Uphill both ways

I have a pretty easy ride to Uni: it’s a fairly flat route that takes me through parkland via quiet back streets. It takes me a little over 15 minutes to get to school – on a normal day. Then there are things like this:

(Image from here.)

Note the hurricane to the south of Australia. That would be the first hurricane to ever effect southern Australia. The edge of this storm has been buffeting Melbourne with seriously strong winds, causing the sections of my ride that I usually coast down to feel like a steep uphill slog. And they blow my light road bike all over the road. Not fun. About a third of my way to Uni today, my quads were insisting that I’d just climbed Twin Peaks.

And that's just what's happening on land. Western Victoria is supposedly getting pounded by 20ft waves. A buoy near the entrance to Port Philip Bay (close to Melbourne) recorded a 7m (~21ft) wave this morning. And the experts on diving in Victoria say that March and April are the best months to dive!

Endings

I've been thinking a lot about Nina this week, since Lumpkin told me she was killed in a mountaineering accident last Friday. She was such a sugar-loving, vivacious person who not only made us welcome in Wellington, but pretty much convinced us to move there in the first place. I loved walking through the city with her, learning about all the things that could be done to make a city more pedestrian-friendly. Like those pavers that we teased her about when we were out with Jason and Paul.

There was another death last week, though not as tragic I suppose. My good friend Alicia's Granny Annie died. I spent a fair amount of time with her when I was young, playing cards and learning Mah Jong. I don't know any of my other friends' grandparents like I knew Granny Annie. She was 89 and had suffered from Alzheimers for years. In fact, Alicia told me that one day while she was visiting, Granny Annie told her, "You look a lot like Alicia", to which she replied, "I am Alicia!". In some ways she had been gone for a while.

At Granny Annie's memorial service, Alicia's mum shared the story of Granny Annie's life. What struck me most was how hard she and her husband worked. Annie's husband would open their shop every morning until it was time for him to go to work, which is when Annie would take over for the day. When Allen got home from work, he would take over from Annie, working in the shop while Annie prepared dinner and took care of the kids.

Hearing that made me realize how luxurious our lives are. We have choice like perhaps no other generation has had choice. This choice comes with the pressure to figure out what we want to Do With Our Lives. This makes it so much harder. There's room to waffle and room to change our minds and room to worry about what we're doing. Back then, you had to work - and hard - every day. No room for lengthy sabbaticals to ponder your life's direction.

I see this in my grandmother too. She's in her late 80's and definitely losing her mind, but still she weeds her enormous garden and takes care of Vince and Sam (the alpacas). I know that she also spends the occasional day in bed, which she entirely deserves but would never, ever, ever have happened even 10 years ago. She has a work ethic that puts mine to shame - so much so that it makes me question whether I even have one!

And this is balanced by hearing about Nina's death, which makes me want to live to the best of my ability Right Now. You never know when the end will be. How to balance these two lessons? How to find the medium between working hard and working toward something you love? Perhaps that's called a PhD.

So, this is some of what I've been thinking about: death and change and the different forms of loss. Saying, "I'm sorry" at Granny Annie's funeral wasn't right - she had a good long life and a good death. And then there's Nina, just turned 30. Saying "I'm sorry" doesn't even begin to cover it.

Questions

Science is all about asking questions. There's an art to devising a brilliant question with far-reaching repercussions that can be answered through a simple experiment. Failing that, there's a process to taking a big question and simplifying it into testable components. The trick is to make sure that each of those components is still interesting, otherwise you're likely to find yourself in the middle of an experiment bored to tears and wondering how on earth you're going to convince anyone that this is ground-breaking research. It's all about making a little part of a little experiment tie in with the big picture.

Honing this ability to ask good research questions is a necessary part of the PhD process and what I've been working on for the last five weeks. Today my big picture just got a whole lot bigger. In a meeting, I was asked by one of the department's more senior professors what I want to do at the end of the PhD. Perhaps foolishly, I answered honestly - I believe my exact words were, "I have no idea." If only I had given my internal editor a chance to disagree! Fortunately, the other grad student in the room also had no idea. We were both then scolded and told that this was unacceptable. Everything we do during this PhD, all the choices we make, are supposed to further us along our career path. Do we choose to TA in order to gain valuable teaching experience in preparation for a job as an academic lecturer? Do we work with government agencies to lay the groundwork for a position as a researcher? Or do we network like crazy with industry so as to get in the door there?

All I can say is, Uh...what? It's time for me to really start thinking about this stuff? I thought I had another few years!

This question of "career" feels so antithetical to who I am. Or perhaps it's merely that the word "career" instantly brings to mind a desk-job at some large firm where I spend a good part of my time weasling my way up the ladder of promotions and raises. In other words, it sounds bloody awful.

I do know that there are other options out there and, in fact, that's why I'm subjecting myself to this three (and a half) year research program. I guess my attitude towards the What Comes Next has been very much a wait-and-see. Today as I was mulling this over in my over-worked neural circuitry, I realized that the wait-and-see attitude is devoid of hopes and aspirations. Instead of going for my dream job, I have been planning to see what's available when I get out (saying get out like that sounds way too much like this is a prison term). How passive! I'd much rather live striving for something than waiting for whatever shows up. That isn't antithetical to me at all.

But there's a catch: I have to decide on something, and I'm notoriously hopeless at making decisions (just ask my husband). I really don't want to be strapped down to some career path, which is part of my resistance to making a decision - it just seems so final. And yet, if I don't start thinking about this I may realize what I want too late to get there. There aren't so many positions open each year for marine ecologists.

Once again, this PhD is showing me how little I know. Thanks a lot.

Competition

As you may know, Z is trying to make it as a freelance writer here in Melbourne. The competition is really tough. For example, check out this guy.

I agree

Confession time: I talk to myself. You're probably not surprised because you most likely talk to yourself, too. Recently, however, I've caught myself agreeing with myself. As in:

- I think I should have sushi for lunch today.
- I agree.

I miss the days of simple internal monologues. This feels a few steps closer to clinical. And what happens if I start disagreeing with myself? That could get ugly.

I've also recently had to come to terms with the fact that I have very little intuitive sense of left and right. At 31 years of age, I still need (and I do mean need) to look at my palms and spell out the "L" for left. This is difficult to do while driving, which is why I need my directions to be littered with large gestures.

And I'm getting a PhD?

- Who's idea was that?
- Well, it wasn't mine.

Martian invasion

I went diving yesterday to help a colleague out with his research. While he counted fish along a transect, I explored. I saw my first wild sea horses - saying it like that makes me imagine them galloping past in a storm of turbulence, leaving a trail of silted water in their wake. As cool as they are with the whole "pregnant" male thing, they couldn't compare with seeing one of these:


It's a giant cuttle, Sepia apama (photo from here). When I first came across hovering just above the bottom, I had no idea what I was looking at. Its coloration and the raised skin flaps on its back made it look like part of the reef,though the fin along the bottom of its mantle rippled continuously. Its tentacles and arms were curled up into its face, and it sat starting at us with its strange eyes. At one point, my dive buddy and I moved to one side, and it moved so as to remain facing us. Was it an animal? Responsiveness suggested yes. Was it a fish? Completely the wrong shape. A vertebrate? Sure didn't look like any vertebrate I'd ever seen. An alien from Mars? Maybe. A Cephalopod? Distinct head region suggests probably - but far less interesting than the alien from Mars hypothesis. An octopus? Nope. A squid? Also nope. We surfaced and I asked my partner what it was. Fortunately, he recognized the creature. Unfortunately, he's from France and doesn't know the English word for it. Neither did the other guy on the boat who's from Germany. When I suggested cuttlefish, there was general consensus, backed up by the guidebook when we got back to the truck.

This may be one of the coolest things I've seen underwater in quite some time. It can't get over how otherworldly and alien it looked. Perhaps Martians have invaded Earth and have been classified as Cephalopods. It sure would explain their intelligence and looks. Come to think of it, Martian invasion would explain the intelligence and looks of a lot of people too. For example, Tom Cruise. No, wait - hasn't he expelled his aliens?