Its been about 10 days of interesting, tasty, and inexpensive food and not-as-pleasant climate. Everything has been going pretty well so far. I’m getting acquainted with my new project and also working on my other project from T.J. Watson. The locals have proven very hospitable and friendly.

As for adventures, we made the trip to Agra last week via a travel agency. Here we saw India’s prized attraction, the Taj Mahal, as well as Agra Fort. On the way back, we stopped by Mathura, the birth place of Krishna. 

There were no cameras (or any electronic devices for that matter) allowed in the temple (next to Krishna’s birthplace), due to terrorist attacks that occurred some time back, so I have no photos to share of Mathura. I can say that it was  a very nice place and an equally nice experience. I had never been to a Hindu temple, so it was interesting to see the devotion of its members.

The Taj Mahal is hard to put in words, so I’ll let the photos do the talking. We happened to go on the anniversary of Shah Jahan, so entrance was free, which meant there were a lot of people. 

- From the Agra Fort 

- wild monkeys! 

- The Taj Mahal

- no shoes allowed on the marble floors

This week is sadly my last week in Paris and working with the Agence. I have very much enjoyed my time here and everyone at the Agence has been extremely kind and taught me a great deal, particularly Dr. Couchoud.

 I just completed the draft of the APHA abstract that I am submitting to the 'late breaker' session for the November conference in Denver, and my committee and Dr. Couchoud are editing it currently and I will submit it to the epidemiology chair of APHA directly by email later this week.

 I am also looking into journals to which I can submit a 'brief report' of the descriptive statistics and co-morbid clinical diseases of HIV-positive renal replacement therapy and renal transplant patients, which is the data that I have been analyzing. Currently, the journal 'Transplant Infectious Disease' seems to be a good fit and I found a similar study on USRDS HIV+ renal transplant patient data in this journal recently.

 This past weekend I was in Turin, Italy visiting my best friend from the US and her boyfriend, who is Italian at their place. I was having a great time until i went to the market w/her on Saturday and my wallet was stolen out of my purse! I had no idea it was gone until i went to buy something and noticed it missing. It contained all my credit/debit cards, passport, and drivers license, needless to say this was a total cauchemar(nightmare) lol.

I had to file a police report and was able to fly back to France w/a copy of my passport I had made and had my family wire me money and my bank allows me to wire money as well since all debit/credit cards were stolen. Italy is pretty bad apparently, and there is a large gypsy community that specializes only in stealing. My friend Jessica and her bf had their apt broken into during Christmas and all their presents stolen even they later told me!

So, word of advice, when traveling in Italy, watch your purse/wallet!

 Overall however, the weekend ended ok and Turin was very pretty. See attached pics of Turin and Paris:)

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Last night I went to a 40th birthday party at the house of a French lady whom I met during Paris's 'designer days'. the party was a surprise birthday party for her friend, Laurent, who is a journalist here in Paris that writes on articles and topics related to healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry (since he himself is a pharmacist as well). The party was very fun and had great food and it was interesting talking to all of the guests and good practice for my French! :) Laurent also knew the L'agence de la Biomedicine, where i work, because he has covered them much in his work he said b/c they are the entity responsible for allocating all transplant organs and tissues in France.

Today I am resuming with SAS analyses for my APHA abstract and creating a table for the results to summarize for the abstract. Dr. Couchoud has taught me several new analysis techniques this week.

I also received great news from the USRDS US renal registry, that my proposal was accepted, so I can move forward with the data request this week and hopefully have it upon my return to Miami after July 10th.

I can't believe my trip is already coming to an end, time flies! But I have learned much and made some great friends during my time here and hope to visit again in the future. Attached are some pics from last night's bday party:)

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This week at the Agence I am working on the interpretation of the results of my statistical analyses of the prevalent HIV patients in the REIN registry and also composition of an abstract for the APHA conference in November. The student liason from APHA said I can send the abstract directly to the chair of the epidemiology section and that they are looking forward to my submission.

 I also heard from the director of the USRDS US renal registry, Dr. Eggers, and he said he is reviewing my proposal this week and should hopefully approve it if all looks ok and I can move forward w/data request so that I can have it upon my return to Miami in 2 wks to begin analyses of US data w/Dr. Page, my other advisor.

 Dr. Couchoud was out of town until today due to a nephrology conference she had in Germany but will be continuing to teach me analyses in SAS this week.

I think I still have much to learn in this next 2 wks in terms  of SAS analysis but overall have made good progress.

 This past weekend I just relaxed and explored some of paris and went to the Place d'Italie district,which is the Italian and Chinatown of paris and got some interesting fruits and vegetables.

I have also attached some pics of the area where I live, the Invalides, and my work:)

This week has been off to a good start and Dr. Couchoud and I had the chance to sit down together and formulate the methods section and analyses of my aims. I am almost done with entering these edits and will be starting analysis using SAS with her on Friday (She is out of the city 2 days this week due to work travel). She is quite a busy person, I am honestly impressed at how she can do so many things at once!

 This past weekend I had a chance to relax and go to the Centre Pompidou  with my roommate Fanny and 2 of her friends and see the modern art exhibits and the newer feminist exhibit they have up. Some very interesting newer art by some more modern artists as well as many old works from Picasso. Took lots of pictures and finally found my camera upload cord so will post shortly:)

 This weekend my boyfriend is actually visiting from the US and we are going Friday eveining-Sunday to Piza Italy and then to La Spetzia Italy to meet up with one of my best friends and her Italian boyfriend who live there, so should be fun:)

Its been four weeks now and I must say that time really flies when you're in an industry research lab. There are a lot of interesting things going on at IBM. Regarding my project, I'm not sure how much I can say due to the confidential nature of the project, but its basically a simulator for a special kind of scheduler. The main complexity of the project stems from the fact that there has been so much research in this area, and a simulator should feature most a lot of the well-known functionality in order to compare new approaches to old ones.

Having focused on my research area itself for quite some time, its been quite a change of pace learning a different (albeit related) research area and  trying to keep up with all the discussions (and trying to ensure that what I am developing is what they actually need). Fortunately, working with everyone in the team has been a good experience. Another nice thing has been the fact that I've spent so much time programming. The nature of my regular research work has not involved such a long, continuous period of programming in a long time.

In the mean time, I've managed to make a few escapes to NYC and some of the local attractions in the Westchester area. The free entrance to the Natural History museum (since IBM is a supporter) has provided some educational experiences beyond HPC scheduling. Below are a photo taken at Central Park and two at the sculpture garden at the Pepsi headquarters. The hills and mountains have provided a nice change of pace from Miami, but I miss the tropical summer weather and warm beaches (wearing a jacket in May feels really weird).