I just put up our advent calendar. I think it was more fun to make it rather than search stores that sold one. Making packets recycled from grocery bags, one for each date, putting in little goodies, candies, and chocolates, and hanging it up was most fun. It will be even better to open it…

My friend Xu Xiaoying visited us the week before last and we had a nice.time She hails from Shanghai; we met in Berlin, Germany, and had really bonded well, in the lab and outside it. The experiments would last until late in the night and we would intersperse it with good talk, and good hot…

My memory of that day is vivid. Graduate school had pushed my nights very late and I had slept in. I was woken up with a call “go turn on the tv!!” Sometimes our bodies respond to such commands without a word, hearing the undertone of shock, terror and pain in it. The idiot box…

“Happiness starts with healthiness!!” crooned a lady extolling the virtues of a pet supplies shop. I was startled. My ears rang so loud, I thought I was in the bell tower of Notre Dame. The transformation of ‘health’ into ‘healthiness’ was akin to a bad dream. How in the world does one keep track of…