Rambles from afar

Wasn't this sort of thing supposed to finish when I submitted a thesis?

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 05:30:21 GMT

It's half past midnight on a Monday evening, and I'm still at work. Again. This makes the fourth night in the last week that I've been here after midnight. Including the weekend. In the lab on both Friday and Saturday night - yep, I'm living it large in my twenties.

Is it incredibly pathetic to say that I'm too old for this shit? Or does it just enhance the crazy-old-cat-lady-in-training vibe I seem to be giving out?

It ain't Kansas anymore

Sat, 18 Mar 2006 06:23:20 GMT

Oh my. I just saw my first bit of Commonwealth Games footage courtesy of the CBC. It opens with a bad shot of the skyline from behind the tennis centre (seriously! You couldn't find a better location?), and the sports anchor saying "Welcome to Mel-BORN Australia". 30 seconds into the coverage and I'm already hysterical. Where are Dan and Casey when you need them? I want to see this guy do cricket commentary...

Lesson of the day

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 05:33:34 GMT

What's the only thing worse than spending dozens of hours painstakingly rewriting a review article to incorporate the suggestions of three (opposing) referee reports? Discovering the day before the revision is due that you're around 2,500 words over the limit for the journal, instead of the ~500-odd that you thought you were over.

Fuck. Lesson for the day - when the senior author says "Oh no, that's excluding references, figures and tables", don't just take their word for it. Check the journal's website. Preferably more than 24 hours before the resubmission is due.

I obviously missed the day that lesson was taught in PhD-school.

Tam? Tam who?

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 04:48:22 GMT

Hello all.

Yes, I'm still alive. I haven't been eaten alive by a polar bear, beaten to death with a beaver tail, or turned into an ice sculpture. I am, however, one of the crappiest correspondents ever. Ahem.

So, where have I been for the last few months? Well...

As some of you know, my first 6 months in Canada were pretty crappy. In fact, large chunks of that were spent deep in soul-sucking misery. A lot of that was due to work, although the fact that I wasn't a particularly happy camper before leaving Melbourne didn't help.

For the first few months I was here, I accomplished nothing. I had no equipment, no cells, no resources. One of those situations where everything that could go wrong, did. So instead of having the 2-3 month delay before starting to acquire data that I'd anticipated, it was more like 8 months. Needless to say, having left my home, my family, friends, and everything that I love to move to the other side of the world for a supposedly fantastic job, spending half a year beating your head against a brick wall kind of sucks.

At some point in my period of woe, I had an epiphany (those of you who know what's coming, stop laughing - up_the_creek and lisa_donna, I'm looking at you!). I realised that an awful lot of my self-esteem is rooted in my accomplishments, particularly professional. Not accomplishing anything of note = an unhappy Tam.

(Yes, it really did take me until now to figure that out. Even though it was blatantly obviously. Shut up, I'm a little slow sometimes).

Thankfully, things have started to improve over the last few months. Work has (slowly) becoming productive, and I'm now settled in - to the point where I think of Ottawa as home. At least for the moment. I'm singing in a few choirs, and thoroughly enjoying that. Life potters on...

I was about to say that things are rather boring and mundane. And then I started to think about that... in the last 8 months since leaving Melbourne I've:

* been to Montreal, Toronto and Stratford, and spent a traditional Canadian thanksgiving at a cottage in Ontario (complete with Turkey, pumpkin pie and canoeing);
* driven around Ontario and Quebec with one of my best mates - without getting killed on the wrong side of the road!
* wandered around Quebec City on midnight ghost tour;
* been saturated by the spray at the bottom of Niagara Falls;
* cycled between the wineries at Niagara-on-the-Lake for tastings of ice wine;
* spent a week in Vermont during Fall for work (and got hit on by both a poet from NYC and a PhD Southerner who voted for Bush. Ahem);
* skated on the Rideau Canal in -30oC temperatures;
* visited London and Warsaw in winter;
* spent Christmas in Krakow, New Year's in Cambridge, and my birthday in New York City.

I guess that's not quite so boring after all, eh?

(Oh, and for those of you who have heard the rumours, yes, there is a boy on the scene. He's the one who took me to New York for my birthday... )

Clueless

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 17:14:37 GMT

I'm sitting in at work on a Sunday morning, filling in time during incubations by surfing the internet, reading various blogs of friends and friends-of-friends, replying to old emails, etc. And I just figured something out...

You know, for an intelligent person I can be pretty fucking stupid sometimes.

I'll write a proper update sometime soon. Frankly, my life in Canada is a little too boring and miserable to even bother blogging about.

Sun, 16 Oct 2005 05:36:16 GMT

Whoever said "absence makes the heart grow fonder" was talking a complete pile of crap.

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 05:15:51 GMT

My latest TV obsession is House MD - I bought the first season DVD recently, and watched it in 3 days. It's possible that I want to be House when I grow up... (ignoring the whole medical degree thing. Shhh). I just have one question - why the hell are fellows on what are obviously presitgious fellowships doing labwork? Seriously people!

Christmas holidays

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 05:29:10 GMT

If you could go anywhere in Europe or North/South America for Christmas, where would you go? Why?

Why am I asking? Because I'm not spending Christmas here alone, dammit!

Football, Canadian-style

Mon, 05 Sep 2005 22:10:57 GMT

It's Labour Day here today, and I've spent part of the afternoon watching football - apparently, that's what you do on Labour Day. Now, Canadian football is supposedly different (and far superior) to American football. Uh, yeah. I can't see any difference, so I'll trust my workmates on that one.

So far, the major elements seem to be: twice as many people on the sidelines than on the field (preferably girls who are competing with their gold bikinis in the shine stakes, failing that gum-chewing overweight men with helmet-sized headsets), a crowd that screams at random intervals, an announcer with irritating puns and weird-arse Texas meets Canada accent ("y'all" and "eh" do not belong in the same sentence, I'm sorry), and a constant soundtrack of loud music on repeat - with a heavy emphasis on "We Will Rock You" and "I Will Survive". WTF?

As for the game... Well, in the hour I've been watching they've managed about 18 minutes of play. From what I can tell, play seems to consist of the players lining up opposite one another, then running around crashing into each other for (at most) 3 seconds before the whistle blows and the crowd goes wild. Everyone then picks themselves up, adjusting helmets and scratching their balls as they go off into little huddles for the next quarter of an hour. Occasionally someone will jog on or off the field at a leisurely pace. Eventually they'll decide it's time to elevate their heart rate briefly, and chase each other around for a few more seconds. That's usually about the time that someone decides that an extended period of horizontal-ness is required, so the trainers converge on them whilst the rest of the team stands around comparing notes about how many cheerleaders they've nailed in the 4 million hours since this game actually started.

No wonder people stock up on beers when watching football over here. I had to fix myself a gin to help stop my brain leaking out of my ears...

Semester has started

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 18:20:10 GMT

I think the med students must be back from summer holidays.

People in togas and ketchup-stained scrubs keep walking past my office.

I think I'm getting used to this place

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 04:02:30 GMT

You know you're getting used to living in Ottawa when...

* You start to look to the left first when crossing the road, dramatically increasing your chances of surviving the next two years.
* You're getting acclimatized to the murky brown pond scum that passes for coffee here.
* The fact that you have to buy all your booze from a government-owned monopoly doesn't seem weird anymore.
* You realise that indicators on cars sold here are obviously an optional extra.
* You understand that a comment about the weather simply has to be worked into every single conversation. No exceptions.
* You remember to refer to shopping centres as malls. And still hate them no matter what they're called.
* Your inner 12 year old stops snickering every time you see someone with "Roots" on their sweater.
* You're drunk at 2am, and start craving poutines instead of a souvlaki.

Trashy movies ahoy

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 04:31:26 GMT

Wow. Blade Trinity is an incredibly crappy movie. And I am a connoisseur of crappy B-grade action movies.

Although when the opening scene features a moustache-twirling baddie who is Lispin' Lisa from Josie and the Pussycats with a new (and equally bad) set of false teeth, there's really no coming back.

(Okay, I had a long day at work and needed comfort food and trashy television. Shoot me.)

What, an update? Outrageous!

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 02:37:59 GMT

Yeah, I've been kind of slack lately, I know. Anyway...

I've been in Canada for just over 2 months now, and things are puttering along okay. I've got an apartment in downtown Ottawa, a little one bedroom place on the first floor of a old walk-up. I've sublet the place for 12 months, so the old tenant has left a some of her stuff here - most importantly, an old couch on the balcony. The decor is kind of hilarious - the girl I've sublet it from has it decorated in a "oh, I'm so bohemian" kind of way, so there are various designs and quotes painted on the walls. Every morning when I leave for work I'm farewelled with the words "peace, serenity, tranquillity" on the inside of the front door, that sort of thing. Still, I love having my own place here. And I even have furniture - ah, Ikea, friend of people moving countries.

Work is... well, kind of meh. There are good bits and bad. The bad being that I'm still yet to start doing any experiments here yet, I'm still spending my days trawling through the literature and it's driving me nuts. I'm hoping to start lab work next week - although since I've been saying that for over a month now, I'm not exactly hopeful. My workmates are a good bunch of people, who haven't been there much longer than I have. The boss and 3 others moved from Montreal to Ottawa just over a month before I arrived, and myself and 3 others have started since then. It's very multi-cultural group - we've got people from Brazil, South Africa, Spain, China, Czech Republic and Australia (obviously!). With the exception of the boss, I'm the only native English speaker, which makes for some amusing moments. I'm sharing an office with two other women, both postdocs - one from Brazil and one from Spain. And at this rate they're going to learn more Australian slang than Canadian! Makes for some interesting combinations of cursing when things aren't working in the lab too...

Sadly, I don't have that much exciting to report - I'm really still in the settling-in phase. Have an audition for a choir on Friday, which could be interesting. I'm really not the auditioning type... Gulp!

I'll update again soon, with various ramblings about Ottawa and other Canadian oddities. No, really I will...

(Damn. I was about to go to bed, but I just watched the last episode of season 1 West Wing. Must resist the urge to watch the conclusion in season 2...)

3 days and counting

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 12:34:27 GMT

I finally lodged my corrected thesis at the department today. Fingers crossed that the chair of examiners okays it - I'm running out of time to do any more changes before I leave. Which means that I'm down to the really important stuff - like choosing what colour to get my thesis bound in.

Current number of packed boxes = 0. I can pack up 6 years of accumulated crap in 3 days, can't I?

Welcome

Mon, 06 Jun 2005 13:24:04 GMT

Yes, I've finally submitted to temptation and started a live journal.

Hey, I'm moving to another country. How else do you expect me to keep in touch with everyone?