Bench, bath and beyond
Transform your apartment into a yeast lab, and have fun doing it!
One of the very first lessons you learn in microbiology is that while countless things can – and will – go wrong, you can almost always count on your microbes to grow. There is some strange comfort in knowing that what looks like clear liquid today will reveal countless gleaming colonies smiling up at you […]
Managing your finances when your spouse can’t work
Being an F1 and F2 couple living on graduate stipend is challenging but manageable
“Are you ready for the change in lifestyle?” That is the question that most of our friends asked when they heard about my plan to go back to school. We had a good life back in Jakarta, and we were about to leave all that and live on a budget in one of the most […]
Shaking hands with death
My clinical experience through MIT
When I entered the room, I took a few moments to look around. The room was lit by a warm, orange glimmer sneaking through the window blinds, announcing the end of another beautiful summer afternoon. I took one step forward as the nurse pulled the bed curtain closed behind us. The patient was an old […]
L’Autre, c’est moi
Sondering away in the heart of a young boy
As a child, I vividly remember staring for hours out the window in the back seat of my parents’ car, scrutinizing nearby people stopped at the red light or passing us on the highway. I’d see a driver singing her favorite tune, a couple absorbed in some deep conversation, or an entire family sitting quietly […]
Navigating MIT
How to Survive in the Forest of Numbers
MIT exemplifies a uniquely analytical and quantitative intellectual approach. It’s a good thing, usually; after all, scientific revolutions like Newtonian physics began when we started putting stuff into quantitative perspective. MIT, however, took it a bit too far. Humans are, in general, pretty bad at memorizing numbers (with a few exceptions like Akira Haraguch, who […]
