a personal

[Peter Romanienko]

        I don't really post much but I'm a voracious voyeur. There's
nothing better than being a week away from my computer and getting about
250 messages from all you folks. I'm 28 and suffering through what I hope
is my last year of graduate school. I hope to get my PhD in molecular
biology from cornell, not the one in Ithaca, the one in NYC, and make the
world a better place through genetic engineering. I grew up, gasp, in what
is lovingly referred to as the "armpit of america" central N.J. The stench
off the turnpike is horrendous.
        I always liked to read, as a teen the authors were Tolkein, Frank
Herbert, and at times Stephen King.During high school (Catholic, but now
avowed atheist) and college I read the requisite titles, but as a Biology
major there weren't many elective classes so I got some Homer, Faukner,
Dostoyevsky etc. I got to Grad School and started reading for pleasure, of
all things, Kerouac, D.H. Lawrence, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy , Jaroslav Hasek
(The Good Soldier Svejk is a trip through the Zone in its own right, the
Zone of WWI that is) Celine (Journey to end of night is much better than
DOC), Gaddis (rivals even Pynchon, almost) , Bulgakov, and of course
Pynchon. The dryness of biospeak and blandness of scientific papers cranked
out by assembly-line laboratories would drive anyone to read.
        When I'm not reading I'm trying to create a recombination system in
the germline of the mouse to study gene rearrangements and repair. Within a
year I expect to be elsewhere (with my soon to be wife) doing postdoctoral
work in someplace other than Manhattan. Maybe SanFran, don't know. I'm
awaiting the end of my graduate career, my marriage, and oh yes, pynchon's
next book, it's a good time to be alive.

Peter Romanienko
Cornell/Sloan Kettering Institute, N.Y.,N.Y.
p-romanienko at ski.mskcc.org