Preparing journal club

It’s my turn, along with VM, to prepare presentations of articles in journal club this week. Woes behold and all, I still couldn’t quite decide which article to present, although it will be along the line of positive selection and evolution. I have 3 candidate articles at hand, so I need to make a decision and start working on it.

Luckily (perhaps) I’m leaving work early today for a dental appointment, and I’ll be going straight home from there. I guess this means I’ll have some good time in the evening to check through these, and get started on the presentation slides.

Sometimes I do wonder though if journal club is taken seriously by everyone. And I also question if the articles of choice will be of interest to everyone in the lab. Afterall, that is the purpose of journal club - to keep up with latest development within relevant field that’s of the lab’s general interest, while practicing presentation skill.

The latter is cool, because I am the proverbial nervous mouse when it comes to giving a presentation. Luckily though, with journal club as well as seminar series, I’ve been given the chance to give a couple of talks just to work on my skill. So far it’s going quite well as training goes. As long as I remember to speak slowly and clearly, and use lots of graphics on the slides instead of paragraphs of words.

10 Places of a Lifetime

There are 10 places compiled by the National Geographic Traveller and I must have live a charmed life. I doubt that I’m at the end of my lifetime just yet but I have been to half of these locations just within the last few years. And totally loving them of course!

Paris : my favourite city among those in the list that I have visited. And I visit it regularly too. It’s virtually my second home away from home. My romance with Paris started nearly a decade ago and this affair doesn’t seem likely to stop anytime soon either. A couple of trips per year is not surprising, occasionally 3-4 times per annum. Top that with the number of friends I have in the city, it’s uncontestable the best city to be.

London : a city of possibilities, with plenty to do and to see. Culturally and historically rich, with plenty of modern touches for fun-loving crowds. Unfortunately, I found London too crowded and I felt suffocated, with tall buildings closing in on me when I walked along its streets. Twice I’ve visited, enjoyed them as I may had, it won’t top my list just yet.

Rome : a city literally soaking with ancient charm of Roman world. Just walk around the Eternal City and you will learn to love every cobblestone of the city. Grab a couple of gelato along the way, or a good hot chocolate on a cold day. Just don’t talk a river tour - it’s not quite like those you get elsewhere, trust me.

Los Angeles : the city of angels, and one that never sleeps (yeah, not Seattle) with the buzzing lifestyle at all time. Smoggy too for a city. Crazy smog, so much so I do wonder how people can remain healthy in the city, inhaling all the fume that is there. But it is the home to Hollywood. To all the glitter and glamour of the showbiz world.

San Francisco : the city that is home to the famous Golden Gate Bridge and wonderful eating places. Tons and tons of chocolate and wine and gourmet food to lay one’s hand on. My trip to ‘Frisco was short and a tad tiring as I did a whole lot of walking, but it was a lot of fun too, with memories that I shall not forget for life.

Multitasking

Is multitasking a good or bad idea?

At home and at leisure, I think it’s great. Say, watching a tv series while surfing the net, replying to friends’ emails, writing a tasklist, catching up blog reads. I can do all these pretty much simultaneously without giving it a second thought.

When it comes to work though, it’s a tad trickier. I find it tough to even read a journal article while waiting for certain scripts to finish running in the background. It’s even tricky to run a same script in parallel for different dataset, for I always have this fear at the back of my mind that I may mix things up and then I’ll be doomed. Results should always be reported as accurately as possible.

So all I can do, for the time being, while waiting for certain things to finish is to review my work flow and document them, and search for relevant reading papers which are then saved and/or printed for later use.

Surely there must be a better way that I can handle a couple more tasks at work, no?