Science inmate 4174449

I have been away from the blog and for that I am terribly sorry. But the truth is that my PhD hasn't been a ride in the park. Now and then I have ten minutes to rest from experiment to writing to experimenting again and redo the whole circuit, from 8 am in the morning to 10 pm at night. Sometimes I just crawl exhausted to the laptop to check a few football scores or just read the fat titles of the general news.

Reading for pleasure occurs just as I do my 20 minutes walk from my house to the lab. I try my most, but that's it. Forget about all the novels and other interesting paper 'documentaries' that have stacked up these last 18 months.

Music is a companion in the lab only when performing very tedious operations. Mastodon, A Perfect Circle, Jeff Buckley, Soulfly, Soundgarden, Sigur Ros and Stone Temple Pilots are a few of my tones. But even that passion of mine has been neglected.

Writing??? Hahaha. yeah, I do write. Only to hear my supervisors say it needs correcting again, and yet again, and once more. I hold no grudge on that. But this blog is one of my passions and it has been neglected because I simply have no time.

I get home, cook for the day after. Prepare a fresh set of clothes. Listen to my girl talking about her day. Skype for brief moments with yet another neglected friend. Go to bed with this guilt in my chest; just to replicate the same routine the following day.

I promise myself I will do gym. I used to exercise three times a week for 90 minutes. I do 60 minutes every 14 days now. God!

I promise myself I will write on my blog about the numerous interesting things I think throughout the day. Nope! I do not do it. I end up just spitting to the back of my lab coat a few phrases I come up with during my lonely philosophical moments, a few of them in between cloning and minipreping.

These phrases could be thoroughly explained and debated. Some are quite controversial to some minds, but they never meant to be offensive. All they intend is to release some of the pressure that grows whenever you work for more than 12 hours a day. All they want to be is funny statements. Some tricky to understand, nevertheless, never offensive. 

One of my lab coats reads:

"Science inmate 4174449" - Purely mentioning that once in science you're forever stuck to science. The number is just my student number in this university. 

Another lab coat reads:

"So yin to science and still so yang" followed by the drawing you can see up there. - Purely evocative of my passion for science, how hard I work in it, how it ages a lot of us who give it all, but inside I still feel so young with all the things I still want to achieve and do. How these passions complement each other.

(sigh*)

... I feel I really need to write a lot more. I love writing in my blog.