Stupid is as Stupid does

I just finished co-ordinating a neuro anatomy workshop. I've never done anything like that before, it was stressful, but I learnt quite a bit. I've learned some organisational skills, I've learned some neuro anatomy but mostly it reinforced my long held belief that people are stupid. Even people with ridiculously high IQs are stupid.
My first encounter with stupidity was at the supermarket. I needed to buy stuff for morning tea for the workshop and some spare stationary bits and pieces; I also needed to buy something for dinner for my family. I wanted to pay by credit card. I put the work stuff through the checkout then asked the chick if I could get a subtotal, a gap on the receipt then go on with my personal purchases. I needed to keep the work stuff separate so I could get reimbursed, but didn't want to have to go through 2 credit card transactions. She looked at me, blinked, and then said "Oh, I don't know, I'll have to ask". I was gobsmacked. Back in the olden days when I was a checkout chick there was a button on the register that said "subtotal", apparently this is not the case anymore. She called the manager over, he muttered something, asked if it was really necessary, then offered to hand write the subtotal on (the register gives a running total, but doesn't print it on the receipt), then looked pained and pleaded me to just put them through separately. I agreed but I was annoyed. You mean to tell me this state-of-the-art cash register can scan an item, tell me not just how much it costs but exactly what it is and put up a picture of it, then send the information back to a central data base for statistical analysis, but it can't do a subtotal? Stupid.

For the workshop I tried to cover every contingency: I had spare pencils, paper, the pre reading material, pencil sharpeners and erasers. What I didn't have was a way to communicate effectively with the attending scientists. I sent out 5 emails within a week reminding people what they needed to bring with them, including their lunch as the lunch break was short and they wouldn't have time to go to the cafe. I asked that they be early as we needed to start at 9am sharp. I gave explicit instructions as to how to find the seminar room (go up the stairs in the foyer – the ONLY stairs – to the TOP of the stairs, to the seminar room NOT the lecture theatre – which was only half way up the stairs). I put up signs with arrows.

By 9am there was one person there. At 9:05am I found a girl in the foyer unable to work out where to go. By 9:10am several people wandered in. I ran out to get some more paper and found several more people sitting in the common room having a meal. At 9:15am the professor got a phone call from some people sitting in the lecture theatre wondering where everybody was. At lunchtime several of them wandered around like zombies looking for the cafe. I despair. These are intelligent people, academics, much smarter than me, but apparently unable to read an email and follow simple instructions, unable to tell the time or work out the difference between the top of the stairs or half way up. People are stupid.

It was a fascinating workshop, frustrating at first, but when I got into it was I hooked. I could have gone on for longer - I was disappointed when it ended. The best parts were when the professor went off on a bit of a tangent and started talking about neural biochemistry. I was reminded that the reason I had studied biochemistry and pharmacology in third year uni was because neural biochem was the field I wanted to get into. I did Honours in biochem then tried to get work in the field; I ended up at CSIRO working in cell biology. My career has diverged from there, taking me into protein chemistry and then antibody engineering. Now I have come back to neurology - sort of – if it's possible to come back to something you never had.

I have often wondered where my current job will lead me. I'm certainly improving my molecular biology skills, and my histology. I wonder if it will ultimately take me to where I wanted to go when I first started out. I don't know if that's possible. I scored the lowest on the quiz at the end of the seminar. Apparently I'm a bit stupid. Read more!

Ice and Pronouns

The course was starting at 9am. The child and I managed to burst out of the front door at 8:30am; I thought I was doing well. I strapped the child into her car seat and started my car to give the engine time to warm up. I then commenced scraping the ice off all the windows. Once I had done that I was faced with the task of moving the husband's car, which he had kindly parked behind mine. His car was also totally iced up and does not start well in cold weather. I revved and stalled and revved and stalled the car down the driveway, navigating by leaning out of the door so I could see, and finally managed to get it into the street. Meanwhile the child had got out of her seat and was crying because my car "was bumping"- it had choked and stalled. I started the car again and we set off, stopped to clear the windscreen and drove away again. It was 8:50am. After ditching the child at school I hammered the poor, old car to Uni and attempted to find the building and car park I needed amongst the campus labyrinth. I arrived at reception at 9:05am, pretty good going I thought. I then had to wait 5 minutes for the receptionist to get off the phone so I could find out which room I was supposed to be in. She directed me along a path, around a corner, up some stairs and to the tutorial room. The door was locked. I walked to the other door, which was also locked, but was able to get the attention of the people in the room. I was let in and I apologised for being late. Of course, there were no notebooks or pens left so the tutor had to faff around organising something for me. Finally I sat down to begin learning. My phone rang. I jumped up, apologised and left the room. After explaining to my co-worker that I wasn't in the lab that day and they would have to deal with the issue on their own I switched my phone to silent and returned to my seat. Then I started sneezing. I sat there, sneezing, thinking "these people all hate me". My suspicions were confirmed during the day as my attempts to make jokes during the class went ignored. I considered dismantling my pen and firing spit balls at the tutor but decided against it.
So two days later I am now well informed on the intricacies of the correct grammar of the English language. I now know when to hyphenate compounded adjectives and what a split infinitive is. I know that it's ok to end a sentence with a preposition and how to use a semicolon. I can identify an attributive adjective and a past participle. It's all very interesting. No, really! And best of all, I got a certificate.
During the course I pondered on how amazing it is that most of us know absolutely nothing about correct grammar, yet we manage to speak and write clearly anyway. I guess it's like a car – you don't have to know how the internal combustion engine works in order to drive one around. I don't think my new found knowledge will improve the quality of my blog (sorry) but it may make me ever so slightly more pompous, which I am quite pleased about. It is one of my goals in life to become completely arrogant and pompous. I also aspire to become (even more) eccentric, have long, unkempt hair, cackle loudly at inappropriate moments and be able to frighten small children with just a look. The fact that I can work towards at least one of these goals by attending a course paid for by my employer and attended during working hours is pure gold.
In other news, I have applied some of my laboratory knowledge to solving what has become a daily problem: removing ice from the car's windscreen. Scraping at it potentially scratches your windscreen and leaves icy residue. Pouring hot water on a frozen sheet of glass is sheer stupidity. The solution? A spray bottle full of metho: metho melts the ice and stops it refreezing. Sure you go to work smelling like a wino, but at least you can see clearly on your way there.
So my life is improving. I can construct a passive clause containing a modifying adverb and I can clear the ice off my windscreen. Wooo Hoo! Read more!

Ding Dong Dell

I'm feeling very frustrated and low at the moment. A combination, I think, of lifestyle and my job. Don't misunderstand, I enjoy my job most of the time. The Uni is a great place to work, there are lots of good coffee shops, I can go to the gym at lunch time and most importantly the people I work with are fantastic. My struggle is that I have worked in labs for over 14 years, I am not junior staff. As far as the Biacore goes I was an expert - my name is recognised at international conferences. Same story with cell culture, I have the magic touch with mammalian cells – a red thumb so to speak. But in this lab I am out of my field, I don't know or understand a lot of what goes on. I am learning and I am getting better, but it's slow and frustrating. Not to mention how badly battered my ego is when an honours student can make an experiment work and I can't.
I have also decided to give up dieting. I have been on a diet for most of my adult life. A chronic yo-yo dieter: diet – lose weight, stop dieting – put it all (and then some) back on again. It's a common story. I turn 40 next year and my metabolism is shot to hell and I have no-one to blame but myself. So my new goal is to just eat well, get plenty of exercise and hope my poor addled body can sort out where it is supposed to be. But part of me feels like I have failed. This has been a life long struggle with the expectation that ONE DAY (soon) I will be thinner. It has been a constant expectation that I have put on myself and now I am trying to take it away. I will no longer diet, I will not count calories or use diet shakes to replace meals or take weight loss pills or eat nothing but salad for months on end. Stop the insanity: live my life. I should feel liberated, but I feel sad. It's like giving in. No doubt I will put on more weight at first when I go through the glee of eating "forbidden" foods, but hopefully with perseverance at the gym I will get fitter and find some balance.
I bought a new computer. It was recommended to me to buy from an online company, as it would be the best deal. And it was a good price. Ordering wasn't that easy: I had to call India a couple of times because I didn't want a monitor (we just bought a new one last year) or a printer. I also paid an extra $50 for after hours delivery and so they could take away the old computer. I organised finance so we could lease the computer and return it and upgrade in a few years – it seemed sensible. So I faxed in the paperwork, they lost it. I sent it again. It all seemed good. About a week later the courier company called to say they would be delivering the computer between 5 and 8pm on Monday, which was fine. The next day I got an email from India telling me that after hours delivery wasn't available where I live so they would refund my $50. This is where I fucked up – I said "OK". I should have been honest but I was sick of their incompetence by then and decided to get the money back.
So Monday morning at about 10 past 7 in the morning (all still asleep) there is a knocking at the door – the computer has arrived. I asked if he was going to take the old one for recycling and he said "no, it's not on my paper work". Mysteriously there were two boxes. That day I got a phone call asking if I had completed the paperwork for the finance yet. That night I unpacked one of the boxes: tower, keyboard, mouse as ordered. The second box contained a printer. Well, I thought, better to get something extra than have something missing. So I set it up and began the process of installing software and configuring the system. I had ordered dual optical drives to facilitate burning. Once I had everything ready I popped a CD into the drive, the computer said "please insert a disk into the drive". I explained to it that there was one there already, I argued, I tried different disk types, I tried the other drive. Eventually I got the second drive to see a disk. I mucked around a bit more, it seemed OK. The next day it was the same story – it could not see the disks. So on the phone to India. Now all of the advertising and sales pitch for this company refers to their help line as being a real bonus. OK, where is the phone number for said help line? It took me about 20 minuted of searching to find it, then another 20 minutes on hold. At this point the 5 year old lost the plot and I had to hang up.
The next day I tried again and after 45 minutes on hold I got through to someone who then transferred me and put me on hold. Another 15 minutes later I finally got to speak to a girl about the problem. She did a remote access to the computer, deleted some filters in the set up and it seemed to work.
Two days later the drives went blind again. Another call, another hour on hold, another distraught and screaming 5 year old that I just ignored so I could speak to the Indian man. Half an hour later of mucking around he informs me that the problem is that the new drives are very sensitive and won't read inferior disks. "But the disk in there is a brand new TDK CD-ROM", "It must be poor quality" was the reply. So I have a new stack of blank CDs that I can't use? I explained that my 10 year old computer never had this problem and how can an upgraded system be less reliable than an old one? He was very nice about it and suggested that I wait a month or so until new drivers are released and see if that helps. I was furious. The small child was, by this stage, collapsed on the floor in the kitchen sobbing and was probably permanently psychologically scarred. My bad karma for taking the $50 back.
I have finally worked out that Windows Vista is fucking up the software, that iTunes doesn't run properly in Vista and that may be all the problem is. So I decided to delete Vista and reinstall XP. I searched the net for "how to" pages, found plenty (apparently Vista sucks and a lot of people are desperate to get rid of it) and tried to fix things. I couldn't. I couldn't work out how to make a boot disk with a CD. I was defeated. Again I was foiled by my own limitations; I just don't have enough computer savvy. Apparently the new version of iTunes will be Vista compatible, so I'll wait until then and see if it fixes things.
So my week has been a mish mash of failures, disappointments, frustrations and non-achievement. I'm getting my hair done tomorrow, so at least I'll look good in my despair. Read more!

Microtomes and Madness

Well, I'm into my second week of my new life as a biologist. So far I have dissected a couple of pigeon eyes, embedded them in paraffin and attempted to section them on a microtome. The first two parts of the process I think I have under control, but the microtome is doing my head in. Who would have thought handling a 10μm thin slice of wax could be so difficult? Just looking at the damn thing makes it either curl up and collapse or crumble into a thousand pieces. I guess I shouldn't beat myself up too much, I am new to this gig, but I get so frustrated with myself when I am faced with my own ineptitude. I expect to be good at something instantly and when I'm not I go through the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief:
Denial (there must be something wrong with the machine),
Anger (you idiot! Get it right!),
Bargaining (OK, if you get this right you can have cake for afternoon tea)
Depression (I am so useless, I can't do anything!)
Acceptance (I'm not infallible, I need help)
Eventually I got one of my supervisors to have a go and she couldn't get it to work either, it was a bad prep – so not my fault.
Otherwise I have been pre-occupied with the Uni's Body Donation Program, i.e. compiling paperwork and forms for people who wish to leave their bodies to science. A weird concept, ultimately valuable, but weird. I wonder if I'm the right person for the job. I certainly wouldn't donate my body, or that of my child, for a bunch of med students to chop up; but then I wouldn't hesitate to donate organs. I understand the importance of such donations – med students and surgical trainees need to learn – but it just doesn't sit right with me. I can't understand or explain it - it is illogical. A dead body is just a hunk of flesh isn't it? But if my beautiful little girl died there is no way on Earth I would allow a bunch of spotty, over privileged, pretentious twerps to slice her up. This is one of those instances where my ethics and my ideals are totally over-ridden by my heart. Perhaps even in death the parental protective instinct is just too strong.
But, apart from ethical dilemmas, work itself goes well. I am happy.

This morning I had to drive the girl to school; the husband (who usually takes her) had an early meeting. I didn't arrive on campus until 9:10am – all of the parking near my building was taken. I drove from car park to car park for over 20 minutes before I found a spot. The car park I found was staff parking, but it also had a large sign saying "changed parking conditions". I pondered on the meaning of this cryptic sign. Was the "changed conditions" the mud that has resulted from that day's downpour? Or was it something less obvious? I figured if I got a parking ticket I could contest it on the grounds of their vagueness. I parked, stepped out of the car into the rain and trudged off in what I thought was the direction of my building. I walked for about 15 minutes before I ended up back at the same car park. At the moment I realised where I was I also realised, or perhaps allowed myself to admit, that Blandberra IS in the Twilight Zone. You try to go in a straight line, but end up going in circles. Nothing makes sense. At 9:50am I made it into my lab, soaking wet, frustrated and confused as to why my umbrella was no longer in my car and convinced that the city I live in does not conform to the laws of physics. A Dark City indeed.
The husband and I experienced similar dis-orientation whilst in Italy last year on our honeymoon. After a few days in fabulous Venice we became convinced that during the night all of the buildings shuffled themselves around. No matter how carefully we plotted our course, what landmarks we noted (turn left at the beggar with the funny hat) we were never able to retrace our steps to find that cute shop/bar/pizza place we had spotted the previous day. That, of course, is the only time ANYONE will ever compare the mysterious and stunningly beautiful city of Venice to the life-sucking, vacuous city of Blandberra.
So I sit here, glass of wine at my side, typing my little self-indulgent blog, while the husband cleans the kitchen, and I think that being a working mother isn't that bad when you have the support of your husband and your job doesn't suck.
I may have, at the risk of typing too soon, the best of both worlds. Read more!