Wendy is a Doctor at Rockefeller!

Yesterday morning at 7:55 am, my brother in-law drove Paul and me to Manhattan. Wendy, his daughter and our oldest niece, was ready to defend her Ph.D. thesis based on her new findings on protein at Rockefeller University. The agenda was she would present her project, followed by a Q&A session. Afterwards, she would go through a closed-door defense of no more than 2 hours. My niece who I baby sat in May-October 1989 was really grown, calm, logical, and systematic in her presentation. She used clear and easily understood words and phrases to summarize the process of what she was doing in her 4 years of intensive lab work.

Shortly after 11:00 am, we left her with the grilling committee and went out of the auditorium, together with her close family consisting of her boyfriend, parents, younger sister, and future in-laws. We toured Rockefeller University, a private university founded in 1901, neighboring with Weill Cornell and Sloan Kettering to make a tri medical research center on York Avenue. After the tour we gathered at the open outdoor patio of the cafeteria and waited for the results of her defense.  It was one of the longest two hours that I had ever undergone in my life, all but like the birth of a child or country. My anxiety was triply shared by her mother and mother in-law to be.

Eventually, a text message was relayed from the boyfriend, "Wendy is Doctor!" We all cheered and then joined her in their lab kitchen for sandwiches, cake, and champagne. We met her PI (Principal Investigator) and lab colleagues, an unusual group devoid of jealousy and competitions, because of the abundance of opportunities and diverse research foci in this particular environment. The campus seemed to be a true oasis not only for us humans but also for animals. A miniature mouse scuttered around us on the floor for food, so did a couple of fearless sparrows invite themselves later on our picnic table. Such an oasis is not impossible to reach. It takes near-perfect scores all the way through one's high school onwards. In our niece's case, it also needs intellectual dedication and parental nurturing from a dedicated Cornell father and Regeneron mother.

Go, girl! There are more challenges awaiting at Cornell. But there will be more opportunities as well.

A Quiet Goodbye to Jack O'Neill

Right after Sunday dinner at 8:00 pm, Paul and I said in unison that we should take a walk since it was still light. Where to? Either Capitola Village or East Cliff? As we did not manage to see the ocean over the weekend, with the First Friday event downtown and Saturday dinner at a friends' in Felton, we need to breathe more sea air, so East Cliff was decided upon.

Pleasure Point was unusually moody with the rolling fog and eerie quiet after the busy celebration of Jack O'Neill's life in the morning at eleven. We did not make it for various reasons. Perhaps we preferred a quiet goodbye to the local legend.

As usual, we passed by Jack's oceanfront house. But unlike our usual walks, we stopped by and recollected ourselves to pay our respect to Jack O'Neill, one of the celebrities who have done their utmost to benefit people and environment.

Courtesy of Paul Titangos Photography

O'Neill was born on March 27th, 1923 in Denver, CO and died on June 2nd, 2017 in Santa Cruz, CA. In the span of 94 years, he was a surfer, wet suit inventor, and founder of the world renowned O'Neill surf company. The proudest invention to him is the founding of his O’Neill Sea Odyssey, a marine and environmental education program. So far, the program has educated over 100,000 school children, to continue O'Neill's belief that, “The ocean is alive and we’ve got to take care of it.”

Give Alley Flower a Chance

We tend to write off the late bloomer or Ugly Duckling too quickly. Sometimes we even dismiss the potential of our staff with just one question or a message. It is truly deplorable, for I have come across many an instance that hidden treasures are often in disguise.

 Courtesy of Paul Titangos Photography

Nineteen years ago, we moved ourselves, along with some gladiola bulbs, across the street to our new house and planted them along the sidewall. After Paul had cleared all of the sidewall path where purple iris and calla lilies used to reside, a green plant shot out next to our side-door step this spring. It looked like a unwanted thick weed growing not straight up but sideways. For some reason, we left it alone. Partly because of our sympathy for oddballs or physically challenged creatures. Partly because of our being burned-out by too much growth around us after the wet winter and spring. Surprisingly, the sideways plant has started to bloom since last week. It turns out to be a pink-white-yellow gladiola, one of the bulbs planted nearly two decades ago! Despite years of anonymity, it is blooming anyway.

I cannot help but think how close we came to killing a beauty, just because of its ordinary, even  distressed, appearance. Such an instances are abundant in our life. Take for example our adoption of Chippy, a kitten weeded out by both her original owner and future adopters, due to two strikes against her: a runt's drowsiness and white fur, which could be a problem for white cats. No one would have anticipated that she made it to Baker & Taylor's 2014 cat calendar.

The sojourn on the earth is short and limited for everyone, and every living thing. We should not deprive them of opportunities to grow to their full potential, because of differences. Give an alley flower or animal a chance; the late bloomer or Ugly Duckling might contribute to society more than we dare to think.