Lab Retreat Fun

At the end of May my lab went on a two-day lab retreat, which I organized pretty much single-handedly. I put a lot of effort into organizing it, so I was very happy to see that it went well and everybody enjoyed it.

The primary purpose of the lab retreat was to have in-depth discussions on selected few interesting topics in our area of research. The secondary purpose was to have a lot of fun. And a lot of fun we had :)

I was very happy (and proud) to see that all my labmates tried to make the lab retreat as entertaining as possible, and that they came up with many ingenious games even for the scientific part of the retreat. For example, one group created a game with similar mechanics to Magic: The Gathering based on theories of aging:

And to make it even more interesting, they traced the remaining life each player had on a lifespan graph:

I, on the other hand, organized an event called "Bio-Olympics". It included three activities: plate toss, rope pulling and building of a worm.

Plate toss. If you look carefully, you will see several agar plates up in the air:

Rope pulling:

My boss as a worm, and the rest of the lab behind her:

Lab on the rock:

In the evening we spent 2 hours playing science taboo:

And when we were done with it, we first played Mafia/Werewolf and then Jenga:

On the second day my awesome friend Nicole, who is an equally awesome personal coach, led a team building session for us. It was a highly valuable experience for us and we all loved it and truly appreciated Nicole's help. Thank you so much, Nicole!

Marshmallow Challenge

Marshmallow Challenge is a good team-building exercise that encourages collaboration and creativity, at the same time teaching the importance of prototyping and not making (false) assumptions. It is a fantastic icebreaker for any meeting, does not take too much time and does not require too many resources.

In fact, the only resources you need are:

• 20 spaghetti sticks (uncooked)
• 1 marshmallow
• 1 meter of string
• 1 meter of tape

The task is to build, using only resources provided, the tallest freestanding structure with a marshmallow on top, within 18 minutes. I gave this task to my labmates at the beginning of the lab retreat that we had recently, and I'm proud to report that two groups out of four, managed to build quite impressive two-story structures!

Before I gave this task to my labmates, I wanted to test myself in it, so I asked Anil to be my teammate and to build the marshmallow structure together with me. I was very pleased to find out that we had exactly the same approach to the task. We first started with drawing a model, and only after we agreed on it, we started building the structure.

We decided that a three-sided base is the most optimal taking into account the resources we had, which proved to be true. However, we hoped to build a three-story structure, which we failed to do as we run out of time. Still, I'm quite pleased with the marshmallow structure we built. It is not as easy as you might think!

Our marshmallow-spaghetti structure:

Nameless Lane

In Fort Bragg there is an interesting street that goes by the name "Nameless":

What the heck does Bruce Willis know about making Vodka?

Abso-lute-ly Nothing.

Awesome Sobieski Vodka ad campaign featuring Bruce Willis! Watch the video "In Character". (Unfortunately, the video embedding is not possible right now.)

two parodies

1. "The Most Beautiful Girl in the Lab" - made at UCSF! This is a parody of Flight of Conchords' "The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room":


I love how creative scientists can get! :)

2. Parody of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance", also pretty good though not made by scientists:


Edit: I just learned that the second video is by a cappella men-only choir "On The Rocks" from University of Oregon. It seems that university environment stimulates people to satire... :)

Population vs elevation

I am a huge fan of all those places, which population score is lower than their elevation. Hence this one I consider to be a true gem:

Ig Nobel 2008

As always, pick your favorite from this year's winners. I can not decide if I am more intrigued by the study that showed that Coca-cola negatively affects sperm motility and hence can be used as contraceptive, or by the study that showed that the fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than the fleas that live on a cat.

CA driver's license

Yesterday, I attempted again to obtain CA driver's license. And this time, finally, I managed. But not without problems of course :)

This time around I decided to use Marta's (a friend from the lab) car, as other girl from my lab had already used her car for the same purpose and she had had no problems with it. Based on that, I assumed that Marta's car fulfills all the requirements that DMV has towards the vehicle.

But with all my luck, there was a problem with the car and I was almost sure that because of it I would be send home again without a license. When one of the examiners was doing the "safety inspection" of the car, she noticed that the back stop light at the passenger's side did not work... When she told me that, my heart stopped, and in my mind's eyes I already saw myself going through the ordeal of making another appointment for the exam... Luckily, the woman was nice enough to suggest that I go and fix the light and come back for the exam later that same day. I immediately drove to the nearest gas station and found somebody who replaced the light bulb for me. 20 minutes later I was back in the line waiting for the exam.

The exam itself went very well and I was very happy with its outcome. Not only I did not make a single mistake, but also after we were back at the DMV office, my examiner repeated at least three times that I am a very good driver :) Maybe that does not mean so much from the mouth of somebody who has to deal all the time with the beginning drivers, but still it made me very happy and at least it partly compensated for my previous misfortunes with the exam.

Bonus story:
Earlier that same morning, when I arrived at the DMV office, something ironically funny happened to me. I was driving around their parking lot looking for a free parking space when I finally spotted a car about to pull out and free one of the spots. I stopped, switched on my indicator and patiently waited for the car to pull out. In meantime, another car appeared from the opposite direction blocking the exit way of the car whose spot I was planning on taking. There would be nothing wrong with that, if the other car had not attempt to enter the parking lot in the OPPOSITE direction to the traffic signs and if that wouldn't have led to blocking of 5 cars (my car, the car that wanted to leave the parking space and two other cars that wanted to drive out of the parking lot following the traffic rules). Somehow I am still able to understand that somebody might make mistake like this and turn into the wrong traffic lane, but I have very little understanding (and patience) for people who do something like this, see that they block several other cars, but just decide to do nothing and wait for others to solve the situation. So I think to myself "who is the idiot driving this car?" and I start to stare through the car's window to see who is causing all that mess. And now, surprise, surprise (here the irony comes), who do I see? The driver is my friend Ania, with whom I initially planned to travel for the past two weeks when also my friend Agnieszka was visiting. About a month ago, I had decided not to travel with Ania anymore as a series of very peculiar events (that I might describe here later on) made me question her intelligence and/or sanity. Well, she did prove me wrong again, didn't she? ;)

quiz

A friend who knew that I would be flying back today from Europe to SF wrote to me in the email following message:
Hope you are having a good flight right now, I'd be expecting some mild clear air turbulence over Idaho and central Oregon, caused by the jet stream that is messing up the flying here today. Booh!
Any ideas who this friend could be?

procrastination