more immunological nonsense (photos included this time!!)
nerd attack! immunologists loose in the west end! 
before heading to the qmu 
me and steve.erica, alexis, me.carol loves dancing.rooooaaaarrr!.
carol -heart- immunologists!
carol : look epon, the leaves make it look like a watercolour!
epon : isn't it that a watercolour is meant to look like it?
was walking through the park amidst an emerald forest in three dimensions and thought of this snippet of our conversation. :)
what does carol do just 2 days before her second exam? she goes out and has a blasstttt of a timee with drunken immunologists and the like... starting out at brick on bath street, where i got very nicely relaxed on white wine, we then hopped, skipped and jumped over (narrowly missing cars) to kushion for more excellent banter and dancing.
anyhow, i would just like to reinstate that freedom, oh freedom, will be mine to have and to holldddd very very very sooon... Rrright, now if i can just keep my mind body movin' body movin' on Cox Proportional Hazards Models and oh.. a-one sound and the sound's so soothin' We be getting down and you know we're crush grooving the Nolan 7 principles of a good public servant. to my people, keep rock it on, cos my raps is beda than yours....
soo. i have decided to take a break and present some findings from the nerd world applicable to the real world...
There is no such thing as the perfect textbook
there is no such thing as the perfect textbook. i mean, personally, Janeway(see above) is the man for me, but Janeway tends to have information on the same subject everywhere (eg. information on T cell receptors (TCR) can be found on pages 116-117, 128, 193 and 149-154.), his diagrams have the utter worst colour combinations (primary colours don't go) and he is a bit outdated.. (who doesn't know that there are 3 different types of Tregs and that Tr1 and Th3 are kinda obsolete?).
Similarly, there is no such thing as the perfect relationship, perfect person or perfect friend. But, like Janeway, there are just somethings in your life, that if you remove, it'd be analogous to cutting your right arm off. My Janeway is smothered in pencil marks, hi-lights, coffee / green tea stains and has earned the dog-ears of a well-read textbook. I know Janeway for all his inadequacies and strengths (which far outweigh the former), and if i one day woke up to see him gone, i'd be devastated.
There is such a thing as the perfect book
However, there is also such a thing as the perfect book. My bible, like janeway, has been with me forever and i've laboured into its pages for years and years. One thing different is that the bible, unlike other texts, is ALIVE. i mean it. While i am never faithful to any one book at a time (like a TCR, i am promiscuous) and tend to have 4 books at a go at the same time (hey, what can i say? I have many different needs), I find that the bible is the only one that has life-giving properties. Don't ask me to explain this in any other way, but it's supernatural. And the fact that it is written over a period of about 4000 years by multiple authors and that they all agree on the same thing is just utterly mind-blowing.
We need to go deeper
On the surface, Janeway looks incredibly daunting and reading one bit on its own can be totally taken out of context. However, persistence and perseverance has paved the way to understanding... Similarly, Romans 15:13 - we will only have joy if we know Him and we will only know him if we study about Him...
In conclusion, i'd just like to say that nerds can still have a life outside of their books... and the delving into specifics can open a world of knowledge that is broadly universal. %)
what makes carol happy is the feel of a well-sharpened knife... i miss home. :/
but in the mean time, i am doing the best i can..
“But it may be fine—I expect it will be fine,” said Mrs Ramsay, making some little twist of the reddish brown stocking she was knitting, impatiently. If she finished it tonight, if they did go to the Lighthouse after all, it was to be given to the Lighthouse keeper for his little boy, who was threatened with a tuberculous hip; together with a pile of old magazines, and some tobacco, indeed, whatever she could find lying about, not really wanted, but only littering the room, to give those poor fellows, who must be bored to death sitting all day with nothing to do but polish the lamp and trim the wick and rake about on their scrap of garden, something to amuse them. For how would you like to be shut up for a whole month at a time, and possibly more in stormy weather, upon a rock the size of a tennis lawn? she would ask; and to have no letters or newspapers, and to see nobody; if you were married, not to see your wife, not to know how your children were,—if they were ill, if they had fallen down and broken their legs or arms; to see the same dreary waves breaking week after week, and then a dreadful storm coming, and the windows covered with spray, and birds dashed against the lamp, and the whole place rocking, and not be able to put your nose out of doors for fear of being swept into the sea? How would you like that? she asked, addressing herself particularly to her daughters. So she added, rather differently, one must take them whatever comforts one can."
- To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf
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again...taken from Nature Immunology 1, 291 - 297 (2000)
YESSSSsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss........... the package has arrived.
the clothes make the man
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"..See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these..."
"If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow, is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?..."
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Gill and Carol's guide to a good night out:
Step 1 : have a meal together seasoned with spices, salt, mirth and love.
Step 1b: do not deign to dine in style. 
Step 2: head for a pit stop.
Step 3b: wearing red boots help enhance the mood
viper, the medic's club
Step 4: feel free to losee controlll, looosee connntrroolll, baby, looseezeee Kontrolllll
