Scooter adventures

Scooters are a terrific way to get around, especially in Puerto Rico. They are small, and can thus evade traffic messes; they get GREAT gas mileage (about 70-100 mpg); they are sleek and make the rider look super cool; and finally, they are a great way to meet cops. I've gotten pulled over 8 times in 9 months, and every time I get pulled over the cop asks for my number and/or address (These conversations usually go something like this: "So, do you have your license and registration? No? Ok, no problem...so, what do you do? Would you like to see a movie this weekend?")

However, there are two situations in which riding on a scooter is no fun at all: when it is raining and when the scooter is broken. Puerto Rican rain is characteristically very extreme - the roads go from completely dry to flooded within a few minutes. Needless to say, scooters don't do much to keep you dry, and riding in the rain is actually quite painful when it hits your face.

Yesterday, while scooting home, it started to rain fairly hard. I was on a small highway, fairly crowded as it was rush hour, and because the road was rapidly becoming a river, I decided to pull over and wait for it to pass. After a few minutes, the rain lightened, and I got back on the scooter...only to find that it was dead. As soon as I discovered this, the rain picked up again and I spent the next half hour getting drenched while trying to decide how best to get out of this predicament.

After getting honked at by a number of passing cars, a policeman pulled over, and helpfully yelled from a bullhorn that the shoulder of the road was not a safe parking spot. After explaining to him that, in fact, I was not parked here for pleasure but out of necessity due to my scooter's untimely death, the policemen took a look at the battery, found that I had blown a fuse, and somehow managed to temporarily repain my scooter using a piece of my metal ID badge from work. I was back on the road in five minutes - soaked to the skin, but moving nonetheless.

More CDC absurdity

Today I recieved the following email from CDC - one of their weekly swine flu/H1N1 updates:

"CDC does not recommend "swine flu parties" as a way to protect against future infection with novel Influenza A (H1N1) Swine flu parties are gatherings where people have close contact with a person who has contracted the virus in the hopes of becoming infected themselves and, therefore, develop natural immunity to the novel H1N1 flu virus should it circulate later and cause more severe disease."

Just some things to keep in mind...

Also, to keep the mood light, I discovered that the Atlanta office is having an electric slide party at one of their campuses. Unfortunately, my travel funds don't cover the cost of attendence.

Important information about how to transport viruses

My boss told me this story a little while ago...some of you have heard it before but its definitely worth recording.

Some time ago, there was an outbreak of a virus in Malaysia. Little was known about the virus, and one researcher at the national public health laboratory asked if he could use CDC's facility in Fort Collins, Colorado* to study this virus in greater detail. The people in Ft. Collins said, yes, of course, and gave him the address so he could send a sample of the virus ahead of time to work with when he arrived.

The researcher arrived at the lab some days later - the virus had not arrived, but the Ft. Collins folks assumed it was being held up in customs. After welcoming the researcher to the lab, one of the CDC employees started showing him around the lab.

As soon as they entered the first lab, the visitor began unbuttoning his shirt. The somewhat taken-aback CDC employee tried to explain that she was married, they were in a lab, etc. etc...

...but then she saw that the researcher had two flasks to his chest chest. Knowing that the (potentially deadly, unresearched) virus could survive at body temperature, the researcher had decided to transport the live virus by taping it to himself on a trans-Pacific flight.

Luckily, no one was infected...but it kind of makes you wonder what else makes it through airport security.

*CDC has different sections - within the infectious disease branch is a sub-branch of the center for vector-borne infectious disease - basically, any disease carried by insects or other critters, and this branch is based out of Ft. Collins, CO. The dengue branch, where I work, is a subset of this branch. All of these branches have acronyms - so I work at the dengue branch, which is under DVBID, within the NCZVED as a part of CCID at CDC. A bit of a mouthful, no?

To swine or not to swine?

Working at CDC in the midst of an outbreak is an interesting experience - in some ways, reassuring, and in other ways completely baffling. The speed and magnitude of the response to the outbreak is impressive, especially given my experiences in the research world (repeated failure punctuated by brief, beautiful successes...as one coworker said, "It's called REsearch because you have to do it again and again and again").



On the other hand, the inboxes of CDC employees have been inundated with 1-2 email a day reminding us that influenza produces flu-like symptoms, and people suspecting that they have been infected should stay home. On a more local level, the person at the branch assigned to do testing on samples in Puerto Rico has a permanently runny nose - in the 8 months I've been here, I don't think he's stopped sniffling.


But as usual, Puerto Rico seems immune to the drama of the outside world. No fanatical antibacterial hand-soaping here - the most I've heard that's happened as a result of the outbreak was that my neighbr called in "sick" on Monday to go surfing. Go figure.

8 months late...

Well, here it is. A blog.

When I moved to Puerto Rico, I thought that since I'd technically still be living in the US, just working a run-of-the-mill job, there was no reason to start a blog.

Here are some things that changed my mind:

1. My boss: mid forties, very intelligent, slightly crazy. She has the attention span of a goldfish and has givn me some truly entertaining job advice. Yesterday she told me, "Elena, you better make sure you have a plan B. Because if you don't get into medical school, you're going to move in with your parents and eat ice cream all day and become Jabba the Hutt."

2. My apartment: a studio with some creative quirks, including holes in the wall to allow cross-apartment water flow during heavy rains, carnivorous ants, and a host of interesting neighbors.

3. The poison cabinet at work: a coworker recently found the above pictured bottle in the cabinet. We still don't know what it is.

4. The quirks of working in infectious disease research: these stories have to be written down somewhere. My favorite story to date involves my boss and a "dead" pelican to be tested for West Nile Virus, delivered to the lab in a box. My boss walked into the lab and opened the box, only to discover that, in fact, this rather large pelican was still alive and rather put out at being stuffed inside the container. Ever the tenacious scientist, my boss had several large technicians in the lab restrain the bird so she could get a sample before the bird was released.

5. And finally, Puerto Rico itself. From the spastic traffic to the man who swims with his iguana at the beach near my house to the high-speed Spanish that seems to have lost most of its "s"s, this is a quirky and crazy place to be.