Here's to another crazy day

Recently, Balto is covered under a closed layer of ice. Snow has fallen, melted, and coalesced into a cracking, slippery, hard cake-icing-like blanket.


Another crazy day.

After lunch, I had to do a presentation of half a dozen project ideas for students' course projects in Taylor's "Computer-Integrated Surgery 2" in my PI's absence. The students kept their pokerfaces under a barrage of prime ideas from a couple of researchers here... they must be tough vis-a-vis the incessant displays of brillance around them. Or maybe they were just tired.

Late lunch, then another event - "FACEBOOK 101: Demo Day - The New 'Face' of the Web". In an intersession course, students had developed a bunch of Facebook applications all revolving around video and photos, and today was demo day. They dispersed around a bunch of laptops in the lounge area upstairs and showed off what they had invented and implemented during those three weeks.


Afterwards, another PhD student approached me with yet another project idea we could co-mentor in the afore-mentioned CIS2 course - so back to PowerPoint to whip up another inspiring slide, after discussing how much is too much for a semester project. At Hopkins, students regularly have to sign NDAs about their engineering projects.

Just when I believed the day would be over, my desk neighbor approached me and reminded me of today's dinner outing. So a bunch of colleagues started moving, avalanche-like, towards a nearby dinner bar. Astonishingly enough, a few of them are smokers, as it turned out afterwards.


And, I got myself into the vortex of classes here... or seminars. Finally, after so many years, medical computing science (after high school, initially I contemplated studying that) and I finally meet in terms of actual courses.

McDull and the zhibaoji

I haven't understood almost anything the first time I saw this, many years ago.
Now, I understand no more, maybe even some less... but it is no less hilarious!
The famous McDull of Hong Kong and his mom's famous paper bun chicken!



(And unless I'm a total jerk, it's even more belly-splittingly funny in Cantonese!)

Disconnect

So many things are happening recently, some of which should be depressing, some upsetting, some uplifting, some wonderful, some outrageous... and still, it is so hard to actually experience, to actually feel them. Plus, this disconnect comes packaged with a lack of initiative as well. Where has empathy, where has motivation gone? Rage, sadness, drive, exhaustion - where are they? What to make of that?

Impressions

Homewood.


Gefräßiger Plapperkäfer von Traal:
"Ein zum Verrücktwerden dämliches Vieh, es nimmt an, wenn du es nicht siehst, kann es dich auch nicht sehen - bescheuert wie eine Bürste, aber sehr, sehr gefräßig."



From Eadweard Muybridge's time-lapse photographs of a man riding a galloping horse.



From Homewood.

Bag of Hurt

To use Steve Jobs' words (from another context), these days are a bag of hurt.

The year started out somewhat shaky, and so far has only gone downhill. The more one believes something to be stable, the less it becomes so.

Time to do something about it.

Obama Was Here!

Today was a big day in Baltimore's history: Obama passed through the city on his train "Whistle Stop Tour" to Washington DC for the inauguration on Jan 20. Maybe this was not one of the greatest days Balto has ever seen (I don't know enough of its history yet), but definitely a major thing.



Obama obviously copied a travel that before him another president-elect had undertaken - Abraham Lincoln, commonly seen as one of the greatest presidents of the U.S., and who guided the country through one of its greatest challenges, the Civil War. Obama alluded to great difficulties ahead as well, talking of the economy in blood-sweat-and-tears terms.





He obviously drew a huge crowd (Maryland having been one of his staunchest supporters in the elections), the anticipation of which had driven mayor Sheila Dixon (a black woman, in a city of around 2/3 blacks) to instate road closures across a large part of downtown. Instead of opening the streets up to people completely, they were instead partitioned into go- and no-go-streets, and then in turn cascaded into a kind of gigantic rat maze that the visitors had to pass through, circumnavigating the same blocks over and over from different sides, completely uselessly and annoyingly. Obama's speech (as well as MLK III's and the (probably) governor's before) were transmitted on big screens across downtown.

The Week

This Friday, an absolute crazy week came to a close.

Starting last Thursday, when our Fraunhofer project partner Matthias from Darmstadt arrived here for a week of work, all available time was filled with projects, presentations, and food.



On Monday, the ERC-CISST lab where I am working was celebrating its 10 Year Graduation - meaning that the NSF had funded the Sonderforschungsbereich-like structure for a decade with copious amounts of money, which now ran out. However, over the course of the lab's existence, this "seeding money" had been relegated to the status of peanuts, supplemented by proportionately larger other sources of funding. Still, this anniversary was a momentous day. Everybody had their demos, presentations, and posters prepared, and lots of big people had come for a day full of talks and (free) food. My (big) boss even changed from fishing into evening attire for the occasion. The whole lab was buzzing with discussion, plenary talks, and excitement. Here at the LCSR (the name that the ERC-CISST is migrating to) it is imperative to carry a lab notebook with you all the time to jot down the sparks of inspiration and the wealth of information that you keep getting any given day.
The day ended with a dinner reception full of laudatios for Taylor, some outrageously long speeches, and a truly prime dinner.











On Wednesday, Matthias and I went to JHMI to attend a laparoscopic partial nephrectomy (removing part of the kidney due to tumor invasion). For me, it was the first operation to have witnessed from beginning to end, and definitely an experience I won't forget anytime soon. The excitement and stress level during the time-critical parts of the operation were nerve-wrecking. The whole thing took much longer than expected - over five instead of less than three hours (including preparations over ten hours) - and was conducted by one very experienced and extremely professional young doctor. Eventually the local anatomy turned out worse than expected, and so the intervention unfortunately had to be converted to a radical nephrectomy. So it came that on Wednesday evening, between 10 and 11pm, I was able to put my hands on a freshly excised, still warm human kidney for the first time.






It was much bigger than expected, redder, and softer. The cancerous lesion was clearly palpable, and the whole kidney looked very disorganized. Anatomically it looked very similar to the pig kidneys I had dissected and prepared the weeks before, so it was absolutely awesome to compare all the features I already knew to this unexpected new specimen of a very different kind.



Afterwards, we trashed our scrubs, got our clothing back, and left the hospital excited and unbelievably hungry, tired, and freezing. Until well past midnight we stayed out in a small diner near Homewood which is famous for its trashy and very scary horror-movie-like ambience which draws its power exclusively from harmless children's toys and dolls arranged in frightening compositions.

On Thursday, Emad, Matthias, and I got the chance to present our respective ultrasound-related work to an international audience of students and faculty that had assembled at the LCSR for a week-long winter school on surgical robotics. As ours is a small world, I could recognize some of the faces from my visit to the summer school in Montpellier in 2003.

After his presentation, Matthias left for Germany, the winter school frenzy wound down, no more operations, so on Friday I was able to collect my thoughts for the first time in a week. I rummaged through some old data we collected earlier that needs some post-processing, received some overdue CT data information, got some calls from the JHMI regarding still other CT scans, continued working on a publication draft, and finally got to sneak into the final-day buffet dinner reception of the crazy week's winter school. Almost no students or faculty were left, so only a hard core of JHU members and some foreign students and professors were attending.

At my table, two senior research scientist staff from my office, a Japanese professor from Tokyo University, and myself got to sit right next to each other. We shared our experiences with Japan (the Romanian one of the two researchers had worked at this professor's lab some years earlier and considers returning, the Korean one would like to go there to work, and I would, too) and then continued ruminating on the power of China, the fall of the U.S., and where to go to sit through the economic downturn. The general consensus was that hightech medical engineering might always be in high demand (or so we hope), and that Australia is a good place to go. Sure, the consensus also said that for us, it is absolutely necessary to go to Japan for work once, too - but Australia is trying hard to attract top-notch science to edge itself into the first league of research and technology nations. At first we were surprised at this finding, but then we convinced ourselves that Australian universities command a prime set of researchers, have lots of money, pay generously, search top-tier faculty, and are in general an attractive offer. It is at the end of the world, but maybe the world might come to there.

In all probability, I have forgotten a fair amount of what happened this week, but hopefully the notes above will serve (me) well enough to retain some vague scaffolding of memory.

Paris

As promised, MC and I made a trip to Paris. It was not without its difficulties even to get there, but these were not exactly related to the trip itself. Bad omens were ShabuShabu's astute refusal to start the engine (the ADAC had to jumpstart the car, and the battery had to be replaced) and several hours ineffectively spent around the Kaiserslautern post office.

But then, we arrived in Paris alright and determined to have a happy new year.




And so it was. It was incredibly cold, windy, rainy at times, and outrageously expensive, but Paris is great any time of year. The last time I've been there was probably in 7th grade as a language exchange student, so freshing up on all the sights, museums, and churches was (American colloquialism ahead) all da hoot. More or less according the vague draft as follows, it were some foot-hurt-filled days.

Dezember
29. Pont Neuf 桥
29. Schiffahrt auf der Seine 赛那河
29. Pantheon 先贤祠 (offen?)
29. Tour d'Eiffel 爱飞尔铁塔 (9h30 à 23h45*; Dernière montée 23h00 (pour le sommet 22h30))


30. Louvre 卢浮宫



30. Place de la Concorde 协和广场
30. Galeries Lafayette



30. Printemps


31. Centre Georges Pompidou 蓬碧度 (December 24 and 31, the Centre Pompidou will be closed at 7pm. Tickets available until 6pm. The Pompidou Center is open every day, except Tuesdays and May 1, 11am-10pm.)

31. Musee d'Orsay 奥赛博物馆 (9.30-18 Uhr; 21.45 Uhr donnerstags; Montags Geschlossen)



Januar
1. Sacre Coeur 圣心教堂
1. Notre Dame 巴黎圣母院




1. La Defense 拉迪芳斯新城


1. Arc de Triomphe 凯旋门

The plan turned out to be slightly too ambitious, it turned out that (as heard before) France is no North America (and thus has no Internet anywhere), so lugging Oolong along was a weird idea, but still, with the tourist guide book in hand, it proved to be successful.

Fireworks on New Year were disappointing (basically nonexistent), but throngs of people were still trying to get to the Tour d'Eiffel on time.



Praying for no rain one day resulted in snow the next.

Parking was an adventure, but ultimately rewarding.

Stupidly enough, I forgot all but one of my credit and debit card PINs - so I had to pay for everything Euro-ish with my American account, in dollars.

I saw a guy in front of Notre-Dame who had an R1. I approached him, we nodded to each other, and we each went our ways.



The last day, desparate over still not having been to the Tour Eiffel, on the way back I drove straight to the tower. Against all expectations, we found a parking spot not even 50m away from the base, the ticket booth line was short (due to extreme cold, sure), and the view at Paris at dusk was spectacular. But frosty.



And although it has nothing to do with Paris, today I gave a short presentation about RONAF's 3D ultrasound to the surgical robotics winter school audience here at JHU. The faculty attending are to a large extent old acquaintances from 2003's Montpellier summer school. Although that "acquaintance" is rather unidirectional, I believe.

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More pictures of Paris will follow. Today I am too exhausted from the last few days of Matthias (our Fraunhofer project partner) being here, doing experiments, and yesterday attending an extremely long kidney operation until very late at night that was far from successful in the end. But more to come.

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More pictures of Paris have been added. Gosh, doing this in Blogger is incredibly time-consuming.

New Year

After a long new year hiatus, a wrapup.

Lots of things were blogworthy, but time was short. My own Christmas present (christened "Oolong") arrived just in time before I left for Germany. (The term "home" is slowly blurring.) The trip there went almost ok, but a large part of the trip to the plane was thwarted by NYC's total lack of luggage lockers. At the Manhattan Penn Station, I asked the tourist information for the locker locations, I was given a flyer with the address of a commercial locker facility (!), and upon walking the three blocks (!) with all my back-breaking luggage, it turned out this place was closed. To drive the point home: There is no place in Manhattan (maybe in New York City) where one can live his luggage for one afternoon. Probably this country has already completely succumbed to terrorism paranoia. In fact, after I reluctantly decided to forgo my planned sightseeing afternoon in Manhattan and took the metro to JFK (in fact, there is no direct connection, one has to change not only metro lines, but metro operators to get there), it turned out there is no place to leave your luggage at JFK, either. The check-in counters don't open until three hours before boarding. This meant staying at JFK for six hours, an international, major airport which nonetheless has no power sockets, no Internet, and only was seemed like three luggage carts for all of the millions of passengers to drive their suitcases around. Finally, it could be noted (although the point is obvious after having been here for four months) that the few luggage carts that are actually present cannot be used on escalators, unlike the ones anywhere in Germany.

Enough complaints! I arrived at Frankfurt alright (Iceland Air still existed, although food and drinks were visibly cheaper than a few months ago), and Germany immediately felt like... a part of the modern, industrialized World.