Real Human Moments

I recently attended the Summer Institute of Statistical Genetics which was held at the University of Washington in Seattle. The school attracts students and professionals from around the world and instructs them in the latest techniques in a large variety of areas. I traveled from Connecticut with my lab mate Jorge, and I was scheduled for 2 modules taking 6 days with a weekend in the middle. I also added an extra 4 days onto the end of my stay to allow for sight seeing.  Many of the attendees elected to stay in a dorm because it was the cheapest housing available, Jorge and I choose this route.

We  began to hang out with several of the attendees and by the end we were good friends. The variety of people was amazing. There were professionals and students from Uruguay, Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico, Columbia, the United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, Austrailia, Denmark and England. Early on a large number of us, maybe 20 or so had dinner at a brew pub creating a table the size of the entire room. It was such an awesome moment because so many people, with no connection got together and had a great time. We found differences and commonalities in our work, social experiences and politics. In fact if you wanted a new perspective on politics, or a world event you only needed to pick up your beer and walk to a different part of the table. It is interesting discussing revolution with people whos country has recently gone through one in the past 50 years, where as its a much more abstract discussion for Americans.

After leaving the bar, I suggested that several of us try and walk to the  shore. Severall people agreed and I picked a direction and lead the group. I really had no idea where we were going but I found my way and we made it to the water eventually. We were able to spend the nights and weekend of our stay exploring downtown seattle and the surrounding areas. It was a very relaxed atmosphere as most of us had put on hold our daily responsibilities for this trip, a very rare situation in which to meet new people. We celebrated a fellow compute programmers birthday who was from Denmark by all packing into a sushi restaurant where you can pick your dish off of a large conveyer belt, and finished off the evening awkwardly remembering our childhood piano lessons in the dorm.

All good things have to come to an end, and slowly we began loosing members of the group as they finished up their courses. I luckily had a few extras for my first north western adventure.

The title of this blog is in reference to a line from Richard Linklater’s movie about dreams. A lady is speaking to the dreamer about her frustration with human interaction. She feels that in what ever society she is from people are afraid of people. We follow predetermined scripts in many of the actions we do daily, supposedly to get away from this human to human interaction. An example she provides is at the fast food joint, rather than speaking out our order we just say a number and expect the “do you want fries with that” response.

Most my posts have been more in the travel log format, simply a glorified list of where I’ve gone, and what I’ve done. I haven’t really been diligent in keeping it current because I find that writing that information is not entertaining to me. I am going to try and switch my posts focus to the human situations which I encounter in every day life, or travel.