A Life with Cytokines, Accompanied by Friends and Music

"I appeared as a dewdrop, and disappearing as it is. All of my beloved Naniwa (Osaka) is just a dream of dreams." This quote is the funeral ode of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, who is regarded as a "Great Unifier of Japan" for his role before the Tokugawa Shogunate. Even though he was born into an extremely poor farming family, Toyotomi rose to the top nonhereditary position in the emperorship, called the kanpaku, or chief advisor to the emperor, at the end of the sixteenth century. I personally do not like the man because of the bloody dictatorships he represents, but this ode touches my heart; he must have felt empty at the end of his life. This ode also reminds me of "The Myth of Sisyphus," written by Albert Camus, in which Sisyphus must repeatedly roll a big stone to the top of a mountain as a punishment from the gods. Camus writes, "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart." That said, I will write about my life as a continuously struggling molecular biologist and immunologist.