While The Sun Hangs In The Sky

Last week was a nightmare. 

Around nine o'clock, as I was having a Skype meeting with a couple of colleagues from Mexico City and Juriquilla, Queretaro, in front of my laptop in Lerma de Villada, beginning the 4th week of classes, one of my closest colleagues arrived to his lab, located a few meters away from the University, in Mexico City –a space which he, his wife and my previous boss rented since two years ago, when September 19th's Earthquake damaged the building on which they worked... and on which I worked for the previous three years–, bought an orange juice, left it on a desk and said to his wife that he would go to the bank. 

It would be the last time she would see him.  

At 14: 00, her wife tried to call him on the cellphone –they used to eat together, at that time– and he didn't answer. All day long, she tried to do it, over and over again. 
On Monday's night, she reported him as a missing person.

I knew about the situation, from a friend of my wife, until Tuesday, as I was about to teach my class of Drug Addiction. It was so shocking. He's not the kind of person who disappears, leaving his entire family distraught. 

Immediately, my wife and myself started to share information about him and the situation on our social networks. We were close to them. My wife and myself shared a small office with them for the last two years. 
We saw them everyday... 
Sometimes we ate with them... 

I shared a bigger office with both of them on the previous three years. 
I worked with them for the last five years. 

We even have a publish paper and another one that I'm writing. 

I saw them when they told me that she was pregnant and I saw them when they took her baby daughter to the University when the baby started to walk and to go to the kindergarten... 

I saw their entire family when they took them to the University, when they were on holidays... 

Both of them invited me to teach a few classes and seminars for their undergraduate and postgraduate students... He, a researcher from Oregon and myself shared the advisory of a postgraduate student... 

At the end of each year, since we started to work together, my wife and myself went to their house for the last dinner of the year. My wife even cooked a few deserts they loved. 

They sometimes gave us a ride on their Van, if we accidentally saw them on an Avenue next to the University, on which they passed right after leaving their baby daughter in the kindergarten. They even asked us if we wanted the baby tub of their baby daughter, when we told them that we wanted to have a baby. 

I was beside him during the Earthquake... on the third floor of the soon-to-be-damaged building... and I saw them so preoccupied –his wife was in another building of the University and their daughters were at their schools, a few miles away– and I saw them helping a couple of women whom had lost their minds, as soon as the Earthquake finished...

On Wednesday's night, we knew via Whatsapp that he had been found in a small town in Oaxaca. The message was brief and sad: it said it weren't good news. 

On Thursday's morning it was official: he was dead. 

The circumstances of his death are suspicious.
The authorities seem to have an urge to close the case as soon as possible.

They say he commited suicide. It is unreal. 
A few of his colleagues –including me– have a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology. 
We don't think so.
He was the most positive person I have ever knew. 
He had five kids. The younger of them has four years old.  

His pupils say that on the previous days of his missing, he was so optimistic. 

Finally, after two years, the authorities of the University had told him that, at the end of October, he and her wife will have a new lab... inside the University... and so they will have an appropriate space to continue with their experimental research... and so they will not longer have to pay a rent, with their own money, for a space a few blocks away from the University... 

His pupils say that he and his wife were making plans to celebrate it with a big travel in boat across the ocean. 

No one around him, agrees with this suicidal hypothesis. 
Some journalists have spread the new that his family accepted that he was depressed. 
None of this is true. 

I still can't believe it. 
I can't believe I will not see him ever again.

The last time I saw him was on July.
It was the quarterly progress examination of a postgraduate student. 

As usual, he hugged me and he seemed pretty happy. 

At the end of the exam, we walked downstairs.

He gave me the cellphone number of one of his friends.
His friend was looking for a younger researcher. She was able to interview some candidates in order to contract one of them. He thought I could be interested. I was the third person he told about it. I got a new job on January. The other two persons are still postdocs. 

He started to smoke.
I wanted to ask him which were his thoughts about the last strike on the University.

On April, I saw him and I saw his wife at some protests against the three month strike.
(I even uploaded a couple of videos of these protests on my YouTube Channel.)
It was such a disturbing situation that we didn't talk at all. I had no money. I had to spend all my savings to survive. I had no patience to talk to anyone. 

Back then, on July, I wanted to ask him which were his thoughts about unionized professors... but we spoke very few. He had to see someone else. 

Then, I went to the office we shared for the last two years –since we lost our building–, to say Hi to her wife. She was really warm and she was really happy to see me. I knew things weren't cool at all, at the office. 
It seemed that she and his husband had been threatened by members of the new administration –those who had left them without a workspace since the Earthquake of 2017– and she wasn't happy at all. It was weird. She's one of the most passionate scientist I have ever met. 

These guys of the new administration seemed to have an urge to occupy the office, no matter if it wasn't their office and no matter if my colleagues saw it as a temporary asylum... because the new administration had not assigned them an appropriate space. 
It seemed more important to them to have the office rather than to give to my colleagues a decent space to continue with their experimental research. 

I tried to distract her and I asked her for her advice.
I' was about to become an Editor in a Neuroscience Topic in an Open Access Journal, and she was Editor of this Journal a few years ago. 

We said Goodbye. 

On this awful weekend I sent her a couple of messages. 
She didn't give an answer. I understand her. She said –no doubt about it– there were the worst days of her life.

Last Friday, it was the funeral of his husband.

At the main entrance of the room, it was a photograph of the seven members of the family.
Later, she said to her father in law that they took that photograph on December, a couple of years ago. 

It was so heartbreaking. His husband looked so happy and smiled, as we, who knew him, saw him daily. 

When I saw her widow, we hugged and I was unable to say something smart. 
She told me that she thought that she wouldn't find her husband's body... and that it gave her some peace of mind. 

I was unable to say something. I didn't find the appropriate words to give her comfort.

My wife and myself were in the funeral until the next day. 
We spoke with colleagues and pupils. 

I feel terrible. I'm still on shock. 
I would like to help her widow somehow, but I dunno what to do or to say. 

I met her when I was about to start my postgraduate studies, more than ten years ago. 
Then she was about to obtain her PhD degree. She's about my age. 
We were professors at the School of Psychology. 
Sometimes we saw each other and spoke a few words. 

I cannot stop thinking of them. 
We shared so many memories. It's awful and painful.
I remember both of them being the most pacifist and friendly persons I have ever met. 

Since I knew of his death, I've been thinking on this song. 

In one of our last conversations on Monday, almost a year ago, he confessed that he was a big fan of Queen. One day after,I just had seen the movie of Freddie Mercury and I told him so.

He asked me if the movie had sexual or violent or inappropriate scenes... so he can get his four old year-daughter to see it to the movie theatre... 

I never knew if he watched it.
I will remember him as the enthusiastic and smiling guy he was.  

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Innuendo

If You're Lonely, You Can Talk To Me

I would like to write, but I feel so tired.
I'm on my new house.
It's weird 'cause we had always lived in apartments. 

My wife and cats are sleeping. 
They're so happy. 

A week ago we moved from Mexico City.
Lerma is a nice place, but cold. 

I'm still sick, though not as I sick as I was a week ago. 
The moving was so exhausting. 
Excluding the furnishing, we moved 120 boxes!

I had a lot of stuff. 
Tons of books, tons of CDs, tons of DVDs, tons of BRs and tons of clothes, five guitars, five guitar pedals, microphones, personal computers, a couple of amplifiers for the guitars... 

My new studio isn't bad at all, but currently it looks like a warehouse.  

We lived in a small apartment the last five years. 
It was a nice apartment, but our neighbors were so disrespectful. 
Usually they put loud music -always the same song- and they kept the building so dirty. 
They made loud parties almost once per month.
They usually threw trash to the streets and behaved as if having kids and cars were the most ambitious goals humankind could ever have. 
Some of them even murdered dogs and cats. 

Nevertheless, I feel nostalgic. 

Last Sunday of the previous year, we went to the old apartment. 
It was so weird to look at it so empty and cold. 
We lived many things there. 

Before we lived in this small apartment, we lived in another one. 
It was located in a better neighborhood than the later one. 
It was so well located and people was so polite. 
We had a nice park, coffee shops and restaurants so close. 

Sadly, then I was so focused on my PhD that I didn't enjoy it at all.

Before I got this job in Lerma, I was a postdoc at UAM Iztapalapa for four years.

It was a nice period of my life. 
I was free to do whatever I wanted to.
My boss was an awesome man.  

He helped me out to find a new job. 
The last six months I wanted to speak with him. 
For a year I had been some sort of consultant and I wanted to have a better academic position. I wasn't enjoying at all to be some sort of consultant. 

Money was running out. 
For a year, almost everything I had was from SNI. 

I met my most recent boss when I was about to have my admission interview to the PhD. 
It must be the autumn of 2008. I needed that he signed me a document.
He was in the middle of a Science Fair. 
Though he didn't know me, he was so polite. 

A year ago or so, he came to the Dissemination of Science's Office in which I had been working for the last year -the team in which I was working, had been working in an enormous building who had to be abandoned after the September 19th Mexico City' earthquake- and he stayed with me for a couple of hours.

For a reason I ignore, he knew that I play guitar. 
(Maybe someone told him so, or he looked at one of my youtube videos.)

He told me that, at some point -maybe when he was a postdoc-, he wanted to play guitar, too. He told me that he was a terrible guitarist. He spoke me about a Beatles' song.

Dunno remember exactly what he said, but the point was that according to him, this song has been considered to have one of the best bass lines in the history of rock n' roll. 

For the ten years I have been meeting him, this has been the most personal moment we ever had.

I was speechless. It was so weird. What a jerk I was. 

The first night I slept in my new house, I had a dream about my recent boss and one of his friends who also was my boss when I was a postgraduate student. 

Once I recover I will write about it. 

Hey Bulldog

I'm A Loser Baby, So Why Don't You Kill Me

Almost fifteen years ago, I started to teach at undergraduate level. 

One of the reviewers of my thesis was a young researcher.  

He studied timing on rodents. 
I had just written a thesis about numerical competence on pigeons. 

At the end of the revision process, I told him that I was interested on teaching and he got me an interview on a private University. 

It was one of the most expensive in the country, or they said so. 

When I went to the interview, the appearance of the school surprised me. 
It seemed really modern. It seemed a first world school.

Everything looked so new and clean.  

http://www.marca.com/

I began three months later.
I had an awful schedule and a boring topic. 
Nevertheless, the experience was the best I could ever have. 

A few of my pupils were really concerned in learning.  

Since it was the first time I was completely responsible for a full course, I must have been a lousy teacher. 

Two years later, I started to teach at UNAM. 
I worked there for four years. 

On the last years of my postgraduate studies, I was so stressed that I did not enjoy teaching and then I quit. 

The relationship with my PhD advisor was so unpleasant at that time.

I had even found a way to teach my classes when it was lunchtime at the lab, to avoid any kind of conflict between us.

Sadly, it didn't work. 

He was not personally mad with me, but in general. 

The lab was full of undergraduate students. Most of them were apathetic and lazy. 

He treated me like if I were one of them. 

One day I got sick and I told him that I would not go to work. 

Unfortunately, that day none of the lazy undergrads was in the lab at that time. 

He got furious and wrote an impulsive e-mail. 

He wrote the worst things he thought about each one in the lab. 

In my case, he wrote that I had no ideas and that I just followed his instructions. 

He sent that e-mail to all of us. 

I still conserve it. 

Obviously, it hit me. 
Specially 'cause he made it public. 

I trusted him and he trusted me –I was the one who took charge of his classes when he couldn't do it–, but it was completely disappointing. 

Maybe I was apathetic and lazy, too. 

However, everybody is able to check my track record at his lab and draw their own conclusions.  

The last paper I published with him was my idea, but he refused to accept it. 

It looks like he just wanted to show how powerful he was.
Also, the most important issue above all: he never get wrong. 
Specially when it's about judging people. 

He recently published a review including part of the data of my published papers.

Not only he did not include me as a co-author –he could ask me to write the corresponding section of the paper or to redo the plots, or whatever–, but he did not even put me on the acknowledgements of the review. 

On each one of my papers he put people who actually did not collaborate at all.  

2011 SfN Annual Meeting. San Diego, CA

I was so stupid. 

I should have leave his lab sooner than I did. 

I quit as a professor. 
I should never have given up.

I would have almost fifteen years teaching at UNAM. 

I became SNI soon after I received my PhD and I had a post-doc position for three years at UAM-Iztapalapa on which I acquired several abilities related to training of human resources and to Grant's writing.

I've been teaching on a regular basis, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. 

I also have been invited to speak about some research topics on diverse academic forums. 

I was advisor of a graduate student and also co-advisor of a postgraduate student. 

I am about to send the response to the reviewers' comments to my last research paper. 

Nevertheless, what I do is barely attractive to society. 

September 19th earthquake' damaged an important research building in the institution I have been working in the last four years.  

Obviously, it worsened my chances to find a researcher position there.  

A month ago or so, I sent my CV and my independent research plans to compete for a researcher position in a provincial University. 

A colleague told me about this opportunity.
A week later, he also told me that I had just passed the first candidate filter.

This researcher position was offered by an institution interested in conducting studies on addiction to drugs of abuse. 

They wanted to have evidence to apply it on public health policies. 

They expected from the young researcher all the abilities I had acquired as a post-doc. 
This opportunity sounded like real fun. 

Besides, my postgraduate studies were conducted in a lab focused on cannabinoids and I have an expertise on behavioral tests employed to evaluate diverse stages of addiction on murine models.

My profile could be of interest for the institution.  

Nevertheless, a couple of weeks ago, while I was watching a FIFA World Cup game between Brazil and Belgium, I received an e-mail from this institution. 

I was so nervous.

Then I started to read: 

"We're sorry to inform you..."

It seems the epithet of my academic life. 

I asked them what had been exactly wrong with me. 

They told me that they didn't have the necessary resources to support my research purpose and that they were looking for a social researcher.

My profile was too oriented to basic research. 

In other words, they wanted a profound thinker rather than an expert on behavior and basic research. 

It was kind of weird, 'cause on the announcement of the vacant they asked for an expert on evaluating the effects of drugs on health. 

What the hell does that mean? 
Were they just too polite to me?
Was my PhD advisor right about me?
Am I an average untalented researcher?

I hate my situation. 

They say it cannot rain all the time.

However, this has been the second bad news I have received in the last month. 

At this rate, the best news I will have is that I can have a child. 

Perhaps I am overreacting.

I guess I should have learned how to fix cellphones and cars. 

I am a disaster. 

I fail over and over again. 

https://libero.pe/rusia-2018/

http://grantland.com/features/beck-phases-out/

I'm A Loser Baby, So Why Don't You Kill Me

El Pelo De Esa Chica No Deja Pasar La Luz

"Narcolepsy includes excessive daytime sleepiness, sleep attacks, cataplexy, hallucinations and poor sleep quality. 

It affects .03 % of worldwide population. 

Cataplexy is an episode of sudden loss of muscle tone, provoked by a strong emotion. 
Narcolepsy with cataplexy has been associated with a selective loss of orexin/hypocretin neurons.

These neurons are located in the lateral hypothalamus and were discovered in the late 90's, by two research groups, both of which were interested in peptides involved in food intake regulation. 

Due to studies carried out between the 40's and 60's, which showed aphagia in animals associated to lesions of the lateral hypothalamus, authors had been suggested that orexins/hypocretins would have an important role in appetite.

Later, following the discovery of these peptides, it became almost a standard approach to employ transgenic mice lacking orexin/hypocretin neurons.

Surprinsingly, instead of being hypophagic, these transgenic mice exhibited a sudden loss of muscle tone.

Orexin/hypocretin knock out mice are the most employed rodent model of narcolepsy with cataplexy. A couple of papers have recently demonstrated that the medial prefrontal cortex is responsible for the profound muscle weakness provoked by stimuli associated to strong emotions, such as palatable foods and wheel activity.

In summary, the proposal is that neurons from this area project to emotional brain regions and that the lack of these peptides from the lateral hypothalamus facilitates the inhibition of motoneurons in the spinal chord."  

In a few hours I'm going to speak about this topic. 

Despite it is of my favorite ones, I couldn't sleep well.

The entire night, I was sort of anxious and tired. 

I guess it was related to my academic career. 
I am on a precarious situation. 
I am able to do so many things for free.
But if I continue to do it, there will come a day in which people think that I am doing well. 

My life has been so depressing, lately.
There are no real job opportunities for me. 

I feel dizzy. 
I woke up from a confussing dream. 

Mona was walking down the street. 

I knew her a couple of years ago.

One of my colleagues asked me if I wanted to learn how to extract DNA from brain tissue and how to measure DNA methylation. 

I agreed. Then, one of his pupils took me to Mona's lab. 

No one introduced me to her.

Obviously, when she suddenly saw me there in her lab, she was so surprised.

But she did not say a word. 

Later, when I saw her on the alleys of the University, she just ignored me. 

Obviously, except if one of my colleagues was present. 

Maybe I wasn't too polite when I appeared out of nowhere in her lab.
I should have introduced myself to her, but I didn't. 
It was also wrong that neither my colleague nor his student, had introduced me to Mona. 

For days I thought I had to apologyze, but time went by and I just forgot about it.

After the September 19th earthquake' left uninhabitable the building on which both Mona's and my colleague's labs' were located, we found again on a temporal office.

The first day it happened, as I walked thru the office, I said "Hi", just for courtesy. 
She was signing up some papers that were stacked on the desk.
She raised her head and saw me, but she just ignored me. 
Her attitude pissed me off.
I was angst a few hours.

What kind of roughness had that been?
What kind of rough woman was she? 

We have been sharing this office for almost three months.

We even sit one behind the other. 

I have even taught one of her postgraduate students how to evaluate the Novel Recognition Object test in rodents. 

She's so selfish, so hypocritical.

She's just kind to people when she needs something from people. 

Wouldn't you believe me if I tell you she's Jewish? 

I had never had the opportunity to personally treat any Jew and I had never considered them as victims or as the greedy people they show us in the movies. 

She has even been rough with my wife, too.

I particularly hate when this happens. 

She's so obvious.

Most of her students are also so selfish and so hypocritical like she. 

Losers.  

Suckers. 

https://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/09/

However, in my dream Mona was walking down the street.

Apparently, she was looking for someone else. 
I didn't want to see her and I avoided her, but suddenly we stood. 

She opened her mouth and then smiled to me.
She said "Hello", exhibiting her teeth. 
They're as yellowish as those of rodents. 
Maybe she's fifteen years older than me, or so.
Even when she looks younger, I have always thought that her teeth reveal her real age. 

She was looking for me. 
She was about to hold my hand.
Her chestnut-dyed hair warmed like a strange fire in the gloom and simultaneously left some of her real gray hair exposed. 

It was cold and rainy. 

I felt inside of a World War II movie scene.
It was so intense. 
I sensed we were about to kiss... and I woke up. 

I don't really understand why I dreamed about her.

She's attractive, and I guess other colleagues have a crush on her. 
I don't like her. 
I'm sure she will ignore me again, when we stop sharing the office. 

She's a prominent researcher. 

We have a cold relationship. 

On the last week I've been dreaming about her.
I have heard that she likes opera.

When I imagine what kind of teenager she was, I do not know why but I think she liked pop music. 

I think she liked Mecano and that she used to dance in nightclubs.

Las Curvas De Esa Chica

Cuando Pase El Temblor

On September 19th, I woke up earlier than usual. I had a nightmare and I couldn't fell asleep again. I felt somewhat nervous and anxious. I had a bad feeling and I started to read the news on my cellphone, to get rid off that bad feeling. 

Against my need to alleviate myself from the nightmare, almost all of the news were related to the 32nd anniversary of the devastating earthquake that destroyed a lot of buildings and lives in Mexico City in 1985. 

Back then I was just a child, but the news gave me the chills and I started to remember how I experienced that earthquake. 

It was such a surprise to realize that I avoid to think about it. 

  

I guess it was so awful that I never think of it. It's not a conscious act. 
I guess I repress all those memories related to that event. 
Then, in a few months, I was about to celebrate my fifth birthday, but I had a few weeks on the first grade of elementary school. 

Then, as I prepared myself to take a shower, I remembered. 

My dad was not present at that time. He had left home earlier and he was at Insurgentes Sur Avenue, waiting for a Van of the company he worked for. On the previous months, he had been sick. He almost had a nervous breakdown and the physician suggested him to not drive his car. He had a silver Volkswagen.  

We lived in the 5th floor, in a small apartment. 

When the earthquake started, I was having breakfast, just about to go to school. 
Suddenly everything started to move and I thought that I was ill because of the breakfast.
My mom hugged me and told me not to worry. 
It was a nightmare. Some things hanging on the walls of the apartment fall apart and broke.
It looked like the earthquake was never going to finish. 
The building moved like a small boat drifting on the gigantic sea.
The movement was fierce and unpredictable. 
It lasted just about two minutes, but nearly 20, 000 people died. 

A lot of people lost everything, in just about two minutes. 
Mom took me to the school and dad called her later.
None of the buildings around our apartment, looked damaged. 

We were fine -dad and mom and my brother and myself-, but scared.  

I had to stop reading the news, 'cause I was already worried and sad.

Late that day, at the University -and in the entire city- we had a simulation of an earthquake evacuation. Everything happened as it was supposed to happened. 

I was alone -my colleagues were occupied at another buildings of the University- and it made feel strange and abandoned.  

When the simulation finished, I still felt somewhat anxious and nervous -as early in the morning-, but I went back to work. 

My office is located on the 3rd floor of the heaviest building of the University. 

I was about to send documents for a CONACyT announcement. We needed money for research.   

At some point, I took a break. 

I was reading a paper of Neurobiology of Learning & Memory. 
It was an interesting study. Authors wanted to evaluate how sleep restriction affected both short- and long- term memories in Aplysia. Besides, they showed how a sleep opportunity of just a few hours, reverted the negative effect of sleep restriction. 

Simultaneously, my colleagues were talking about René Drucker -he just died a night before- and I was curious about what they think of him as a scientist. I have a published paper with him, and he also was advisor of my advisor.

People, usually not related to neurosciences, saw Drucker as an important scientist.
They don't even know that his most recognized papers are those related to his studies on sleep mechanisms in the cat, rather than his studies on Parkinson.

My colleagues said that he was once invited to a Parkinson conference and that he was not really welcome by the specialists. They even kinda hated him and thought he was so arrogant. 

I saw him once at a conference in an annual meeting of the Sociedad Mexicana para la Investigación y Medicina del Sueño, and he was really rude. 

He spoke of an old study -never published- about the relationship between depression and nicotine. It was supposed to be an awesome experiment with depressed women, but I thought it was weird that Drucker -or his student- decided to left it unpublished. 

Another possibility was that the paper, in fact, would have been rejected from an indexed journal. 

He treated my advisor so badly, like if my advisor were his slave. 

Nonetheless, when I had to do something with Drucker, he wasn't rude at all -he was present in my candidacy examination and I had to look for him several times-, but I refuse to accept that people are not dumb and that they don't read but have an opinion for everything.  

People are convinced by appearances.  

Suddenly, it started.

It seemed a light earthquake at the beginning, but it became violent soon. 
It felt like if an enormous worm crawled rapidly, moving everything at its. 

We left the office and just stopped in a security area, with other researchers and students. 
As the movement increased in intensity, a wall fall to the ground and then a window broke.
Women screamed and they put me nervous. I thought the building was about to collapse. 

I thought of my wife and cats.
They were also inside a building, but in the 5th floor. 

When it finished, I left the University.
My cellphone didn't work, so I couldn't communicate to my wife. 
The street was chaotic. People walked across the avenues. 
Traffic was at its highest. No public transport, no taxis were available. 

I had to walk for miles. 
As I walked I felt worst. I didn't know how my family was. 
All I knew came from the radio. News said that several buildings had collapsed. 

Nearly three hours after the earthquake, I got home. 
The building was OK, so my wife and cats. 

Today, I went back to the University.   
One of my colleagues, asked me to accompany him.
I've been so scared -I developed a nervous cough- and I haven't slept well. 

The building of the University in which I have worked for the last three years, it's so damaged that authorities have declared it is uninhabitable. 
Today a couple of colleagues and myself, fed the animals. 
I was so scared. I couldn't stop thinking what if another earthquake started precisely when we were inside the building. It was so extreme. 
The building is so damaged, that most of the researchers who worked in there just decided to sacrifice their animals. 
I was so nervous and scared, but I remained inside the building for almost two hours. 
Everything changed for us in a couple of minutes. 
I don't know when I'm going back to normal. 

Cuando Pase El Temblor