Dear Chief & colleagues:
I ran my check-in procedures and met my lab boss today. As a new comer, I needed security exam before entering NIH, similar to that at the airport. NIH has a big campus, 27 institutes, and many many buildings and trees, similar to a big American university.
My lab is Neurobiology, Neuroregeneration & Retinal Repair Lab (NNRL) at the National Eye Institute. My boss is an Indian with a kind smile. He lead me to go through the lab and introduced me to everyone one by one. I'm amazed that this lab has 55 people, consisting of official NIH employees, post-doc, MD PHD, and students. They came from various countries, including China, Korea, Japan (a male Tokyo ophthalmologist), Thailand, India, Poland, Netherland, Russia, a female neurosurgeon, and so on. However, perhaps I'm the first of the lab from Taiwan. This lab is much bigger, compared to any NCKU lab, and can be divided into three or four branches or groups. Every bench is clean and is not crowded. Every worker, including I, has a seat and table in the lab, a desk computer, and a bench.
It seems that my first job is to do subretinal transplantation of gene-modified stem cells. Two researchers will discuss with me tomorrow.
I currently lives a temporary room at a house in Rockville City, neighboring to Bethesda City, which is the location of NIH. I need to walk 20 mins to the station, take the subway for 20 mins, and walk 20 mins to the lab. My wife and 2 younger children are now at my friend in Deleware State, 2 hours away from here. My first son is now at my brother in law in New Jersey State, 4 hours away. I'm finding a suitable house rental for my whole family and hope to settle down before semester. We saw a beautiful house (USD 620,000), but the rent is USD 2,400 per month (= NTD 75,000/month). Everything is expensive here: bread and other food are twice than in Taiwan, health & car insurances are 4 times higher. Only oil, coke and car may be cheaper.
It's a totally new life, new job, new thinking and new style. I can not totally understand English that people say, can not totally figure out the money card of subway, and do not know most of the lab work. I'll stay here for 100 weeks and hope to achieve some wonderful experiences and results before coming back.
I already opened an account in Skype, and created a Facebook with my Chinese name and probably will post my photos some day after. You can not imagine that the sunset here is 20:30 and the weather is as hot as in Tainan. But there are trees, wood, small animals and birds everywhere. I saw a racoon 浣熊 at night, a wild rabbit and many squirrels. I was told that deer and fox would appear at the back wood if I would decide that beautiful house.
See you soon.
Sincerely,
Yi-Sheng Chang
