Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Quote on attitude

“The longer I love, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company...a church....a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitudes.” 
― Charles R. Swindoll



Guess where I heard this? In a public bus in Boston!

Have been so inspired by this that I've resolved to maintaining a good attitude at all times.

And so far it's been 5 days (and counting)!


(kind of slipped up last night when I hissed at Ani harshly enough to upset him.... he kept trying to twist Durga's hand so he could hold it while going to sleep, making her wake up and cry, and making me want to rip my hair out)

Other fantastic news:
a) ASHG 2013! (See prev blog post for scant details)
b) Acadia/Boston! (yes, we were there. Beautiful and fun, both places. I'm so glad to be back home, though)
c) Figured out how to get average promoter methylations while controlling for CpG island presence!
(...aaand I just lost my audience with just that one sentence)

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Notes from the ASHG 2013

My first gigantic conference! Used to attend Keystone as a grad student. Am at the American Society of Human Genetics annual conference in Boston this week and the scale of this is greater than anything I've attended before. Nearly 7000 attendees!

Currently at an exhibit hall which is the size of a football field, waiting for the President's speech.
In front of me is a Japanese group, all of whom bowed to each other multiple times. I imagine them saying "After you, dear chap" "No no, after you!" after each bow.
Multiple attempts to figure out who should sit down first.
10 minutes later: okay, they've figured it out. Now they've whipped out their cameras and are taking pictures of each other.
5 minutes later: they are now taking pictures with some of the award winners.
Update: oh wait! It's not an award winner who's posing for pics- it's the president!

Am sitting waay in the front- 4th row from the stage. I figure I should get my money's worth of education. No snoozing while at the conference! There are zillions of rows- there's supposed to be a screen every 25-30 rows, and I count 3. There are about 75 columns.