The Whole Erk Catalogue Tales of a Geek Abroad

I'm working on writing up a report on my research from the last few months, and I'm getting tired of FTPing it to myself back and forth. Therefore, I'm going to save it here along with some commentary, as a little insight into what my life has been about for the last while. This is a work-in-progress.

Introduction
Planaria – free living flatworms of class Turbellaria – have been known for their incredible regenerative capacity since Abraham Trembley and later Peter Simon Pallas first considered them “immortal under the edge of the knife” nearly 250 years ago (Newmark and Sanchèz Alvarado, 2002). Their nearly limitless regenerative plasticity allows a full organism to regenerate from a fragment as small as 1/279 of the original organism. In addition to this fascinating ability, planaria are very interesting as a model organism due to their extreme simplicity yet resemblance to upper organisms: they are bilaterally symmetrical, cephalised, have cute eyespots which function almost identically to more advanced eyes, and possess a central nervous system consisting of paired ganglia and longitudinal nerve cords. However, their eyes are very nearly as simple as possible using the light-detection rhodopsin system standard to most visual organisms, and the planarian contains only three distinct tissue layers. Its circulatory, digestive, and respirtatory systems are virtually nonexistent: as a flatworm it accomplishes these functions via diffusion. The planarian represents a fascinating bridge between extremely complex and extremely simple organisms, making it ideal as a research topic. [This paragraph is quoted with minor modification from my research proposal "Exploring gene function and expression in Planaria using RNA interference knockouts."]

These are the players in my life right now. In some places names may be changed to protect the innocent.

My Family
My mom seems to be proud of me, but she's also a little upset. We've had our differences but we're pretty close, and I've never been more than a few towns away for more than a couple months at a time. She's doing a good job of not letting it show, but I do think this is pretty rough on her in some ways.

My little sister, Robin, doesn't seem too troubled. I think she's excited, as this is the kind of thing she'd be interested in as well. I'll be sure to send her a lot of cool Engrish shirts. I also have to frame the painting she gave me a few years ago and bring it along.

My dad lives in Calgary, and at the time of writing this I haven't had much time to hang out with him. I'm going out there as soon as I can to do some renovation work with him. He and his girlfriend will probably come visit me in Japan as their schedules are more flexible and they have more means than my mom, so I think he's taking it a lot easier. He lives with my stepmom, Zdenka, who is great. She's a graphic designer and my boss, I do mostly the computer end of things although I help with the graphics too. I still can't believe I was lucky enough to land a job like that, and that I can actually hold my own in that field.