No Bandwidth

Okay, so, first entry. I'm starting this blog because, well, I couldn't find any more Big Bang Theory episodes to stream and I'm incredibly bored. Woo!

Alright, I've been in Argentina for about a week now, and things are finally going pretty well. It was a rocky start, as most of my friends and relatives have had to hear about, with no bank access, some power and water outages, and a total lack of direction at the lab. But the banking, power and water are fixed, and I'm finally starting to get somewhere (or at least an idea of somewhere to go) at the lab. Which is great, because I was running out of comics to read while I was supposed to be "working" on something I finished last week and had no idea how to proceed with.

I have sort of an odd situation at the lab, I think. Well, maybe odd in a general sense; I suspect it's not terribly uncommon for someone in my field though. So, I've got this mathematical biology/computational biochemistry work to do: basically I'm designing and implementing biochemical simulations. Well, so far it's just implementing with not so much designing, but that's going to change soon. I think. I hope. Of course, at least so far it's been nice and easy. Anyway, basically I have to admit that I have pretty much no interest at all in the biochemistry I'm working on. I don't know why it's important really (my labmate mentioned something about cancer pathology, but I wasn't clear on the details). I do however, quite enjoy the actual techniques and methods we're using (i.e. coding and running simulations in MATLAB). It's kind of weird, I think, because most scientists would be the other way around if anything. The techniques may or may not be of much interest, but the data, and the results, are important. But I guess that's the issue with being in applied mathematics. It's more about the tools than the results you get with them. I mean, your results should be correct, but the results aren't really the point: it's how you got them. Results are just for confirming the correctness of method.

Thinking about this, I am so glad there is a computer scientist in my lab, because if they were all biochemists, I'd probably never get anything done. Really, it's nice to have someone I can talk to who actually has a similar background as I do, and gets the chemists, so I don't have to filter all the chemspeak (coupled with the whole english/spanish language thing) through my own understanding. Of course, it'll probably be a mark in my favor when I talk about doing interdisciplinary work and such on my NSF Fellowship application.

As for the rest of life here, well, I've started to pick up a very small amount of spanish. Not really even a day of classes worth really, but I can get around on the bus system and order food and wine at restaurants (more or less. Got the wine down though.) You know, the important things.

And the wine, it is cheaper than water. Seriously. It's pretty great. A glass of house wine usually runs about AR$4-5, which is about US$1.15. A bottle of water is about AR$6. Okay, so the water is still cheaper per mL, but not by much!

More later,
JC