The Two Most Important Things in Life (Currently): Science and FOOTBALL

Since I'm back in good old Buch and pipetting away again, let me just say that science is pretty much the same anywhere. I visited Adele's lab in Paris and watched her do a plant DNA extraction: a very familiar Invitrogen kit! Yesterday one of my office mates struck a conversation with me about how he viewed science: particularly molecular biology. He said if you threw enough money and manpower at this type of science, you're bound to crank out data but it's all useless. People who sit on a pile of data but fail at the analysis part are not scientists, in his opinion (I agree). He then went onto say that he feels like the majority of "scientists" are not doing science. They are wasting money and time just to make a living. While we were chatting, I was mulling over his pessimistic views. While a lot of research seem far away from practical implications, this type of work is fundamental in building a collective understanding of our world. I disagree with the thought of knowledge being useless. How have we come to understand complicated processes like metabolism? Painstaking and meticulous research. When I read biology textbooks, I know that behind every sentence, a lot of bench and field work was put in. It is simply summarized for my benefit. I agree with my office mate that to be a scientist, you have to "get it"-- what is the freakin' point?? what is the big picture?--, you also have to be passionate because sometimes, repetition of one procedure and bog you down and make you want to fast forward through 6 hours of pipette, wash, wait 20, repeat X 6.

Okay, on to something less serious but very much a part of every conversation to be had here. Football, soccer fever, whatever you want to call it, is on the loose!!! Hopefully, you have been keeping up because Germany with a 1-0 against Ghana pulled a first out of the group! Next game up: England (long enmity in football) on Sunday afternoon. Everyone is buzzing about it. Most popular question is: where are you going to watch the game? Well, I already know where I will be watching it (to be revealed after Sunday, it's going to be crazy!). After last game, everyone on the streets were screaming Deutschland, Deutschland!!! The city went crazy: there was a bit of a stampede on the S-Bahn. Of course, I was caught in it--being squeezed by tall people = me wishing I had more muscles.

LILY