Radzone

Yaay I have comments on my blog! After trying out three different services I've currently settled with Haloscan.

TIFR is officially closed today and I'm working... it's bliss to work when few people are around. For some reason I think I should write a bit about what I do in TIFR whole day! Apart from attending courses, seminars, causeries, journal clubs and participating in them I also do some amount of experimental work. I've recently been introduced to cell cultures so I nurture and grow a cell line of brain cells for some study we want to do.

WHY...? Well rats are a good model to study medicine and physiology since we can't actually cut up people.

Though that was actually a suggestion given by one of SPCA (Maneka Gandhi's ) people. Since we're doing work on Depression, Stress and neurodegenrative disorders, this lady says, "Why are you using rats just use human specimens na.... there are so many in Thane Mental Hospital who anyways have no life"!!!!! She was dead SERIOUS!!! Sort of left our boss speechless (never happens!)

Anyways many-a-times animal lovers seem to think humans aren't animals and sort of treat humans like they're pests!!!!

posted by Radha @ 12:50 AM

Ms. Elle....

This is loosely based on some one I recently met, an extremely young at heart lady called Ms Elle Green (nee Lalita Joshi). I thought her story was fascinating and should be shared. I'm not sure she agrees so her name and details have been changed. Lalita was born in Bombay, she spent most of her early life in Bombay with one stint in a village in Konkan and then returned to Bombay. She got married to her childhood sweetheart, a Gujrati businessman, and then moved to California. He mistreated her so she left him after a few years. Then she set out to become a "successful single woman" in America and started working and attending university part time. She trained herself in Computer science. Then she met Mr. Green who immediately fell in love with her and asked her to marry him. She had loads of reservation but gave in to his relentless courtship after a bit. The two of them (and now three after her son has hopped on board) started three very successful companies. Somewhere along the way she went from being Lalita Joshi to L. Joshi, to L. Green and finally Elle Green!! Now she has set up a branch of her Databases comopany in a quaint little town in India and she visits India every once in a while with Mr. Green in tow. Her pemanent address is Palo Alto, CA (I can see Stanford wanabes thinking whats her e-mail address???:))

You are probably thinking this sounds like fiction or a plot of some really worn out TV series, but it is actually true... (well almost)! Ms. Elle (her preferred title of being refered to as) is 66 years old and is very popular among her young staff of fresh computer engineers and the like. You've probably met more interesting people but she definitely comes up among the top few in my list!

posted by Radha @ 12:29 AM

The Scooter Cart

I've always wondered about this cart thingy which is attached to some scooters to carry a third person. I just find it really strange!! Agreed that it is very convinient for people with a family of three and all the benefits and whatever but I kind of tend to look at it twice everytime I see one. It's like a grown up person being dragged along in pram of sorts. This third entity get's completely isolated from the other two because of the distance and the noise and usually are an extremely uncomfortable and incredibly bored lot. The passenger's head comes exactly at the level of exhaust pipes of automobiles and gets blasted by particulate carbon, smoke and CO at almost every signal stop. I've never really ridden in one nad don't know anybody who has, and would really like to know more about the experience. From a distance it looks like the worst kind of commute ever! Is it just me??!

posted by Radha @ 10:02 PM