "worded-out". However, I still wanted to give my trusty audience something to read during their daily web browse. So why not communicate via pictures?, I asked myself.

SWEET! (and mindless)

So here are a few of my favourite things (in pictures)

1. Roadtrips!!!

2. Chilling with friends in a patio while having a drink! PRICELESS!
3. Making food look pretty!!! These are some fruit and cheese arrangements I made for my parents' 25th anniversary

4. PATIOS!!! Especially love those with lots of gorgeous flowers outside!

5. COFFEE!!!! But then again, I think this is obvious for those who know me.

I got a cafe mocha and a Montreal bagel with cream cheese at the ByWard Market in Ottawa this summer after a 4-day conference! It was especially enjoyable cause I enjoyed this breakfast with some lovely people with whom I engaged in some fantastic conversations

Now, back to writing!

So close I can smell it, so far away it aches in my bones!

2010-08-03T23:55:00.003-04:00

I'm so close to being done my master's degree... just a couple of weeks left actually!
But at this very moment, as I sit on my comfy chair trying to focus on the 3rd draft of my final manuscript and panicking about the 10-page multilevel assignment due in less than 2 weeks that I haven't started yet, I truly wish the end was nearer.

To tell you the truth, I wish I could just go to sleep for days and wake up to the aroma of freshly-baked bread and coffee. I wish I could wake up and read a couple of books that I've been putting away because I haven't had the time to read non-academic related material, go for a swim, go for a walk, watch movies, etc. I guess I just feel like relaxing for a little bit.

So before I burn out, DAYS before the end of my master's (God forbid), I think I better go to bed and dream about my happy place.

"The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold."

Psalm 18:2

Obesity and Physical Exercise... what a dilemma!

2010-07-08T23:17:00.006-04:00

I read something interesting in Science Daily today.
The article reported on some recent British findings that analyzed the relationship between obesity and physical exercise.

Scientists in charge of the Early Bird study at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth UK, tried to make sense of some findings that suggested that obese children didn't lose very much weight (up to 90g over 3 years) during intervention trials. This means they didn't lose as much weight as they had hoped after engaging them in a physical activity regime.

The Early Bird study sought out to answer this conundrum: was it that obese children engaged in less physical exercise because they were obese, or lack of physical exercise made sedentary children obese?

The results, recently published in Archives of Disease in Childhood, suggest that physical activity does not influence weight loss, but rather, increased weight leads to less activity.

I started to ponder that the desire or will to decrease or stop physical activity in obese children might be due to physical limitations. After all, obesity is known to mediate complications in metabolism, such as decreased pulmonary function and cardiopulmonary distress. These can be particularly affected if weight gain is concurrent to development, just as in the case of children. This is one of the many reasons why it is CRUCIAL to prevent infant and childhood obesity!

The article then called for a greater emphasis on obesity prevention by dietary means and managing common factors that lead children to gain weight rapidly during development, such as the quality of food available to them (junk foods vs. healthy foods) and teaching them proper food selection.

In reality it is far better to prevent than to treat once it's too late!

Super Easy Baba Ganoush

2010-06-23T20:52:00.004-04:00

Due to my recent publication in pubmed, my supervisor suggested we had an apéro, a french term for an aperitif or an alcoholic drink usually accompanied with an appetizer or snacks.

He had done this at his previous labs and wanted to start the tradition in our lab. I couldn't object as he provided the alcoholic drink (sparkling wine), so it was up to me to bring snacks in to enjoy with the bubbly.

This is when the eggplant that had been sitting in my fridge for a week came to mind, and I decided to prepare some homemade baba ganoush, a garlicky dip made out of eggplant.

So here's a really simple version of baba ganoush

for anyone who might be looking for a simple and tasty dip or a recipe for that eggplant that's been in your fridge for too long:

Diana's Baba Ganoush

1 large eggplant
4 garlic cloves, minced
the juice of 1 large lime or lemon
1 tsp tahini sauce (this is sesame seed based, so if you don't have any tahini handy, use some sesame seeds instead!)
1 tsp of finely chopped ginger root
olive oil to taste
salt and pepper
freshly chopped parsley (to taste)

Prick eggplant with fork multiple times and place on a baking sheet in pre-heated 450F oven. Roast for about 20-30 minutes (until flesh is tender)
Remove eggplant from oven, let cool a bit and start removing the skin
Place flesh in food processor as well as the garlic cloves, the lime/lemon juice, the tahini sauce and ginger root.
Start pureeing and add olive oil until you acquire desired consistency (I like mine a bit thick so I didn't add much. If you like your dip a little more runny, add more lime/lemon juice and oil as required)
Add salt, pepper and parsley to taste (or you might want to add the parsley on top)
Serve with warm pita bread, crackers, chips, etc.

optional: you might want to add your own flavour and make it special. For example, you might want to add hot sauce, curry, paprika, or any other herb that you have handy. It can only enhance the flavour!

Macs... they're just something else!

2010-06-18T14:08:00.004-04:00

I'm currently in the midst of writing an article outlining the findings of my masters project. Because it's a primary article (an article describing the outcomes of a scientific experiment), I have to produce various figures and tables in order to depict my results and explain my findings.

I have to say that I am ecstatic to have a mac that allows me to create wonderful graphics that are very easy to modify, among other things. Today, as I was trying to crop one of my figures, I came about a website that described 8 beautiful things about a Mac program called "Preview", which allows to read PDFs, figure and picture files and also lets you modify them. It's a charm!

Here's the website. I found it very helpful. Hope you do too!

Another feature that I love about my mac that I was unable to do with my old PC is multitask. I don't mean having a couple of word files, a couple of Google Chrome pages open and my iTunes running. I mean having 23 PDFs open at the same time while juggling between a few word, excel and powerpoint documents, iTunes, Google Chrome, iCalendar... I guess I can get quite wound up when I need to get work done. What a fantastic little machine.

And let's not talk about the battery life. I remember that by the end of the first year of my first PC laptop (mid 2006), the battery life was barely an hour long. This coming week, my little mac get to celebrate his 1st year under my wonderful care and it can still function for more than 4 hours without being charged (mind you, this number changes if I start procrastinating and decide to watch a movie or a couple of episodes on SurftheChannel). Nonetheless, it's still priceless (figure of speech!).

So as the new academic year approaches at a surprising pace and students look for a new reliable and powerful computer, here's my suggestion: go for a mac! Yes, they are more expensive than other PC laptops out there, but this beauty is definitely worth the extra buck (or multiple bucks). And I'm sure that apart from all the aforementioned features you will also enjoy the fact that you will not get to lose your precious documents due to a silly virus that has managed to invade your computer thanks to the downloads you continuously run as you sit impatiently waiting to watch the next episode of your favourite sitcom in your lonely dorm room. Sad but true, but now you know!

Canadian Obesity Network Student Meeting (part1)

2010-06-15T22:32:00.008-04:00

This past week, I had the amazing opportunity to participate in the Canadian Obesity Network (CON) Student Meeting which took place at the University of Ottawa.

Throughout the span of four days, I was exposed to amazing oral presentations, poster sessions, talks, food and lots of socializing. Our days were so packed, we barely had time to check out the great touristic attractions of our nation's capital. (Nonetheless, we made some time! Here's some proof!)

So, what was I doing there?

I was selected to present a poster outlining the research I have carried out during the initial 9 months of my master's degree. It was challenging to fit all the findings I have obtained into a 3x4 ft. poster, but seeing as the overall topic of this conference was obesity, I tailored my findings to highlight how it is applicable in the study of obesity-more specifically from a genomics perspective.

So my research focused on the influence that genetic variations in enzymes involved in the formation of fat molecules have on fat concentrations in blood. That's the main idea at least.

I was really surprised to see that there was almost no mention of the genetic influences involved in obesity, since most of the research presented at the conference was based on intervention studies and clinical approaches involving eating behaviours and the obese phenotype. That being said, I learnt a lot about these types of studies and their importance in the prevention and management of this condition.

My presentation went great! I had really great feedback from the judging panel, including Dr. K. Adamo, Dr. P. Imbeault and Dr. B. Fontaine-Bisson. I felt extremely at ease explaining my research findings to people with an extensive genetics background as well as to others who would normally stop listening at the mention of the words "gene" or "genotype/phenotype". The latter were very thankful that I was able to place my research into a more applicable context that they could relate to, and understand.

At night, the organizing committee had organized multiple social events taking place in ByWard Market, a quaint area near our residence with a vibrant nightlife. We visited some interesting places such as the cute pub with amazing live music "Heart and Crown" and the trendy lounge with a fantastic patio "Foundations".

Even though we were encouraged to socialize and meet other people, the loud atmosphere prevented us from chatting with others without some awkward misunderstandings and voice strains. We still had tons of fun though!

On swag at conferences

2010-06-09T13:20:00.003-04:00

I am currently riding a train to Ottawa and making the most of ViaRail's complimentary wireless internet. I feel privileged to live in a country where internet is highly appreciated and most of the time, free. On the other hand, I can only imagine how useless this technological pampering is going to make me... "What do you mean there is no wireless or internet access in this remote village, sir? NOOOOOOOOOO!"

For now, I'll just enjoy it and tell you what I found while I was browsing the web. No ladies and gentlemen, I wasn't only looking at facebook.

I found this blog entry very relevant to my current experience as it talks about the free "swag" one gets at scientific/medical conferences.

The ASCO Meeting: The swag disappears! (2010 edition)

Really interesting read!

Yet I hope I don't experience that this type of rejection this week... I'm really looking forward to free post-its, pens, magnets, coffee and other goodies.

On Genetics and Anthropology

2010-06-08T19:24:00.003-04:00

I always found the marriage between genetics and anthropology to be something fascinating.

At a first glance, these two fields wouldn't seem to be able to mesh properly. I mean, the study of human genetics focuses on the role genes have in the formation of everything that constitutes the human body-a pure science, while anthropology studies humanity with what I consider to be a more social approach.

Deciphering life...

However, anthropology, as I just learned, is much more than social sciences and the way people interact with each other. This field tries to answer the question what is humanity? and how did it become it? And what better way to answer these insightful questions than by going back to the most fundamental pieces of the human puzzle... the genes!

It makes sense then, for these two fields to be studied in unison to go beyond deciphering what genes code for or how they work, but dig deeper at the root of why they work that way. This is where the study of human interactions and its surroundings comes in handy, to explain why genes work the way they do according to different factors such as environment, diet, etc.

This is something I am very intrigued with. In my studies, I have come across cases in which a simple explanation of what genes did wasn't enough to elucidate how a particular outcome came about. For example, if I know "Suzie" has type 1 of gene "G" (G1) then theoretically, she should be able to eat burgers all day and not gain weight. However, we sometimes observe that people with a G1 gene type (genotype) deviate from the common outcome and DO gain weight after eating burgers all day. Why is that? How can this be explained by only looking at the genotypes? It basically can't. That's why you need to analyze this association taking into account other aspects such as other genes, the type of burgers eaten, family history, etc. As well, because genes evolve according to one's surroundings over thousands of years, it is important not only to look at immediate events or exposure that might have modified genetic response in the short term, but to analyze these changes in the context of our ancestor's environments and types of stress they were exposed to.

Collaboration between genetics and anthropology fields is necessary to look at the BIG PICTURE, which in my opinion is a hilarious juxtaposition considering we are analyzing the most elemental matter of human life. Yet, this will be perhaps the only way in which we will be able to understand the challenging changes we are observing in our world nowadays and of which we are the main protagonists. After all, unresponsive burger-eaters who might be at high risk of a stroke or diabetes, are not made overnight.

What I was reading: Pandora’s Seed GUEST ESSAY / BY SPENCER WELLS / JUNE 7, 2010 (http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/pandoras_seed/)

"FROM OBESITY TO CHRONIQUE FATIGUE SYNDROME, JIHADISM TO URBAN ENNUI, THE COSTS OF CIVILIZATION ARE BECOMING EVER MORE APPARENT. SPENCER WELLS EXPLORES ADAPTING TO A WORLD WHERE ACCELERATING CHANGE IS THE NEW STATUS QUO."

Note: I found the scientific commentary very insightful, yet I don't agree with all of his statements. Take it in with discretion.

Wake up and smell the coffee!

2010-06-02T16:03:00.004-04:00

This is a devotional I wrote about 5 years ago. I was asked by my youth pastor to write a small devo of any Bible verse I wished, so I chose Ephisians 5:8-14:

⁸For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light ⁹(for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) ¹⁰and find out what pleases the Lord. ¹¹Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. ¹²For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. ¹³But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, ¹⁴for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said:
"Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you."

I found this text to be very relevant to the stage of life I found myself in, getting used to an academic environment and feeling way too comfortable with my group of Christian friends. Thus, I decided to comment on how we should strive to actively be salt and light and to WAKE UP from our monotone routines. Tell me what you think!

"Ephesians 5: 8-14 Wake up and smell the coffee!

How many times have we heard of this expression?
Many people use this phrase without thinking what it really means. And no,
unfortunately it doesn't mean that one should wake up and smell the amazing
aroma of a cup of Starbucks coffee. (yum!)

In my opinion, it means that we should wake up from a life of complacency,
from a life full of pointless routines and especially from a life of
spiritual deadness.

God calls us to WAKE UP! From the numbness created in our lives by routine
and to make the most of every opportunity, make the most of our lives here
on Earth. If we are awake, God promises to shine light unto us and be a
blessing in our lives and through us be a blessing to others:

"I will make you a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name
great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you and all people of the Earth will be blessed
through you."
(Genesis 12:2-3 NIV)

This is what God promised Abraham millions of years ago and fulfilled that
promise! Now God offers this promise to us! God wants us to be awake and
alert to shine that light unto others, showing the wonderful love of Christ
through our words and actions. So once you start thinking about it, wouldnít
you want to wake up and smell the coffee?

CHECK IT OUT!
Ephesians 5:14 - "Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ will
shine on you."

Diana Merino is 18 and from Waterloo, ON."

http://www.youtheventz.com/christmasdevo0506.htm

Soup Kitchen

2010-05-20T21:55:00.003-04:00

For the past 2 weeks, I have been fortunate to volunteer at the Royal City Church (RCC) soup kitchen.

I have always been interested on volunteering at one of these places because I feel that I mostly volunteer with children and haven't had the chance to interact with adults.

At first, I wasn't sure what to expect. What kind of people would I see? What kind of food would I serve? (Do they really serve soup at soup kitchens?) Would I be in danger at any time?

Well, I'm glad to say that I am really happy with what I have experienced so far.

The RCC soup kitchen gets all types of people. From teenagers to senior adults. From people with congenital disabilities to drug addicts, alcoholics and people suffering from mental illnesses. I have seen people with just a plastic bag holding their belongings, people with nice watches and cell phones, and even a lady with a blackberry! I have seen people that if I was to see them in the street, I would have never imagined they couldn't afford their daily bread. This was an eye opener. I guess you never know who goes to bed hungry... appearances are deceiving.

Every week, the volunteers in charge of preparing the food do their best to serve the best food they are able to afford. Last week we served roast beef, pastrami and ham and cheese sandwiches, menestrone soup and a wide variety of desserts (including 3 different types of pies, chocolate croissants and cinnamon rolls)! I mean, these people receive good food! And this fact makes me happy because giving to the needy doesn't mean giving the worse or things we don't want or need anymore. Giving generously means giving the best!

I haven't found myself in danger at all. I'm really enjoying myself as I interact with some of the "regulars". They are actually very friendly and will try their best to remember your name. Some will share a bit of their lives with you, others will ask you to play board games with them. Some are more friendly than others but in reality they all appreciate the work you do for them!

Today, an older man came to the serving table just as we were done serving and told one of the people in charge that he felt particularly special because we smiled at him and didn't "treat him like shit". WOW! that opened my eyes to the times I avoid making eye contact with the homeless and ignore the fact that they are people made in God's image just like me.

So yes! I am very happy I was able to connect with this program and now volunteer at the soup kitchen. I feel God is using this opportunity to show me how He loves and cares for all His children and how much I have been blessed with. It definitely puts things into perspective!

Reliance in the One

2010-05-10T09:18:00.004-04:00

Have you ever found yourself at a crossroads and didn't have a clue what way to go? Now imagine that instead of there being only 2 roads to choose from, there's an infinite number of roads, all without a visible end in sight. BAH! You panic.

That is where I find myself right now. I'm at a stage in my life where everything in front of me is uncertainty. It's like being stuck in the middle of the ocean without a visible shoreline, having no clue in what direction to start swimming towards. I know I need to start swimming but I just don't know where to start. I'm sure everyone goes through this at some point or another, but instead of having hope in numbers, I have hope in the One who throws in the lifesaver, the One who promises me a glorious beach to rest on after I'm done swimming, the One who never abandons me, even when I disobey or insult Him. WOW. He's so good!

I rest assured that I'm not going through this alone and that He has the best in store for me. I'm very excited to see what beach I end up in! I'll let you know as soon as I get there!

Chilaquiles a la Diana

2010-05-02T00:00:00.002-04:00

Here's a recipe for you Mexican cuisine lovers.

Chilaquiles are, in my personal opinion, a denser, meal-like version of Mexican nachos. When I asked my Mexican friends what the main differences were between chilaquiles and nachos, they instantly mentioned the fact that nachos are normally made with "yellow" cheese, instead of the gooey white Oaxaca cheese-a Mexican delicacy. Then they explained how chilaquiles constitute more of an actual meal instead of an appetizer and how Mexicans usually have chilaquiles for breakfast. BREAKFAST? Talk about jumpstarting your day!

It's true. Chilaquiles are considered an easy and money-saving breakfast meals because they use leftovers such as day-old tortillas, salsa, chicken, eggs, etc. Who knew such an exquisite dish was the result of last night's dinner and a little creativity!

Intrigued by the concept of this mouth-watering dish, I decided to invite my Mexican friends over and give chilaquiles a try. I had to improvise with some of the ingredients, but that is what makes this particular recipe my own. My friends were pleased with my innovative creation and I was pleased by the Mexican nod of approval.

Chilaquiles a la Diana in Creamy Poblano Sauce

Ingredients:

***the "real" ingredients in brackets***

Tostitos (fried tortillas or tostadas)
Shredded Mozarella cheese (Oaxaca cheese or queso fresco)
A couple of chiles poblanos for creamy sauce (replace with either tomate, jitomate or mole sauce)
Half an onion for sauce
Jalapeno peppers for sauce
Cream-or milk and butter-for sauce
Feta cheese for sauce and topping
Sour cream for topping

Instructions:

For sauce (recall, traditional chilaquiles use tomate-green, jitomate-red or mole sauce):
-Chop the 1/2 onion and chile poblano into medium sized pieces. Finely chop as much jalapeno pepper as you think you can handle, after removing the seeds carefully.
-Melt some butter on low-heat skillet and place onions first. Once the onions have become translucent, add the chile and peppers. Let sizzle until chiles become soft.
-Add heavy cream (or milk and butter) and let it simmer until reduced.
-Transfer hot contents into blender or food processor and puree with lid ajar.
-Add salt to taste
*I normally like to reduce the sauce until it's thick so that I don't end up with chilaquile soup!*
Place tostitos on baking sheet lined with parchment paper
Pour sauce over chips (trying to cover the entire sheet)
Generously spread the shredded cheese over the chips bathed in sauce (I added Feta cheese cause I had some in the fridge... it couldn't hurt)
Place the sheet in pre-heated over (350F) and remove once the cheese starts to bubble
Serve in individual plates and place sour cream on top.
Enjoy and get messy (you will need utensils if the chips get soggy!)

GAH! All my roomies are gone!

2010-04-30T23:16:00.004-04:00

And that is how 8 months go by... like the blink of an eye.

As I type this, I can only think of how quiet my place is (thank goodness the people upstairs are not around) and how I'll have to be the one who locks the door, turns off the light and makes sure nothing is left on in the kitchen. I mean, I don't really mind these things, but for the last 8 months I shared this task with my wonderful roommates.

"Crazy artist party" Anne's birthday

Tini left a week ago for an internship position in Toronto. She's not far away and I'm really looking forward to paying her a visit to the big city. She has offered to take me to a piano bar and if you know me at all, you would understand how excited I am about this possibility. She's going back to DEU in July so I have to make sure to visit her before then. I certainly miss coming home and finding her here, chatting while I made some dinner and learning more about her life in Germany. She's such a wonderful girl and I'm very happy that we ended up living together, even if it was for only 4 months!

Anne left today and we had to bid adieu over early breakfast. It was a bitter-sweet moment. I really enjoyed getting to know her and spending time with her. We were the Super Brother pair... I was Mario, she was Luigi, and we were known for our speed-walking abilities. I would teach her some Spanish, she would teach me some German. I would teach her some new songs on the guitar, and she would imitate Courtney! Hahaha... We would keep each other company when hell broke loose upstairs and we would walk together to and from downtown so we didn't have to walk alone. She taught me to never complain and be tolerant of others and I hope I taught her something as well.

I'm so happy for her and for what she has learned from her Canadian experience. I rest assured by the fact that we'll see each other again and we'll rock it like the good ol' Guelph times!

Even though my roommates are now gone, I'm so happy to know that I don't have to be alone. My best friend moved in the day I arrived in Guelph, and even though He has a busy schedule, He'll stick around for good!

On DHA, IQ and nutrigenomics

2010-04-15T00:12:00.003-04:00

Several studies have shown beneficial effects of DHA (omega-3 fatty acid) and AA (omega-6 fatty acid) in brain development, due to their effect in neurotransmission and neuron repair after cell damage (ie. Marszalek et al., 2005 & Lesa et al., 2003).

These fatty acids are accumulated in the human brain during the first postnatal month, so increasing blood-DHA levels for breastfeeding or feeding with a DHA-supplemented formula is very important for proper brain development and normal cognitive abilities.

However, it has been studied that not only the levels of DHA in the mother's milk or the DHA-supplemented formula have an effect on brain development and cognition. Caspi et al. found that genes involved in fat metabolism modulate the relationship between breast milk (high in DHA levels) and cognition (as measured by IQ).

This means that a baby's genes may influence how well they are able to store DHA in their brain as newborns, which in turn may determine their IQ level!

Caspi et al. found that for one genetic variant (rs174575-the name of a DNA site in which single nucleotide variations occur, in this case either a C or a G), infants with a CG or CC combination had greater IQ points (+6.8 points) when breastfed compared to formula (assuming formula wasn't supplemented with DHA), and infants carrying a GG combination had no difference in IQ points when fed either breast milk or formula.

These results basically mean, that if a baby has the rare form of this allele (GG), the levels of DHA provided through breast milk or DHA-supplemented formula will not have an effect on their individual IQ. However, if a baby carries the most common combinations (CG and CC), their IQ will increase if provided with higher levels of DHA.

This is a very interesting finding since these results demonstrate that genes can actually "control" how well a brain develops according to the levels of DHA given. This is a perfect example of a diet-gene interaction (genes affect how diet influences a particular condition or phenotype) and as such, it's also considered a perfect example of nutrigenomics!

Fatty fish (ie. salmon) contains considerable amounts of DHA!

Today I learned: How to transform neglog10 into p-val

2010-04-10T00:06:00.003-04:00

This might sound a little silly but math doesn't get easier when you're studying your masters.

Today I stumbled across a math problem that I'm sure my grade 12 brother could have solved in seconds.

If, NegLog10(p-val)=y
Then, p-val=?

If your answer is: p-val=y/NegLog10, you are on the right track but not quite there yet.

It took Mike and I about 10 minutes to solve this cause we are both super rusty at our high-school level math! (mostly him though...hahaha)

Alright, here's how it got solved:

Let: p-val=x
Let: NegLog10 value =y

NegLog10(x)=y (solve for x)

1. Recall:NegLog10(x)= Log10(1/x)
2. Thus, y=Log10(1/x)
3. (and this is what took us forever to figure out...) Recall: y/Log10=10^y (DUH!)
4. 10^y=1/x
5. x= 1/(10^y)

Now you know!

Letters to God

2010-04-06T23:42:00.005-04:00

As a way of recollecting my thoughts and taking a tiny little break from school work, I watch movie trailers on the apple website. I enjoy it. It's quick, entertaining and mindless. Just what I need as a study break.

Today I found myself at http://trailers.apple.com/ and saw the trailers for a couple of movies. The first one was "Dinner for Schmucks" with Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd.

It's a light comedy, Steve-Carrell style (which means silly-funny!). The trailer was alright. I personally wouldn't pay to go watch it at the movies.

The second movie trailer I watched was called "Letters to God". I was truly inspired by the storyline (which you can find here). It is about an 8-year old boy suffering from cancer and the effect his faith has on others.

Watching the trailer almost made my heart melt. As a person who has been personally shaken by similar circumstances, I could identify with the story and what the characters were going through. Cancer has touched the lives of more people than I could even imagine, yet the right attitude has the power to place things into perspective and focus on life, rather than death.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this soon (it comes out this Friday!)

Nutrigenomics

2010-04-05T21:48:00.004-04:00

My current research project is based in Nutrigenomics.

This term might be new to most of you, but in simplest terms, Nutrigenomics is the study of the interaction between food and genes. This means that nutrigenomic scientists study how foods affect the way your genes work and how your predetermined genetic makeup affects the way you use nutrients in your body. Cool, eh?

Well now that you know what Nutrigenomics means, you might ask yourself: So how does that help me?. I'm glad you asked!

Nutrigenomics research is very relevant. Research in this field can improve the way you eat, the way you loose weight, your health and most importantly, it can prevent and manage many metabolic diseases by looking at your genes. Since everyone's genes are different, not everybody responds best to the same type of diets or treatments. For that reason, determining what types of diets or treatments your genes will respond to best is ideal for long-lasting weight loss and effective therapeutic treatments.

For example, a devastating disease such as diabetes can be approached with a Nutrigenomics angle in order to personalize treatment (administer drugs or recommend lifestyle modifications that will keep sugar levels low, which are considered to be more effective for a person according to their unique set of genes ) and improve diabetes management.

If you're interested in this field, keep visiting my blog as I will post more information on Nutrigenomics. In the mean time, check this article found in "Science Daily".

Considering diabetes treatment, experts say one size does not fit all

ScienceDaily (2010-04-05) -- Patients with type 2 diabetes are generally treated similarly despite the fact that they may have underlying differences that could affect their therapeutic response. A group of experts has just issued recommendations for individualized treatment.

I'm back!

2010-04-05T21:39:00.003-04:00

Dear loyal readers,

After taking a short blogging sabbatical, I've returned to bring you more of the interesting articles you want to read. You'll be reading more about curious science facts, nutritional recommendations and quirky reflections, thoughts and opinions.

Enjoy!

yours truly,

Diana

The Olympics and Long Legs

2010-02-13T21:41:00.003-05:00

Today, as I watched the Olympics, "what-if's" invaded my mind.

What if I was encouraged to pursue a competitive sport since childhood? What if my parents had placed a greater emphasis on sports by setting different priorities in my household? What if I had decided to give up a "normal" upbringing and replaced it with early morning practices and weekend competitions? Could I have ended up at the Olympics? Could it had been me kissing a medal on the podium crying with tears of joy?

I don't know. Maybe? But I did notice something when I was watching Dutch speed skater Kramer skate for gold. Long legs make a huge difference in excelling at these types of sports.

"So, what are short-legged people supposed to do, dad? I asked. "We are the ones who get the long-legged people to the Olympics". PLOP!

In perfect harmony: my lab

2010-02-03T20:39:00.008-05:00

I have the great fortune to be a part of a great lab. Everyone gets along amazingly well, everyone respects each other, and most importantly, everyone has learned to care for one another so much that we act like a big happy lab family.

What is really impressive is how fast we've all bonded and gotten used to each others' eccentricities. And to think that this group just started working together a month ago!

So here's a small lab profile and the eccentricities that make us unique, mysterious or just plain weird.

The Sup: He's our supervisor. He cares for the well being and smooth sailing of this lovely lab-ship. Even though his office is removed from our lab, he drops in occasionally to say good morning, check that we're doing OK and invite us awesome cookies and truffles! We love treats! We also really enjoy when he calls and says: "Hi, it's (insert Sup's name here)" even though we have caller ID and we know exactly who is calling. PLOP

The Scottish Hulk: Oozing with testosterone and always ready to crack a big joke, TSH is one of our newest members. He joined us in January and the lab has not been the same. This might be due to his smart-mouth sarcastic remarks, his expressions of anger that require some muscle flexing (especially at the Waters lady and all other salespeople who take over more than 2 minutes of his precious time... God forbid!), his amazing Scottish accent (and not-so-amazing German accent), his loud laughter and his insightful anecdotes. Afterall, he is the most seasoned grad student, so he always has something to share!

The Fat Lady: Oozing with fat KNOWLEDGE, TFL is the quietest lab member, completely opposite to TSH, which is really funny cause they sit right beside each other. Due to the current lab seating arrangement, poor TFL sits right in the middle of the constant loud conversations and arguments between TSH and me. And believe me, they can get quite loud! The only thing she gets to say is: "Why do I have to be in the middle of this?". Aww. Poor TFL, I'm sure she gets a good crack out of our conversations though. Today, we even made her cry... laughing.
TFL and I go back to September when we had the great priviledge (?) to take STATs and 6040. Great times! Great Fall partner in crime and my personal "Starbucks-Fridays" coffee buddy. Always there for you.

Me: I would prefer if someone else said something about me. I'll just say that I bring spice to this lab concoction. Always ready to contribute with a smile, a laugh, a lame pun, a song, a silly dance, an order (including a coffee order from across the street, thanks TSH-my personal Coffee-B!!!), an environmentally-friendly perspective (don't throw those away, we can use them as wrapping paper!) and small sweet treats ("guys, I baked these this morning. Hope you like them!"). Let's just say more than one person has already named me "lab-mom"

The Dutch Undie: The experienced one. She's been working at the lab the longest (4 extra months) and thus is a great resource for lab experience, information and departmental gossip. She loves chocolate (which she brings to share in occasion!), horses, belly-dancing ("yo yo don't make me laugh, I'm in pain. (more laughter) No seriously, cut it off.), the colour orange and calling me names. She's actually very good at it too, so I laugh, TSH laughs and the lab laughing cycle begins (again). TDU is quite strong. Today, she broke the Eppendorf drawer so badly that TSH had to take his sweater off, pull up his sleeves and go at it. Thankfully I caught it on camara... priceless! She definitely knows how to leave her mark!

The Soft Undie: She is the other new addition to the lab. And she won it too! You see, our Sup asked TFL and I to talk to her and another undegrad candidate for the lab position. The day we were supposed to meet TSU, our class was going on a "field trip" to the campus pub (I say "field trip" because during class we were discussing the beneficial effects of coffee on liver cirrhosis. We were trying to prove this theory out. I think they call it applied learning). So, TFL and I decided to invite TSU over to the pub and talk to her there. What we didn't know was that Mr. Random, a creepy middle-aged man who couldn't shut up, was at the pub trying to pick up girls. So TSU, unknowingly, sat beside him and had to endure his constant annoying chatter for minutes. We knew right then and there that she was going to be able to get along just fine with everyone in the lab. TSU is quiet but talkative, super friendly and loves to listen to loud music while she studies.

So now you might understand the interesting dynamics that occur at this lab and why I love it so much. It's such a friendly, relaxed and cooperative atmosphere. Sometimes, it's too hard to concentrate due to all the laughter, but we also know how to buckle down and get to work. It's a good mix, a balanced blend... hmm mmm...perfect harmony.

Asking God Why...

2010-01-31T13:14:00.003-05:00

When something bad happens, we try to understand why. It's our nature. Our rational minds try to grasp the reason for why these unfortunate or catastrophic things happen, and find a culprit. Most commonly, humans turn to God and demand an explanation. "Why would you let this happen God? Why me? What did I do to deserve this?" Then we continue with something like this: "Weren't you supposed to be with me? Protect me? Didn't you promise you would take care of me?"

Some people, in their anger and frustration, turn away from God and blame him for all that's wrong in the world. What they don't know and care to understand is that everything happens for a reason. The author of Romans, a letter from the new testament, understood this very well. Paul had been persecuted and placed in jail. He suffered, he hurt. He'd had his share of gruesome moments, yet he understood that

"God causes all things to work together for good" (Rom 8:28)

Paul got it. Even in his suffering he wasn't alone. God was with him.

So you might ask "Why did God allow for him to suffer? Couldn't he have spared him?" Yes, God is all-powerful, so he could have spared him; however, he knew Paul's faith would become stronger if he allowed for this to happen. God promises that he will never allow for something that we cannot tolerate, even if it seems unbearable at the moment. He is a loving Father after all, and as such, he always takes care of his children.

This is a testimony by Dr. James McDonald regarding the suffering in Haiti:

"Faced with the gruesome scenes of the broken bodies and buildings, and the desperation of people suffering, I was also overwhelmed by the ground level, flat-out reality of people helping people. We saw obstacles overcome by obstinate people determined to get aid to those in need. We witnessed horrific tragedies but we also saw evidence of good everywhere. Having been there and back, I can tell you there's a direct, human connection, saturated with God's goodness that is descending on Haiti from every direction. If you prayed and cried for the people of Haiti, then good in your own life has already come from this tragedy."

Good is coming out of Haiti's unfortunate's situation. Compassion, love, empathy and sacrifice are being poured into this devastated country. People from around the world are changing. People are realizing that material riches can be destroyed in a matter of minutes, that self-reliance is not enough and that they are so utterly blessed to have a roof on their house, food on their plates and health.

These are the changes that are coming about from Haiti's situation. Things are working together for good. That is God's promise.

How I helped Haiti...

2010-01-25T23:43:00.003-05:00

By now everyone should be fully aware of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated the impoverished nation of Haiti on January 12, 2010. Just under 2 weeks later, the official death toll has increased to 150,000 in the capital alone. The Haitian government has estimated a number north of 200,000 deaths, however this estimate will most likely increase with time. What we thought as unthinkable has happened; and now that the search and rescue efforts have been called off, the daunting task of restoring this suffering country from the ground up is merely beginning.

Heart wrenching images and unbelievable testimonials have plagued every type of media, and I feel like the reality of Haiti's present and the uncertainty of its future follows me everywhere I go.

"What should I do about it? I'm just a financially unstable student. I don't have millions laying around that I can use to help!" That's where I found myself by the end of last week, after watching endless pleads for donations by artists such as George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Wyclef Jean. Their noble effort raised a whopping $58 million in 24 hours, an impressive sum considering how hard we were all hit by last year's recession. Still, I found myself willing but undecided on what to do to actually help. The sum I wanted to donate seemed too small to make a difference and with so many relief organizations out there, what happened if 100% of my money didn't even make it to the ones who needed it? I needed some guidance.

The guidance I had been asking for came on Sunday at church. The CEO of Compassion Canada, Dr. Barry Slauenwhite, visited us and gave us his testimony. You see, he had arrived in Port-au-Prince a couple hours before the earthquake and found himself being shaken by the powerful seismic shifts inside a mini-bus on his way to his hotel. He saw how people were running around madly trying to run away from crumbling buildings. He saw how the dust rose simbolizing the blurry sense of confusion experienced by the Haitian population. He lived it. Wow, what a powerful story. Just as he finished narrating his testimony, Dr. Slauenwhite explained how Compassion Canada is working on Haitian relief through the empowerment of the local community and the local church. This organization is not only providing fish but is also teaching Haitians how to fish. In my opinion, that's a long-term investment I would like to invest my pennies on. As well, Compassion Canada largely focuses on helping children and provides them with much more than just their physical needs, their spiritual needs. As a Christian organization, Compassion Canada ministers to communities in need, just like Haiti, placing special focus on providing hope through the message of salvation. I was taken away by the Dr. Slauenwhite's sincerity and the organization's empowering help to communities in need. I decided to donate to the Compassion Canada Haiti disaster relief and recovery fund (online donation page attached).

I am certain that my little contribution will go a long way, as well as my prayers for those who have lost so much and are suffering.

"For the LORD your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your forefathers, which he confirmed to them by oath."
Deuteronomy 4:31

Today I learned...

2010-01-19T23:11:00.003-05:00

Hi!
Welcome to my new series of posts called: "Today I learned". These posts will appear regularly on my blog and I hope you enjoy these little pieces of information, opinion or insight.

Today I learned: that sometimes you need to listen to your body and give your brain a rest!

Today I decided to sleep in because Monday was a very exhausting day. I started working at my lab at 8:30am and didn't stop until 10pm at night. I did have lunch and snack breaks, but I was mostly working, writing, attending seminars, meetings and a late night class. I was mentally exhausted and my eyes needed a break, so I decided to set my alarm for 8am.

*radio alarm turns on*

I wake up and I decide I can do with a little more sleep so I ignore the radio and doze off. I finally woke up at 8:30am, a little after my determined brain won the battle against my lazy body. "I'm definitely not going in for 9am", I thought, so then I started procrastinating with my favourite procrastinating tool: Boatload Puzzles. Instead of just finishing one puzzle, I decide to continue with a second one and later, a third one... I just needed to better my score! Then I realized I still needed to take a shower and have some breakfast. Next thing I know it's already 10:30am and I'm on the phone with my parents, catching up. "Haha... I'm definitely not going in for 11 either!"

Consequences:

the garbage was not placed on the curve on time. Haha, poor landlady will have to deal with our garbage bags in her shed till next week.
Did not start my tasks earlier during the day, so I felt bad and stayed late at the lab (so much for trying to get out of there before sunset)

On the other hand, I did have an enjoyable day. I got some things done and I definitely enjoyed the extra sleep. During my university career, I made myself think that sleep can be a waste of time. I even trained myself to be able to fully function with 6 hours of sleep a night (gym session included!). But sometimes you just have to listen to what your body is telling you (ie. SLEEP!) and follow through with it, even if your mind is used to the contrary. Routine is important but you could also benefit from those days in which you refuse to follow routine and surprise your brain with sponteneity and randomness. Spice it up a bit, you know?

Veredict: (worth it/not worth it?)
WORTH IT! What's life without some spice and some garbage in your landlady's shed?

Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe (1)

2010-01-17T17:00:00.001-05:00

I made some cookies this week and they turned out outstandingly awesome!

I found this recipe in an old notebook I had hidden in my bookshelf. I have used this recipe before, but I didn't remember when exactly, until I read an added ingredient: coffee liquor.
"Ah, liquor cookies!" like a flash of lightning, an image played in my head prompted by my memory neurons (don't quote me on this, this reference might be physiologically inaccurate). The image consists of me and my younger undergrad friends making cookies in my 3rd year apartment. At that time, the liquor cookies were the bomb... these girls had never heard of cooking with alcohol and once they tried a cookie, they never looked back.

Cooking with alcohol is a regular practice in my kitchen, and unlike some friends' beliefs (JDB, I'm referring to you!), it is not dangerous and it does not lead to drunkenness after some bites. The alcohol is evaporated during the baking process, after which you are only left with a slight and pleasant liquor flavour. I tend to replace the colloquial vanilla essence for nutty, fruity or coffee liquors. Believe it or not, it makes a difference. Or at least it produces a placebo effect of edginess and rebelliousness, going against social conventions in the kitchen. You're not really ingesting alcohol though.

This recipe calls for 2 eggs, but being a master student who seldomly sees good monetary days and finding myself egg-less, I decided to replace this by my trusty egg-replacement recipe:

EGG REPLACEMENT:
For 1 egg, mix:

1 tablespoon of baking soda
with
2 tablespoons of warm water

This definitely does the trick! (thanks Lynn!) I've used this egg replacement many times, especially when baking for vegan friends. I have to say I prefer it over "fake eggs" and I always find myself using this mix when making cookies. Apart from reducing tummy-ache after eating too much dough, I find these cookies to be moistier than those with "real eggs".

Chocolate Chip Liquor Cookies

1 cup of margarine (softened)
1 1/4 cups of brown sugar (original recipe calls for 1 cup of white and 1 cup of brown sugar. I find this to be too sweet!)
2 eggs (use egg replacement if you want to try something new. Also reduces cholesterol per bite)

2 teaspoons (approx) of coffee liquor (I also tried Amaretto, Grand Marnier, Frangelico, etc. They all seem to work!)
3 cups of all-purpose unbleached flour
1 teaspoon of baking soda mixed with 2 teaspoons of warm water
1/2 teaspoon of salt
Chocolate chips to taste

Preheat oven to 350F
Cream together margarine and sugar until smooth. Add egg replacement mix slowly and mix softly until incorporated. Stir in the liquor. Stir in the baking soda and water mix and the salt. Add flour and chocolate chips (in that order) until everything is properly mixed.
Drop by spoonfuls onto greased baking sheets.
Bake for 10 minutes (it will vary according to the size of each cookies, so try to make the sizes even!) or until edges are brown. Try not to overbake since they will dry up!
Enjoy right out of the oven when they are chewy and warm!

Makes 24+ cookies.

Older people are cool too!

2010-01-17T15:16:00.004-05:00

I like working with kids. I've been involved in different activities for kids, from babysitting to residential camp. I've even considered a career dedicated to children, their health and well-being.

So when given the option between spending time with children or the elderly, my first instinct dictates me to choose children.

However, this has prevented me from interacting with older individuals and I'm starting to regret that. Today I tried a new church by my house. Most of the people there were elderly and I got to interact with some really nice ladies that approached me when I was sipping coffee by myself. One of them was named Margaret, and even though she could not remember by name after repeating it to her more than 4 times, she made me feel welcomed and cared for. She introduced me to some more people in the church and even offered me a ride back home. She truly demonstrated the love of Christ through what she did for me today.

From now on, when given the choice between working with children or the elderly, I'll think it twice!

New Beginnings

2010-01-16T16:49:00.003-05:00

Another term has started (this one is #10!). And as with any other beginning of term, getting used to a new weekly routine takes time and effort. Classes change, schedules change, work changes, the people who you would normally see in a daily or weekly basis have moved on, and so have you.
You are not the same person you used to be, and as such, you don't do the same things you used to do. It's call progression and it only makes you stronger!

Instead of dwelling on the things I miss, I will provide you with a list of new things I enjoy (and will enjoy) this term:

Having only one class that meets once a week!
Heading my own project and feeling more independent in the lab
Bumping into people I met last term around town or campus
New faces, lame jokes and sing-alongs at the lab
Gym in the mornings!
DAYS ARE GETTING LONGER!
Journalism class!
Two (and sometimes three) roommates
New and more powerful hot plates (the old ones broke down)
New friends!

I'm sure there's lots more to add to this list but I'll leave it like this for now.

Movies (2)

2010-01-16T16:19:00.006-05:00

As I promised on my previous post, here comes a tiny review of a great movie I saw during the break...

"Invictus"

This movie tells the story of the South African national rugby team "The Springboks" and their rise to victory during the Rugby World Cup of 1995. This time coincided with Nelson Mandela's rise to office and the abolition of apartheid in this African nation. Thanks to the faith Mandela placed on The Springboks-a team tightly associated with white domination and the apartheid movement, the team became the emblem of hope for this divided South African population. Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman) used the power of rugby to bring a nation together and make them share something in common: their support for the team that represented them all as a whole.

A big part of this successful story is attributed to François Pienaar, the captain of the South African team, who, at least in the movie, not only lead his team by example, but also believed in Mandela's plans to unite a very divided and resentful South African population. Matt Damon plays this character really well and at various parts of the movie, we observe the admiration he had for Mandela and the inspiration he obtained from the president's life.

Really great movie! I found myself grinning during most of the film, and it felt like a steal because I didn't pay to see it! No, I did not sneak into the cinema. I had a movie certificate from 2 Christmases ago!

I recommend you watch it when you have some time! Even if you don't follow rugby, these performances will keep you entretained until the credits roll and you see pictures from the actual event nearly 15 years ago!

Movies (1)

2010-01-03T15:11:00.009-05:00

This Christmas break, I was blessed with free time to watch a couple of inspiring movies at the theatre. Here's my take on movie #1:

My mom and I had some mother-daughter bonding time at the theatre and watched "The Blind Side". I don't intent to write a full review of the movie, but rather share with you my take on it. I knew my mom would like this movie, seeing as she likes Sandra Bullock and the plot seemed to be optimistic and captivating. This movie did not disappoint at all. Both my mom and I felt really great after the show and my mom didn't even mind the amount of football references the movie had. I on the other hand, could have done with a little more football!
Here's the trailer in case you want to check it out!

Based on a true story, this movie shows that self-less love is the perfect catalyst for change. The Tuohy family took Michael in without expecting anything in exchange, knowing that they were changing the norms and challenging the society they were part of. They invested in Michael's life, acknowledged his potential and like a rough precious stone, they help him polish his act in order to achieve everything he was capable of doing. Michael Oher was the Baltimore Raven's first draft pick during the 2009 NFL draft. Here's a picture of him with the Tuohy family.

Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and did not mind paying ridiculous cinema prices to enjoy this flick. Inspiring, encouraging, entretaining, feel-good movie. I totally recommend it!

Coming soon: Movie #2... "Invictus"

End of year musings...

2009-12-30T10:42:00.007-05:00

Yes, I've been slacking off. But for good reason.

This Christmas time, I decided I was going to rest. My plan was to go to a spa at least once, watch TV in my PJs until my eyes hurt, bake, cook, try to get better at the guitar and read. Even though I had really good intentions for this break, the business of Christmas got to me and I got to enjoy only some of these planned events. I am glad to inform my loyal audience that I was able to bake up a storm (cookies, cakes, biscotti, etc), prepare an entire Christmas meal (turkey, 2 types of stuffing, veggies, sweet potato bake YUM!, etc), socialize with friends from different stages of my life and watch multiple Christmas movies and Food Network Marathons. However, I was not very successful at making time to go to a spa, playing my guitar or reading. Also, as you might have already realized, I wasn't able to write on my page and update my readers with innovative discoveries, reflections and opinions. So, considering the New Year is only hours away, I have decided that in the new year I will write at least 1 posting per week. And I promise I will not cheat on the published posting dates, since apparently this is possible, as a guilty dear friend of mine shared with me.

The new year will also bring changes to this page. I am planning on changing the page layout, posting more of my pictures, especially on days where I have ran out of things to say or find myself extremely busy with school, work and life, and adding new postings regarding a topic another dear friend of mine shared he would like to see more of: recipes! As you may know, I love experimenting in the kitchen and I will share some of these experiments in the form of detailed recipes and/or pictures. Unfortunately, I haven't had enough guts to venture into the art of Molecular Gastronomy-the scientific field that explores the physical and chemical properties that occur to food as its being prepared. This new field utilizes techniques such as preparing foods in vaccuum chambers or preparing ice-cream with liquid nitrogen. I hope the new year will allow me to become a little more knowledgeable in this new gastronomical field so I can share some findings with you.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

When the worse is over...

2009-12-06T23:59:00.002-05:00

... i just feeling like sleeping
... i just want to lounge
... i just want to cozy up to a movie while drinking some hot cocoa or tea
... i just want to hang out with friends who I've indirectly avoided while busy with school work
... i just want to do everything I said I wanted to do while I was busy
... i just feel like staring at people outside a cafe window
... i just feel like praising the One who helped me get through all of this!!! THANK YOU!

So now that the worse is over, I can do all these things, however I need to make sure I don't get too overwhelmed with all these activities. Afterall, I still have a final to study for and a literature review to finish up!

Easy Fixes?

2009-11-22T12:07:00.005-05:00

I'm currently working on a literature review paper about 3 lipid desaturases in humans. These enzymes are in charge of modifying dietary fats into other compounds your body can use for cellular repair, signaling messages and energy.
One of the three enzymes is SCD-1 (Stearoyl CoA Desaturase-1), an enzyme that transforms saturated fatty acids (fats you obtain most commonly from animal products) into monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs). This type of fatty acid is necessary for many processes, however, it is also necessary for the creation of triglycerides that get stored in your body as fat deposits when in excess. This means that SCD-1 mediates the accumulation of fat deposits in the body (among other things...). Studies in mice have shown that obliterating SCD-1 indeed induces a leaner body size and reduces the development of other diseases.

Most of the articles I've been reviewing focus on understanding how this enzyme works and whether it can be altered pharmaclogically (and possibly, in a not-so-distant future, genetically) so that fat accumulation is decreased. In theory, if a drug able to decrease the activity of SCD-1 is designed it would provide wonderful benefits to people battling obesity and other obesity-related diseases such as type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

What a wonderful quick fix, eh? Eat as much as you want, drink to your heart's content, don't do any exercise... just drink a pill that will prevent you from getting fat. Well, let me break it to you... when it comes to the human body, there are no such things as easy fixes!

The bulk of the research I'm covering focuses on the positive effects of such obliteration, however, recent studies have demonstrated a detrimental effect associated with decreased activity of SCD-1. When SCD-1 activity decreases, saturated fatty acids accumulate in the body, thus altering cholesterol levels and increasing the development of atherosclerosis (thickening of the artery walls that prevent proper blood flow). Atherosclerosis leads to strokes, heart attacks and eventually death.

The take home message, and something that I'm learning by writing this review paper, is that things are never as simple as they seem, especially when it concerns the marvelous workings of the human body. Easy fixes are in reality more complex than they appear to be and might complicate things to exponential levels.

Hard work and dedication, as painful and annoying as they might be, are and will always be the best solution to all our problems!
.

Interesting Article on SciAm

2009-11-21T16:22:00.002-05:00

Learning is a life-long process, however, as more research emerges on this particular field of psychology, we are discovering new ways as to how learning is achieved more efficiently.

Earlier today I found this article in Scientific American:

Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn

I have clipped some interesting bits (however, I really recommend you reading this article!)

"By challenging ourselves to retrieve or generate answers we can improve our recall. Keep that in mind next time you turn to Google for an answer, and give yourself a little more time to come up with the answer on your own."
"And remember, even if you get the questions wrong as you self-test yourself during study the process is still useful, indeed much more useful than just studying. Getting the answer wrong is a great way to learn."

TIPS:

Students might consider taking the questions in the back of the textbook chapter and try to answer them before reading the chapter. (If there are no questions, convert the section headings to questions. If the heading is Pavlovian Conditioning, ask yourself What is Pavlovian conditioning?). Then read the chapter and answer the questions while reading it. When the chapter is finished, go back to the questions and try answering them again. For any you miss, restudy that section of the chapter. Then wait a few days and try to answer the questions again (restudying when you need to). Keep this practice up on all the chapters you read before the exam and you will be have learned the material in a durable manner and be able to retrieve it long after you have left the course.

I will try to keep these tips in mind at all times. I know I'll need them really soon as exam-time approaches!

Happy reading!

Coffee, Liver Cirrhosis and Cancer

2009-11-05T19:57:00.005-05:00

Today, a presentation about the beneficial effect of coffee on liver cirrhosis provided me with more reasons to refill my cup of java.

According to multiple epidimiological and animal model studies, coffee's active components (chlorogenic acid, cafestol and kahweol (C + K), and caffeine) provide a chemoprotective effect and reduce the incidence and progression of liver cirrhosis. As I commented in a previous post, caffeine acts as an antagonist of the adenosine receptor, thus, it blocks adenosine from binding to its receptor and initiating a signalling pathway. The final effects of the adenosine signalling pathway include drowsiness/sleepiness (that's why coffee wakes us up!) and hepatic inflammation. Inflammation of the liver induces fibrosis that in time turns into cirrhosis, a condition associated with the eventual loss of liver function.

Moreover, cell culture and murine model studies have associated chlorogenic acid with decreased levels of carcinogenesis, and C+K and caffeine intake with anti-tumorigenic effects. Some suggested methods of action include the promotion of phase 2 detoxifying enzymes and the decrease of phase 1 activating enzymes. These findings indicate that coffee might also have a protective effect against cancer.

More studies are needed to elucidate the exact mechanisms behind these protective effects and more importantly, to identify an ideal amount of coffee intake that will provide the most benefit without driving you off the walls.

Earthly Treasures

2009-11-01T13:54:00.005-05:00

Today's sermon was titled "I need to know the Joy of Heavenly Treasures!" and it was based on Matthew 6:19-21. The passage goes like this:

¹⁹"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Robbie clearly demonstrated that our earthly treasures can be manifested as a myriad of common things that we usually fail to identify as threats to our spiritual growth. Some of these things can be identified by 2 simple questions:

What/Who do I spend most of my time with?
What/Who do I spend most of my money in?

As a rather wealth-less university student I thought these "earthly treasures" talks didn't apply to me; but as I reflect on those two questions, I realize that my economic status does not absolve me of this admonishment. Things like education, friends and accomplishments could become earthly treasures that hold me back from investing necessary time in the formation of omy heavenly treasures. These are the ones that really matter and the ones for which we should be living.

Research... red meat and cancer (PartI)

2009-10-29T12:25:00.005-04:00

For one of my grad classes, I'm writing a paper analyzing the association between cancer and red meat consumption. I'm finding a lot of really interesting articles and I thought I would share some of the information I found.

Heterocyclic amines (HCA) are cancerinogenic (cancer-causing) metabolites created when cooking meats. Meat is pretty much animal muscle, thus when exposed to high temperatures, a reaction occurs between amino acids and phosphocreatine-a molecule known to provide instant energy to muscle. This creates the noxious heterocyclic amines.

A document by the National Cancer Institute in the States recommends using different cooking procedures that reduce the formation of cancerinogenic heterocyclic amines in meats.
One of these recommendations is microwaving meats before cooking them at high temperatures. However, they don't address separate implications related to microwave use.
I have found other papers that recommend marinating meats for several hours before cooking them at high temperatures (ie. BBQ) to reduce HCA. They recommend using olive oil, lime juice, beer or wine!

Ultimately, the best and most efficient way to decrease the risk of red meat-induced cancer is to reduce consumption. Try to reduce the amounts of meat in your diet and include a meat-free day to your week. This will not only help your health, but your pocket too!

This weekend...

2009-10-25T10:12:00.004-04:00

This past Wednesday, we were handed a take-home exam for our Nutrition, Exercise and Metabolism class. In my 4+ years of post-secondary education, I have never had a take-home exam; and seeing as we had more than 5 days to complete this assignment, I thought it would be an easy task and an easy mark.

This is day#4. Our take-home midterm is due tomorrow and I haven't even finished one of the 2 questions. Readers might instantly conclude that I have been procrastinating because of the lack of motivation or the pursue of different priorities, however, I tell you I have been working on this exam continuously for the past 3 days!

Our take-home exam consists on designing two studies (selected from a list of questions) and basically inventing results and writing a whole research article on it. I didn't think it was going to be this time consuming but I guess underestimated the time it takes to study the background material, research whether your design, measurements are results are valid and intuitive, and invent data that doesn't sound out of this planet.

Hopefully, after I'm done with this exam, I will be able to laugh about how I've stayed working at my lab past midnight for a couple of days this weekend!

Caloric restriction

2009-10-23T08:22:00.006-04:00

In class, we briefly discussed the idea of caloric restriction and longevity.

A hypothesis has been drawn linking reduced caloric intake and a longer lifespan.
According to the Hormesis Hypothesis of Caloric Restriction (CR), a reduced caloric intake translates into a mild stressful condition from which the organism defends itself by increasing its immune system, and staying alert to combat the causes of aging. In CR situations organisms shift to survival mode, altering their metabolism according to their needs.

This means that if you MILDLY restrict your caloric intake to a point at which your body believes its undergoing mild stress, a shift towards survival mode will naturally increase your defenses to protect you against any threat posed to your health and your lifespan, whatever those might be.

It is hard to say whether this hypothesis is completely safe as I imagine that caloric restriction brings threats of its own such as hypoglycemia (reduced blood sugar) and fatigue. Also, CR should be monitored closely to ensure an individual meets its energy requirements for proper functioning.

I am currently not supporting this theory, however, it has made me ponder about what we believe to be a proper caloric intake. Is this a true estimation of what our body really needs? And in a country of plenty, where food producers have a huge influence on nutritional guidelines, how can we advocate for our own health if we don't have the correct information and it's so much easier to just go with the flow?

101 Cookbooks-Recipe Blog

2009-10-04T23:46:00.003-04:00

Being a lover of good food that is both nutritious and well-presented, I couldn't but fall in love with a blog I ran into while looking for a cracker recipe:

101 Cookbooks

The author, Heidi Swanson, shares the same passion I have for making food appealing through exquisite presentation and for introducing healthier meal alternatives to skeptics that believe that healthy food is synonymous to a plain looking salad or grey slimy porridge. 101 Cookbooks makes healthy food easy, inspiring and appetizing.

It is very easy to prepare food that is not only good for your body but that tastes so guilt-free delicious! You just need a little help and inspiration from a site like 101 Cookbooks.

Enjoy!

P.S. I'm currently in love with this flour-less, sugar-less, egg-less chocolate chip cookie recipe.
Check it out: Nikki's Healthy Cookies

GTA Conference

2009-09-20T13:27:00.004-04:00

At this year's Teacher's Assistant conference, I was able to attend interesting sessions on a wide spectrum of educational topics. Some of these include EBL/EBT (Enquiry Based Learning and Equiry Based Teaching), Effective Facilitation of Seminar Groups and Teaching to Learn & Learning to Teach. It was a refreshing insight into post-graduate academia and it confirmed some of the ideas I was already aware of or I was struggling to fully orchestrate in my mind.

What I got from it was this: Teaching, especially at a post-secondary level, is about guiding the student to obtain the information for them to chew, not chewing the information for them, spoon feeding it to them and wait for them to memorize and regurgitate. This only leads to a waste of your time and effort, for even though the students might have achieved a good level of memorization for the exam, they are doomed to forget the information because they never analyzed it or understood it in the first place. Learning should be active and as facilitator/educators, we should challenge them to dig deeper and embrace the fact that knowledge should be integrated into daily life rather than stored in an old shoe box and forgotten after their grades are posted.

One week in...

2009-09-17T11:51:00.004-04:00

So today I celebrate 1 week from the start of classes.
These are some things I've learnt during this week about Guelph, the grad life and classes in general:

Grad classes are very different from undergrad classes. Even though this seems like an obvious statement, let me give you some first-hand insight. Undergrad students are expected to listen and memorize and not necessarily think. Grad students, due to the nature of the class delivery, are expected to think, question, make conclusions and suggestions about the material learnt. It's a big change in thought processing and I am very glad that I am being challenged with this new style of learning. (P.S. if you ever heard me rant about school while in undergrad this will sound familiar! I was always annoyed that undergrad courses don't call for students to actually understand material, just learn it. The way individuals will understand the material is by discussing it, questioning it and making connections).
The grad life doesn't impose any small deadlines. Only huge ones and inconveniently crowded at the latter part of the term. It's up to you, a mature grad student, to make smaller deadlines and try to keep in check everything needed for those dreadful December days. Ie. keeping up readings for 70-page 100% worth paper due in December.
Keys=power. Love it!
Guelph night life is insane. So many places to go, bands to listen to and many more students lining up to make it to the 2am edition of "Salsateria's" burritos or "Sun Sun's" chinese special
Coffee breaks are a must. You gotta give your eyes a break afterall!

I'll conclude this post with a little piece of grad wisdom: always check your email, don't look like a lost frosh and always carry your keys around (you never know when you'll need the power!).

09/09/09

2009-09-09T09:56:00.002-04:00

How many times will you be able to write 09/09/09 on the empty line where the date is supposed to go? JUST ONE (in our lifetime at least!)! Isn't it great? I feel like writing a whole bunch of forms and making the most out of this situation!

However today instead of writing forms, I'll be meeting fellow graduate students in my program. The beginning of a new school year is always exciting; yet this year the excitement is also accompanied with some other feelings, like uncertainty and nervousness. I'm starting my MSc at a different school, in a different city where everything is new, where, if you're not careful of hiding your "noob-iness", you'll end up looking like a lost Frosh. Believe me, looking like a Frosh is not necesarily good, especially if you've already looked like a Frosh when you WERE a Frosh! However, that is exactly how I looked when trying to go into the Athletic Building without realizing I needed to swipe my student card first. PLOP!

This is a very exciting opportunity to expand out of my comfort, that bubble that surrounded me while at Waterloo. Even though I would periodically reach out during my years at UW, I still had a comfort bubble to use as a refuge when things didn't go as expected or when I didn't feel like mingling. Now, it's either mingle or go stand by yourself in the corner!

I guess I'll mingle.

Guelphing

2009-09-02T13:30:00.006-04:00

I'm currently sitting on a comfortable leather couch on the ground floor of the MacLaughlin Building, staring at Johnston Hall outside the large floor-to-ceiling windows. The sun in warm and shining brightly making the green grass look alive.

Welcome to Guelph, the wonderful city I call home since Monday. I'm at the library (MacLaughlin Building) trying to read an article that I haven't even cracked up open yet. It's a little hard to focus when everything around you is new and exciting. After a couple days of living in this green city I have realized that I wouldn't mind living here for more than a year-the length of my MSc. Some of the things I have fallen in love with are:

How green the city is! There are so many huge, beautiful trees, so many blooming flowers, so much greenery! I get amazed everytime I look outside the window cause there's always something green that absorbs all the other colours of the rainbow.
How I keep bumping into people I know. Like I have previously stated, I moved in on Monday, and to tell you the truth, I don't know many people who attend the University of Guelph, however, everywhere I've gone for the past 2 days, I've been able to recognize at least one familiar face-mostly my international student friends. (Context: my roomate is an international exchange student from Germany who met these guys from France and Germany last week. On Monday night, I met her and she invited me to go meet these folk downtown Guelph. Since I had nothing else to do, I agreed and I met some really cool people from Lyon, Konstance, etc. On Tuesday morning, my roomate, Michael (other German student) and I went to the mall and on our way out we ran into Adrien and Flo so we decided to invite them over to our house for dinner. What was planned to be a quiet small dinner became a haphazard potluck party for 7. On our walk back home, we also ran into Cedric and invited him as well. On a city this big, who would have thought we would see so many familiar faces!)
How beautiful campus is! I mean, Waterloo was a great school but it definitely lacks architectural diversity and uniqueness. Just have a look around UoG and you will see unique structures with lots of personality: the Bullring, a circular building in the middle of campus housing the student run cafe/pub and other services; Johnston Hall, a beautiful traditional looking building that has become UoGuelph's landmark; and Rozanski Hall with its contemporary look that includes materials salvaged from the beef barn that once stood on the site.Walking around campus will be very inspiring!
Guelph's eccentricities! Let's just put it this way, there is a statue of a bear outside one of the buildings on campus that students dress up daily. The monument sits there and models the different costumes that gracious students lend it. Yesterday: pink boa, pink sunglasses and a red purse. Today: fishing rod with matching fishing hat! Gotta love it!

This entry gives you an idea of how much I'm enjoying Guelph so far (Day 3!) and I'm sure Ill enjoy it even more once classes start and students flood campus.

Oh and P.S. I met with my professor and another professor on campus today to discuss the collaborative project I'll be working on starting on Tuesday. It went great and I am super excited to get started!

Love is in the air... weddings

2009-08-30T14:20:00.005-04:00

Only 49 hours ago, I was at my friend's wedding. This is the second wedding I attended this summer and the fact that my newly married friends are my age (a few years short of quarter of a century) made me realize that if I had found my other half earlier in life, I could be married this very instant. Even though the thought of it terrified me at first, I have to say that-in my mind-I came to terms with it. I guess it would be a good thing. I guess that if I found my soul-mate earlier in life, I would not want to spend another minute of my existence separated from him.

That being said, is any age too small? Is there such a thing as a minimum age for marriage? And if the answer is yes, where do we draw the age-limit line?

I personally don't think we can delimit a physical age for love, and neither for marriage. Don't get me wrong. I certainly don't agree with a wedding between a couple of 10 year olds that stubbornly assure their families that what they feel for each other is real love. What I'm trying to say is that each person is different. You might feel you're ready to jump into the huge commitment of marriage, while I-at the same physical age-might disagree and argue that I have to discover myself, my wants, my dislikes, my goals, my shortcomings before deciding to jump into the married-life bandwagon. Neither one of us is wrong. We just see life in a different light.

That is where this post finds me. With no marriage plans in my near future, I am doing my best at trying to figure out who I am and why. I'm knocking on every door and following my stretch and narrow path . I cannot say that once I'm done figuring out my persona, I will be ready for a commited relationship. On the contrary, I don't think I'll be able to figure out who I am and who I was created to be without my other half. Like the well-known saying goes: No man is an island. Therefore one cannot completely map the land without realizing there is more to it than one's self.

So to those who have jumped into the marriage waters: CONGRATULATIONS!
To those who are not ready to get wet: CONGRATULATIONS! Just don't wait till you're done getting to know yourself. It might be too late.

Statistics, the way of the future?

2009-08-06T10:04:00.004-04:00

I was never great at math. I mean, I can do it but I'm not a natural. It takes a great effort and hours of dedication for me to be good at it. So when my professor told me that I should take a statistics course as part of my masters degree, I got a little worried. "I have already taken an undergrad statistics course in my 2nd year, what do you mean I need to take another one? Why?", I thought and my face probably conveyed the same message.

To tell the truth, I was probably scared cause I had tried for so long to hide from my course demons (ie. Calculus and I guess math in general) and now there was no way I could run and hide.
I've already enrolled for my fall term courses and every time I look at my course list, the 6-level stats course sticks out like a sore thumb with neon lights pointing at it saying "Look, you're stuck with math...sucker!".

I've already come to terms with it. Statistics is not going to bring me down. I decided I am going to give my best and learn as much as I can, cause in reality, statistics is a very useful tool to have and know how to use. That is why I was happy to read in today's news about the power of Statistics. The article not only accentuated the power behind Statistics as a data management tool, but also how it's taking over the working world by storm. There is plenty of data out there and very little data interpreters. Statistics, it seems to me, is the translation method between data (nonsensical numbers and figures) and results. The workplace requires people with statistic skills, so if you're like my old self, who runs and hides at the sound of anything "mathy", stop running, face your demons and take the world by storm!

I'm getting excited about my 6-level stats course this fall and happy to say that the neon lights now say "Go kick stat butt!"

Picture Blog... the magic of camp!

2009-07-21T19:54:00.012-04:00

Super Awesome Bands

2009-07-21T19:08:00.003-04:00

I'm a huge fan of getting to know new and upcoming artists or artists that are not well known but have been producing amazing music for years. However, the hurdle is how to find this music.

We often rely on the radio or tv-main media sources in general-to tell us what music we should be shoving up our ears, and that is exactly what these media sources do. They transform great songs into boring and dull pieces of music due to their incessant repetition. Another option, especially for those who are hooked to the internet 24/7 is MySpace or any other music blog. I particularly follow Obscure Sound (www.obscuresound.com) because I love finding out about new bands and artists from around the world. Plus, I think the musical analysis this website provides is stellar as well as the samplers they put up. The only downfall of this particular method of music acquisition is the difficulty that arises when trying to keep up with weekly blog posts while leading a busy life. Unless you make a conscious effort to check these sites every couple of days, you might not succeed.

So here's a foolproof method of new music acquisition: iTunes Store Free Single of the Week. If you have an iTunes account, you can download a free single of an unknown or upcoming artist every week. Just click on the "Free Single" and DONE! The singles are mostly from Canadian artists which is amazing! What a great way to get to know more national talent! Also, you can download the free francophone single of the week if you are into multicultural music! All in all, an awesome deal!

Here are some examples of awesome bands/artists I got exposed to by using this iTunes feature:
-The Arkells
-Beast
-Band of Skulls
-The Script
-Alexandre Desilets

Go ahead, enjoy!

P.S. Did you know that Starbucks provides its customers with a free single of the week as well? Every Tuesday, a new single is available for you to redeem. Just ask for them if you don't see them near the cash register!

Canada Day

2009-07-02T01:35:00.003-04:00

We celebrated Canada's 142nd anniversary of Confederation today (or rather yesterday since I'm writing this blog late at night, or early in the morning). Yet, I had a weird feeling when getting in line with a huge crowd of people, trying to stay together with my group of friends when we walked to downtown Burlington to see the fireworks.

No, it wasn't the stickiness that thousands of crowded bodies generate, nor the fact that I was spending this momentous occasion with a new group of people. It was more so the thought that the following day was a Thursday. What a crazy concept, holidays on a Wednesday! It cuts your productive week in half. I was supposed to make my Wednesday holiday a productive one. Unfortunately I don't have good news to report on regarding the productivity department. I did get some things done, yet I feel I would have been more productive if the holiday would have been on a Friday or a Monday. At least, my friends and i could have planned a road trip with a long weekend.

Since this unreal scenario prevented me from focusing on the celebrations, I would like to share with you a couple of things that were running through my head:
-"Oh, look at the lights! They are so pretty! Isn't it funny how serious and responsible adults look like little kids when observing fireworks? Everyone gawking with their mouths open and saying Oohs and Ahhs! How funny"
-"Man, these fireworks are definitely not environmentally friendly. Starting with the amount of smoke being released by those explosions. I'm sure the fumes are awful for our environment making the amount of green house gases even higher than what they already are. If you combine not only one city's smoke emissions but all cities in Canada, and 3 days later, in the States; the pollution created by our patriotic spirit will doom us to a hotter, stinkier, and sicker planet. Not to mention noise pollution and the heart attacks poor animals were having when the huge explosions were taking place, fireworks... very environmentally unfriendly."
-"You know what would be a great idea as a Dragon's Den* product? Environmentally friendly fireworks!!! That would be SO GREAT! You would be able to enjoy the magical qualities of fireworks and their amazing child-like effects on people while being satisfied to know that your enjoyment is not hurting the environment. I would be down and I'm sure those Dragons would too!"
-"Oh Man! If they actually invent environmentally friendly fireworks I would love to use them at my wedding. Wouldn't that be something else? BOOM! Have you guys ever seen the movie: The Count of Montecristo? Maybe this will give you an idea of what I have in mind... min 6:55

Happy Canada Day folks!

*Dragon's Den is CBC's show where entrepreneurs get to pitch in ideas to investors and they decide whether to lend the money of not. We were watching this before going to see the fireworks. Hence the connection

I Will Rise...

2009-05-14T16:16:00.002-04:00

We sang this at church last time.
It was perfect timing too!
Listen to the first verse:

"There's a peace I've come to know
Though my heart and flesh may fail
There is an anchor for my soul
I can say: It is Well!"

How wonderful it is to know that there is an anchor for our soul, even when our heart and flesh fail!

Note how I don't say: IF our heart and flesh may fail. Our heart and flesh will always fail, yet we know that we'll have that anchor that will allow us to say It's all well! Our anchor is the fact that Jesus has overcome. What more can we ask?

Grad Road Trip

2009-05-14T09:02:00.003-04:00

After exams were done on the 24th, Diego and I decided we were going to embark on a Grad Road Trip. Even though there were talks about it beforehand, we had not confirmed our US. adventure yet. It wasn't till Saturday night at our parents' friends house that we bought the tickets, sign that finalized our decision. Diego, Rachel and I were going to go to California and Arizona for 10 days and try to fit in as many adventures as possible.

We flew on Tuesday morning. Our flight left at 8:30am from Buffalo International. This meant we had to wake up at 4am to try to leave by 5am, cross the border and get to the airport. Everything was very quiet and thankfully empty at such early hours, however, before we headed to our gate, I was super frisked because I kept beeping at the metal detector gate. It was SO embarrassing! I had to go to this clear glass box and be frisked for the next 5 minutes. Now I know never to wear cargo pants when flying.

We arrived at LAX at 1pm due to the 3 hour difference. We had a connecting flight in Chicago which was thankfully on time. By then, I was sporting my newly bought I LOVE NYC boxers I had bought in Buffalo after the cargo pants disaster-I was trying to avoid another frisking parade in case I had to go through metal detector machines again. At LAX we saw a large DECA group. They were there for the National Competitions. It reminded me of when I used to be in DECA in high school.
We caught a Disneyland bus that would take us to Disneyland in Anaheim, Ca, they city where my aunt lives. Since our aunt couldn't pick us up till 3pm, we wondered around downtown Disney for a while. It was cute and colourful but we were tired and wanted to eat. We had some Jumba Juice for "lunch". Refreshing. Our aunt and younger cousin, Allyson, picked us up and took us to this Asian buffet. If you know me, you would know that I pronounce "buffet" funnyly and that I don't like them because they are an excuse to stuff yourself with food you don't really need but you eat nonetheless cause you're paying for it. I didn't want to say anything cause my aunt seemed excited about the idea of taking us there. I didn't eat much, and now that I think about it, none of us did. I think we were too tired.
We drove by Anaheim to get to my aunt's place. I still remembered some of the landmarks, considering I had lived there for 3 months more than 10 years ago. When we got home we were surprised to see our cousin, who is currently studying Biology and Comparative Literature at UC Riverside and had taken the evening out to come see us. He had changed, but then again, it's been more than 10 years. He took us for an evening adventure. I'm not sure we had a destination planned for that evening but we decided on HW5 that we were headed to Laguna Beach. We got there just before sunset, took some crazy pictures by the ocean (OCEAN!) and the some sunset pictures from a gazebo. We then walked around Laguna Beach and we realized how pretty it was. We stopped at a French Cafe where a lady named Antoinette lured us with free samples and promised us an ocean-view experience from their patio. We had some coffee.

On Wednesday, we had the whole house to ourselves. We woke up relatively late and went for a walk to downtown Anaheim. Nothing much to see actually, we came back home, not before checking a museum, a gallery and going to eat the best tortas we've had in a while. TORTAS are Mexican sandwiches and they reminded Diego and I of when we used to live in Mexico. YUM. At home, we decided to prepare dinner for the fam. It was a challenging task since we did not know where they kept their stuff or what kind of food they would like. We ended up making sesame chicken, mashed potatoes and a strawberry spinach salad. We topped it off with some home made Iced Tea (they had never heard of the concept!). The latter was challenging to make since my aunt has no sugar in the house and they didn't have any ice cube trays. We surprised them with the fancy table setting and the food. They were really thankful. At night we watched TV with my aunt who watches her Mexican daily soap at 9pm.

On Thursday we decided to rent a car. Wednesday had taught us that if we wanted to make the most out of our trip, we should rent a car and go wonder the beaches, etc. We decided we were going to go to Santa Monica! Such a beautiful place. We quickly fell in love with the town, its quaint streets, huge trees and awesome beach. It was Thursday so it wasn't too busy, which was great. We walked to the beach, as we took pictures and got to rest on the sand. The temperature of the water was still too cold to go in but laying on the beach was great. We walked on the famous Santa Monica pier and headed to town just before sunset. We shopped at a cute thrift store and then went to eat Vegan food at RFD (Real Food Daily). Even though Diego was a little apprehensive at first, he really liked his vegan pizza. It was delish. I also bought a passion fruit raspberry cheesecake that Rach and I enjoyed on Friday morning (much better than Cheesecake Factory cheesecake!). We ate gelato and left for home by taking the HW that cuts across the city of Los Angeles.

On Friday we were driving up to Phoenix to meet our uncle and crash his place. It took us about 5 hours to get there but since we left the house at about 10am, we were caught in midday heat in the middle of nowhere. Since we wanted to save on gas, we decided not to turn the AC on. Hahaha... we were wilting like plants in the dessert. We stopped at an exit to recharge with some Dairy Queen (I had a huge freezy... Dan should be proud!) and enjoy the AC and washroom priviledges. We continued our journey and made it to the Botanical Gardens in Phoenix by 4:30pm. We were tired, hot, hungry and had to wait for my uncle to come in order to go in for a glass exhibit at the gardens. We were at the exhibit for about 4 hours and we didn't even get to see it all. The garden had tons of blown glass sculptures so we took lots of pictures, however, we were out of batteries by night when the scultures looked the nicest. We then headed to this place called Jungle Pita, a trendy Pita place near his house and had some awesome food and local beer. It was a great meal for our huge hunger. We got to my uncle's place, took a tour of the house and headed right to bed. We were beat.

On Saturday we got to visit lots of places around Phoenix. We first went shopping for shoes and clothes. We also visited Scottsdale, a posh area east of Phoenix, downtown Phoenix (not much there), South Hill- a mountain that allows you to look at Phoenix and surrounding areas from the south and Tempe, one of my favourite places. Tempe is a university town as it hosts ASU (Arizona State University). It was what I was expecting downtown to be, but downtown Phoenix is mostly a business area that is probably alive and vibrant Monday to Friday from 9-5pm. ON the other hand, Tempe was vibrant, full of live music, street performers, christmas lights and tons of restaurants and stores along Mill St. We walked along Mill St. for a couple of blocks and back to finally eat at P.F. Chang's, a gourmet chinese cuisine chain. Apart from the fact that we could have eaten anything due to our extreme hunger (it was 8pm and we had had ice-cream for lunch), P.F. Chang's food was amazing. Kudos to their infamous lettuce wraps and their Ground chicken and eggplant dish. YUM.

On Sunday, I woke up Diego and Rachel really early in the morning to go for a walk. We had decided this was better than hiking Echo Canyon, a mountain close to our uncle's place since it required for us to wake up and start hiking at 5ish in order to avoid the sun's heat. We went for a walk from Mummy Mt. to Camelback Mt. and then took a dunk at the complex's pool. We had it all for ourselves. What a relief to the morning's heat!
We found a Harvest Bible Chapel Church in North Phoenix so we headed there for church. It felt just like at home and we were very happy about it. The sermon was really good too! "Forgiveness, is more than saying sorry..." Hahaha...I should stop there.
We went home to my uncle's place and he had invited some friends to have brunch with us. It was funny to see what brunch meant to them. Fruit salad, bagels and chips. We were happy we were fed though. We then went to Scottsdale to walk around the boutiques and check out the nice stores. One of mine and Rach's fav. was a boutique called "Anthropologie". It was very cute but expensive. I didn't buy anything but it was cool to watch. They had everything from hand made dresses to dishes, home decor and even furniture. Very eccentric, colourful and chic. Even though Rach didn't buy the dress she fell in love with then, she came back on Wednesday to purchase it. It's so cute! Very Rachel! We walked for a while in Kierland Commons and Downtown Scottsdale and ended up eating at Oregano's, this awesome pizza place on Scottsdale Rd. You could make your own pizzas! Rach and I ordered an eggplant, portobello mushroom, basil and caramelized red onions. DELISH! we also had local brews.

On Monday, we took it easy, had a late breakfast and then headed to Flagstaff, a small university town north of Phoenix. We were going to stay there at my uncle's condo on Monday night in order to tackle the Grand Canyon early on Tuesday morning. Flagstaff was one of my favourite places of the whole trip (followed closely by Santa Monica and then Tempe). It's a cute town with lots of quaint stores and restaurants and brick buildings. It's surrounded by mountains where pines grow and at the distance you can see snow covered peaks. It hosts NAU, Northern Arizona University. Route 66 runs by it so we took it in order to get from downtown to the condo. Our uncle came with us in order to open it and turn on the water, etc. We were supposed to go to Sedona but we were too tired to drive there and back. We stayed in and slept early, not before going to town to run some errands and buy some food for Tuesday.

On Tuesday, we woke up early and drove up 2 hours to the Grand Canyon. Watching the scenography change was impressive. From evergreen pines to cacti and desert-like environments. We got to the Grand Canyon's West Rim and took tons of pictures. We then drove for about 30min to the South Rim in order to start our hike. We unfortunately started a little later than desired (~10am) which meant we were going to have the sun on our tails during the whole hike. We hiked to the first rest stop and decided it was a good distance down. Plus there had been some problems hiking lower than that because of an injured old lady who had fallen from a mule and had broken her hips. We went up with more difficulty and made it in good time. We took the Bright Angel Trail and we met lots of interesting people, like this Chicago man who worked for AT&T, kids from an elementary school near by asking us "Where are you from?" and a Quebecois couple. We returned to Flagstaff, had Peruvian food at a small but good peruvian restaurant and headed home to Phoenix. We made it there kinda late so we went right to bed but not before buying cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory and giving a piece to my uncle.

On Wednesday we returned to Los Angeles. It was going to go up to 103F (very hot!) so we decided to turn on the car's AC and make it home alive. We ate at a rest stop (Carl's Jr. and Subway) and drove home to my aunt's place. Before driving through LA, we stopped at an outlet mall in order to kill time. It was interesting to hear announcements made both in English and Korean. Yes! Korean! We got to our aunt's place and our cousin Jon was there again. He was going back to university after supper but he promised he would take us somewhere on Friday and also got super cheap Disneyland tickets for us from his friend William. Disneyland, here we come!

On Thursday, we went to return the car which was conviniently close to Disneyland. We were dropped off by this girl at the doors and then called William. Can you believe that public phones in Disneyland cannot call cell phones? Preposterous! We had to plead with the girl in the lost and found booth to allow us to call "our friend who had our tickets". We got in and the fun started. It appeared busy to us but according to William who works at the park, it wasn't very full at all. Thursday was a good day. It got a little hot at noon but it was great nonetheless. Our favourite rides were: Indiana Jones, Mulholland, Pirates of the Caribbean, white water rafting (we got soaked!), one with the snow-peak, the 3D movies, etc. We had tons of fun and we got our picture taken with Mickey Mouse!!!!!!! M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!
We didn't have enough time to get to all the rides, unfortunately, however we did get to see the parade in Main Street and we then went to eat at the House of Blues. It was cool but they made us wait WAY too much!

On Friday, we waited for our cousin to come from university in order to take us for a ride (we didn't have the car anymore). I was ready to go but Diego and Rach had to get some things ready, so Jon and I decided to go out for some Starbucks. He took me to The Block, a strip mall that was popular with teenagers and young adults. The Starbucks was big and not very busy. It seemed like a cool store and they gave us freebees. We picked Diego and Rachel up and decided we were going to get Diego's TOMS (www.tomsshoes.com) so we went to a couple of places such as the South Pacific Mall (really posh and huge!) with no avail. We then decided to go to Santa Monica cause we had seen them there. On our way there, I suggested the idea of taking Pacific Coast Highway in order to go by other famous beaches such as Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Venice Beach, etc but it was somewhat of a bad idea on a Friday afternoon, as the traffic was insane. We were hot and restless. It was fun to see some of the beaches though. We got to Santa Monica and couldn't find the shoes Diego wanted :( so we decided to grab a bite and head home. We had italian food at this Pizza place and it was really good. They got me at the free freshly baked rolls with homemade tomato sauce. Rachel and I had a Veggie Pizza. We got back to the car and we had a little incident with the parking lady (so annoying!). We got back after 8pm which was sucky since we were taking my aunt, uncle and cousins to P.F. Changs for dinner. We were all hungry but had to wait for more than an hour for a spot for 7 people.
It was a great day. We couldn't believe we were flying the next day!

On Saturday, my uncle drove us to LAX to take our first flight down to Philly. We got there on time but our connecting flight to Buffalo was delayed. At first they said it was delayed for an hour but then we realized it was more like 2 hours. We were going to arrive to Buffalo at about 11:30pm. We had to chill at the Philly airport for a couple of hours which wasn't such a big deal since it's a nice airport with lots of little shopping stores.
We got back a bit after 11:30pm and our dad and Dan greeted us. We had to go to bed early cause we had to wake up mom early with breakfast in bed and make it to the 9am church service.

What a great roadtrip! And that is how I finished my undergrad!

Stop this train...

2009-04-24T08:29:00.004-04:00

I write my last exam at 4:00pm today and even though I knew this was going to be the case, I'm still flabbergasted by the fact that after 6:30pm (if not earlier), I'll be done with my undergraduate academic life. Isn't it amazing how time flies by; how you are somewhere at one time and somewhere completely different at another time; how you feel like you've become a passive character to this fast-paced plot line? I personally think that if I don't hurry I won't be able to keep up with the train that arrives to its location and seems to leave just seconds afterwards. I need to feel like I'm living and not just staring out the window of this train that is life.

I mean, I don't think I've become a passive character in my life but I do think that if someone just lets opportunities go by without making the most out of them, one can forget that the life they are passively observing is theirs. Next thing you know, the train is gone!

So, my resolution for this occasion, my university graduation, is to live my life as the main character, to enjoy and make most of the opportunities I get, to live in the present, making sure I laugh the hardest, sing the loudest and thank God everyday!

Convocation Day!

2009-04-17T11:41:00.002-04:00

All these exams are making it hard for me to post articles on my blog.
In the meantime, however, I'm going to be putting up random little articles (so that my "readers" don't think I've quit this blog business).

Today: a funny video I found on youtube!
video

Even if you've never heard of Twitter, this will be a funny video to watch... just imagine, a couple of decades ago we still had bulky computers with chunky hard drives, no wireless and no iPhone telling everybody we're going to the can.

Ahh... how times change!

Cancer and what we eat...

2009-03-27T00:38:00.003-04:00

My friend Jason wrote an article related to the cancers you are most likely to get, according to epidemiological studies to date. As I read over the list of "high incidence" cancers, I was pleased to see that most of them can be prevented through diet! So I did a little research and replied to his blog entry. ENJOY!

Here's his article:

The Cancer Menu

As we storm through our whirlwind week on cancer, it’s interesting to consider which cancers you are most likely to get. Please don’t become paranoid, however - this is an exercise in epidemiology, and not doom-and-gloom:

Women are most likely to get:

Breast cancer
Lung cancer
Colorectal cancer

Men are most likely to get:

Prostate cancer
Lung cancer
Colorectal cancer

Note that for both men and women, lung cancer is far more deadly than either breast cancer or prostate cancer. So for both sexes, the cancer you are most likely to die from is lung cancer. That being said, if you are a non-smoker and are able to minimize your environmental exposures (second-hand smoke, asbestos, radon, etc.), your lifetime risk for lung cancer is far lower than these lists might suggest.

Here's my comment:

It's important to note that even though cancer is-to a certain extent-dictated by your genes, there are some every day things you can do in order to prevent your exposure to carcinogens and change bad habits that might trigger the formation of cancerous cells.

In the case of lung cancer, as you already mentioned, minimizing your exposure to carcinogens such as smoke (first and second hand), asbestos and radon can certainly reduce the risk of obtaining this disease.

In the case of colorectal cancer, diet is a VERY important factor that should be taken into consideration. The relationship between colorectal cancer and diet has been studied for some years now and the results show that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, high in fibre and low in calories and animal fats have a protective effect against this particular type of cancer. (article: http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com/articles/nutrition/coloncan_11/)

Certain types of breast cancer (mostly those which are not due to mutations in the BRAC1 or BRAC2 genes) can also be prevented by a modified diet. A reduced risk of invasive breast cancer is observed in individuals who eat low-fat diets. Concurrent studies are also studying the effect of a high fruit and vegetable diet on the prevention of breast cancer (article: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/breast-cancer-prevention/WO00091). As well, the Mayo Clinic also recommends staying physically active and keeping a healthy weight in order to prevent the onset of breast cancer.

In the case of prostate cancer, a recent study reports that the consumption of soy may prevent the onset of prostate cancer and it may even be used as treatment for such a prevalent cancer (article: http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajcn.2008.27029v1). Also, as observed for breast cancer, the consumption of a diet high in fruits and vegetables, high in fibres and low in fats may also prevent this cancer. One little known fact about breast cancer is that it has been strongly linked to the consumption of milk and other dairy products as well as meats (article: http://www.cancerproject.org/survival/cancer_facts/prostate.php).

Even though more research needs to be made in order to identify the particular pathways involved in the prevention of several cancers due to diet modifications, most preliminary studies show that lifestyle changes, mostly diet, can greatly reduce the risk of the cancers you are "most likely to get". And the best part is that even though you might not have control over your genes, you have complete control over what you eat!

Isn't that encouraging?

My last day as a 21 year old...

2009-03-21T22:05:00.003-04:00

Yes, it's true. Tomorrow I turn 22.

It's funny how fast time goes by. You are a wide-eyed 18 year old girl when you start university.

Your 19th birthday is a blast, especially if it falls on a Wednesday and you end up celebrating the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday AND Sunday! You can finally go into bars and enjoy their buck a beer Wednesdays or Martini Mondays (still working on this one...). You can finally go into an all-ages concert taking place in a bar and not feel like a looser because of the two HUGE X's drawn on your hands with permanent marker. True story. Being 19 definitely gives you the peace of mind necessary to attend events without thinking about a minimum age requirement. At least here in Canada.

Your 20th birthday is sweet too. You have finally figured out who your closest friends are and hopefully by this time, all of them are "legal" and they can join you at your favourite bar (which you might have by now). The only difference in this case is the realization that you are not a teenager anymore. You can't be irresponsible and expect to blame it on the fact that you are a teenager who didn't know better. After all, some argue that the definition of "teenager" should include the word "irresponsibility" in there somewhere. You are now a twenty-something and therefore, you are expected to act as one. So your first question is: How do I do that?

Your 21st birthday is amazing. Even though you start feeling the weight of your years (for some reason things start taking twice the effort! haha) you party out big time with your good friends. You can even take a road trip to the States and feel universally "legal". What a sweet concept! Not that anywhere else but North America cares about the age you are before you start drinking.

In your 22nd birthday you realize this trend is never gonna stop. There's no way out of it... you are getting older and you will only get older and older. Bags under your eyes start appearing in your birthday pictures, maybe one or two marked lines? What a scare! You also realize that you are graduating soon and need to know what to do with your life. Up till now, everything has been pretty straightforward. When in high school, you followed directions. Your choices were not really life-changing choices as you could only choose from a very narrow selection of options. For example, what university would you attend?, what program would you follow?, where would you live? are all questions with relatively few options as answers. When in university you choices definitely expand. At that moment, you feel like you have total control over your life since mom and dad are not around to tell you that you should go to bed by a certain hour or that you cannot eat this or that. Yet, the type of choices you make are relatively small and will not necessarily define the person you will become. However, once you realize that you are months away from the familiarity of going to class every day, writing papers and freaking out about finals, you start thinking about all the other choices out there; choices that will define your future, choices that will make it or break it, choices that you are stuck with for weeks, months or the rest of your life. These are the big leagues now and you better have your head on your shoulders or the world will pass you by without you even noticing it. That is what it entails turning 22.

Turning 22 shouldn't be too bad though. I'm sure that the leaves will turn at their own pace and that doors will certainly open and close leading me to where I'm supposed to go. After all, like my good friend Melissa said, "At least you're not turning 24!"

St. Patrick's day so far...

2009-03-17T19:16:00.004-04:00

Green cowboy hat earings
Green hair accessories
Green scarf (only for the morning walk... way too hot to wear during the day!)
Green socks and undergarments
Green beer
Green pasta sauce
Green shirt
Green pants
Green nachos
No green food colorant at the grocery store.. you know you live in an university town when...
Green mob of drunken university students drinking in their front porch

Also, good chat with friends and complete strangers due to Campus Day at School. They made me feel old!

Happy St. Paddy's Day everyone!

Ode to Winter...

2009-03-11T22:35:00.006-04:00

Now that winter is almost gone for good, I've decided to post a few pictures I captured this winter.
Even though I LOVE snow, I'm rejoiced that it's mostly gone by now.

So I guess I'm putting these pictures up to remind myself that winter is indeed beautiful and that snow, a blessing. After all, this is only my 8th snowy winter! I'm not that tired of it yet!

Now, where's spring hiding?

Obama and Stem Cell Resarch...

2009-03-10T20:12:00.002-04:00

This morning as I was listening to my morning radio alarm (currently CBC Radio Canada 2-which I love by the way), I learnt that Obama has decided to remove the ban on funding for stem cell research that George W. Bush had installed about 8 years ago.
I guess this doesn't mean very much to those readers who are not devoted to or interested at all in the science field, but as a Science student currently taking many embryology, molecular technology and bioethics courses, this is BIG news!

First of all, why was there a ban on stem cell research?
Stem cell research encompasses any study done on stem cells-cells with the potential of becoming any different type of cell in the human body. Most of these stem cells come from embryos that will not be implanted into the mother's uterus to grow and become babies. This means that those embryos could have become human persons, however, since they are not used (mostly in IVF-In Vitro Fertilization) they are used for harvesting their stem cells which are very useful reasearch tools. This is what some people have a problem with. These people believe that using these "unutilized" embryos for their stem cells is wrong because the embryos are human beings with the potential of becoming fully functional human persons.
George W. Bush seemed to think that this type of research was morally prohibited and therefore created a ban on stem cell research.

However, IVF still occurs at rapidly increasing numbers, hence increasing the number of embryos made and of "unutilized" embryos. So what happens to these unutilized embryos once the mother has been impregnated with the selected embryo? Some couples choose to freeze their embryos in case their pregnancy doesn't go to term. Others decide to donate the embryos to other couples trying to get pregnant. However, as an article describes, most of unutilized embryos end up destroyed, mostly in the United States where the ban prohibits researchers to use the excess embryos in Human Stem Cell Research.

In my opinion, getting rid of these fertilized eggs seems like a huge waste, especially considering the great discoveries that could be obtained through the use of embryonic stem cells. It might sound like a completely utalitarian perspective, but instead of destroying the excess embryos, which wouldn't bring much benefit to any party; using embryo's stem cells in research involving treatment for diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other diseases with increasing incidence values would be of excessive benefit to the human population as a whole.

Here are a couple articles you might want to check out:

Scientific American (Mar 9, 09)
CBS News (Mar 9, 09)
The Canadian Press (Mar 9, 09)- Canada's take on this. It may hurt ongoing Canadian research!

Enjoy!

My Soothers...

2009-02-28T22:11:00.003-05:00

My twenty-something years of experience here on Earth have taught me some pretty awesome things. One of those things is how to deal with unexpected, stressful circumstances and remain sane. Why am I talking about this now? Am I on the brink of mental collapse? No, not really; but I guess that unexpected and stressful occurrences can happen any day and it's better to be prepared by knowing how to cope with uncertainty.

My coping methods include:

making lists
listening to music I can belt out to (and belting them out!)
talking to a friend, even an imaginary one, or in my case, God
going out for a walk
writing lyrics or diary entry
playing my guitar
ordering around (this include my room, common areas, etc)

Each of them has a slightly different yet the same effect on my mood. They calm me down and provide me with the sense of balance and control that I have lost. As any other human being on Earth, I deceive myself in thinking I have complete control over any situation. The ugly truth is I don't. I only have control over what happens to me to a certain extent. Beyond that it's all God's doing and I'm glad cause I know if it was up to me, I would ruin it big time!

The Science Behind Coffee Alertness...

2009-02-19T11:42:00.006-05:00

I was studying about the brain and sleep cycles for my next Physiology exam when I came across an article about coffee and they way it affects the human metabolism.

Coffee is one of the many foodstuff that contains caffeine, a psychoactive drug that promotes alertness. In other words, a stimulant that prevents you from falling asleep. Having too much coffee can lead to a "caffeine high"-term which refers to the exhilarating feeling you get when your blood pressure rises and you find yourself suffering from a momentary attention deficit disorder. In extreme doses (more than 7 cups of coffee a day), caffeine can even become a hallucinogen, making people hear voices and see things that are not there (click here).

The way caffeine and its methyxanthine cousins: theobromine (in chocolate)and theophylline (in tea) operate in the human body is as receptor antagonists for adenosine. This means that these caffeine molecules prevent adenosine from interacting with its receptor, therefore preventing for the subsequent signal pathway leading to sleepiness.

Adenosine is a neuromodulator of the central nervous system which binds to at least 4 (known to date) G-protein coupled adenosine receptors. These cAMP dependent membrane receptors get blocked by caffeine molecules which prevent their normal interaction with adenosine. This observation has led to further studies that aim at indentifying the process by which adenosine signals the supression of neurons promoting wakefulness (thank you Silverthorne!).

That being said, it only makes sense that we feel sleepy when a higher concentration of adenosine molecules accumulates in our extracellular fluid (ECF). In the morning, the level of adenosine in the ECF is low, hence we shouldn't feel sleepy. As the day unravels, one starts accumulating these molecules which signal for the inhibition of the neurons promoting wakefulness, therefore we feel sleepier later through the day.

Knowing this, it would only make sense to drink coffee later through the day, when the caffeine molecules have a better effect by antagonising the accumulated adenosine molecules in the ECF.

This made me ponder why people are used to drinking coffee first thing in the morning. Habit?, associative learning? (something along the lines of Pavlov's dog theory-the association of a particular stimulus to a reward, such as the stimulus of coffee drinking and becoming alert as the reward?). I'll be researching that soon.

Now you know. Coffee does help you become alert and push those sleepy feelings aside, but watch out for its psychoactive effects. No matter how alert you are, hallucinations won't help you perform better at work!

Nutrigenomics...

2009-02-17T20:38:00.005-05:00

I came across this term when I was researching about Master degrees opportunities at Guelph. I was intrigued by this compound word as I am very interested in Nutrition and Genetics, so I decided to research it.

According to good old trusty Wikipedia, nutrigenomics means the study of molecular relationships between nutrition and the response of genes, with the aim of extrapolating how such subtle changes can affect human health^.Nutrigenomics focuses on the effect of nutrients on the genome, epigenome, proteome and metabolome.

This means that epigenomicists study how food interacts with the production of proteins made by your body. For example, let's say your body over produces a certain protein receptor on the surface of your muscle cells when you eat dark-chocolate covered jalapenos. The goal of the epigenomicist is to investigate how and why the digestion of such a disgusting sounding food has the aforementioned effects (I'm not judging here. If dark-chocolate covered jalapenos are your thing, go right ahead and enjoy them... just don't make me try one!).

This field seems to have a lot of potential, however Wikipedia only thinks its contribution will be minor in the next little while.

"While there is hope that nutrigenomics will ultimately enable such personalised dietary advice, it is a science still in its infancy and its contribution to public health over the next decade is thought to be minor."

Really? In my opinion, this revolutionary field will become a large area of study, especially if we can personalize the diets of those people suffering from chronic diseases such as diabetes or cancer. This personalization will enable us to have more control over the type of genes being activated and those we do not want to express. So interesting!

Anyways, here's a clip. Enjoy!

Ethical issues...

2009-02-11T20:35:00.002-05:00

You know it's midterm time when you seem to have no time to write in your own blog!

So, in order to appease my faithful readers, I will put a small note up. A note I hope I'll follow after my first group of midterms is done-more specifically-after Thursday night.

I don't know if you've been reading, listening or watching the news lately but I'm sure that by now, you are at least aware of this particular news story. No, I'm not talking about the SuperBowl and how the Steelers stole the show last Sunday night (however the Cardinals demonstrated to be a worthy opponent... GO CARDS!). I'm talking about the octuplet story.

Take a look:

What do you think? What are your thoughts? Do you think this is morally permissible? Why, why not? Do you think the mom is putting her interest before the interest of her 14 children?

Another controversial news story is also the case of Ranjit Hayer, the 60 yr. old mother of twin boys.
Check that story here

or take a look

Selfish? Maybe, maybe not. What do you think?

More to come...

Y2K... what a distant concept?

2009-01-28T17:49:00.006-05:00

My friends had a Y2K party last weekend in which we all celebrated the year 2000 again. It's a good party theme and I'm sure they had a blast making all the Y2K gear (2000 glasses included!) but this theme made me think a little more than I had expected.

Y2K... it's been 9 years since that time in which extremists thought the world would end and hence went ahead and decided to take matters into their own hands. Some decided to buy enough resources to last them a couple of months and locked themselves until the "worse" was over. Others even tried to kill themselves to avoid the Y2K chaos or Apocalypse. As I recall these facts nine years later, I can't help but think how easy it is for people to bring upon their own destruction due to erroneous beliefs.

Back to the Y2K party. I was 12 when the "real" celebrations took place. I still remember the big party at my house. My parents invited a lot of their friends from church, so I hung out with some of their children. I remember the big set of fireworks we lit just before midnight and I still remember the pungent smell that intoxicated the warm Limean air several minutes later. But what I remember the most was kissing my parents "Happy New Year" and realizing the world was still the same. Nothing had changed, nothing had broken or exploded (apart from the many fireworks that night). The world was still the same. It was the year 2000!!! (and what I year! I'll leave that for another post)

There's one thing I want to bring up from this piece of past. This is the thought that even though the idea of the year 2000 frightened us to the point of insanity (more some than others), by taking it one step at the time, we dealt with our fear to the unknown and unexpected. We realized the world was not over but just starting. Likewise, I'm at a point in my life in which I don't know what's going to happen in a couple of months. I'm uncertain about where I'm going to be and what I'm going to be doing, yet I know that if I take it one step at a time, I'll realize that there's no point in panicking and taking this matter into my own hands. I'll deal with my fear to the unknown knowing that there's someone who's preparing a great set of fireworks for me to see when midnight comes.

...3, 2, 1...

Unavailability...

2009-01-18T15:17:00.003-05:00

I don't like how dependent I've become to Facebook.

Facebook has become a easy and simple way to stay in touch with friends and see how they are doing. This is a great tool if you truly want to remain friends with people who live several miles away, a few miles away or less than a mile away but are too busy to put some time aside to call you. So yes, Facebook does accomplish this function. But in my case, Facebook has become more than just a tool helping keep up with my friends. No, I'm not referring to stalking on friends and friends' friends and finding out who just got engaged or who just broke up. I'm referring to the fact that Facebook has become my "little black book" with important dates, birthdays, telephones, etc.

Why write it down if I can always log in to Facebook and check my events online? I figured it would save a couple of trees anyways. Some people may argue: "Diana, what happens if you don't have access online". True point, yet I would reply: "We live in the 21st century...even watches have online access!" (It's true... check this out! http://www.linuxdevices.com/files/misc/IBM-linuxwatch.gif)
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's relatively easy to access the internet nowadays, so that wouldn't be an excuse for not using Facebook as your personal planner.

However, something unexpected happened just a couple of minutes ago that made me regret the fact that I have none of my "Facebook Personal Planner" information written somewhere else.

Facebook Login

Account Unavailable

Your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Yes! my account is unavailable.

What is that supposed to mean? I'm not going to be able to access important information that I need right now? Seriously?

Then it hit me: WOW! what will ever happen to me if Mark Zuckerberg decides to shut down Facebook... what about my telephone #s, my important dates, events, PICTURES? (especially if a virus contaminated my computer and eliminated all my old pictures... so glad that I had uploaded them to Facebook).

So what now? I'm not going to stop using Facebook as my Personal Planner all together. I think it's still very helpful at this duty, yet I'm going to make sure I don't become solely dependent on it.

...God makes them much better than expected!

2009-01-10T16:50:00.002-05:00

I'm sorry. I should have written this entry a while ago... precisely on the night of December 28th when Diego and Rachel arrived at my grandparents' house 16 hours after expected.

What an odyssey it was for the two of them to arrive in Lima; and what a great answer to prayer!

I'll write what Diego and Rachel explained to me and the many others who were aware of their situation.
Their first flight was delayed for more than 3 hours-layover time they had in between flights and enough time in case the first flight was delayed a little (keyword: little!). They arrived at JFK and their connection flight had already departed. They approached the AA booth and realized it was closed for the night. They had to wait until the morning shift arrived early the next morning. I can only imagine how worried and frustrated they must have felt. They took a nap and approached the AA both the next morning. He explained the AA lady about their situation and how there was nothing they could have done to get there on time.

The AA lady was apparently God's answers to our prayers.

AA wasn't responsible for their situation because the previous flight was Delta, not American. In any other situation AA could have refused to offer an alternative stating that they are not responsible for Delta's "mistake" or the inclement weather, but not in their case. The AA lady offered multiple alternatives from which Diego and Rachel chose the one that would take them to Lima in the shortest amount of time. However, the chosen alternative involved a large amount of faith and reliance on God's plan.

The plan was to take a flight down to Miami and then catch a flight to Lima; however, they would have to be placed in "Stand by" for both of these flights and wait to hear if the flight had any unclaimed seats. Thank God, both flights had unsold seats they were able to take.

They arrived to Lima on Sunday night and decided to surprise us by taking a taxi straight to my grandparents' house. I wasn't there when they arrived but my dad told me how it happened. My parents hadn't heard from Diego since he called Saturday night to confirm he had lost the connection flight in JFK, so no one knew what was going on with them. They decided to write him an email inquiring of his whereabouts when they heard the doorbell ring. They weren't expecting anyone that late at night so they peeked out the door to check who rang. I cannot imagine my dad's reaction when he realized it was Diego and Rachel ringing, however I can visualize some of it by how his face lit when he told me about it.

God is good!

When things don't go the way they are supposed to...

2008-12-27T21:10:00.003-05:00

Earlier today we got a phone call from my brother saying that he could be missing his flight to Peru.

I flew in on the 22nd and even though my flight was delayed for about 3 hours, I still made it safe and sound because I didn't need to catch any other flight connections. In my brother's case, being delayed has the potential of bringing devastating consequences. See, he has to catch a second flight before landing in Peru, so if his first flight is delayed, causing him to miss his second flight, then he won't be able to make it here on time, or at all.

We received the call and were caught off-guard. "Are you sure you're not gonna make it?, What are your options?". Best case scenario, they catch their connection and get to Lima on time (without any luggage because there would be no time for getting the luggage and running from gate X to gate Y). Worse case scenario, they are stuck in JFK. And then what?

In times like these-times which we mere mortals with a tightly regulated budget cannot control-there's nothing else that we can do but to turn to the one who has control over everything. God has a plan for everything. He does not do things for the fun of it.

Everything that we go through has a purpose, even if that purpose is to instill peace and patience in us through trials like these. I cannot say that this is the only reason why this is happening. What I'm trying to say (and convince myself while I'm at it) is that we have to trust that these tosses and turns happen for a reason. The outcomes will not necessarily be what we had in mind, yet, they will be what is best for us.

Now, the only thing I can do to help my brother is pray. Who knows, maybe a little faith will move mountains-or in this case, delay the connection flight my brother needs to take. In times like these, when things don't go the way they are supposed to, we need to learn to rely on the one who has control over what we have no control over.

Before my battery dies...

2008-12-08T11:52:00.006-05:00

As I sit at the Grebel Library, studying away for more than a couple final exams at a time, I realize that I really appreciate silence.

Many of you that know me might recall that I am a living jukebox; always coming up with songs (randomly triggered by "key words") and singing them out loud. I am constantly busting up a tune, even if I don't know the lyrics. Also, people who have known me for a while, might recall that I constantly need music playing the background. I wake up, I turn the radio on. I walk to and from school, I plug my iPod headphone on. I come back from school, I turn the radio on. I'm preparing a meal, I turn my iPod on. I'm eating the meal I have just prepared and I turn on my bistro-mix on my iPod, so on and so forth. I pretty much eat, walk, talk, breathe and sleep music. For a person like me, silence can become awkward and boring.

In a busy world like ours, silence becomes synonym to loneliness and anxiety, yet as the famous Chris Tomlin song goes: "In the secret, in the quiet place. In the stillness you are there...", God is found in silence. I am not surprised by this fact. How are we supposed to get to know Him and talk to Him if we live in noise? How is He supposed to talk to us if our headphones are plugged to our ears? How is He supposed to say "I'm here" if we don't care to listen?

Maybe, silence becomes loneliness to people who do not expect anything from it; people who do not know that God is found in it. If people would just wait in silence for a little longer, they might just not feel lonely anymore. Silence, all of a sudden, would become synonym to safety, security and happiness.

I want to hear God's voice. I long for it. Even though I might get scared at first, I would love to hear what He was to say to me. I will still be jukebox and sing every time a song pops up in my head, however, I'll make sure to have moments of stillness and silence so there's nothing that might impede me from hearing His voice.

Now, back to studying in this morgue-like silence. Hopefully God is around and feels like a small chat!

For God alone my soul waits in silence, from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken. Psalm 62:1-2 NRSV

Broken Jars of Clay...

2008-11-28T00:27:00.005-05:00

A humble jar of clay, cracked and deemed useless
Laying on the ground where it came from
Forgotten by the world, no one around it
Considered to be waste, thrown out for good

I'm that jar of clay, ready to be waste
Worthless piece of clay, purposeless in every sense
But in it you've placed your gift and all that's best
So that through the cracks, your treasure shines out bright

And it's because of you that I am broken
It's because of you that I shine through
And if you're loving arms remain wide open
Take away the pain but let me be a broken jar of clay for you

And it's because of you that I am broken
It's because of you that I shine through
And if you love me so, explain this to me
Why the pain is gone when I am with you

(2nd Corinthians 4:7-9)
⁷But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. ⁸We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; ⁹persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

The Winter Reds

2008-11-25T18:53:00.005-05:00

Oh Man! I have a case of the winter reds. It's a relative of the winter blues but not as depressing.
It's true... the winter reds are characterized by an increased desire to ingest sweet foods such as gingerbread men, sugar cookies with colourful icing, candy canes and CHOCOLATE! (in every shape or form!) Also, the winter reds are known for stimulating laziness, especially once you've taken your winter boots off and have placed your frozen feet on your toasty little slippers; once you've changed into your pijamas and you take the first sip of the hot beverage you have just prepared. These symptoms further progress to an inability to wake up from bed, function in the early morning or late night and the deep desire to curl up to your favourite movie/TV show/book, wrapped in your blankie.

There are a few environmental factors that trigger the winter red symptoms. These are:
1. SNOW
2. Sunsets at 5pm
3. Sunrises at 8am
4. Christmas carols on the radio
5. Salt-stained jeans
6. Bruises on your behind (due to icy road/sidewalk conditions)
7. Exam time

The cure: unknown. I guess it depends on every single proband. I personally tend to do better when pumped up by the promise of a Starbucks treat or the promise of a nice night out with friends. Sun also seems to help.

If you have of any other ideas on how to combat the winter reds let me know!

Good studying!

Music for the Heart...

2008-11-12T18:44:00.008-05:00

As I was wondering in the pages of Science Daily, I came across an article which caught my immediate attention. "Joyful Music May Promote Heart Health" was the title of this interesting article. To tell you the truth, I was sold after I read the word "music" but then I started to read the article and I grew more and more interested in this study.

The scientist in charge of this enjoyable study was Dr. Michael Miller, M.D., director of preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center and professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He researched the effect different music had on the cardiovascular system of a group of participants. The participants were exposed to music they found enjoyable, music that promoted relaxation and music that made them feel anxious, as well as comical audio tapes. They analyzed the blood vessel diameter before and during the exposure to these types of music and recorded the results.

Music the volunteers found enjoyable increased blood vessel diameter an average of 26%, while music that made volunteers feel anxious decreased the diameter by 6%. Comical audio tapes increased the diameter by 19% and relaxing music a statistical insignificant 11%.

What I found really interesting about this article is the fact that most people considered country music as their enjoyable music! Who would have thought?

It's probably the twang that makes everyone happy...

And as expected, most people considered heavy metal music as the music that made them feel most anxious. I guess AC/DC, Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath are not only a hazard to our hair cells but to our cardiovascular system as well!

Haha... look at those shags...

So, make your heart a favour and listen to some enjoyable music every once in a while... or do it everyday! I certainly benefit from listening to some good tunes whenever I have a chance. I might not be qualified to check for blood vessel diameter myself but every time I listen to my favourite songs on my iPod, my heart gets happy.

Disappointed in humanity

2008-11-09T00:21:00.002-05:00

*Warning: this post is somewhat of a downer*

This past Thursday, profs and students from the Biology dept. got together for some great time off from school. Pins and Pints, a yearly BUGS tradition, gives both students and profs the chance to get to know each other over a game of 5 pin bowling, followed by some drinks at a local pub. It's a great time once one overcomes the initial awkward silences. What are you supposed to talk to your profs about anyways? If you talk about school and how much you love their class, the profs might think of you as a suck-up keener who wants to go into Medical School. On the other hand, if the conversation starts getting a little more personal, the professors might think one of 2 things: you have issues or you are obsessed with them and stalking them. Once you find you both have a "neutral" commonality (i.e. traveling) and the fear of "what-to-talk-about?" has been overcome, time flies and by the time you notice, you're schooling your profs in a "friendly" game of 5-pin!

This year, I got to hold a lengthy conversation with Dr. V.D., my Physiology and Animal Cell Biotechnology prof. She is a young professor who got taught her first year Intro Biology class by the same prof who taught me the same class 3 years ago. We got to be in the same bowling group and I had a blast getting to knock down some pins with her.

5-pin is an intense game... you feel you're so close to finally getting the grasp of it, and then you mess it all up by throwing the ball into the gutter endless times. I do have to say I got a grasp of it by the end of the night. This game not only game the chance to work on my patience and competitiveness but watching Dr. V.D. throw her balls into the gutter multiple times reminded me that professors are not super human-a characteristic we commonly accredit our professors with. I realized professors are not scary but somewhat misunderstood. They tend to be too intelligent for their own good, a result of investing precious hours of their lives studying or doing research instead of investing the time on relationships. This sacrifice definitely pays off in the academic world but puts them at a disadvantage in the social world. It was quite comical to see professor being intimidated by students at the bowling alley. Of course, students were in their comfort zone while profs were bursting out from their bubbles and reaching out into that world they normally hear about but don't really get to experience. Dr. V.D. kept mentioning that she hadn't done many of the things she was doing that day in years... "I haven't played bowling since I was in my teens" or "I haven't had mushroom caps since 1st year at university, you know, when they were a staple at the cafeteria". I was glad she was having new experiences.

Yes, now to the event addressing this post's title. Leah and I were ready to head home after a long day studying, TAing, bowling and socializing at McMillan's. We headed towards our bus stop and figured that the bus was not going to go by for another 10 minutes. Instead of waiting at that bus stop, we decided to keep walking until the bus come by. We walked for about 8 minutes and then decided to stop and wait for the bus. We were waiting by a couple of electricity poles when we saw a car drive up, roll down their window and throw an egg at us.

AN EGG!!!!!!!!!! Can you believe that?

We didn't know it was an egg at the beginning because the coward who threw the projectile let out a childish scream as he/she threw the egg at us. This distracting squeal masked the sound of the egg hitting one of the posts. We were so puzzled that we had to walk to the post to realize what had just happened. AN EGG!!!! SERIOUSLY??? Who does that? Why? An egg? Seriously???

What is the benefit obtained by randomly chucking eggs at innocent pedestrians? If anything, this despicable act is only beneficial to egg farmers and the "egg industry". But seriously? an egg? There are so many people who would benefit from the nutritional value of an egg... why waste it as a "clothing item", as a cheap projectile that only brings pain and humiliation to the affected party? Plain evil.

I'm sure Leah would have loved to take a picture of my face painted with disbelief when we realized we had been attacked by the egg-terrorists. An egg, huh? SERIOUSLY!
Even though we were saved by the post and remained "egg-less", I was seriously perturbed. I could not comprehend such a cowardly and pointless act. I was disappointed with my own kind; disappointed with humanity.

Thankfully, I've regained some of that lost trust since Thursday. It's true... there are good people out there. There's still some hope and this hope lies on our hands. The question now is: Will we be able to live up to this hope and get a strike or will we mess it all up and end up in the gutter?

What do exercising and drinking have in common?

2008-10-25T23:20:00.007-04:00

"What makes you ask this very random question, Diana?" you may ask. Well, let me tell you that both exercising and drinking have a protective effect on your heart. That's right... drinking a glass or two of alcohol per day has the same effect on your heart than exercising for half an hour.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta's Time Magazine article: "Work Out and Drink Up", suggests that drinking a moderate quantity of alcohol a week and exercising regularly will indeed reduce your risk of heart failure by 50%. (http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1703763_1703764_1710554,00.html)

It makes sense. Both exercising and alcohol have the same beneficial effects in your body: they increase the levels of HDLs (High Density Lipoproteins or "good cholesterol") in the blood which is needed for a healthy heart. Ideally, the level of HDLs should be higher than the level of LDLs (Low Density Lipoproteins or "bad cholesterol") in blood and the ratio of HDL's and total cholesterol in your blood should be higher than 0.5 (i.e. your total cholesterol should be less than twice the amount of HDLs).

This sounded too good to be true, so I continued reading and realized what the catch was. Apparently, the study the article referred to had not concluded that these beneficial effects were applicable to individuals younger than 45 yrs. old. They actually do not recommend having alcohol before 45 yrs old, especially to women with a risk of breast cancer and individuals with family history of alcoholism. Sorry to disappoint!

I know there has been some studies focusing on the beneficial effects of red wine to the heart. Red wine, due to its phytochemicals, has a protective effect on the heart and it's full of antioxidants which get rid of reactive oxygen species (ROS), free radicals are known to be a cause of cancer.

There you go. Next time you need an excuse to open a bottle of wine during dinner time, remember you might be doing your heart a favour!

Now that it's done...

2008-10-22T23:53:00.004-04:00

So, midterms are finally over. I guess it's time to take things a little easier and let my brain rest for a while but for some reason, I feel like I'm running out of time.

I feel like there are so many things to do and so little to time to accomplish them. I'm not only talking about school now... I'm talking about friends and family time.
Today, after my exam was over at 10:30am, I took a real long break from it all to catch up with a couple of friends I hadn't seen in a while. The infamous BioSquad got together at the Bomber to chat for a bit and exchange summer stories, drama, etc. It was a nice time to get to chat with the girls and get to know all the events that had occurred since I saw them last in the winter. Oh how things change! I can't believe we're in 4th year, getting together at the university pub, acting like mature, responsible students who took a break from our crazy busy schedules (work, school, volunteering, nap-time...Oh Mary!, etc) to get together. What a contrast! I still remember the time we first met in first year, innocent and wide eyed we would talk about how busy our lives were due to a BIOL 130 or 250 midterm... HA! such a breeze compare to the new level of hecticness our lives have undertaken. Needless to say, I had tons of fun BioSquadding today, laughing, gasping and group-hugging in the middle of the SLC Great Atrium (I'm sure we were entretainment for some people).

Biosquad + Karen celebrating Courtney's B-day at Bomber!

Right after group-hugging with the girls, I saw a friend that I hadn't seen in ages. He was in the Great Atrium waiting for another friend, so I approached him and said hi. It had been a while since we saw each other and even though we never really tried hard to communicate during this time, it was still nice to see an old face and hear about his latest updates.

As I walked home, I encountered another friend who lives really close by my house. Across from it actually. Close enough that If I tried hard and stretched myself to the window right now, I would see inside his kitchen. I know! creepy. We walked and talked. There was no way we would run out of conversation topics. You see, he is in Science and is studying for a midterm of a class I tutor. Needless to say, I asked him if he needed any help and offered to lend him my book. We started talking about expression regulation (most specifically, the Trp Operon) and realized as we approached our respective houses that the walk home ran short as we could have continued talking about this subject for a longer time.

Later in the day, Diego came over and we went grocery shopping... at last! You see, I hadn't gone shopping in a while since my weeks had been busy with midterms and projects. I don't place an elevated level of urgency to going grocery shopping so I tend to bump it down the list of THINGS TO DO when more "important" things come into play (ie. midterms). It's funny how it works, cause I definitely make time to go to the gym every morning-especially during midterm time-but ignore a "bear necessity" such as grocery shopping. It all comes down to priorities. Oh, thanks for the ride DIEGO!

As if this wasn't enough, I had another visitor during supper time. My friend Ben came over for some Spanish help. He has a midterm tomorrow so I offered my Spanish expertise and guidance... yes, I'm kinda like a Yoda... He said he would repay me with dinner so I agreed. We had some Pad Tai and it was delish. We went over many conjugated verbs in Spanish and realized how hard it is to explain the grammatic characteristics of your first tongue to someone else. Most of the answers I would give Ben whenever he asked me why I conjugated verbs a certain way would be: "Just 'cause... hmmm it just sounds good" Not very convincing, I know.

Now, as I sit in my room, blogging instead of reading over tomorrow's lectures or the lab I have to teach; I realize that having too much free time in my hands is dangerous! It is definitely nice to take a day off and just destress from exam week(s) madness but it's important that I keep up with readings, studying and projects to prevent cramming for them later.

Now that it's done... well, I guess I just have to keep it coming.

Crazy Times call for Crazy Measures...

2008-10-15T00:52:00.002-04:00

As my crazy week of midterms start, I want to make sure I physically document how I deal with the pressure of writing 4 midterms in about 52 hrs.

I'm not extremely stressed out even though these conditions would normally call for some type of stress-response from my part. I think the Thanksgiving break at home made me realize that I don't need to be stressed out in order to study well for exams. After all, good stress is productive, bad (aka. freaking out) stress is noxious.

I finished my notes for exam #1 last night. I've gone over most of the material with a friend in that class (BIOL 483: Animal Cell Biotechnology) and I'll review the info one last time before my exam tomorrow. This class is relatively straight forward but it gets a little confusing at times since there are infinite procedures, parameters and cell line characteristics to memorize. I'm mostly working on getting everything straight before the exam so I can answer all the questions without doubts.

Exam #2 is Nutrition and to be truthful, I haven't starting studying for this exam yet. So far, the topics learned are not extremely challenging and therefore have decided to leave it till the day before the exam. Of course, I have been reviewing the material throughout the term and with the exception of a few recommended intake values, I have been exposed to this material in previous classes.

Exam #3 (same day as exam #2) is Molecular Biotechnology 1. This course is INTENSE! I love it. Dupont is a great prof. hands down and the material covered is very interesting. It's a combination of techniques and theory I've previously studied and new material which only adds to the previous concepts. That being said, this new material provides each topic with greater depth and many more details to understand.
Dupont provided us a sample midterm and told us to use it as mock exam, abiding by the time limits and specific formats asked. I plan on doing this practice midterm tomorrow, so hopefully I'm done studying for it tomorrow evening. I will need to focus on concepts rather than insignificant details. I know Dupont's style... she likes asking understanding questions.

Exam #4 is Histology. Unfortunately Mungo is not going to be here for it (family crisis... yes, again! poor Mungo! We love Mungo!). This course is also intense, but in a different way. The midterm is based on the identification and characterization of tissues and cells from microscope slides. Even though this might sound easy, the task is challenged by the fact that sometimes, sample slides are not easy to "read" due to low resolution or their big pink mess-look. I'll be studying for this on Thursday night and Friday morning/afternoon (exam starts at 5:30pm-mixed feelings on midterm time assigned...). The good thing about this course is that the constant lab quizzes keep you on your toes so I'm not too rusty on the course material.

It's important to note that between exam #3 and 4 (Thursday evening) I also have to proctor a first year Biology midterm (BIOL 130) since I'm a BIOL 130L TA. There is no way I can save myself from this one. I already tried to talk to Dragana but she seemed obviously annoyed by my insinuation. I stopped trying.

So, how am I managing my stress? I'm trying to make it to the gym in the mornings, enjoying my glorious walks to and from school where I smile at the sight of autumn leaves showering me and imagine myself jumping on piles of leaves (I'm sure the owners of those big houses on the hill and hence, "owners" of those piles of leaves I'm referring to, wouldn't appreciate my enthusiasm though) and listening to music. The fact that the main floor of DP is officially open after endless months of renovations makes me happy, so I go and chill at the library which motivates me to study and prevents me from wasting precious study time at the BUGS lounge. It's nothing personal, but I cannot study in the BUGS lounge.

Tomorrow I write exam#1 at 1:30pm. That is when it all begins, so now that I have a general idea of my plan of action, I'll try to follow it closely. This means no entries till crazy midterm week is over.

POC!

Giving Thanks for Those Little Miracles...

2008-10-11T21:49:00.007-04:00

I've got so many things to be thankful for. I'm sure everyone does. The problem is not everybody sees it that way. In desperate times we tend to focus on the negative and forget to acknowledge the presence of a silver lining. In other words, while walking in the "valleys of shadow and death" the idea of comforting green pastures and quiet waters doesn't really cross our mind. In the midst of chaos we are amazing at comparing our misfortune to the fortune of others and feeling sad for ourselves.

I've been there. I've caught myself comparing my misfortune to others' in multiple occasions, only to feel worse about my situation. After many tears wept, this is what I learned: If you compare yourself, your work, your life to others, expect to feel worse than you did before. And even though I've come to this insightful conclusion, due to my human nature, I will still compare my life to the life of others. That's just how our mind works.

Keeping this depressing fact in mind, I try to help myself forget about how "wonderful" other peoples' lives seem to be by focusing on things I am or should be thankful for. Little things such as the sudden flight of a cardinal or the glittery effect the sun has on early morning frosty fields are things I should be thankful for. My family and my friends, the random people who smile at me as I walk in the street, health, abundant food and a warm place to sleep are things I give thanks to God about everyday.

Who doesn't love receiving a letter or email from an old friend or a person you randomly met in a bus in Peru, who you talked to for almost 5 hours without running out of things to say? Who doesn't love realizing that the bus you thought you missed is a couple minutes late or the fact that it pours the day you forgot your umbrella at home but it suddenly stops after your classes are done? In my point of view, these are all blessing we should be thankful for. They are not obvious miracles like raising someone from the grave or splitting the Red Sea but they are God's little gifts to remind us that He's always with us, even when we feel like the weight of the world rests on us.

So now that is time to celebrate the blessings we daily receive, let's not focus on what our lives lack but rather on the little miracles we encounter around the corner, under a tree or right across our noses. Believe me when I say that even when our lives seem to suck, there are still more things to be thankful for than things to complain about.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

My new radio love...

2008-10-06T21:16:00.003-04:00

As an avid music listener, I love listening to the radio. It's really hard to keep up with great new musicians and bands so I figured listening to the radio would expose me to a new spectrum of styles and sounds and help me refine my music likes. Unfortunately (and if you haven't listened to the radio in a long time this will be shocking to you), the popular radios love to repeat singles over and over and over again which only makes you sick of that particular song and hence ignite a passion against the artist/band. As I have realized, radio stations only play one or at very most, a couple of singles by the aforementioned hypothetical artist/band, ignoring amazing tunes only found if you care enough to listen to the artist/band's whole album. As well, radio stations play material of selected artists/bands (a.k.a popular artists/bands) and decide that upcoming or independent music is not worth of some radio exposure.

In general, I have realized that by listening to the radio I get to dislike artists instead of learning to like them; I am misguided as to what the music potential of a certain artist is (by only listening to one of their songs over and over and over again); and I don't get real exposure to new and unique music because I'm always subjected to the same music and the same artists.
So in order to burst my own musical bubble, I decided to look for new radio alternatives. That is how I found CBC Radio Canada 2.

I've had heard of Radio Canada before but I had not really listened to it. One day, by accident, I erased all my preset radio programming on my alarm clock. I started pressing tuning buttons until I heard this cool folky music. I stopped and kept listening, I loved it! The segment after the cool folky music was jazz... WOW! That was some jazz! I quickly added this radio station to my new list of preset radio programming and kept listening to it all day. It's true, there were some segments that weren't my favourite but all in all, I loved the new styles of music I was being exposed to. From live concerts by Canadian artists in Canada Live to unique music, stories and essays in the Vinyl Cafe, everything that I listen to in this radio station is new to me. I'm opening myself to new music material and learning from it. The bubble is finally bursting.

I'm currently listening to Canada Live and the singer-songwriter Courtney Wing and the Mark Duggan Quintet at the Atlantic Jazz Festival. Such great music. You should check it out!

Courtney Wing Live at the Atlantic Jazz Festival

Also, check out Lenka and Meaghan Smith... new artists I just found about via. iTunes store!

Morning walks

2008-10-04T00:38:00.010-04:00

If you know me, you would know that I love taking pictures. I take my handy little point-and-shoot everywhere I go (seriously, everywhere!). This gives me the opportunity to capture a glimpse of those little moments that made me smile, laugh or scratch my head, and transport myself back to those instances when I review the pictures days, months or years later. I like to think that instead of writing everything down on a diary I can just take a picture that will instantly remind me of the time in which I took it.

For example, a picture of a mount of fall leaves on the St. Paul's green will remind me of the time when my friends Lynn, Lisha, Rita and I dared to go out on a cold and wet fall day and played with the leaves. Or a picture of yesterday's dinner will remind me of how good that stuffed pepper was. No need to write it down!

Sunday's dinner was stellar... stuffed peppers with mashed potatoes

Some of you could say: "But Diana, it is impossible to capture every single event of your day on film or pixels, no matter how trigger happy you are!" True. I don't mean capturing everything on "film" but only those things worth remembering, moments of extraordinary beauty and humbling simplicity. Moments that remind me how beautiful it is to wake up every morning and be able to breathe, move, walk and talk. I think that's the real reasoning behind my picture taking... thanksgiving.

My mornings this term start really early. At least it seems so considering my earliest class starts at 9:30am. I wake up at 7am and I'm out the door by 8am. At this time, the streets are empty and silent, the sun is just starting to warm up the air and birds' chirps are still audible. The cool air is the perfect start to my busy fall days, yet the morning beauty instills in me a sense of peace and security that I cannot explain. The sun's first rays and the way they hit the landscape make me smile as I feel His presence around me. As God's spoiled child, I know that He's showing me this view every morning because He knows I love it. It's like Christmas every morning and opening my door is equivalent to unwrapping my Christmas present.

Beautiful morning view on my way to school

A couple of days I woke up to what seemed to be a dark and wet morning. I didn't even open my blinds as I didn't want to wake up to a rather depressing sight. I was getting ready to leave. I grabbed my keys and opened the door. To my wonderful surprise, I saw a uniquely beautiful chromatic display in front of my very own eyes. Yes, a rainbow! A full one, and right across from my door. "I'm so spoiled", I thought aloud. "Wow, thank you God!"
I was definitely not expecting this surprise when I woke up that morning. It was such a great gift! It was the perfect demonstration of security and comfort I could ever receive.

As you would have imagined, I stopped and took some pictures for my personal photo-diary. I took various pictures actually... and I showed them to everyone that day as I bragged on how I saw this awesome rainbow in the morning. It was such a perfect combination of mist and sun that created the perfect conditions for the rainbow. Definitely not a coincidence! ... Thank you!

My morning walk is a time in which I have a chance to forget about my busy day and admire God's gifts. I detach from my hectic schedule and dwell in the thought that there is someone out there caring for me. Someone who loves me so much that He deliberately puts me in the right place at the right time just so I smile. Someone who shows me beauty in everything, even the darkest of days or the toughest situations. Someone who's always there to cheer me on giving me the opportunity to capture those moments of extraordinary beauty and humbling simplicity on film as I walk to school in the morning.

Extraordinary beauty and humbling simplicity

THEY ARE IN!

2008-10-01T00:52:00.006-04:00

I finally submitted my medical school applications!

Hitting the submit button was definitely harder than I expected since there was a surprisingly large pressure mounting over my shoulders. I wanted everything to be perfect so even though I had already checked over the application once, I wanted to keep checking it over and over and over again. I finally came to the realization that I needed to let go and trust that the first thorough check was thorough enough. As I clicked "Submit" I prayed a little prayer and put everything in His hands. The famous words appeared in the screen: Application Complete and I cheered!

Not having to think or worry about finishing my applications is definitely a great feeling. I can now check another item off my unending "To Do" list and try to catch up with school work, TA work and my social life. Although I'm going to have to wait for more than 3 months before I hear from any of the universities I applied to, I get comfort in the fact that God has this application in His hands and that He has the right plan for my life.

I can now go to bed knowing everything will be alright. He's in control! There's no need to worry. They are in!

Almost in!

2008-09-30T01:18:00.004-04:00

Applications are almost in!!!
It's an exciting yet terrifying experience to see the big bold red letters on the OMSAS webpage reminding you: "There are 1 day(s) left until the OMSAS application submission deadline at 01 October 2008, 4:30 PM EDT."

Yes, it's true... only 1 day left and I'm done. After that, a combination of prayers, crossed fingers and lots of optimism will help me cope till the day I hear something back from different Medical Schools. I'll make sure to keep it posted.

So what I am going to do with all my "spare time" now that I don't have to worry about applications? Well, for once, try to catch up to all the work I have been putting off in the meantime. Readings, midterms, marking, etc. There's so much to do... it never stops. The beauty of it is that I'm getting used to this constant activity mode. I think it's good and healthy. It keeps me going, it keeps me alive.

Till later times...
Ce Vaks

Life at 24B

2008-09-20T14:00:00.007-04:00

I moved into a new house this fall. Even though my housemates and I have tried coming up with an original and legen-wait for it- dary house name, we haven't been able to come up with the right name quite yet (I don't care what you say Cassie, we will not call this house "The Red Phoenix"!).

As the weeks go by (we are past week #2 already), we all try to get used to everyone's way of doing things. I personally cannot stand the sight of a sink full of dirty dishes, crumbs all over the countertop and food stains on the microwave walls. I cannot stand shoes being left by the door or heaps of garbage on the recycling bin waiting to be "magically" thrown out either. I guess that when it comes to keeping things in order, I'm picky. On the same note, there's probably things that I do that innervate my housemates. Who knows, maybe singing while cooking or the excessive number of tofu packages in the fridge bother some people.

It all comes down to getting used to the people you're living with and realizing everyone has their own little way of doing things. Everyone is raised differently. Whether we want it or not, most of the time, the way we do things is greatly based on our families and the way we were brought up. I was never taught to fill the sink with soapy water when doing my dishes. Nor I was prohibited from having desert for breakfast (maybe I was but I never obeyed...). These are things that might be unthinkable to other people whose families washed their dishes with a sink full of hot soapy water and ate cereal and toast every morning.

As we all differ on the way we doing things, we expect everyone else around us to do things our way. If this doesn't happen we get frustrated and issues arise. It all comes down to our naturally selfish nature. The only way to solve these issues is to think outside our selfish bubble, to realize that we are not the centre of it all and that our ways are not the ONLY ways. A little bit of bread crumbs on the table never hurt anyone... a random pair of shoes in the middle of the hallway might have; but truth is, living at peace with your housemates is worth more than a small bump on the head.

The key is to be flexible. Not "Kyle-Shewfelt-Canadian-gold-medalist-gymnast"-flexible but flexible in a way that you're able to adapt to any new thing that comes your way. For example, if your new housemate enjoys eating microwavable bacon and leaving lard all over the place (which of course annoys the crap out of you), rather than thinking of the way you'll get back at him for it, grab a soapy cloth and clean it up. Kindly inform him of his future cholesterol issues and move on. Your ulcer-free intestines will thank you later.

Overwhelm-ness

2008-09-17T23:50:00.000-04:00

It's Med-school application time and I certainly wasn't prepared for the amount of work required to complete these applications. Just when you think you're close to an end, you realize that there are many other details needed: manager's addresses, emails, phone numbers, job responsibilities, descriptions, from and to dates, etc.

I find myself going down memory lane, remembering my first yucky job at the fish and chips place by my house-talk about a stink!- remembering all those activities I was involved in, all the shows I performed in, all the clubs I was a part of. This walk down memory lane all of a sudden made me realize that I like to keep busy. Even though I sometimes complain about my lack of free time, I feel useful when I'm busy, so I overbook myself and pray I'll make it through.

Burn-out much? Not yet, or perhaps I recover quickly. Hopefully the overwhelm-ness of it all won't take a huge toll on me.

It's crunch time again. I've been in this state of "crunchiness" for a while now. Since Peru and its endless preps to studying for and writing the mighty MCATs; it's been crunchy for more than 4 months with small down times here and there. However, I find a little stress is always helpful. It keeps me going. It keeps me afloat and prevents me from succumbing into a state of numbness.

Cheers to positive stress and crunchiness, yet avoid gray skies and downpouring overwhelm-ness.

The little time i have left in Peru

2008-08-02T00:30:00.000-04:00

I catch my plain in 3 days... it´s definitely unreal.
It´s been such a great trip here in Peru. I´ve learnt so much, I´ve seen so much, I´ve laughed so much, ate so much and taken tons of pictures to prove it! It´s been a great time... no regrets.
Now that the end is imminant, I´m setting priorities straight and placing the most important matters at the top of the list. In my list, my top priority is family. I´m trying to spend as much time as I can with my family since it´s going to be a long time until I see them again.

Getting to know more about my relatives and their lives helps me understand myself a little more. It´s not that we´re living in the same world but I see a lot of them and their actions in me. Maybe if I listen well enough, I´ll avoid some awkward situations and know how to confront some others. Afterall, history repeats itself.

I am also trying to enjoy everything I get to do on my last three days here. From eating at a Peruvian food buffet to dancing some Salsa at a Miraflores salsa club, I´ll try to enjoy everything at its time. No regrets, no mulligans, no double takes. Opportunities come in singles.

Just three days!!!

WOW, just three days...

Decisions...

2008-07-17T14:08:00.002-04:00

Everyone is caught in one of these situations all the time. They come in all sizes and shapes and unfortunately, no one can avoid them as they have become an inherent part of our daily living. It all starts in the morning… should we get out of bed or should we keep hitting the snooze button? Should we wear jeans or khakis? Shoes or sandals? Toast or cereal? Orange or apple? Everything we do is based on a decision.

As specified before, decisions come in different sizes. Some are small as choosing what side of the bed to get out of, but some are big, I mean huge and crucial. They will determine the rest of your life. They will make it or break it. There’s nothing insignificant about these decisions, and the way you handle them will not only determine your future days but will also teach you more about yourself.

Even though decision making can be a stressful and dreadful event, it can also give you an insight to the way you handle problems and look for solutions. It can target the areas that need to be polished and outline the areas that you handle well. Decision making should be a learning process, a chance to analyze how we react to the type of decision we have to make.

Last month I had the chance to go on a trip to Peru’s south. I traveled to Cusco, Puno and Arequipa in what I consider an unforgettable trip. Many of the decisions I had to make during the trip were, in retrospect, small even though they seemed to be huge at the time. One such decision was choosing to hike the Colca Canyon, one of the deepest canyons in the world. As a person who doesn’t hike very often, I was a little intimidated at the time. This 3-day hike included hiking down the wall of the canyon through dangerously steep paths with loose rocks on the first day and waking up very early in the morning of the last day to hike up the 1000m canyon wall and catch a bus to go observe condors before 7am. At the time, the decision to pay more than 100 soles for this adventure seemed big. I analyzed the pros and cons, as I normally do with decisions like these, and decided to go ahead with it. During this time, I realized that even though this is not something I normally do- trying it wouldn’t hurt. If anything, I would have bragging rights and anecdotes to tell my friends, right? As I look back at this time in my life, I realize that going outside my comfort zone was hard but truly worth it. I made the right choice at going ahead with the hike and if I had the same opportunity again, I would take it. Sometimes it’s worth to take a risk when making a decision. In those cases not only the decision process is a learning experience but the decision’s outcome as well.

Risk is involved in every decision so there’s no way to avoid it. Understanding this might save precious time when making a decision. We make a decision knowing the risks and understanding that we have to be flexible to whatever the outcome turns out to be. Risk involves jumping into unclear terrain, the chances of falling are great but you still have to jump to figure out whether you will fall or land on your feet. A decision is the actual jump. A good or expected outcome is equivalent to landing on your feet while a bad or unexpected outcome is equivalent to falling. Even though everyone hopes to land on their feet, sometimes we cannot avoid falling. What you do after you fall is the important turn point. If you decide to stand up after falling you will learn from that fall and continue with life with a little more wisdom. If you decide to remain on the floor, your failure will eventually consume you. You are the one who chooses what to do once you fall.

This is something I keep reminding myself. As my MCAT-writing day approaches quickly, I struggle with the “what if’s” of this whole process. What if I fail my MCATs? What happens if no Med-school wants me? What happens if I bomb the interview? I figured it all comes to 1 of 2 things. I either get into Med-school first try or not. If I get in first try, awesome. If I don’t I have to be flexible to work with the undesired outcome. I have to learn to stand up from the ground and continue with life, whatever that might be. The decision might seem huge at the time, but if I transport myself to years from now and look back at this time in my life, I will realize that this decision looks small in the grand scheme of things; and, the time I spent worrying about it was a waste. I want to stop worrying about the near future and focus on doing my best. God has a plan for me- the grand scheme of things- I like to call it. Even though I don’t know what awaits for me in his grand scheme, I know that he wants what’s best for me. If the undesirable outcome occurs, He will give me the strength and determination I will need to stand up from the ground and continue to live life.

Decisions, everyone has to make them; everyone has to own up to the outcomes. They are a great but stressful learning process that helps you learn more about yourself. You are the one who has to choose to reap of the benefits of this learning process. By learning what you do wrong during the decision process, you will be targeting areas of improvement. By choosing to rise up from an undesired outcome, you will be learning more about your problem solving skills and it may even open possibilities you were not expecting before. The grand scheme is out there. It’s your choice to make it to the finish line.

Hospital del Niño

2008-07-11T18:33:00.001-04:00

This week i have had the great opportunity to realize an observership at Hospital del Niño in Breña, Lima-Perú.
I went to the hospital expecting to learn a lot about the common diseases of the region and how physicians diagnose and treat these diseases. But the scope of things I ended up learning was greater than what I expected.

I started on Monday under the supervision of Dr. V. A. Garaycochea, the chief of Paediatrics of Medicine B-where i was going to do my observenship. She is a charismatic lady who is described by her interns as "strict but an amazing teacher". I soon recognize these qualities when we do our first morning visit. She asked different questions during the visit and if we didn´t know the answers (me included) she told us to go research it and that she would ask us about it the next morning. In one occassion, we were analyzing the symptoms of a new patient, Brayan, a 6 month old who suffered from tonic and clonic seizures. Even though he was 6 months old, he had the developmental regression of a 2 month old baby. Since this wasn´t always seen in patients at Medicine B, she went into her office, retrieved an article and told us to go read it. The article talked about global developmental delay and the guide to determine its causes. She told me to read it carefully cause I was going to have to do a mini-exposition on it the next day. I was impressed that as an observant on her floor, she trusted me to do an exposition on such a topic. Let´s just say I am now aware on the different procedures involved in the determination of the causing agents of global deveopmental delay! Dr. Garaycochea was very demanding on her interns but she demanded in such a way that the interns were interested to know more rather than forced to.

I worked along with 4 other interns. 2 of them, Hans and Carlos were in their 7th year of Med-school and had been at Medicine B for about a month. The other 2, Leslie and Lourdes were in their 6th year of Med-school and this was their 2nd week in Medicine B. Even though they were just rotating at this hospital, they seemed to know their way around quite well and they definitely knew how to deal with the patients. They all go to Hospital Cayetano Heredia, one of the best and most recognized medicine universities in the country.

(L-R) Hans, me, Leslie and Carlos

They were all very nice. Leslie and Lourdes showed me around the first day and they were really nice even though I asked a lot of questions. Each of these girls worked along side the guys writing progression reports, the SOAPs for each patient and in obtaining clinical history from the parents. They were very efficient at what they were doing. At least once a week, they had to present a certain topic to the rest of the interns in our building. Their presentation would be on something such as pneumonia or diarrhea. These were very interesting topics as those are 2 of the most common diseases affecting children this time of year. Leslie did her presentation this week. She talked about an article on a study on the effect of Ondansetron (an antiemetic) on children with gastritis and gastroenteritis. She analyzed the article using the CASP guidelines which would determine whether the study made sense and could be used in their clinical setting.
All the interns were very knowledgeable and they seemed to have everything under control. I was very impressed to see that they were in charge of EVERYTHING... most of what the doctor would do is visit the patients in the morning, talk to the interns about the progress of the patients and prescribe new medication or tests. Everything else, the interns were in charge of.

The kids at Medicine B were there for many reasons including hydrophathy, seizures, viral pneumonia, dehydration due to diarrhea, etc. I got to interact with most of them and their relatives but there were 2 kids who i was mostly attached to. Their names were Angela and Leonardo. Angela is a 8 year old girl who suffers from dwarfism and other complications. This week she was at the hospital because her O2 levels were fluctuating rapidly but as seen by the big pile of papers next to the other patients´charts, she had been in the hospital almost all her life. I could also tell because everyone knew who Angela was. She was everyone´s spoiled girl, mainly because she would win the hearts of the doctor´s nurses and volunteers with kisses and hugs. I got to spend time with her and feed her "teta" term she used to refer to her milk. She is a very cute girl!

Angela and I

Leonardo-or Leo as I like to call him- is a 2 yr 11m old boy. He ws born with a rare disease in which his diaphragm did not close completely. Because of this, his esophagus is shorter than normal and his stomach is way up high (i wish i could have taken a picture of his X-rays). He also has dismorphic facial features and a delay in development. He doesn´t talk at all but he is very smart. For example, he cries everytime he sees his milk bottle empty, not because he hasn´t had enough but rather because he knows there´s no more milk. He quiets down some minutes later as he starts to feel full. The problem is that he is a severely malnourished boy who has an abdominal catheter through which he gets fed. This prevents him from feeling full right away and therefore cries cause he feels hungry. He is a really cute boy. I loved making him smile!

Leonardo and I

So my week at INSN or IESN or ISN (yeah, the hospital is called all these 3 things!) was a very interesting one. I not only learned about the common diseases affecting children in Lima but also, I learned about other interesting diseases I had never heard of. I learned the difference between "sibilantes", "roncantes" and "crepitos"- sounds heard from the lungs of a child with pneumonia. I learned about different research methods that aid in the diagnosis and determination of the treatment for a patient, as well as how to analyze articles and determine whether their results are reliable. I learned more about the life of an intern and the interactions between members of the medical hierarchy. I learned to love waking up at 5:30am and taking a one hour bus ride to the hospital every day just to help these kids feel better.
This observership opportunity was a great experience, as I not only learned about medicine itself but about medicine as a lifestyle.

B in the B

2008-04-26T23:55:00.000-04:00

"Beauty in the Broken"... the first thing that comes to my mind is the Starfield song with the same name but when I start thinking about what those 4 words actually mean I realize their true meaning.

Brokenness is something our society avoids at all costs... from a broken vase to a broken heart, no one wants to deal with the pieces and the loss. What society doesn't understand or doesn't want to admit is that we learn the most from situations in which we experience brokenness. A broken vase teaches us to be more careful and a broken heart teaches us that and much more. It's all about learning, we never stop.

What I find important is to find beauty in brokenness, beauty in the fact we'll learn something we were not expecting to learn and to delight ourselves in knowing that we'll learn the most important lessons during these times of struggle.

Brokenness... it'll always hurt but that doesn't mean it can't be beautiful!