coming home

i am so tired but i can't sleep......

i have much pain that can't be relieved......

i can't wait to go home- to crouch under my favorite blanket, and be taken care of by my healer, who bore me, taught me, raised me and constantly supports me!

mammy, i am coming home soon!

almost exploded

yesterday i endured tremendous stress, which came from putting a presentation together. there has always been stress of some sort but it was really the first time that made every part of me ache such that i couldn't continue though time was tight.

today's only thursday, so i had started my TGIF early, though tomorrow is the day to give the presentation. it's put together, only work needs to be done is to modify it.

i guess the stress is declining, so is the unexplainable ache that was associated with it.

thanks god.

island earthquake oct 15, 2006

posted below is a recap of my first personal encounter of an earthquake hit on Oct 15, 2006 written by my roommate Mayee. epi center was 6 mi from NW of the Big Island. enjoy!

The first quake woke up Yeung, my roommate who's a graduate student from Hong Kong. She walked out sleepy and confused into the living room where I was already braced under a doorway with Nina Bear and Coco next to me. I told her it was an earthquake and said, "Go stand in a doorway frame, it's safer there". When the second quake hit, still confused she started heading towards me intending to crowd in with me and the two dogs. I had to wave her towards her bedroom door (which was closest to her anyways) and told her to, " Go stand in the freakin' doorway already!". I reached over to my second roommate's door (Lori's a grad student from the Philippines) and opened it, calling out "Lori! Wake up, it's an earthquake. Go stand in a doorway!" Lori's bed was empty and I heard a voice calling out, "I'm already under the desk!" - this provided a bit of unintentional comic relief and we were sure to remind her of it a few more times throughout the day. Then we waited out the second quake and the smaller aftershock that followed. When the electricity went out about 5 minutes after the last apparent aftershock, I could hear a collective scream of surprise and horror from the street outside. Adults and kids. Seems it was a little too much for the two Polynesian families across the street. As for Mark, his first thought upon feeling the tremors was that Nina Bear was scratching herself vigorously by the bed. Then his next thought, after the earthquakes passed, was to forgo the cold shower he usually takes in the morning and take a really hot shower because who knew how long we would have hot water? As it turns out, the water -hot and cold- stayed available all day. Which was a real blessing, because no electricity is merely an inconvenience, but no water could be really bad news.

Without power, we couldn't do much. No working on the computer, no internet, no tv. Because all the intersection lights were out, we didn't want to drive anywhere - where would you want to drive to anyways when the power was down island-wide? We didn't want to go to the beach because, even though my emergency weather radio said that no tsunamis were anticipated, who wanted to take the chance? And I couldn't do any field work because there was a flood watch for all the islands. So we stayed in the apartment and alternated reading (form Yeung, Lori, and me it was journal articles; for Mark, business magazines) and lots of napping. And making fun of all the pidgin folks calling into the radio station. One guy asked if Heco (our local power company) was going to reimburse him for all the food that was going bad in his fridge. Kids kept calling in to ask if they had to go to school the next day. Stuff like that.

When evening came and we still had no electricity, all four of us took to the streets to see if we could find restaurants that were open. There were lots of other roving bands of hungry people. There was a run on fried rice and fried noodles. We ended up at Magoo's; a bar that caters to the local UH crowd. They had a generator and had it hooked up to the essentials: juke box, neon beer signs, beer pumps. I was impressed; they managed to keep the beer cold and the music going. Some undergrads from the dorms were down there, people from the neighborhoods were there. The place was packed. When the power came on at about 10pm, people cheered and then booed because they wanted the party to keep going.

So that's what happened to us the day the earthquake hit Hawaii.

fix you

when you love something, it will last-- still i love coldplay's music
here's a recent one:

When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse
When the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

High up above or down below
When you too in love to let it go
If you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

angry or frustrated? pride or persistence?

as a scientist-to-be, i am receiving training. a big part of becoming a scientist is the ability to come up with ideas and hypotheses to explore the unknowns. well, i did come up with something and with great enthusiam i was dying to test my hypothesis and to dig deeper into the matter at hands.

as everyone knows there are many sides to one story, and there are many layers to the very same story. and one story is often times connected to another if you get your hands on the right piece for connection. excitingly i found many possible linkages just by reading the available literature. i want to run the experiments to see whether i was anywhere close to what i thought. of course what i thought had no preliminary data because i just thought of the possible connection.

the dilemma now is without preliminary data to support my hypothesis, i can't even run the experiment. or i should say my PI doesn't buy it, but he's proposing as well something that had no preliminary data of. here i don't know exactly why my proposal dropped dead. i saw great potential and value, but sadly they didn't.

how can i, the little one who is getting trained, with no preliminary data at hands make them see what i see? i read, but they didn't read what i read, how can i tell them the great importance of what i want to test if they don't see it when i tell them.

i can't help but to think that they don't approve of my proposal because it's not in their realm of expertise. and if i were to get their guidance, they'd better be in control of the whole experiment. should i quit and just go with their "command"? or should i persue and persuade them further? no, there's no sign of success as they have already changed my path.

but my idea must not die. in case i have no opportunity to test it ever, at least it should live here. i believe that during viral infection and the like, the deviated brain immune system is activated. unlike the rest of the body, the brain has much more signal trasducing agents, neurotransmitters, peptides, soluble gas and amino acids on top of cytokines and chemokines. brain cell death must be far more regulated than cells in the rest of the body because they don't divide. for events such highly regulated, there's much to be known and that's what i want to know. i hope somebody will look into it and let me know what they find. i want to know under what trigger and mechanism our brain cells die. or if they don't die, through what process they become dysfunctional, like those of progressive neurological diseases.

well, this is probably not the only time when i will not be able to follow my heart. but at least i must learn this is not an end, just like how i slowly but surely live my dreams, one by one and one at a time.

yet i also know at times, what i want may not be best for me. things always happen for a reason and there are things to be learned in each and every happening.

the most humane way to cook a lobster

i love to cook and had wondered about this before. who knows what's the most humane way to cook a lobster?

a. put it alive into a boiling water pot
b. put it in the pot alive in the cold water before it boils
c. cut it in halves before cooking it
d. none of the above, then what is it?

*people who i have told the answers to are prohibited from participating!

too good to be true = then don't believe it

i am too much of a dreamer and believer in good things and it hurts when they turn out to be some gimmicks. when something sounds too good to be true, then it's better to believe it's not true. what going to find the technology in germany, what going to diamond's lab? in the end, just work with what we have and know what we can't do because we don't have what we need.

first knows the limitation--> needs arise accordingly vs think as if there's no limit--> needs cannot be fulfilled

don't tell me case 2 if what we have is case 1. that's so cheating.

am i on the way to complete recovery?

for the past three years or so i had been suffering from chronic muscular pain on the right side of my upper back. i know what caused it but i didn't know how to cure it since i let it go to far.

since it wasn't severe enough or that the condition presents no easy signs that could be "fixed", i saw a doctor, a physical therapist, an acupuncturist, and took different kind of over the counter pain killers, and muscle relaxant and lived with it. the muscle relaxant worked great when i could just knock myself out and sleep in the most relaxed state. yet once i got up and do a few things, the pain came back again, througout the day and at its worst when i had to use the computer a lot. but i am a student, there's no way around using the computer. and most frustrating ever, i could be in pain even when i didn't touch the computer for days.

finally, i decided to seek help from a PAIN SPECIALIST. did another set of x-rays and no signs abnormality. Dr. Cederic K Akau was the only one in town that i could find on the internet system. everything went just normal and i suggested my problem being associated with muscle inflammation. with ample of experience in athristic joint pain management which is caused by inflammation, he prescribed me a non-steriod anti-inflammatory drug called Nabumetone. twice a day i took the drug and i couldn't believe that i felt better already only after taking it for one day. maybe it was psychological, or maybe not. i hope this is it for me, and i will have to look no further to recover from the chronic pain on the back.

so muscle ache sufferers, ask your doctor to look for signs of inflammations!

gesundheit to all!