In Portugal

So over the last couple of weeks I have been doing a lot of lab work and when I have finished with that I have been finding every possible means to avoid thinking about this conference. I haven't done any background reading and I don't know my talk by heart. I only know it well enough to get on a small roll and then stumble over everything. I couldn't sleep last night, I must have been worried, then today I had to get up at 5.30. On the bus ride I tried to go over my talk but I was so tired. On the plane I tried again but my head hurt so much. I was planning on having a quiet afternoon at the hotel and doing work, but it seemed like a better idea to be social and get to know some people. So here I am, it's 9.30 at night, I'm short on sleep and have to be out at about 8am tomorrow, so I probably need to get up at 6.30. I still don't know my talk, I am tired, my head hurts, the water in the taps tastes funny and the air-conditioning cannot be turned off. I also have to share a room with a random stranger, who I have not met yet so I definintely can't have an early sleep, because it would be weird to wake up beside a person that I don't know - did I mention that the two single beds are pushed up right against each other, and you can't move them because there are built in bedside cabinets next to them? What sort of hotel-planning is that - if you ask for two single beds why would they think that you would want them right next to each other? So I need to go over this talk a couple more times, then go to sleep. By lunchtime tomorrow it will all be over and I can relax. Of course, there will still be talks to listen to, a poster to stand beside and answer questions about, and  trying to mingle without offending anyone or bad-mouthing my supervisor, but it will still be far easier than preparing for my own talk. Then I will go out and take photos of the city so that there is more on here than my endless blathering.

No title ...

So this week has been pretty sucky. I am largely hating work at the moment - it is terribly full-on and I get the feeling that it's going to stay that way until I finish. I'm just not cut out for putting such long hours into a job that I don't like. I have so much lab work to do and I really don't like lab work, it just stresses me out and then because I am stressed out I fuck things up. I have to go to Portugal in just over a week and my talk is half ready, but there is this one piece of work that I was hoping to have finished for both my paper and my talk and now it is not finished because I'm not sure if I'm doing it right, and I don't know how to use the microscope properly, and maybe I don't even have the right microscope available. The technicians at the hospital are willing to help me which is great, but they aren't free until after the conference. So first of all I have to deal with my supervisor's condescension and patronisation over me not being able to have this simple piece of work finished on time, and then the questions that people might ask at the conference because I don't understand this stuff properly. I could give them an answer that is completely wrong, which would be terrible. But at the same time, what do I care anyway, it's not like I'm going to stay in this line of research for the rest of my career. Though it would be terribly vindictive to get it all wrong on purpose just to screw over my supervisor. Who is still behaving badly. I ran into her and her family today (unfortunately, what a way to ruin Saturday) and after the necessary 'hi-how-are-you's she actually said to me: 'off to the lab? off to the lab?' in a chirpy voice while nodding her head, as if it's OK for her to expect me to work constantly. It's one thing for a student to choose to work the weekend, but they can't actually tell us to do so, that's against some sort of university rules. I really wanted to tell her no, I'm actually doing groceries and relaxing because I do actually need to eat and live, but instead I was nice. And then I was so put out that I did no work all day. Instead I made ciabatta bread (which is awesome by the way, I shouldn't make it because I eat too much of it). I watched The Secret Garden too. Old kids movies are great. Sadly I will have to work tomorrow though. I really don't want to. I just can't hack working the weekends. I brought a lotto ticket today though, maybe I won and can run away to a tropical island.

In other news, there really is no news. Everything here is the same as always. I like that I now have a pet to talk to but this last week he has not come out at all. Turns out it was because he was shedding. So now I have a snake skin and I don't know what to do with it. Then I invited a friend to feed him and we watched the snake eat a mouse. He has not come out of his cage in ages and I am too nervous to pick him up out of it - the tank is his own space so I don't want to put my hands in there, I would rather wait for him to crawl out and then pick him up. Tomorrow is a feeding day so I will have something to break up the lab work. Some of the other PhD students have Master's students at the moment to do lab work for them - I don't have that but at the same time, first you have to teach them how to do all the work so it's probably more trouble than it's worth. Though with somebody else helping me out I might not lose my keys so often, because there would be someone else with me to notice where I put them down. Luckily there is always someone at work to let me into whatever doors I need. It would me much worse if I lost my house keys.

The weather here the last couple of weeks has been really atrocious - freezing cold winds and plenty of rain. It always seems to rain whenever I go outside and it stops when I go in. It is OK when there is rugby practice but as soon as a match begins it starts to really lash down. We won our last game despite the rain, but I think it would be a nice experience to play in good weather. We have team t-shirts now and sadly they are not purple - they were supposed to be but instead they are royal blue with a red stripe. My fluorescent pink socks really don't match so I should get some bright red ones instead. I would like them to have some blue on them to match the colour scheme, like blue polka dots or stars, but you don't seem to be able to get socks that match my imagination so I guess I will just have to make do. It's quite sad though, because I really do seem to like to make a spectacle of myself. You need a cheerful point to the game because a lot of them take it so serious and get sort of aggressive - they really just need to chill out and have some fun.

Anyway, that's all for now and I sadly have no photos for you this week because nothing exciting happens and if it does I don't often have my camera, but next week I'll be in Portugal so I'll surely see new things to take pictures of and have proper news instead of nothing news. Or maybe not. I don't even want to go, it will just be taking me away from work for a week, and I will have to be around my supervisor far more than I usually would, and speak to people that are working in the same area as me, at which point I will have to pretend that I am actually enthusiastic about my research and believe it is going somewhere. I mean, what if I were to actually tell people that I think it's a waste of time for a lab with no expertise like my lab (which is really just me) to be attempting such novel work and competing against real experienced scientists - imagine the repurcussions! Perhaps I would be fired. That would make life a lot easier though, if you are fired you don't even have to go to the trouble to make the decision to leave, you just are told to. I'm sure my family wouldn't mind me bludging off of them! However, that is unlikely to happen because my supervisor has already had one student leave so she really needs to get my through my PhD or she will end up looking pretty incompetent. Which she is in some senses, but they don't bother to teach people how to supervise or lecture or manage, they just expect scientists to be able to do so. Which is crazy, there are a lot of scientists out there who should not be allowed anywhere near a teaching and management position, but there is no such thing as a university position in which you are a researcher doing your own research without having to manage students and teach undergrads, which takes up so much time that you don't actually get to do any research at all. It really is not playing to people's strengths at all, especially seeing as loads of scientists are so socially inept that they should never be allowed anywhere near a position that involves being in charge of other people. However, I am sure I said goodnight a whole paragraph ago so I will stop my griping now and get some sleep so that I can manage to haul myself out of bed in the morning and go to work (despite it being a Sunday). Goodnight world - please let me win the lotto or meet a millionaire sometime soon ...

A slow week ...

I've been having lots of weird dreams this week. First there was this one earlier in the week that I can't remember at all, except that there was a spider in it, which caused me to wake up. I had to get up and turn the light on and check through all my blankets to make sure there were no spiders. Then the next night I had this crazy dream (actually, it was one of many and I've forgotten all the other weird stuff that happened, I only remember the scary bit). Ok, like a said, a crazy dream, in which Wilbert the snake was really agitated and moving around his tank a lot. Then he stretched his mouth wide open and I noticed that his mouth was an awful lot bigger than it used to be - like it was suddenly as large as my fist. Then I noticed that the rest of him was suddenly huge too (in fact, he didn't really look like Wilbert anymore at all), and the tank was partially open. So suddenly I was trying to close the tank and weigh down the lid so that this giant thrashing snake couldn't get out, when next thing you know the lid was pretty much on properly but the snake was half out of the tank. So I stepped away from him and he immediately came towards me, and for some reason picked up my scarf in his mouth along the way. So I wrapped it around his head so that he couldn't see and would stop moving, but that didn't work. Then he was somehow in my arms and I was trying to hold his head away from me but he managed to bite me on the hand, and his teeth were not all all like snake teeth but more like shark teeth, with lots of rows. Then I woke up and my hand was all tingly. I had to turn the light on for awhile again. I was worried that the run of bad dreams would continue but it seems to have stopped. Or at least I cannot remember them. Last night I also got up and turned the light on, at about 2 am, but I have no idea why, I think maybe I got up in my sleep and then woke up when the light came on. How weird is that? Clearly work is getting to me and I'm well on my way to a nervous breakdown. Hopefully when it comes I will also win the lotto and then I can just scarper off to some tropical island or buy a big boat and sail the oceans looking for whales. But for now I guess I should get back to work, that was all I had to say really, that and I'm really glad that it's Friday!

I have just realised that it is only three weeks until I go to Portugal for a conference. It is probably the only real conference that I will go to during my PhD and it's all about biological adhesion. All of the big names in this area of research will be there and I am supposed to be giving a talk about my research. In three weeks.

It's Monday today but it doesn't feel like it because I worked in the lab all weekend. It was awful. It was sort of necessary though, seeing as I did nothing for the entire long Easter weekend. There is still so much to do though. As well as making a presentation and writing a talk I have to keep doing research in the hope that I will have more results by then. And I will have to do a lot of reading to make sure that I can answer any questions that are asked. I also have to repeat an experiment in order to get my paper about all of my microscopy work published. That's not so bad though - I heard back from the journal really quickly and one of the reviewers thought that it was absolutely perfect and needed no changes! The other one had a few comments but the only real change is that I have to repeat something, this time using a control. Which he is very right about, I should have done that in the first place. And then I will probably get my paper accepted and will soon be a published author!

As well as work I now have my pet snake to look after. He has not eaten in nearly two weeks - he attacks his food but does not eat it. His old owner says that is normal, he is just a picky eater. So I will try again this week. I have been trying to let him out every day so that he will be even tamer. He is happy enough to slither around my arms but he really likes to explore, which is how he managed to get stuck inside my office chair over the weekend. I freaked out, I had no idea what to do! I turned it upside down (he was in the gap between the seat cushion and the plastic bit that covers all the up-down mechanisms) and I thought I would have to call someone to bring me a screwdriver to take it to pieces. Then I decided to try and scare him out first and started drumming on the plastic. He came out eventually. I picked him up and held him some more but next thing you know I saw him open his mouth and move sort of quickly. Perhaps he was just yawning, I don't know, but I didn't wait to find out - I freaked (again) and flung him back into his tank because I really did think that he was going to try bite me. Not that it would have done much, but still, I didn't want to get bitten. He is definitely getting tamer, because now when I pick him up he immediately begins to move around instead of staying still in my hands. Yesterday he lifted his head and came straight towards my neck and face and I could not see what he was doing. Perhaps he just wanted to sniff around a bit but I was taking no chances and put him straight back. He spends a lot of time in his cage just looking out of the glass at me. I'm not sure if he can see me, but it really seems as if he can see a little at least.

The weather was nice over the weekend so I went for a walk to take a picture of the swan on its nest (not much of a walk, it's pretty close, just not quite my usual way home from campus). There is always a nest somewhere close to campus, I think that it is the same swan, and she raises her babies on the canal that runs past my building. Sometimes we feed them our scraps at lunchtime but she always steals the food from the babies and tries to attack our feet. I think the babies might be called signets, but I'm not sure. I hear that the eggs are huge but she is always sitting on them when I go past.

Now the weather is absolutely freezing again and I have rugby practice tonight. We had our first game last week and we won! I'm not sure if we were very good or if they were just not so well practised, but I hope that we can keep winning. It's 4 pm so I only have to keep working for another hour and a half. I have some lab work to do but the other lab that I would have to be working in is freezing cold! So I will sit here at my computer and try to prepare for this conference. I hope that it is warm in Lisbon, that will at least make up for having to work so hard until then.

Meet Wilbert

Wilbert is my new pet. He's a snake. Not quite the same as a dog or a cat, but still, at least I have something to talk to at work now. And to watch when I'm procrastinating. He's an albino California King Snake and he's about 2 years old. His owner has left our department and poor old Wilbert needed a home. He's still very small (he will get much bigger and live for 10 years or so), which is good because that means his teeth are small. He is not venemous at all, in the wild he would catch food by biting it and wrapping himself around it until it died. In captivity, however, he has to settle for mice that are brought frozen and then thawed out and warmed up.

See, here is Wilbert with a mouse inside of him. After he has eaten he stays very still for a day or so, but then he will come out and move around his tank again. I have given him some big rocks and branches and a pipe to hide in so he seems pretty happy in his tank these days. He used to just hide in the woodchips all the time, which was quite boring. Now he crawls around.

So other than adopting a snake, I have been doing very little. I have been working, which makes me tired, and I have been playing sports, which makes me tired and hungry, so then I come home and make yummy food. And bake too much. Today there were cupcakes because it was a friend's birthday and I had too many. Now it is Easter so there is another excuse to bake and eat chocolate. Here in Galway there will be a food festival this weekend so I will have to check that out and maybe it will be interesting. I will need something to do on the weekend as the hiking club that I was going out with on a Sunday has finished for the semester. Last Sunday was the last hike and the weather was beautiful - I even got sunburnt. Luckily it faded quickly. We climbed a mountain called Maumtrasna, which was beside a couple of lakes. So lets end with some pictures and I will go do some work (or not).

Lots of Adventures

For the last week, I have had an old friend visiting me and have been trying to entertain her. I had to try and work at least a little bit, so I brought her into the office with me. We went downstairs to visit a colleague who will very soon be leaving the apartment, and he let us hold all of his animals. This one below is Lizzie (short for Queen Elizabeth III - I named her). She is a Bearded Dragon from Australia. She is not dangerous at all.

This, on the other hand, is dangerous. Or at least, a little dangerous. This is an albino king snake, whose name I think might be Wilbur. He used to be a very angry snake but has settled down a lot. This was my first chance to hold him and he did not want to stay still for the camera at all. Instead he wanted to crawl up my sleeve.

There is a second albino king snake that lives in my colleague's office. This one is smaller and more aggressive, which lead to him being named Little Bastard. He is a rescue snake - the SPCA found him and some other snakes starved and emaciated and called up the zoology department to ask if anybody could help. However, Little Bastard doesn't seem to appreciate being saved and has a tendency to bite. Luckily his teeth are small.

The main features of the scary animal tour are the tarantulas. In particular, there is a very docile Chilean Rose Tarantula that I have now held four times. The first time I may have panicked somewhat. Let's not go into that. Now it's fine though. She is very tame and will sit perfectly still on your hands until you wiggle your fingers - then she will start walking about. She is quite used to being handled and knows that we will not harm her so she doesn't bother to get aggressive.

All of the other tarantulas are just for looking at - they are far too aggressive to handle. This one is my favourite - it's legs are bright purple! There were also scorpions to look at, but again they were too aggressive to handle. The nice one that I used to hold is dead (and has been preserved for our little musuem).

So that was our entertainment during the week, and on the weekend the plan was to go on a bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher. However, the tours leave at 10 in the morning and that just didn't end up happening for us on a Saturday. Instead we hired a car and I drove us! I had never driven in Ireland before and hadn't driven a manual car for about three years. So it took a little while to get back into the swing of the whole changing gears thing. But once I got used to it, it was fine! We had a map and made our way down to County Clare, where we first stopped at Blackhead. This is basically a big outcropping of flat rock. It's supposed to be interesting for geological reasons I think. As is the whole of the Burren. To me, it's just a lot of rocks.

We drove up to the Ailwee caves and were going to go have a look at them, but it turns out that you have to do a tour, you can't just wander through on your own. The tour costs 12 euro and goes for 40 minutes! It really didn't sound that great, it is just a big cave, after all, and it was already 4 in the afternoon, so we decided to continue on so that we'd see the cliffs before the sun disappeared (did I mention that it was a gorgeous day?). Before the cliffs we stopped at Fanore because it's my favourite beach in Ireland. We came across the cutest little puppy that was not at all interested in us because it was too busy jumping all over a very frightened little girl. We rescued her, and got to give the puppy cuddles before it's owners came for it. Then we went for a short wander on the beach and took photos, which turned out somewhat dark because the sun was so very bright. There were surfers and apparently there was a dolphin cruising the waters there this weekend - it's a regular in those waters, bit of a loner and somewhat territorial, so surfers tend to get out of the water when they see it.

Finally we made it to the cliffs and the sun was just beginning to set and be all colourful. It is great when the weather is clear here, I wish it would last. Went went for a walk but we were tired and it was very windy so we didn't go very far. We stayed out long enough to get some nice photos and that was about it.

I found out that the Cliffs of Moher feature in the Harry Potter movies - the part with the cave that Voldemort has hidden the locket/crucifix in. Not only that, but the Cliffs of Moher were in the Princess Bride too! They were the Cliffs of Insanity and the actors actually had to climb up them!

So after a long day of driving we were very tired and had to try our best to get lots of sleep because the plan for Sunday was to go hiking. The getting lots of sleep thing didn't really work out as planned so hiking was really hard. But at least the weather was nice! It was so sunny and warm - it apparently reached 19 degrees! It is unseasonable warm and I really want it to stay this way. We were on a mountain called Mweel Rea, which is in the same region as the other hikes that I have been on, and is actually right beside the hills that were the location of that first disastrous hike a few weeks ago. When we began the hike yesterday the top of the mountain was covered in cloud but luckily that blew away before too long.

We climbed up a slope that the guides referred to as the 'ramp'. Perhaps you can see it in the photo below - it is the sort of smooth looking part of the slope, where there are no steep cliffs.

The slope seemed very steep going up but was not so bad coming down, so it was probably more my legs that did not want to climb than the climb actually being so steep.

We did not go to the top of Mweel Rea (which, incidentaly, is the highest peak in this part of the country). We were too slow and it was getting late so we stopped at one of the lesser peaks. It was hard enough as it was, and there was a piece of chocolate cake waiting for me in the bus so I was happy enough to turn around an head back down the mountain.

On the way down I found a little frog (in the bog). It was small and brown and left slime all over my hands. Guess that will teach me for picking up frogs. Then, as we were walking through the bog, trying not to get too muddy, my leg sank in, all the way down to the knee. Luckily I didn't lose my boot. And there was a lake at the end of the walk for me to rinse off all of the mud in. Finally I got my chocolate cake, after which I was well ready for bed, but there was still a 2 hour bus ride to sit through. By the time we got back to Galway I was starving, so instead of a nice early night I made a yummy dinner (chicken, mashed potato and lots of gravy, which as everybody knows is one of the most important food groups). We stayed up talking (as usual) and then watching stupid videos on youtube, which is probably why I was so tired today. Now it is only 9 pm and I want to go to sleep already. Although daylight savings did start this weekend. so perhaps I can use the excuse that my body thinks it is 10 pm and thus nearly my bedtime? So despite the hour, I am already in my PJs, in bed, about to pick up my book that I haven't had a chance to read all week.

St Paddies

This spider was on my bedroom wall this morning. Actually, it was this afternoon because I didn't feel like getting out of bed this morning. Who knows how long it had been there. Yuck. But I am home alone this weekend so I had to take care of it myself. I was going to call a friend that lives nearby but it was a skinny spider so I figured I could handly it. I took my largest glass (it is a big purple plastic drinking cup) and I placed it over the spider and as soon as I did so the spider freaked out and started moving really fast, so I was worried that it would somehow get out. But of course it couldn't. I put a postcard beneath it and tipped it out the window. I did not appreciate that start to the day.

It is St Patrick's day today and town was packed. I went out to get groceries and could barely get through the main street. They were all drinking already. I missed the parade but it is not much good. The streets were absolutely filthy. The day is a bit of a let down really because it is just a big drunken mess. It is nice to have an excuse to dress up and wear green but it must be really disappointing for those people with kids because from morning onwards the streets are full of gross drunk people. I think St Paddies might be more fun back home perhaps, because we don't take it quite so far, which means you can actually enjoy it instead of being packed shoulder to shoulder with drunken buffoons and girls that are wearing tops in place of dresses (the girls here like to dress like hookers you see). From my apartment I can hear a lot of people talking and a background of music. The music is ok but the talking and shouting is really annoying. Especially when at 4 am people who live in other apartments in this building come home from town and put on really loud music and talk really loud and just be all-round dickheads. Why can't everyone just want to go to sleep like I do?

Tomorrow is Sunday and my plan is to do very little, and to do most of that on the couch in front of the tele. It is supposed to rain. There is no hiking this week, but last week I went and it was really good. It was misty so there was not much view, but it wasn't too hard and my muscles were not sore afterward. We'll see how next week goes though, maybe it was just an easy hike and my fitness is not actually improving. Monday here is a public holiday, which I should not take because I have a lot of work to do, but I work in labs that are not actually my own and I don't have keys for them, so I guess I have no choice but to not work? I can't really work at home these days because my computer is too slow to run the software that I use. I would like a new computer. Perhaps I should go check my lotto ticket tomorrow and maybe it will say that I have won and then I can go on a shopping spree. I would like a new computer, and new towels and sheets, and a food processor, and new boots. Not to mention to live a life of leisure.