bryant_yang's Xanga

Retreat

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:52:38 GMT

I went to my small group retreat this past weekend, at Lake Arrowhead, CA. So on Friday, Robin and Lillian came by, and I drove them. We left around 7:00, stopped at the Tapo Canyon Mall's food court for dinner, and got to the retreat site (a rented house) around 10 pm. In addition to the speakers (Henry and Wilma Tan), there were 13 of us (me, Jimmy, Garrett, Robin, Calvin, Jelyn, Angela, Connie Lu, Connie Tam, Lillian, Janice, Joyce, and Lauren, who is a friend of Connie Lu). The theme of the retreat was discovering our uniqueness in Christ, and focused on developing our own mission statement.

We had some free time on Saturday, so some of us went to a nearby hiking trail, that led us to the "Heart Rock."

A more close-up view

NYC Trip

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:49:05 GMT

Fri Sept 4: For the 8th time in 9 years, I've gone to the US Open in NYC for Labor Day Weekend. I flew out on Friday morning, and got to JFK Airport around 5 pm. Am I a geek for posting this picture, which is on the wall at JFK?

My brother arrived at the same time, and we took a train to Manhattan. After checking into our Marriott Hotel in the Financial Center (for those of you following the US Open closely, this is not the Marriott Hotel that Melanie Oudin was staying at), we went to Chinatown for dinner (had Malaysian food), then came back to our hotel. We were up til midnight watching Taylor Dent's match on TV.

Sat Sept 5: We got up around 7:30, headed for breakfast at 8:30 (the same breakfast diner we've ate at every time), and got on the train a little after 9:00. We got to Flushing at around 10:00. Although the first matches don't start until 11 am, we like to get there early to either see the Ralph Lauren shop and look around at the exhibits.

Famed coach Nick Bollettieri was there giving commentary.

We had Grounds Admission and Ashe evening tickets, so that means we couldn't watch any of the day matches that were taking place at Ashe Stadium (the main one). First up was Novak Djokovic against Jesse Witten. Witten had come through the qualifier rounds, but gave Djokovic all he could handle. I wasn't too impressed with Djokovic's game. His forehand was consistently landing short (i.e. not even up to the service line), and Witten was capitalizing by drilling flat forehand winners. Witten actually won the first set (and coincidentally at the same time, Hewitt had taken the first set off Federer in Ashe, and so the place was buzzing), but in the end, the Djokester won in 4 sets. Djokovic is now coached by Todd Martin, whom you can see in the 2nd row near the corner, in a white hat.

By that time, it was past 2 pm, and we hadn't eaten. So we went to the food court for lunch, then walked around a little. I split up with my brother at this point, because I "had" to go to the Grandstand to see Thousand Oaks resident Sam Querrey play French Open Finalist Robin Soderling. It's always fun to watch a match at the Grandstand, because the place is so cozy. Querrey is in the near court.

Soderling had way too much game for Querrey. He seemed to win all his rallies, and not even Querrey's vaunted serve seemed to phase Soderling, and it was over in 4 sets. My brother joined me after that (it was probably around 5 pm), and we watched 2003 US Open champ Svetlana Kuznetsova beat Israeli Shahar Peer. Probably the most exciting thing that happened at this match was when they flashed a score on the scoreboard: Melanie Oudin had just beaten Maria Sharapova in three sets. The crowd went crazy.

It was probably around 7 pm, and my brother and I left to get some food at the food court. There were tons of people watching the big screen TV, because John Isner was up two sets to none against Andy Roddick at Ashe. Although we had evening tickets for Ashe, the Isner-Roddick match was technically a day session match, so we had to wait for that to finish. So I went back to the Grandstand. Hardly anybody was there to watch a bubbly blonde 19-year old Danish girl named Caroline Wozniacki. (Now that Wozniacki is in the semifinals, you may not believe me when I say that I was predicting big things for her). Wozniacki is in the far court.

Sweet Caroline? The Great Dane?

It was probably around 9 pm when we exited the Grandstand. There were tons of people milling around outside watching the jumbotron, because Roddick and Isner were deadlocked in the 5th set. We watched the tiebreak on the jumbotron, and the place went nuts when Isner completed the upset. At this point, the organizers had a difficult decision to make. The evening session was supposed to start at 7 pm, with Dinara Safina's match, followed by James Blake's match, but Roddick's match didn't end until after 9. That meant they couldn't start until around 10 pm. So they wound up moving Safina's match to Armstrong and playing Blake's match at Ashe, with both matches starting at 10 pm. People without Ashe tickts were of course delighted, but people with Ashe tickets weren't getting their money's worth. We decided to watch the Blake match, but Robredo destroyed him in straight sets. Even so, it was around 1 am when the match finished. We had some difficulty getting back to the hotel, and so it was after 3 am when I went to sleep.

Sunday Sept 6. We got up around 8:15, probably had breakfast around 9:15 and were on the train around 10, so it was a little after 11 when we got to Flushing. Gilles Simon and Juan Carlos Ferrero were playing in Armstrong. Simon won the first set 6-1 before we even got inside the stadiuim. However, he injured his knee, and Ferrero won the next two sets before Simon had to retire due to injury. On the Grandstand, Fernando Gonzalez beat Tomas Berdych in straight sets.

I also caught a little bit of a women's doubles match. Russia's Maria Kirilenko and Elena Vesnina. Let's just say they're easy on the eyes.

We had lunch after that, then went back to Armstrong, where I had my first chance to see the very promising and talented Juan del Potro of Argentina (sorry, the picture was kind of blurry). This guy has a huge game, so I have a feeling we'll be hearing a lot more from him in the future. I overheard this description of him: "he's from Argentina but looks like a map of Chile."

After dinner, we headed to Ashe. Flavia Penetta beat Vera Zvonareva in three sets. Zvonareva squandered 6 match points in the 2nd set, then proceeded to lose 6-0 in the 3rd set. Understandably she was quite distraught after the match. Crimea River if you know what I mean.

The featured match was Andy Murray against Taylor Dent. This turned out to be a no-contest. Murray had way too many weapons. It sure looked like Murray was playing well enough to win the US Open (but he then lost to Marin Cilic badly two days later). That was it for my 2009 US Open experience.

Travels (MN)

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:33:51 GMT

I know it's been a long time since I blogged about my travels. Here are some pictures from my Minnesota trip over Memorial Day weekend.

I had actually never heard of White Castle (nor did I know of the Harold and Kumar reference)

Herb Brooks statue, he was the coach of the Olympic Team which won gold in the miracle at lake placid, in 1980

Saturday, August 01, 2009

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:48:29 GMT

This is a sign of boredom (although this didn't take that long, maybe 15 minutes for about 274 friends). I wondered that, of my facebook friends, what percentage did I befriend during the first quarter of my life, second, third, and fourth? Of course there is some arbitrariness between when I met somebody and when I became friends with them, but to the best of my determination, here are the actual results:

1st quarter: 9%

2nd quarter: 14%

3rd quarter: 23%

4th quarter: 54%

This doesn't surprise me too much. Because I've moved around a lot for school and work, I've lost touch with people, which explains why the number grows every quarter.

Debbie Meyer Green Bags

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:05:49 GMT

Debbie Meyer Green bags: https://www.greenbags.com/?page=faq

An interesting discussion of its effectiveness (or lack thereof): http://chemistry.about.com/b/2008/07/29/do-debbie-meyer-and-evert-fresh-green-bags-work.htm

In response to some of the comments:

Respondent #22 wrote -"Absorbs Ethylene gas-
Uhhh….
Wouldn’t the gas escape a lot
better if the food in question
wasn’t in an enclosed bag ?????
Sounds like a gimmick to me."

Yes, of course ethylene will escape if the food isn't in the bag, but not before it wreaks its effect on the food in question. The bag serves to protect the food from ethylene in the air (due mostly to ethyelene-releasers such as apples and other ripening fruits).

Respondent #52 wrote "I used these bags for two months and they do “appear” to work for several kinds of produce but I started wondering if the NUTRITIONAL VALUE was in any way depleted and apparently it is. I called the Debbie Meyer phone order number and asked this question. At first I got a carefully worded but vague reply. When I persisted and mentioned there was no mention of preserving nutrition on the package I was told that ANYONE KNOWS the bags are about freshness, not nutrition and was curtly referred to the USDA’s website, and then hung up on."

I'm not aware of any plant nutrient that is capable of escaping as a gas, so I doubt any nutrition is lost.

My five year anniversary at AMGN

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:23:33 GMT

A nice gift from my company for my 5-year anniversary (the picture shown is taken from Amazon.com).

Summer Shutdown

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:10:53 GMT

As you know, Amgen has a week off, paid vacation, starting today. Here's how I'm spending it.

Friday, June 26: Went to Walmart to buy a TV stand. My hutch accommodates my current 26 inch TV, but can't hold anything bigger. It's also mega-heavy (maybe 120-150 lbs) and tall, with no good places to grip it, so it's a pain to move. For my new TV, I contemplated getting a 26 in just to avoid having to move the hutch, but others convinced me otherwise. So I wound up buying a 40-inch LCD ProScan 1080p for $500, which I'm picking up tomorrow (Saturday). Anyway, I was at Walmart at around 9 pm. The TV stand weighs 85 lbs, and it was a bit awkard getting it into the car, but I managed. I started to put it together that night, but only got about a third of the way when I realized I needed another tool.

Saturday, June 27: After getting a required tool at Home Depot, I returned home to finish the TV stand. Ben met me at Best Buy to help me load the TV, and followed me home. Getting the old hutch up the stairs was a Herculean effort, like pushing a square boulder up a hill. Here's the new TV and the new TV stand (pardon the glare. That's not dust). Oops, you'll see an unused cabinet door stored under the dvd player. That space is the only place I can put my minisystem, so for the moment, I'm not going to install that cabinet door.

6/27/09 The picture is good. But I don't have HD (yet), but even without HD it's still sharper than my old TV. At the time, I was using the yellow video jack for my dvd and the picture, quite frankly, looked grainy. Though I might eventually upgrade my dvd player to an upconverting one or better yet, a Blu-Ray player, I took the easier way out and bought the component video cables, and in the progressive scan mode, the picture from the dvd player was much improved. The sound from the TV is decent, but I get much better and deeper sounds by hooking it up to my minisystem, which has 5 speakers and a powered subwoofer (you can only see the center speaker in the picture).

6/28/09 I need to replace the shower tub spout in my guest bathroom. I managed to unscrew the old spout, but it came out with the copper pipe attached to it. So I need to replace the pipe and screw on a new tub spout, and then caulk it. I've never done any of that, so hopefully I won't make a mess.

Happy Father's Day

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:15:26 GMT

UC Davis Lecture

Thu, 21 May 2009 00:57:38 GMT

Earlier in the year, Jackie, an organic chemistry faculty member at UC Davis, asked me if I would give a guest lecture for CHE 130B, an undergraduate course in pharmaceutical chemistry. Since it sounded like a good opportunity, I readily accepted. We agreed that I would give an overview of Alzheimer's Disease in general, and AMGN's efforts in this area in particular. Because this would involve disclosing structures, I knew that I would have to get legal approval as well. To make a long story short, I did submit it for legal approval, but I didn't learn until a few days before the lecture that the submission was done incorrectly, and so it was a mad scramble at the last minute to get the required approvals, but thankfully they all came through.

So early Monday morning, I flew to Sacramento, where Jackie picked me up from SMF. Because class wasn't until 11 am, she took me to a diner called Cindy's for breakfast. The last time I was at Cindy's was when I was about 10 years old. After breakfast, we drove to UC Davis, and we had a little bit of free time so Jackie told me about some of her research projects.

A little before 11, we headed for class. Because CHE 130B is an upper division course, it's not a huge class. Perhaps there were 30 people. She took a few minutes to set up the projector and introduce me, so I had about 45 minutes to give my talk. That's about how long I wanted it to be, but I didn't rehearse it as often as I would have liked, so I talked for about 50 minutes. Hopefully the class enjoyed my talk. They did laugh at my last slide, which was the list of People Magazine's 25 most intriguing people from 1999 (one of them was an Amgen researcher who studied Alzheimer's Disease). After class, Jackie, the TA, and one other student joined us for lunch at the Gunrock Pub, which is the first time I'd ever eaten there.

From 1-5 pm, I had appointments with various faculty members who told me about their work. I didn't know any of them personally, but many of the younger faculty and I have mutual acquaintances at AMGN. I also met with Professor Balch, a relatively senior faculty member in inorganic chemistry (thus unrelated to my area). He was a little perplexed as to why I requested to meet with him. But when I told him that a) I'm from Davis, b) I'm classmates with his youngest daughter and in fact we were in the same 6th grade class, and c) he was the parent chaperone on my 6th grade field trip to Alcatraz, he definitely warmed up to me.

When the day ended, I walked to the Mann Lab parking lot where my mom picked me up, and we drove to the capitol area of Sacramento to pick up my brother, and we had dinner at New Station. Then they took me to the airport.

Universities and Prestige: Part I

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:21:41 GMT

I'm overhearing several discussions on college prestige (mainly amongst the high school students at my church, since deadline time for choosing a college is fast approaching). I have several thoughts on the subject, but too many to fit on one posting. But since the National Academy of Sciences just announced its new electees, it's a good time to bring up a few stats.

Membership in the NAS is considered one of the highest scientific honors bestowed in the United States. But is it completely free of politics? No, of course not. But it's not an old boy's club either, and so the number of NAS members from a given institution is a measure of that school's impact in scientific research. Two caveats are in order. Some schools are bound to have more members simply because they have more faculty members. Also, certain warm-weather schools are a haven for retiring scientists, and this tends to overinflate their numbers, since many of these retirees are no longer active in research. But with that said, here are the membership numbers within the University of California system.

UCB: 127

UCSD: 66

UCLA: 31

UCSF: 31

UCSB: 28

UCI: 22

UCD: 20

UCSC: 8

UCR 2

People sometimes mention UCLA in the same breath as UCB in terms of prestige in the sciences. But as this analysis shows, that is unwarranted. They have about the same number of faculty, and yet UCB has four times the number of members in the NAS. Even UCSD, which has fewer faculty than UCLA easily beats them.