Holy crap, I am exhausted. The last couple of days have been over-the-top crazy. Last week was Thanksgiving; most people take a four-day holiday. Unfortunately, we had a few deadlines this week. One of the projects I am involved with, the Cancer Genome Atlas, is a large multi-institute project in which all kinds of large cancer-oriented data sets are being generated.

Every institute brings to the table their own specialty. All institutes are generating data on the same tumor samples and we hope to get new insights by cross-referencing these data sets. For efficient analysis, it is good to see each other face to face rather then the frequent conference calls we are doing and therefore an analysis jamboree was organized at the Broad Institute. This took play yesterday and today. Obviously, our last batch of data came through on Wednesday night last week and me and some colleagues had to work around to clock to finish at least the analysis of the our own data. Now the jamboree has finished (and it was a lot of fun) but today is also the deadline to submit an abstract for the biggest annual cancer conference, the AACR. Obviously I haven’t written a word and we are 7 hours away from the deadline. And let us not forget that before Monday, another part of our data analysis has to be completed for the next TCGA meeting next week. Argh… Anybody has a job as night watch for me…?

Today is Thanksgiving, the holiday that we always see on the American TV series but have no clue when it is or what it is about. To clear that one: third Thursday of November, to celebrate the first harvest after the arrival of the pilgrims. It is a holiday and considered as or maybe even more important then Christmas. The pilgrims arrived first in the area between Massachusetts and Rhode Island, roughly between Boston and New York.

At that time the area was inhabited by a tribe called the Wampanoag. Today there are no native Americans left in these areas. Coincidence? I think not. As most people know, there were some wars and some lethal infections that diminished the numbers of native Americans. Most of them live in the Southwest these days. I am not sure what their perspective on Thanksgiving is. The other interesting thing about Thanksgiving is tomorrow, Friday, is known as black Friday. Many stores give many discounts; for instance, the music store where I was planning to buy a nice electronic drum set is giving a 20% discount on all items, between 8 and 10am. I heard stories about people sleeping on the streets tonight to make it to shops first; many open at 5am tomorrow morning. I leave that stuff for the masses and will by my kit another time. When I have the resources for it, preferably ;).

This weekend, my good friend Erik visited Boston. Erik is in Montreal for a few months and Montreal is about 300 kilometers away. Takes about eight hours by bus, including two hours at border patrol. Boston has a number of touristy places to visit. One can visit for instance the Freedom trail, Top of the Hub and Harvard Square.

However, overall most American cities cannot bring the same entourage as European cities can. Of course, most European cities are much older. Boston was one of America’s first cities and the foundations for the city were laid in 1624. A number of historical events took place here, including the Boston Tea party which was the start of the Independence war against the English. However, this can not compete with the many ancient buildings and events taking place on the old continent. The lack of history is compensated by skyscrapers, Duck Tours or just enjoying one of the many relaxing coffee bars that populate the streets of Boston. A latte, frappucino or iced coffee and some relaxing music in combination with WiFi makes these bars very popular hangouts and it is kind of surprising that this concept has not yet reached Europe. Maybe we are just less gezellig!

The States have about 3,6 million Chinese-American inhabitants, resulting in numerous China Towns all over the States. After an exciting weekend in New York, I came back from NY using the $15 FungWah bus, connecting China Town New York and China Town Boston.

Travelling a similar distance in the Netherlands (Groningen - Maastricht) by Dutch default transport (train) costs about 35 euro. That is about $50 these days. Go China! New York was fun; went to the Guggenheim which was being renovated so I did not see the famous outside.

The temporary exposition was about Richard Prince, which I did not like much. The regular exposition however has lots of famous stuff, like Monet, Kandinsky and Picasso. That was very cool. Went to a ‘Jewish’ party in the evening, Jewish because everybody but us seemed to be Jewish. It often strikes me how many Jews there are in America (but will save that for another post).
I am writing this post listening to a famous researcher explaining the intricate details of cell circuitry, dissected using RNAi. It is time for the annual Broad Retreat, my first. Of course I had stuff to do and this arranged a loaner laptop. I am probably the only postdoc in Boston not owning a laptop but a conventional desktop - conventional, but not very transportable. I have no use for a laptop in my personal life and I refuse to spend money on one for work. Fortunately the Broad provides loaners. The benefit of a laptop is the ability to do work while listening to talks. Reading a book would be considered offensive; use your laptop and everybody will assume you are working hard but somehow still are able to follow the material presented. The people sitting behind me right now are the only ones who will know that writing a blog is another possibility

Yesterday I got a phone call of my friend Inigo, who is in the process of moving from Rotterdam to New York. We were supposed to meet up on this side of the ocean but so far we failed. This weekend he is in New York again and by coincidence I can get a ride tonight from a friend driving down to see a concert.

So, in a few hours I will be doing the 300 mile or5 hour drive to the Big Apple. New York is an incredible city; walking downtown in Manhattan definitely has a cool vibe to it. I am not a big fan of art museums, but the MoMa was the first museum I really enjoyed. I hope to visit another museum this weekend, maybe the Guggenheim or the Metropolitan. We are supposedly going to a party tomorrow night in Brooklyn. Whatever happens, I am sure it is going to be an exciting weekend and I am really looking forward to it!

Today is a a special day. Not only is it exactly 138 years ago since the first edition of the scientific journal Nature was published, but it is also the day of my first publication with my new group has been published. Ok, so it is not a first authorship. Not quite. Actually, I am the fiftieth (50th) author of a total of seventy two. Everybody knows that only the first and the last authors of a paper count. The first author is usually the PhD student or postdoc that did all the work, the last author is usually the professor or group leader in whose lab the obviously brilliant work was conducted.

A lot of biomedical scientists think that to have more than a few authors on a paper is quite ridiculous. The reasoning being that on most studies only a few people really did the research and many people are listed for political reasons. I do not completely agree on that, mostly because I am rarely first or last author on the papers I have authored :D. But also because many studies or large collaborations these days and you should give credit where credit is due. Should a physician collecting a biological sample from a patient be listed or not? There is a surprising amount of work that goes with collecting the sample, doing the paperwork, collecting information of the patient, etcetera. Not an easy answer to that question.
So for this paper with my honorable fiftieth (50th) authorship, I did some analysis of gene expression data to flag some of the major findings. I think it may have ended up in the supplementary data or something. But hey, at least I did spend some time working on it!