Camping out in the BMI student lounge

Unforutnately I decided yesterday was a good day to watch 50 first dates again (one of my favorite cheesy movies-I think it's super cute)! I got way too tired half way through and had to stop, but I still stayed up until about 1:30. As a result, I decided to skip the 229 lecture (the class I'm auditing). And so it begins, right? I can watch it online, but it's still not a great idea! I came in to go to the monthly BMI-complete with free pizza which was delicious. I also got to chat with my fellow Swiss in the program, who remembers me from the retreat back in February! It was quite flattering!!!

The room was completely full (the pictures don't accurately capture everyone who was there). The whole table was filled, along with all the seats lining the room, as well as some people standing! It's also been completely decked out with Halloween decorations, courtesy of Carol who has a great little light on her desk and a candy jar that I will have to help fill. I'll have to take a picture and post it as well! People were ducking from my camera today. Amar said I could take pictures as long as they don't go on my blog! Sorrrryyyyy!

We also had a short talk, courtesy of Russ Altman, on the new format of the journal club (our Tuesday seminars). I guess students used to present their research on these days, but I think the journal clubs come in pretty handy. Russ chose a great paper by a former BMI student, Olga Troyanskaya. She is now a professor at Princeton (pretty impressive, right?) Russ also wants to make this an opportunity for us to show the methods, not just the Biology. We have an opportunity to look at more than just the Biology (which is usually fascinating) and find out if the methods are truly novel.

We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get work done. David headed to Monterey with his aunt who popped in unexpectedly on Monday for a surprise visit (which I think is great). Since Marina, Alex and I are office-less at the moment, we set up shop in the student lounge area. I decided to move our sign over in an amusing gesture. We didn't do it to keep the area clear, mostly to be funny, but if we get to reserve some seats for ourselves in the meantime (or a true lounge in Alex's case-below) it's not a bad deal!

Of course the great thing about being there is that people stop in and say hello. Amar Das turned on the lights for us, Maureen and Nikesh (Czar and Czarina) stopped by and chatted. We also tried to recruit everyone for flag football. At the moment our team is composed of David, Alex (who is worried he'll break his hip), Noah and myself. Maureen and Amit both sound interested, but we'll see what happens! Peggy also came by, and we tried to recruit her for tennis. She seems a bit hesitant since she just started, but hopefully we won her over! It also started to rain, so I got to make use of my new pink umbrella! YAY!

At one point, Marina and I were sitting side by side on our laptops. The Macs looked sized for the person, I had the big 17 inch and she has the 14 inch. Alex suddenly grabbed the camera and was grinning pretty big, so I figured he just thought it was a funny picture. I grabbed the sign quickly and Marina and I posed for the picture at the right. Alex burst into laughter suddenly and inexplicably, and Marina took a look at the camera (don't we all want to see right after taking a digital picture). Turns out Noah dropped by as well!

Marina, Alex and I headed over to a talk later (since we just could not focus). I could spend my entire life at seminars at this school! It's pretty crazy! It was an interesting subject, and it seemed like all of BMI was there, including Nikesh and Jessie, as well as some affiliated faculty, Serafim Batzoglou, Daphne Koller, Mike Cherry and Gavin Sherlock. Leticia from my Algorithms in Biology course was there as well!

I headed over to TA office hours where I pulled an Alex and explained a problem on the board while the TA looked for a bigger room. One of the CS Master degree students, Andrew, asked if I had a group. We decided to group up with one of the BMI students I already have. I love how students at Stanford are so friendly. At UCSD I remember standing at the front of a CS class and announcing that I was searching for a group for homework assignments. I looked back at a sea of blank stares, which was pretty infuriating. Here everyone is ready to talk and join groups! I love it!

I had plans to meet with Beth and Julie after classes to go to dinner and a movie. The plans got a bit switched around, and I couldn't go back to pick up Ryan since it was raining (we really need a second car)! We decided to go to the Counter, the place we went after Sam Pearlman's qualifying exams. It was so delicious the first time, he converted me. I also had an eye on the burger that Sam was eating, but I have no idea what it was! I'll have to ask him! So it's getting to be late, AGAIN, and I cannot miss tomorrow morning's class, so I'm cutting this short. I decided I had to write my blog after Noah asked me why I hadn't put the pictures from tennis up again...he said I must sacrifice sleep to get his photos up. I'm convinced everyone likes my blog because it features them...which is fine by me! Just leave comments when you visit! I LOVE THEM!