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Tonight we watched The Pursuit of Happyness at home during movie time. Will Smith delivers an incredible performance, capturing the emotional weight of poverty while also showing something even more powerful—resilience. That quiet, stubborn determination to keep going, no matter how many times life pushes back. From https://medium.com/@LilyLii/a-dive-into-the-pursuit-of-happiness-106090232749 His job is to sell these expensive bone density scanners to doctors. Just selling tw

I woke up at 5 am to write this blog :) Like the lady in Guldur Guldur show. If you have watched this episode, you will understand the joke here. She says she woke up at 5 am to make bread for her husband, she made the eggs from scratch herself, even the water from scratch putting H and O together :) No worries, we are not going to talk about "that" level of productivity. I wanted to share one insight I have gathered observing my CGM (continuous glucose monitor, you can also

How should we live this life? This is the question floating around in my head as we drive back home from New Jersey. During this trip, we visited what felt like two extremes of a normal distribution: the American Dream Mall and an Amish Village. I'll describe both experiences, but first let me explain what I mean by "two extremes on a normal distribution plot." You've probably heard statements like, "Assuming the samples have a Gaussian distribution, we can perform this stati

Yesterday I went to a reunion in my Postdoc lab at UVA to listen to Dr Gary Owens give the Robert M Berne lecture and saw many of my lab-mates from that time. 🤩 A reunion is almost like time travel, except time indeed passed. Gary is now much older, it has been almost 10 years, but still incredibly sharp. He weaved a beautiful story of decades of work from his lab to paint a picture where inflammation is both necessary and also detrimental when it comes to atherosclerosis an

This year feels special. A good proportion of people from different faith traditions are fasting around the same time, which happens once in 33 years! There is something beautiful about that shared discipline. Ramadan, for me, is more than decorations, iftar gatherings, self-discovery, and celebrating identity. It is also a time to quiet something else — what many now call “food noise.” What Is Food Noise? Recently, I had a thoughtful conversation with my healthcare provider

Hola, indeed, after a long time! I intended to write about my experience in Cancun, Mexico—hoping to paint a picture for curious minds and to amplify my internal gratitude. But before the beaches and crazy bus drivers, let’s reflect on my first semester teaching at VCU. I should probably admit that I had a lot of head scratching the first two weeks. The type of scratching that peels off the crust of a pimple that just healed. My anxiety and scratching gradually settled down t

I wanted to share a bit of exciting news—this fall, I’ll be joining Virginia Commonwealth University as an Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics. 🎉 I’ll be mostly teaching bioinformatics and continuing my research and collaboration efforts 🙏 My curiosity for bioinformatics first bloomed during my postdoc, when I found myself deep in single-cell RNA-seq. I remember puzzling over UMAP: how could something be “not wrong,” and also “not correct”? That question pulled me into th

Today is my second (or maybe third?) day with a sore throat and strep infection. I’m having a hard time swallowing and speaking. I had meant to study and make progress on my collaborative projects or coursework—but then I remembered I still needed to write my London reflections. Before we get to London, though, I should share something closer to home: we now have a flock of parakeets . A total of five babies have hatched, and there are more eggs being kept warm under their ma

We just returned from a 10-day vacation in Europe, and I want to put my experience into words—first, to solidify the memories for my...

Today, I thought about the cartoons my son watches— Paw Patrol and PJ Masks . It’s hard not to go a little crazy watching how...

Today, my mind is dancing around the word “merhamet.” It translates as mercy, compassion, grace, loving-kindness. One of God’s names...

This morning, my mind wandered into the idea of self defense. Walking downtown, I often feel a manageable level of unease—just enough to...

Yesterday, I took my kids to their piano lesson at Melody Magic Studios . The teachers there are not just educators—they’re musicians in...

It is pouring today in RVA. My son was asking "Mommy, why does it rain?" I told him the clouds have so much to carry and they have to...

What Does It Mean to Change? I was born naked, like all of you. I went to school as normal. 🙂 When I started college, I began wearing a...

Yesterday in My Dream… I told the driver of a car that I hitchhiked that I was doing a PhD in Computer Science. (What kind of...

Trying to beautify the place you are in, shows your joy of life. Joy of life does not pour as rain. You have to cultivate it in...

We tossed out our Ninja coffee maker because it was burning the coffee. I’d almost say my husband felt a wave of pleasure dumping it and...

While shopping for a shirt for my husband, I noticed something strange—one shirt costs $20, while another (same fabric, same function)...

Confidence and Women: A Seedling That Grows This Women’s Day, I found myself reflecting on confidence—why do women, on average, have...