life comes in discrete packages of humor and irony

i was in the men's restroom in LSA a couple days ago, going about my business. and then professor schlissel walks in.

i thought back to the beginning of spring '08: when i sat in the far back rows of pimentel on the first day of bio 1a, i looked past the sea of students sitting in front of me, and fixed my gaze towards the front of the room and beheld none other than the immunologist himself. little did i know that one day i would be standing next to him by the urinal. it's just weird peeing next to your professor.

fine...so i was actually washing my hands when he came in. but it still made a great story.

it kind of reminds me that time i was passing out gospel tracts on campus, and i suddenly saw my ochem professor approach. the mere thought of being able to preach the gospel to my professor took me by surprise. my face suddenly lit up and i uttered an excited "hey!" upon which his face broke out in surprise and he looked at me awkwardly, only to become more cautious of his own safety as he strode on past me. only after he passed me did i realize i was only a single student in a class of eight hundred. and that he had never seen my face nor exchanged a word with me. i guess im still not a true berkeley student.

today i dropped off my samples at the DNA sequencing lab. as i approached the facility, i saw formidable gray machines encompassing the majority of the room, with their loud fans and motors running tirelessly to generate needless amounts of noise. this is where pretty high tech stuff happens. i walk in and i find no one else in the room except a 10 year old boy. yes, he was the one manning the facility. i gave my samples to him and he told me "he'd take care of it."

yeah, i laughed after i walked out of the room.

it just felt unnerving handing off my precious samples to a 10 year old. did that really just happen? did i see it right? is uc berkeley's primary dna sequencing facility run by a 10 year old kid? i guess so.

then again, he was taller than me, and i probably looked just as young as him, so i guess he was just as surprised to see that i myself was a researcher. and yes, im positive that he was actually that much younger than me.