O Canada; La Première Partie

CATGAATAT! 

(HEY in DNA speak)

I just came back from the EVOLUTION conference, which was held in Ottawa this year. For anyone lacking basic geography knowledge, Ottawa is the capital of Canada. I didn't know this actually. For some reason, Canada’s provinces and cities seemed more make believe to me, but rest assured Ottawa is a real and it’s happening. 

I had an absolute blast while abroad (does Canada even count?). My academic interests and career goals were expanded, fortified, and confirmed. I was confronted with new experiences, and in the process gained more nuanced perspectives on race, migration, and how identity mutates in different multicultural, multiracial societies.

La Première Partie of ‘Oh Canada’ will focus on the conference and chronicle my time exploring Ottawa. In La Deuxième Partie, I will discuss my feelings on race, culture, and ethnicity, and how my experience in Canada has illuminated the interplay of these factors in a multiethnic society. I'm a proud black, Nigerian-American male, also a Bronxite that thinks a lot about race, culture, and ethnicity, partly because I find the subject fascinating, but more so because my skin color has forced me to in America. 

Okay, enough preamble. Onwards and upwards to Ottawa eh!

View of my plane 

Flight to Ottawa: 8:30AM, 11 people on the plane. Say what? Say I was flying in style that day. No crying babies, no mildly annoying person sitting next to me. Best of all, I didn't have to engage in trite small talk and flash fake smiles and even faker laughs. I felt completely alone aka I was in flight heaven. 

1 hour later, I land at the Ottawa International Airport. Place was desolate my friends. I feel like more people take Yale’s Blue Line than use this airport. Once I got to the city center, I decided to explore. Ottawa is gorgeous. It’s clean, people are friendly and happy, the city is ultra safe. In fact, Ottawa felt like a better planned, more diverse, less stately Washington DC. 

According to Wikipedia, Ottawa is ranked 2^nd for city with the highest quality of living in the Americas and is the 3^rd cleanest city in the world. An interesting quirk about Ottawa is the obvious signs of allegiance to the Queen of England aka my BFF Liz and strong presence of French culture and language. That’s colonialism for ya. Ottawa is bilingual and for the first time in my life, I heard French being spoken in a context that wasn’t a classroom. I guess the language is still relevant. 

View of Parliament hill from a bridge that leads to Quebec

On my final night, I went to a ‘Canada Day’ light show, which was in 1 word, Underwhelming. Seriously, for days people at the conference RAVED about this light show and how amazing it was. At first I was skeptical, but I was eventually convinced to check it out. 

Here is a short clip of the show: 

I mean, the lights were cool, I loved the grand music and found the heavily abridged version of Canadian history interesting. The word that sums up how I felt about the show is 

True.
(My default word for when I literally have nothing to say because of a lack of interest in a topic or conversation)


There was a mismatch between my expectations and standards. Kind of like a really bad hookup with a really hot person. If only nature readily aligned the best of both worlds, no one would have to settle. 

For the final event of the conference, we went to the Museum of Civilization for a final banquet, where we were showered with FWF ie fancy white food.

For those of you unfamiliar with FWF, its food served at dinners where the main course is 1/10^th of our suggested daily caloric intake, the meat is often tasteless, and in general the food is dully colored. FWF is often accompanied with gourmet leaves, shrubs, and herbs, food more appropriate for rabbits than Homo sapiens. At this banquet, what they were serving could barely feed a nest of newly hatched birds. 

My wedding will have a buffet of food with an equally robust buffet of sauces (BBQ all day!) complimented with cakes, cookies, pies, and beverages from all around the world. If people do not leave my wedding blackout and in a food coma, I have failed. For my health conscious friends, I’ll send out a suggested workout plan with my invitations so people can offset their projected calorie intake. Sorry I'm not sorry. 

Me at the Museum of Civilization!

This is the view from the back of the Museum of Civilization. The museum was beautiful and showcased different civilizations from around the world. I was loving it.

Ottawa is my type of city. It's diverse, happening, actually had a busy downtown area that was alive at night with real people, there was culture, adequate public transportation, and places to shop (very important). Being the NYC snob that I am, there are few cities that have gotten my stamp of approval. So far they include San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia (barely), and now Ottawa.

Onwards to the conference.

EVOLUTION is huge (~2500 people) and filled with scientists and students from all over the world! And by that I mean Canada, America, and Europe. The dress code was super casual being a conference of ecologists and evolutionary biologists. Of course, the Europeans were more dressed up and in general way more put together than the Americans and Canadians. I feel like great style is a pre-requiste to being European. Guess I’ll fit right in in the UK! :) Loljk  

At the conference, I focused on the ecology and evolution of disease and adaptation talks. I love evolution. And at this conference I could feel my blood rushing at presentations where evolution, medicine, and infectious disease were intertwined in a ménage à trois. If I am ever to head an academic department, I will force students to study evolutionary biology because Theodosius Dobzhansky was right when he famously said 

Nothing in biology makes sense except for in the light of evolution

I plan to build my academic home at the intersection of evolutionary biology, microbiology, and infectious disease. I am fascinated by evolution and love its human applications. I also can't forget my homies ie viruses. I have a not so secret adoration for them. Viruses f*ck sh*t up, but do so elegantly and peacefully. They get a bad rap, but all they want to do is replicate. Can they just live their quasi-lives? 

K great Chidi, you're passionate, but does this passion translate to a job? Yes quite a few infact.  

Chidi Akusobi, MD. PhD. Section Chief, Infectious Disease 
Chidi Akusobi, MD. PhD. Director, Centers for Disease Control OR 
Chidi Akusobi, MD. PhD. Lead Back Up Dancer, Lady Gaga World Tour 2025
(#butactually, it's rough out there)

Just the possibilities alone rev me up.

I listed the three events from the conference that resonated the most with me.

I) #arseniclife This da bomb scientist, Rosie Rosefield, was the biggest critic of NASA’s study describing a new form of life that used arsenic instead of phosphorus. Her message was one should be fearless in how they conduct science. She was spectacular and showed me that personal strength is needed to test and defend one's ideas.

Side note: She dyes her hair different colors. Her hair was blue at the time MEANING people can still take me seriously with lightly brown dyed hair. #getmetothesalon 

II) Evolution Rap: Baba Brinkman is this Canadian rapper who raps about evolutionary biology.  Watch this video of his performance “I’m A African” where he raps about the evolutionary origins of Homo sapiens. He managed to get a room filled of white middle class people to yell ‘I’m A African’

Take note, this may very well be the only video of its kind unless some group of South Africans are yelling this...but are they really African though? Now that's a debate.

In the end, Baba Brinkman distilled evolution down to three principles. 

Performance. Feedback. Repeat. (Innovate)

I believe these are the three basic tenants of success. Not just reproductive success, but life success. You perform, you receive and internalize feedback, and you repeat. With every iteration, you get better until one day you'll look around and wonder why nobody's around. That's because you're on top baby! You're an expert. I put innovate in parenthesis because that is what ensures you maintain a competitive advantage over the other organisms ie: people who are also P-F-Ring.

III) Talks: Two talks stood out to me the most. Interestingly, the message and not the science was what resonated. 

Talk by Dr. Carol Eunmi Lee: Dr. Lee is an evolutionary physiologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Before her talk, she spent 20 minutes talking about her experience as a Korean American woman in science. Her main message was that because of her gender and race, people had preconceived notions about her personality, aptitude, and what she was and not good at. She said her identity was ‘prepackaged’ and that she had to consciously fight to make her own narrative. She urged us not to let anyone tell our story that once we let other people dictate how we present ourselves and how we choose to act, we have failed as individuals. 

I wrote that line down.

He's black, I promise! 

Talk by Dr. Scott Edwards: He is an African American ornithologist, professor at Harvard University, and President of the American Society for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He gave the last talk of the conference, which in my opinion was one of the best. The scientists saw him as Scott Miller, talented ornithologist and phylogeneticist.

What I saw was on a deeper more sociological level. There standing on the stage was a black scientist who was well known and well respected amongst his peers. His very existence was proving to any scientist at the conference who had their doubts, youth of color, and America at large that there is no limit and never was a limit to what people of color can achieve. I look at Dr. Scott Edwards and I see a trailblazer and role model. His initiative to bring diversity to EVOLUTION is why I was at the conference, and I am grateful for the opportunity.  Dr. Scott Miller embodies what success in science could mean for me, and I can only hope that I accomplish half of what he's done.



In Dance Beat (Mirror) Empowerment, I expressed hesitation and doubts about the future. After this conference, I feel more ready for the beginning of the rest of my life. 

The key for we young people is to believe in ourselves unequivocally. We must endeavor to write our own stories and trust that the ending will be as beautiful and inspiring as the journey itself. Performance, Feedback, Repeat, Innovate.  It's worked for evolution, and it'll work for us.  We'll all be okay. 

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul

Invictus

Yours Truly, 

CATATTTGCATA 

PS: Don't I look like somebody that you used to know? 

Thank you Instagram for making me more hipster