Exploring Filled Week and Weekend

There was actually not that much to update on from this past week! Very few eventful things happened during the week, and not so many that I couldn't lump them here with all of the fun weekend updates!


Remember the presentation my PI wanted me to work on starting the week I got here? Well, after much editing and fixing, it was finally finished, and it ended up (of course, I would be surprised if this didn't happen), he wanted me to present it at our Tuesday morning lab meeting. I was of course happy to do so. The presentation I thought went okay, but all my labmates seemed to really take a lot from it, as they all came to me after and told me how great and informative it was!!! It meant a lot and was really great to know that everyone was able to get something out of it and found it useful.


On Thursday mornings, we usually have seminar. Unfortunately, the night before, there was a huge fire in the train system (BART), which meant that everyone was either super late to work or had to drive in on Thursday morning, so our seminar speaker never actually came. We were dismissed from seminar early, and a bunch of us went into the Valley Life Sciences Building to check out all of the different things they have there. It's rather sad sometimes because of the three main professors I wanted to work with, two have labs in Valley Life Science, the other in Life Science Addition? And GUESS WHERE I AM?? But it's okay, because I love my lab. Here are some pictures from VLSB:

Skeleton models! The little one is a domestic cat!

Really cool display of our ancestors! I liked the mirror
part of it! :)

Lucy model

This skeleton likes the tree!

DINOSAUUUUUURRRRRR!

On Friday, several of the other girls wanted to try a new ice cream place! It's called Tara's and it's just down the street from Ici's. A whole group of us went but only a few of us got ice cream. They have really unique flavors which are fantastically pulled off. 

I got toasted almond and orange cashew. Both were absolutely delicious! Other flavors were things like allspice, black sesame, sunflower butter, and butternut squash. VERY different from your typical ice cream flavors, and from what I tasted from what the other girls got, all were extremely tasty and tasted true to their name. I love going to new ice cream places and trying flavors unique to that place. Why get something like chocolate when that's available anywhere? It takes a very special ice cream place to pull off flavors like the ones they had, and they did it so well. 

Saturday we had GA group social activities. I don't actually have many pictures of this, mostly because I slept through breakfast and 2/3 of the activities involved eating, and I was too excited about eating to remember to take pictures.

We first stopped at Cheeseboard, a cheese/pizza specialty place in northern Berkeley. They have a different specialty pizza each day, and Saturday's was Crimini mushroom, Onions, French feta cheese, Mozzarella, Fresh herbs, Garlic olive oil. I cannot even describe how that was one of the best pizzas I've ever eaten. The cheese was just so good, and the ingredients were put together in such a wonderfully perfect way that took my mouth on an incredible journey to pizza bliss. 

We actually took our pizza to a destination to have a picnic. We went to Indian Rock Park, which is literally a giant rock the size of about 2-3 houses in actual backyards in North Berkeley. Once you get off the bus, you take this path up a hill, through the backs of several backyards, and all of a sudden you're met with this giant rock. Since North Berkeley is up in the hills, you have an amazing view from the top. 

Notice the house, right there. We were in
the middle of an actual neighborhood!  

That's how you get up the rock. There are just
some stairs, no big deal.

After eating our pizza and enjoying the view, we went to Lush Gelato on our walk back to Berkeley. I was again too hungry and too busy being a pig to remember to take photos, but the flavors I had were brown sugar rum and salted caramel banana, both of which were very good. Lush had similar flavors to Tara's, some of which included balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Gross when you think about, but very good in an ice cream, so I'm told. 

GA activities didn't take the whole day, so most of us, upon getting back from our respective activities, just vegged out in the dorm for the rest of the day. Later at night, I was bored, and asked one of the other girls if she wanted to try a new food place with me. On the way, we stopped at Walgreens because I needed a few things. Unfortunately, I discovered the candy aisle. Usually I'm good at avoiding the sweets and snacks and sugar, but given that the Walgreens out here have things like Bueno Bars (best foreign chocolate ever), they're bound to have things I can't resist buying because they're either too good or they're never available in the US. Things like these:

I CAN'T WAIT TO EAT THEM.

After the Walgreens detour, we went to our real destination, Crepes A-Go-Go. Probably just as good as the Paris Creperie in Boston but without the Nutella hot chocolate, Crepes A-Go-Go has a great selection of sweet and savory crepes. I got a sweet crepe, the King Lias, which has almonds, bananas, coconut, Nutella, and whipped cream. It's the sweetest one on the menu! I was very happy with it, and it was super tasty! 

Today, Sunday, we went into San Francisco to see Alcatraz! I have actually never been there on my previous trips to San Francisco, so I was very excited! 

Street chalk art outside BART in Berkeley

Sign coming into the island

Dock area. Prison is up on top of the hill 

The main prison 

Cells 

Rows and rows of cells 

The areas of the prison had funky names...like
Times Square...

...and Broadway!

Cell Block D, where solitary
confinement is (though I don't have photos
of that particular section) 

Bonnie (one of the other scholars) and I were
bad and are now in prison together :(.

Famous inmates 

Some of the prisoners oil painted! 

Visitation rules

Visitation area 

Guards office

The view is so pretty!...except that you're in prison.

Dummy heads from successful (?)
escape attempt

This is the utility area the prisoners
escaped from 

This sign was put there just for
people like me.

Bye Alcatraz!

That was the end of Amgen planned activities for the day, but certainly not the end of my adventures! As it turns out, several Govies are currently in the area! When I was a rising senior in high school (Summer 2008), I attended the New Jersey Governor's School in the Sciences. It is the only other "scholars" program I've been to, and probably the best one besides Amgen. I did make true lifelong friends during my time at the program, and it was one of the best three weeks of my life. Govies (our affectionate name for our fellow Gov School scholars) also pop up everywhere in the scientific community especially now that we're all getting settled into a field, and it's great to have so many connections. One of the Govies happened to be in town for a conference this weekend, the other is out here for a summer internship. It was great to get to see them again after so many years and hang out in an awesome city together! They + the one's two labmates who joined us had a combination between them of not having done/been to several of the things we'd done/went to, so it was great to introduce them to it, especially for the conference-ers, who got to do really San Francisco typical things in the short time that they're here! It's great how even though we all have roots in NJ and have gone so many separate ways for school, we still manage to meet up in small groups all over the country and even world whenever several people are in the same area (my personal ones have been in DC and now in SF!). Overall it was just a wonderful afternoon/evening, and truly some of the best times of my life are those spent with my Gov Loves :).

Ronak, me, and Mark after our cable car ride to
Fisherman's Wharf for dinner! Gov loves!  :D

We went to Boudin's for dinner. I found a LOBSTER
sourdough bread!

Me at the Boudin's cafe! 

Bread making area as seen from the museum 

Rules for the cable car. Rules a daredevil
like me of course doesn't want to follow!

Don't worry, the cable car was still stationary
when I was posing for this picture!  

We passed this building on the way back. On the left out
of view are all of the Ivy League school flags.
Not important! The actual one important one is
shown here. Hint: it's NOT Stanford! 

Before going to Boudin's, we actually
stopped at Ghirardelli Square.
Last time I was there,  I told myself
no buying chocolate, since I
had a huge stash in my room
 and didn't need more. Well, that
stash is almost done. So guess
who spent a fortune buying a
ginormous bag of chocolates....

This week, one of the main things I really need to do besides all of my labwork and other general Amgen responsibilities is catch up on my snail mail. I have many a letter or postcard to send to various family/friends, which I have been putting on hold for far too long due to other work or responsibilities or "priorities" (such as writing here...oops). I have several workshops this week as well as the usual GRE prep course. It'll be incredibly busy, but will be well worth getting through as next weekend is the Monterey Bay Aquarium/Santa Cruz trip which I'm ridiculously excited for! Off to face my week!