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?

Summer? Winter? Who can tell?

It is still summer here in the southern hemisphere - unless you live in Canberra, apparently. A few weeks ago, a similarly ferocious storm a couple of hours north of Melbourne cracked the windshield of my aunt's car. While I certainly wish it would cool the hell down, I hope it doesn't happen quite so violently. Though, of course, there would be something amazing about experiencing the downpour of that much ice. In fact, the more I think about it, the better it sounds. I take it back: can we please have a massive hail storm here in Melbourne?

The good kind of stormy

I fear that I am becoming one of those people who gushes about how much they love their yoga class at every opportunity they get. But I do love it, even when just sitting there hurts in places I didn't know existed. I've tried to get into yoga at other times but it's never stuck. This time, it feels positively gluey. Perhaps it's the teachers, though one is so soft spoken and flexible that I can't quite hear her and when I try to imitate her moves, discover that my body does not do that. Perhaps it's the type of yoga - this is my first time with Iyengar yoga, having tried mainly Hatha in the past. Or perhaps it's that I let my body get into such a state of un-fit that anything feels restorative.

I rode home after class into a menacing grey sky with a fresh wind from the south at my back. I am now trying to coax said breeze into the house to cool everything down. Meteorologists are predicting that the drought will break this autumn - a colleague told me that one meteorologist is even giving a date for the break: 23rd of February. While I don't believe anyone can give a date for the end of a drought, I do believe that climatologists can look at the weaking El Nino conditions in the Pacific and correlate this to an increased chance of rainfall in southeastern Australia. This is great for the birds and the bees, but not so good for those of us who commute by bike.

On Sunday, Z and I drove across the city to watch The House of Flying Daggers in the botanic gardens. About halfway between home and park, an intense gusty wind rocketed the car. The temperature quickly dropped 14C (~25F) and it began to rain. Sure enough, the screening was canceled, though we did get to have a wonderful walk in the drizzle through the gardens. There's nothing like a cool breeze and rain after a weekend that spent most of the time over 100F. I am so very ready for winter.

The rapid change reminded me of watching a storm roll in across the ocean toward us while Z, Lumpkin and I were in the Perhentians, Malaysia. I've never seen anything like the clearly defined wall of cloud that approached us, massive and towering, like something out of The Day After Tomorrow. As we watched it approach, Z said that he didn't think it would rain on us. Ha! After the usual burst of wind heralding its arrival, the front let loose with such a downpour as to grey out the boats moored about 20m offshore.

While perhaps not quite so picturesque as a tropical island, Melbourne certainly has the stormy weather covered. How I love the thunder and lightening and aliveness to the air as the atmosphere roils. Now if it would just cool the fuck down.

Body meet Mind; Mind, this is Body

For the first time in an embarrassingly long time, I have taken up regular exercise. (Hooray me!) In addition to riding my bike to Uni, I've been taking a couple of classes (like yoga, pilates) a week. I also hope to start swimming regularly. The side effects that I've noticed include an increase in consumption of hydrating fluids, crepuscular muscular fatigue, and an augmentation of available diurnal energy. However, contrary to what previous studies have found, I have not enjoyed more restful nocturnal episodes. The other night I kept Z up with my tossing and turning; little did he know that I was fighting off dream-sharks. Last night he woke me up and said that I was doing that sit-up-while-rolling-over thing - repeatedly. Let's hope this researcher notices a temporal attenuation of this mildly deleterious side-effect.

As you can probably tell, I'm getting into the swing of this whole research thing. This morning, I went to a post-grad orientation. I find orientations to be such hit-or-miss events. Often, 99% of the information will be useless, but that 1% will be so valuable as to make the hours of boredom worth it. At other times, 100% is useless. Today was one of those rare orientations where about 80% was useful information. Among descriptions of various courses and services, I learned what happens if a student and supervisor fall in love. I have to thank whomever it was that asked that question for the outrageous laughter than ensued. I also learned that the completion rates for PhD's hovers around 50%. The professor who presented this information urged us to not be dismayed. Dismayed? I thought. Isn't that supposed to be a challenge? Just like being told that the number of women in the sciences drops off radically after the master's level. I guess my attitude is something like: Ha! Take that!

I've also recently begun to string together bits and pieces from the various topics that I'm interested in. At first I thought that I would have to make a decision to study one thing or another. I've begun to see how they might all slot together into a unified whole. This is very exciting in a very nerdy, scientific sort of way. Which is perfect, because I'm exciting in a very nerdy, scientific sort of way.

How getting a PhD is like trying to get a truck out of deep sand

Today I had lunch with an old friend who's also a scientist, also a woman, and who also did her postgraduate work at Melbourne Uni. When she heard that I am feeling more than a little lost, she said that everyone feels this way at the beginning of a PhD program, particularly one without coursework. She thinks she did about 10% of her PhD in her first year (and about 80% in the final six months), which sounds about the same as my master's. At the beginning, there's so little guidance, so little structure. I suppose the main goal of this first year can be succinctly summarized: know more. So I'm reading and taking notes on what I'm reading and looking for more things to read and then reading them and taking notes and reading more. This process involves little action, little doing. And the more I read and learn, the more I realize how little I actually know. At the end of the day, it's all quite unsatisfying.

Which brings me to today's metaphor. This first part of a PhD feels a lot like trying to get a truck out of sand: lots of going nowhere interspersed with brief moments of movement that, ultimately, don't really get you anywhere either. And the whole time, your heart's beating fast enough to blow a rib because you're so afraid of being stuck in this place permanently. And you're trying all sorts of different approaches (reversing, rocking, sticks under the wheels, rocks under the wheels) but with a certain overtone of panic that makes it hard to give any one approach the time and attention it requires, all the while cycling between fear (How long before someone comes along?) and intense jubilation (The truck moved - it's going to wo--). After what feels like an eternity, you wear yourself out enough to calm down and commit to one approach. You dig several layers of rocks in under the tires and, miracle of all miracles, you manage to pop out of the hole you're in and you're rolling - you're rolling! - and you can't stop or turn around or do anything but drive steadily forwards until you're back on solid ground.

Not that I've ever been in this sort of situation.

Day One

Things you want to know:

- The woman whose desk is next to mine studies kangaroo fertility - or more correctly, she studies kangaroo birth control. I kid you not; her dissertation involves dosing roos with hormones that are identical to the pill.

- My supervisor apologized for my office, which contains brand spanking new desks, a huge window, and my own file cabinet. He started to apologize for the desk chairs - which were not designed for use in the bowels of a dreary office building housing an underfunded government department in the 50's, do not come with wires to poke me in the bum, and do not list dangerously to port - but I cut him off. My office used to be in a trailer, I explained - a trailer that during one particular deluge, started to float. I kid you not.

- I remembered to wear pants.


Things you don't want to know:

- The basement houses a room of aquaria full of venomous marine creatures. Occasionally, the marine tech walks in to find undergrad's from other departments wandering around looking at the tanks. When he asks them what they're doing they usually say something like, "We heard this room was here, man, and we heard it was really cool." He's asked for locks to be installed on the door because there's only one thing worse than finding random students wandering through your lab: finding random students passed out in your lab.

- The same marine tech told me about a student taken by a shark a couple of years ago while at his dive safety stop. There was also a student who lost a leg. (I should not be blogging about this - the family is going to freak.) Both occurred in South Australia, and the leg loss occurred after the divers were spear fishing near a seal colony. I will not be diving in SA, nor will I be spear fishing near a seal colony - or really doing anything in the water near a seal colony. And I have already promised my husband that I will not let myself get taken by a shark.

- I remembered to wear pants.

Early this morning I woke up with a jolt of panic: I was late for school. Except that school doesn't start until tomorrow - and here it's not called school, it's called Uni. My friend A keeps reminding me of that. She also corrects my pronunciation of the word "mobile" - as in, cell phone - to make sure that I enunciate the "ile" part of the word, which I tend to swallow making it MObl rather than moBILE.

This has nothing to do with anything much at all. There will be no pithy sentence that ties this together with the fact that we scored a dresser yesterday off a NY'er who lives around the corner and who advertised it on Craiglist, a service that I wish more people in Melbourne would use. I feel like I unpacked for the first time in a year and a half.

This also has nothing to do with the fact that I'm addicted to spider solitaire and that I will have to uninstall it this evening or risk never finishing my dissertation.

Which reminds me that I'm starting my dissertation tomorrow. Tomorrow I will be a doctoral student. And presumably, one day I will be a doctor. In case it wasn't completely obvious, this fills me with nervous, jittery excitement. I'm sure that tonight I'll have one of those dreams where I'm giving a presentation to my colleagues only to realize half way through that I'm not wearing any pants.

Oh verr

I am done with my temp job. Let me hear a chorus of "Hallelujahs". Lumpkin suggested I steal a t-shirt on my way out the door, one that read "Foster's - Australian for Cow Urine". Lumpkin makes me laugh. There is only one thing I will miss from that job and he sat a few rows away from me. Boy was he nice to look at. But I am more than happy to give up eye candy and air conditioning for the glamorous life style of an underpaid, overworked grad student.

Other wonderful things in my day include the cool breeze wafting in through the back door. Stepping out of the office today, the air felt heavy as if it really wanted to rain but couldn't quite get over the habits formed by eight years of drought. Droughts are addictive.

Speaking of droughts, I arrived home yesterday (bearing ice cream) to find my large tomato plant wilting miserably in its pot, it's leaves shriveled and dry. I rushed to the rescue with a bowl of gray water (we recycle the dish water) and less than ten minutes later, the plant was back to its rabid splendor. I swear it grows half a foot a day. If you notice that I haven't posted in a while, send clippers and a machete.

And that's about the news from here. It is refreshingly cool. I have a five day weekend and then - ack! I start my PhD. Oh shit. I hadn't really been thinking about that. For every "oh verr" there's and "oh god".

What's in a look

When you've lost all your clothes the phrase, "I have nothing to wear" takes on new meaning. I'm working hard to regenerate my wardrobe but it's a struggle. Part of my problem is that I don't want to look like everyone else. On the tram to and from work, I am surrounded by hoards of identically dressed women, none of whom have a style I want to even come close to emulating. Think: Marina chick in a southern Californian mall. On a good day, I'll see a couple of women wearing an outfit that I like, which makes for pretty slim pickin's inspiration-wise and complicates this whole fill-up-the-wardrobe thing. When I try to go shopping, I end up rejecting over 90% of the clothes most shops have on offer. It's all the same! It's all U-Glee! And then there's the fight against the urge to buy the safe clothes, the things that look good but bore me to tears.

After reading this article, I realized that what I'm actually struggling with is defining my own style. I have never - NEVER - been a style junkie, or a fashionista, or someone who can name more than three labels - and that's on a good day. My uniform until a few years ago was a t-shirt and jeans. Now I own heels and even occasionally wear them. Admitting that I do appreciate clothes and want to feel confident in what I'm wearing has been a big step for me. Actually leaving the safe comfort of t-shirts and jeans for clothes that are stylish and opinionated is one hell of a struggle.

One of the first steps is admitting that I like clothes. Hi, my name's Bartlebee and I like clothes. Having never been to AA, I'm not sure what comes next. Perhaps recognizing that fashion does matter, that what I wear does matter, and, most importantly, that it's ok that it matters. This part is a work in progress.

If you like fish...

... here are two particularly novel ways to show your love. If you like music as well as the fishies, then try this lovely fish tank piano. If seeing a piano reminds you of the hours of practice that you were forced into by a mother who could tolerate your tantrums and still get her way, hours you would rather have spent in the bathroom, then perhaps this fish tank will be more
to your liking.

Proof that moving countries is hard even when you allegedly speak the language

Exhibit A: The following conversation, which ensued after I pulled my morning snack from my bag.

Colleague: Oooh! What’s that?

Me: A scone.

Colleague: But what’s wrong with it?

Me: What do you mean, what’s wrong with it? Nothing’s wrong with it. It’s a scone.

Colleague (poking scone): But it’s so flat.

Me: Aren't scones supposed to be flat?

Colleague: No they're not.

Me: They are in the States.

Colleague: They’re not over here.

Me: Then what do you call what I'm eating?

Colleague: I dunno. Is it a muesli slice?

Me: What’s a muesli slice?

Colleagues: A slice with muesli in it.

Me (under breath): Well that's helpful.

Colleague: That has muesli in it, doesn't it?

Me: No, just oats.

Colleague (looking at me like I'm a moron): Right. So, it has muesli in it.

Me: Yeah?

Colleagues: So it's a muesli slice.

Me: Of course. How could I be so silly? Why yes of course this is a muesli slice.

Bleak

My brother Lumpkin just sent me an email. He's sitting at home in his shorts with all the windows and skylights open. He lives in New York. It's January.

Stop and think about that for a moment.

On Christmas day, Melbourne and NY shared the same temperature. Middle of summer; middle of winter. I am starting to think that my Master's advisor may have been serious when he told all of his grad students to buy land in Manitoba.

I had a nightmare a few years ago in which The End had come. My friend KC and I were in a tent in the middle of an apocalyptic desert surrounded by blowing sand and searing sun, applying duct tape to the zippers to try and keep the toxic winds out. And then we huddled together, recalling images from our favourite hiking spots: the towering green freshness of the redwoods; browned California hills scattered with wildflowers and scraggly oaks; the glacier-smoothed granite of the Sierras. And we cried at the loss which was so much greater than our own lives. I woke up soaked in desolation.

I am still occasionally gripped by panic at the thought that the Earth is going to hell in a hand-basket. Or more correctly, that Homo sapiens is going down and taking most things with it. And then I get an email from my bro and I realize that this is actually happening. This is not some nightmare. This is not a thought to try to avoid in order to feel better. This Is Actually Happening. Will politicians wake up in time to avert the worst of it? I don't know. Can I do much more than I'm already doing? I don't know - we have green power, barely drive, vote for people who understand environmental issues, and shop with a conscience. Is it enough? I don't know. Do I feel hopeful? Rarely.

Prognosis: bleak.

Black

The new look of my blog may be bright and colourful ("clownish" according to Z), but my mood certainly isn't. After a week off between Christmas and the New Year, I am back in the tedium that is my temp job. No matter how many times during the day I repeat, "Six days left ..." it still sucks. Even Si's "I am in my happy place" Ikea-faring mantra does nothing to help. It's also hot hot hot except at my desk where I sit literally shivering all day. Have I mentioned that I don't like my job?

I suppose I can't wholly blame the job for The Mood. It's been skulking around for a couple of weeks now and as much as I try to shake it, it won't be shook. So, I garden and bake and organize the kitchen's stock of dried goods into neatly labeled jars and, when that's done, find myself staring into the blackness above our bed and, when I get tired of that, pacing the hallway through the witching hours. I'm sure the insomnia-induced exhaustion doesn't help.

And I'm also sure it will pass - I mean, eventually it has to, right? Until it does, I'm staying close to home and (here I quote Mr. Sassyass) missing y'all terribly.

The good kind of censorship

From Lake Superior State University's list of banished words for 2006, comes the following:

Halthy Food
Someone told Joy Wiltzius of Fort Collins, Colorado, that the tuna steak she had for lunch "sounded healthy." Her reply: "If my lunch were healthy, it would still be swimming somewhere. Grilled and nestled in salad greens, it's 'healthful.'"

And my other favourite:

Combined Celebrity Names
"It's bad enough that celebrities have to be the top news stories. Now we've given them obnoxious names such as 'Bragelina,' 'TomKat' and 'Bennifer.'" -- M. Foster, Port Huron, Michigan.

"It's so annoying, idiotic and so lame and pathetic that it's 'lamethetic.'" -- Ed of Centreville, Virginia.

Lamethetic is a great word - watch, they'll have to ban it next year!

Night Out

Last night we watched The Neverending Story at the Rooftop Cinema which was a very cool venue - actually, it was downright cold, but also cool in the less literal sense. The movie was not as magical as it was when I was a ten-year-old bookworm, but it has survived the tests of time better than The Labyrinth. As with most older movies, it is essential to apply liberal doses of imagination to the not-so-special effects. Take, for example, the part when Atreyu tells the scary wolf-creature that he'd rather go down fighting than be taken by the nothing. The wolf leaps toward him, snarling as the wind of the nothing tears tree from rock. The audience sharply inhales and - cut to Atreyu pushing the large, dead wolf away, its legs sticking out at right angles from its torso as it lies on its side. The whole audience, with the probable exception of the young girl sitting in front of us, laughed out loud.

On our way home, a guy around our age got on the tram and loudly asked if there were any English on board, which there weren't (I quickly decided that I'm Ameralian). A couple of stops later, someone got on wearing an English cap. Our "friend" immediately started singing "Four nil four nil four nil four nil" to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. I guess we won the cricket! The guy wearing the cap turned out to be an Aussie, too, and they soon joined voiced in a rousing rendition of "Yellow Submarine" except the chorus went, "We all live in a convict colony, a convict colony, a convict colony...."