fruit

Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan

Woods Hole, MA

we explored martha's vineyard on sunday cause its a day off for the course. tomorrow we start hard-core science once again. 4 hours of lecture and 12 hours of lab every day. but it was beautiful weather today, jeff me and dan took a ferry to martha's vineyard and had an adventure! we rented Mopeds and zoomed around the island as a gang of three. had several mishaps. that made me a little worried at some point, but survived overall (this includes jeff loosing the bike ikeys, dan running out of gas -- twice -- and me getting dragged by the moped on the beach for ten feet. i wasn't hurt)
all in all the woods hole experience has been great. lots of brilliant scientists, lots of experiments, and lots of beer, and lots of new friends. i went and visited the room where Cole invented the voltage clamp some 60 years ago. to think that i'm now in a way part of the long amazing tradition of neurophysiologists is exciting. it was the coolest thing to hear clay armstrong recount his discovery of the inactivation mechanism of K channels using TEA, as well as the first measurements of gating currents of a channel.
TA-ing for this course has definitely been a learning experience. its not just the lectures that i've benefited from. but also just being put on the spot to explain fundamental principles of electrophysiology and synaptic transmission has forced me to rethink many ideas that i've just taken for granted and rework the logic of it all.

me and ching

the smiling one laughing

one of my favorite photos of bass -- he is actually laughing in this one.
amazing.