Home Page Archive

October 4, 2004

Tyler and I arrived at Barcelona Airport.  Our bicycles did not.  We moved in with guardian-angel Oriol, room-mate Sandra, ex-we're-still-not-sure Paco and frequent visitor Marc and commenced becoming Catalan.  I started classes on 10/5, and Tyler began the search for "the perfect apartment"...

- In the middle of apartment hunting Tyler needed to visit collaborators in France, so I found yet ANOTHER excuse to go to Paris.  On the way to the airport, Tyler dropped his computer and wished he had remembered to back everything up.  Tyler and I commiserated over good wine and phenomenal cheese and great crepes, and... Ahhhh Paris. -

...thirty six apartment viewings later... Tyler and I moved in on November 1 and made our first trip to IKEA (pronounced "e-kay-a" in Spain).  We later remembered why we had not visited IKEA more in the past.

Late November

Tyler and I learned that we could not use the sink and the shower simultaneously.  We also found that the water heater would often shut down with an error "A4" leaving the offender in a very cold shower.  We called the administrator who pointed the finger at the installer who pointed the finger at the manufacturer who pointed the finger back at the installer – who finally suggested that perhaps the Americans were simply showering incorrectly...

Mid December

After too many phone calls and too much finger pointing, the A4 problem appeared to be "mostly" resolved. Tyler and I have found a handy workaround to the problem that is to "reboot" the water heater when it acts up.  We've have added yet another verb to our mixed language vocabulary as in:  "AKKKKKKKK the shower A4ed again.  Do the workaround. Do the workaround!"

Late December

Tyler and I were just finally starting to settle into their new surroundings... when my family came to town to celebrate the holidays.  After spending several days in Barcelona, we all headed south to Andalusia to see the real “Spain” complete with orange trees, flamenco, beautiful women and (oh, yes!) people that speak Spanish all day.  We especially enjoyed a trip to the Alhambra with tour-guide Marisa (who lived in Granada in her college days).

Daily Life..

For those of you who know me well, the adjustment to Spanish time and non-work life has been CHALLENGING.  I am very thankful that Tyler has yet to go crazy from my Program Managing seemingly every aspect of his life.  I run to the beach via Las Ramblas nearly every morning at sunrise (it rises late around here!).  I wave to the en Manel and en Juan at the local flower stand on my way out. I go to Catalan class every morning.  I speak Castellano aka SPANISH during break times and often Japanese after class with a close friend from Japan. My afternoon classes alternate between Spanish on Tuesdays and Thursdays and French on Mondays and Wednesdays.  I seldom am able to keep any of these languages straight in my mind...

Tyler has happily adjusted to his 22 minute commute (door-to-door) via subway.  He works for the Genome Bioinformatics Research Lab at Universitat Pompeu Fabra which is conveniently located near the Olympic Village across the street from the beach.  His group includes individuals from other parts of Spain, France, Greece, Germany, Portugal, Holland and Italy.  He is the token Norteamericano, but they don’t hold that against him.  Tyler tries to practice Spanish with the rest of his team when they meet for a morning café amb llet or when they go to lunch.  He completed the Pre-Intermedio level Spanish course in the fall and is now taking a conversation class with Alicia, the super-mona maestra who seldom wears mini-faldas.

Upcoming Plans

We are hoping to spend Semana Santa (Easter week) in Morocco and are planning to spend “summer” vacation cycling in Spain and possibly the South of France (in late August / September).  We are also thinking about a visit to Japan for Christmas next year.

More importantly, we are planning to visit the Bay Area in late April / early May (04/28 - 05/09ish).  We’d love to see you during our brief visit (we’ll be in the states around 10 days).  Moreover, we’d love to see you in Barcelona, so please don’t hesitate to let us know should you have plans to come to Europe soon. 

Barcelona, here we come...

At last we are moving on to our next big thing. BARCELONA. Please note that our stanfordalumni emails will not change, but our homepage is now moving to www.kyotoalioto.com. Please update your bookmarks. You will automatically be redirected to our new URL momentarily.

Gina has come full circle and is the Program Manager for, you guessed it, ReplayTV - now part of Digital Networks North America, which is now owned by D&M Holdings (Dennon and Marantz). Back among friends, she is driving her team to make ReplayTV the best PVR on the market. Forget TiVo. Go ReplayTV!!!

Meanwhile, Tyler has finished his Ph.D at UC Berkeley. His dissertation describes the discovery of the complete repertoire of odorant receptors encoded by the zebrafish genome. This work has contributed to our understanding of how odorant receptors expressed in the fish nose help fish detect and discriminate among different odors. Tyler would include more of the details of zebrafish and olfaction in this little blurb, but he's aware that you likely have a short attention span. For a better taste, or more appropriately, a whiff of what his research is all about, you can visit the Ngai Lab web site.

We will soon be heading off to Barcelona for a couple of years where Tyler is planning to pursue postdoctoral research in bioinformatics. Feel free to browse through our pictures of our recent visit to Barcelona on dotPhoto.

Long days at SONY and studying olfaction in Zebrafish

After we returned from a refreshing in-between-jobs trip to France at the beginning of June, Gina has been slaving away at her new job at SONY where she is the project manager for the VAIO notebook product line. Meanwhile, Tyler has been slaving away at the bench with the goal of gaining a better understanding of how fish smell odors. More info about our current jobs and our career aspirations, click on the Careers link.

We have been fortunate enough lately to be able to hang out quite a bit with our friends. We often exchange recommendations for books to read, movies to see, good restaurants and things, however, I often forget to write them down. So, as I've promised to several of you, we are now hosting recommendation lists to which we strongly encourage you to make additions.