Is everyone having a nice apocalypse? Jolly good – now let’s talk about what happens next!

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The professor who taught microbial genetics during my undergrad degree was hilarious. A lot of people didn’t like him at all, but those of us with advanced dry humour detection abilities absolutely loved him. One of his most memorable moments was when he told a packed lecture theatre about how he’d tried to introduce a new exam format for final year students, which would involve designing and engineering a novel virus; the class would be graded on a curve, with those who managed to kill the most people upon the release of the virus getting the top marks. However, the university apparently wouldn’t let him, so he had to keep using those boring essay questions.

When I saw the iPhone game Plague Inc, I wondered if Professor Samson had been involved in its conception. Probably not, but he would have loved it. The aim is to evolve a pathogen that will wipe out the world; you get “DNA points” for infecting and killing people and for spreading the disease to new countries, and can redeem them for new traits related to symptoms, route of transmission, and resistance to human research and treatment efforts. It really is enormously good fun.

The trick is to focus first on infecting as many people as possible without making them so sick that finding a cure becomes a global priority, then ramping up the symptoms and resistance to treatment / genetic analysis once you’ve infected as many people as possible. Unfortunately though, it’s almost impossible to win without help; I tried to get past the first (bacterial) level, which you need to beat in order to unlock the more exotic virus, prion and parasite levels, about seven times without success. The problem was that I kept killing everyone except a few hundred people in fucking Greenland and being told I’d failed. GREENLAND! Honestly! I ended up reluctantly paying an extra 99 cents for a power-up – you can unlock these by playing well, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen. Some awesome geeks I met at Beth‘s party a few days later a) commiserated with me about fucking Greenland and then b) let me know that you have to beat a level on the hardest setting to unlock the power-ups for free (I’d been playing on “normal), so I felt a bit better about my extravagant expenditure.

The global outbreak simulation is obviously rather scientifically unrealistic – when the virus evolves a new trait it manifests itself in every single infected person in the world simultaneously, for starters – but really, it’s the “leaving any survivors at all means you fail. Even if they’re in fucking Greenland” flaw that bugs me the most. Where’s the fun in that?! I’m a huuuuuge fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, starting with my childhood love of John Wyndham, and therefore appreciate that what happens after the plague is the most interesting part.

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(smooth and seamless segue into the book-review portion of the post)

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One of the best examples of the genre (and one of the best books I’ve read in the last few years – I’m completely 100% serious about that) is World War Z by Max Brooks. Yes, it’s about zombies, but it’s entirely unlike any other book I’ve read (or film or TV series I’ve seen) in this genre, or even in the post-apocalyptic fiction genre as a whole. The novel’s set in the very near future and is framed as a series of interviews, conducted a few years after the outbreak by a UN official who’s been tasked with writing a comprehensive report. Each chapter is its own little story, featuring interviews with doctors, soldiers, politicians, psychologists, civil servants, and ordinary people from all over the world about their own little part of the war; together, these vignettes add up to one of the most detailed and thoughtful post-pathogen-apocalypse scenarios I’ve ever read. (It even gets into some things that really bug me about The Walking Dead, such as why the hell don’t they obtain a pack of guard dogs to protect the camp?! Why are they so afraid of forming larger groups – are we seriously supposed to believe that not one single character on the show has read Day of the Triffids?! But I digress…)

The book is about much more than zombies, though – it’s a wide-ranging satire on the current state of global politics, international relations, military endeavours, medicine, celebrity, the world of work, and society in general (two notable exceptions that I thought should have been given more coverage: religion, and scientific research). Some parts are so specific to our time that they’ll probably seem quite dated very quickly – for example, Beth joked about the “undead” part of the “any resemblance to actual persons, living or undead, is purely coincidental” legal statement, but some real-life celebs are totally recognisable in one of the more humorous chapters of the book (plus one well-known and much-loved politician, who makes an appearance in one of the more serious chapters, in a very powerful and moving scene that has definitely stayed with me).

I’m guessing that the upcoming film is going to be very different from the book; it’s not really filmable as-is, due mainly to the lack of recurring characters. It would probably have been next to impossible to find enough well-known actors to sign up for five minutes of screen-time each to justify the huge budget a faithful adaptation would necessitate… but I’m sure I’ll go and see it anyway, even though there’s no possible way it’ll be as good as Shaun of the Dead.

The next book I read was The Passage, by Justin Cronin. I know what you’re thinking – “why on earth would she read another vampire trilogy after the whole Strain/Fall/Night Eternal fiasco?! She doesn’t even like vampires that much, at least not compared to zombies!” (you were thinking that, right?) Well, the answer is that it wasn’t my fault. While I was buying WWZ, the woman who works in my local book shop recommended The Passage, saying that it was “excellent, but really really creepy – do NOT read this book if you’re home alone!” I didn’t ask for further details and, suitably cautious, didn’t start the book until Mr E Man came back from Montreal and then finished the night shifts he worked on next. Disappointingly, it really wasn’t all that scary, but I did thoroughly enjoy it and will definitely buy the next two books. It was much, much better than the aforementioned vampire trilogy – much better written, much better characterization, and getting more into the psychological aspects of survival (the story begins with the outbreak itself, then jumps forward a few decades into the much more interesting post-apocalyptic phase). It did get a bit silly in the middle, but redeemed itself by the end, and finished with a massive cliffhanger. I’ll be buying part two in the very near future, I think, after I’ve worked my through some of the piles of unread books in my house!

A little light, cheerful beach reading for a tropical holiday

I didn’t really expect the third and final book I read on vacation to fit the same theme, but somehow it does. Yes, I know I’m late on this one, but I finally got around to reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In this case the catastrophe that befalls mankind (well, the USA, at least) is a drastic fall in the birth rate, and the novel deals with what happens to the status of women in a world where fertility is a rare and precious commodity. The story unfolds from the point of view of a single woman, and gradually expands from a narration of her daily routine to a much bigger picture of what has happened to society as a whole. I definitely found this book to be by far the scariest of the three – recent statements about women from some sectors of the society to my immediate South have really been quite terrifying, much more so than the thought of fictional monsters. OK, so I did have one nightmare per “camping in the woods” episode of the first season of The Walking Dead (seriously! Get some dogs!), but it’s The Handmaid’s Tale that continues to haunt my waking thoughts.

Interestingly, Handmaid and Passage both employ the same device – a post-hoc analysis of some of the book’s events at an academic conference set a few years ahead of the novel. I wonder if Cronin was consciously influenced by Atwood?

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Right, back to the fire and brimstone final family Christmas party preparations. Happy Solstice, everyone!

I only have 15 usable votes so far in the 2012 Comment of the Year award, despite the post having had more than 100 unique hits! Please follow the link to remedy this unacceptable situation, if you have not already done so.

As an incentive / thank you, here’s a photo of Grumpy Cat Her Maj on the new $20 bill. My friends and I have had hours minutes of fun imagining what she’s thinking; most captions so far are along the lines of “I know you’re just going to spend this on maple syrup and beer. Or possibly maple beer. Filthy Canadians”

I had to donate some of these to the local food bank to get over the guilt, judgement and shame I feel every time I spend one of them on something frivolous.

Bonus incentive: the most Vancouvery Christmas song of all time, from local band Said the Whale.

Happy Holidays, everyone! Now go and VOTE!

The results of the Fourth Annual VWXYNot? Readers’ Choice Comment of the Year Award vote are IN!

The winner is…

(insert drumroll here)

…BEAN-MOM!

Congratulations Bean-Mom – please let me know to which email address you’d like me to send your Amazon gift certificate!

Beth – dude – second place three years in a row! If I see you tonight I’ll buy you a bonus prize in liquid format, because really, that’s almost more impressive than winning!

Many thanks to everyone who voted! Personally I prefer the top three choices approach to the single vote I’ve used in previous years, because I think it approaches a fairer representation; several people have mentioned in the past that it’s really hard to pick just one comment, especially when the options can be so different in type, length, and tone. However, the number of votes was way down (by more than 50%, once I’d disqualified a couple of entries that ignored the “vote for three different comments as your first, second and third choices” rule), so maybe I should revert just to be more inclusive, or maybe move the vote to a less busy time of year. What do you guys think? If anything?

I’m shamefully behind on my blog reading, and therefore didn’t see Richard’s excellent article on lab safety until the Guardian had already closed comments. I’ll therefore have to relate my story as its own post, instead of the comment I’d originally intended.

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Richard’s article references a very sad story that’s rather famous among British scientists:

A fair few years ago now, a certain UK Research Council unit installed oxygen sensors in the room where they kept liquid nitrogen tanks. This is because liquid nitrogen rapidly boils at anything approaching room temperature, and naturally the newly gaseous nitrogen will rapidly displace other gasses—including oxygen. So if you’re working with or decanting liquid nitrogen and an oxygen alarm goes off, you get the hell out of Dodge before you asphyxiate. I’ve been there, done that. But in this particular case, the sensors kept going off, making it next to impossible for these particular people to do their work. So they muted the alarm.

Yes, that was a damn fool thing to do, and when there was a leak somebody asphyxiated and they found his body frozen to the floor. But why the sensor kept going off in that situation is something that H&S should have looked at, and, oh I don’t know, made sure the room was adequately ventilated, perhaps? Maybe even moved the tanks someplace else.

This happened while I was doing my PhD in Glasgow, quite close to the facility in question and in an institute funded by the same organisation. Our lab manager therefore took this development extremely seriously, and we were all asked to think of possible solutions to our own liquid nitrogen problem, which was as follows:

We all took it in turns to fill up our lab’s liquid nitrogen containers, and it was a task that everyone dreaded. The tanks were in a deserted corner of the basement, where you would often hear the skitterings of mice behind storage boxes, but never run into a fellow human being. The room was poorly lit, poorly ventilated, and rather musty (don’t worry, they’ve since knocked the old building down and replaced it with a shiny new purpose-built facility). It took ages to fill up the tanks from the single old hose (which would shriek like a banshee as the nitrogen flowed through it, adding to the creepiness of the situation), and your hands would freeze through the thickest of gloves… not to mention the chill that would seep into your feet and then the rest of your body from the fog of nitrogen vapour. Learning that this activity was potentially fatal as well as deeply unpleasant made us dread our turn on the schedule slightly even more.

The list of suggested remedies was long, technical, and potentially extremely expensive – sensors, lights, alarms, video monitors, new ventilation systems for the whole building, you name it.

Now, there’s an old story that when faced with the problem of normal pens not working in zero gravity, NASA spent years and millions of dollars developing a special pen for astronauts. Meanwhile, Soviet cosmonauts used pencils. This tale has sadly been debunked, but I’m proud to relate that my PhD supervisor is just as ingenious as any mythical Soviet engineer:

“Send people down there in pairs – one to fill the tanks, and the other to watch from the doorway, holding a boat hook to pull them out if they collapse”, he said. “I can provide the boat hook”.

Problem solved! We never needed to use the boat hook, thankfully, but it was nice to know it was there…

I honestly didn’t think we’d get any NHL hockey this year, but just like that I’m already double booked for the first Canucks game on Saturday and committed to three hockey pools*…

…including this one!

We’re using the CBC pool again, as most people who are interested should already have an account, and unlike other pools it continues into the playoffs. All readers (including lurkers) and Twitter friends welcome! Once you’ve picked your team for the first week, join the group VWXPool (password: 2012Season!) and let me know in the comments, especially if you’re new and you think I won’t recognise your user name (we always get at least one random person joining the pool each year, but I kick them out if two emails asking who they are go unanswered. I guess some people join random pools on the internet with people they don’t know, which seems odd to me, but to each their own I guess).

I think the pool will be smaller than usual this year, as I know there are a few past participants who are so cheesed off with the lock-out and/or the league’s inaction on head injuries that they just don’t want to be involved in NHL hockey in any way, shape or form any more. We’ll miss you guys, but I do understand – I’m seriously cheesed off with the whole situation myself, just not quite enough to override my love of the sport and the IRL & online social scenes that revolve around it.

YAY HOCKEY!

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*the three pools are very different. The CBC pool we’re using here involves choosing new players every week, another that my friend is running involves picking one player each from 20 groups and sticking with that line-up for the whole season, and the one we’re doing at work will be my first ever draft-style pool. The draft is on Friday… wish me luck!

Those of you who share my appreciation of the peak of Western civilisation that is Twitter may have come across a series of accounts that represent a given country, with one citizen of that country taking over the account each week. I believe this trend started in Sweden, where the idea was actually initiated by the government and Stephen Colbert promptly tried to get in on the act as an honorary Swede, or “artificial Swedener”, as he put it*; this week’s curator, Steffan, has been absolutely brilliant, and his ongoing verbal battle with the corresponding (although not government-affiliated) Canadian account drew my attention to the fact that hey, look – Canada has a corresponding (although not government-affiliated) account!**

I applied immediately, of course, and have been selected as the Person of Canada for the week of January 21st-27th! My profile just went up on the website, and I’m just waiting for the account login information to be handed over tonight or tomorrow morning. This is all very exciting, and the timing is perfect – I’m sure that interest in my work is going to be extremely limited even though I’m going to a presentation about a new funding opportunity tomorrow, so I won’t tweet about that unless asked, but I have a really fun week of non-work events planned: I’m going to the Canucks-Flames game on Wednesday; a live story-telling event on Friday; snowshoeing (possibly, depending on friends) on Saturday morning; and a Burns Night supper on Saturday night.

You don’t even need a Twitter account to follow along – although, as with everything else, it’ll be much more fun if you do!

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*he was unsuccessful. The title of this post is my official tribute fart in his general direction.

**lots of other countries do, too – check out the #rotationcuration hashtag for the latest shenanigans.

Each scoring week in this year’s pool runs from Saturday to Friday, which I prefer to the usual Monday to Sunday – it’s much easier to find time to update the spreadsheet and post the results over the weekend than on a Monday!

As you can tell, I still haven’t quite optimised my use of Google Documents Drive to make charts…

…or my hockey picks. The eight points I picked up for Schneider getting a shut-out for the Canucks on Friday night helped a LOT – yay for the Schneids! SSSSCCCCHHHH!

Congrats to Sugar Scientist for taking the first week’s bragging rights! There’s a tight chasing pack though, so watch out…

I’d very much like participants who have blogs of their own to share the updating duties again this year… please let me know if you’re up for it and I’ll email you the link to the Google Drive spreadsheet. I’ll do next week’s, and you can sign up for a week of your choice on the spreadsheet itself.

YAY, HOCKEY IS BACK! LET THE TRASH-TALKING BEGIN!

Back in 2010, I wrote a blog post about how although my sister and I took very different career paths, we’ve ended up with similar kinds of job. I am sad to have to report that since then, we have discovered a gaping chasm between us that threatens to destroy this new-found unity…

and then:

Naturally, every birthday and Christmas card I send her for the rest of our lives will be signed “love, hugs, and kisses”, just to piss her off…

One of the podcasts to which I subscribe is called 99% Invisible – “a tiny radio show about design, architecture & the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world.” Each episode covers an aspect of design that someone outside the industry just wouldn’t usually think about – for example, how architects incorporate acoustic design into large public buildings. The show’s very well made, and believe me, I need all the help I can get in this arena because, as indicated by the title of this post, I really just don’t usually notice this kind of thing.

Case in point: while I was living in Glasgow, my sister came to see me and we decided to visit the famous School of Art, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Everyone told us that we should definitely take the official tour, led by students at the school; however, we arrived about 45 minutes early and wandered around a bit by ourselves first. The building’s absolutely gorgeous and we thought we were being appropriately observant and appreciative, but apparently we weren’t even close. When the tour started, the guide pointed out the building’s recurring theme, which is symbolic of the growth and maturation of the school’s students as they progress through their education: there are acorn motifs built into many different aspects of the design of the entrance hall, sapling and leaf bud motifs in the corridors, and the gnarled wood of the bannisters in the library represents the roots and branches of mature trees. There were some other features we’d never have noticed by ourselves in a million years, such as the use of light: some of the windows were designed to cast squares of light onto the wall that are the exact shape and size of other built-in features of the room, or that complement the patterns on the floor. It was amazing, and humbling; we hadn’t been thinking about the building’s design at the right level, or even in the right way.

Well, this week I learned that I’ve been similarly oblivious to the less subtle theme behind the design of a building I thought I knew extremely well: the building in which I work. I’ve been in my current job for eight months now and worked in the same building for two and a half years from 2005 to 2007; I went to dozens of meetings there in the intervening years, too. But when my team was treated to the public tour of the building on Monday*, I learned that I’d somehow managed to completely miss the Pacific Northwest theme that graces our hallowed halls.

Now, I had at least spotted these three massive yellow cedar poles, but had not quite grasped their symbolism. They represent the trees of the local forests, rather effin’ obviously now that I think about it!

The green glass bench, one of many similar features in the building, represents our lovely lakes. I’m less embarrassed about not noticing this – half the city of Vancouver’s made of green glass, so you sort of stop noticing it.

Less obviously, the pattern of tiles on the floor represents a meandering stream or river bed:

(note more cedar and green glass in the elevators)

The fact that the ceiling of the lobby area is deliberately grey, to represent our often cloudy skies, is something I feel no shame at all in not noticing; the walls of the lobby stretch upwards to the height of two large lab floors, and the ceiling is therefore so far above you when you come in that I’d never even thought to look up.

The one feature that we all felt absolute idiots for not noticing, though, is the mountain motif on the walls of the lobby:

D’OH! Oh well, at least no-one else noticed this design that’s been staring us in the face every time we enter the building for years, either…

The other cool thing we learned on the tour is that we apparently have a ghost! A poltergeist, to be specific – and one that hates all the glass, symbolic or no. I didn’t know this, but the lovely old house (now a coffee shop) that sits right in front of our very modern-looking green glass building actually used to be where we are now, and was moved over to make way for the new development.

The story goes that the ghost that lived in the house was extremely unhappy about this turn of events, and took out its wrath on all the glass in its new home. Apparently the long curved glass top of the ground floor reception desk shattered for absolutely no reason one night – there’s CCTV footage of it breaking with no-one anywhere near it and with no seismic activity reported in the area. The architects and engineers were said to be completely baffled. Similarly, it took multiple attempts to finish the lunch room on the fifth floor, because the freshly-installed windows kept shattering and/or popping out of their frames – again, for no reason the architects and engineers could discern.

It’s a cool story, and led to much amusement on the tour. The first couple of times the tour guide asked if there were any questions, the response was “tell us more about the ghost!” or just “MOAR GHOST STORIES!!!!”

Sadly, though, the ghost has always been 100% invisible…

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*Some people had never had an official tour, and others had, but a long time ago. It was actually really cool to see the facility the way it’s presented to donors and collaborators – we got a mix of both types of tour – and to learn what kinds of questions both groups ask the Operations Manager, who acts as the guide. Apparently donors mostly ask how much the various machines that go “ping!” cost, and are always flabbergasted at the response!

I have to say, I’m really enjoying the return of the NHL – having games to watch on dark, rainy weeknights makes me very happy!

The pool, however, is not going so well for me. Here are everyone’s points for Week 2:

It was a great week for Gerty and Lava, while Week 1 leader Sugar Scientist also had a very strong showing, with Raj Blackhawks not far behind. At the other end of the graph, Bam and Gen Repair still don’t seem to have figured out which sport we’re following, not that I can talk with my mighty 11th place weekly finish!

And how did these results affect the overall standings?

(Sorry about the shitty graph, by the way – I used to make these graphs in Excel while I had lunch at my desk, but in my new job I actually have people to eat lunch with AND the pool weeks end on a weekend rather than a week day. So I have a choice of Google Drive or Numbers, neither of which I know how to use anywhere near as well as Excel. So I can’t figure out how to give similarly coloured lines uniquely shaped data point marks, but at least the legend on the right lists the players in order of their position).

Sugar Scientist retains the top spot, while Lava’s, Gerty’s, and Raj’s strong week 2 picks lifted them up to second, third, and fourth places, respectively. The rest of us are ticking along much as we were – but there’s still plenty of hockey left to play!

Beth is hosting next week – thank you, Beth and Chall, for signing up for hosting duties!

While browsing journal TOCs in my RSS reader earlier today, I realised that I seem to have subconsciously assigned human personalities to some of the journals I read most frequently.

For example:

• Current Biology is an extrovert who enthusiastically dives into any ongoing topic of conversation, and talks with their hands a lot. Fun at parties;
• Nucleic Acids Research is an older man in a tweed jacket who quietly talks with great authority about the arcane technical details of his obscure hobby over a cup of Earl Grey;
• Genome Research is that one friend who always has the most recent smart phone and tablet;
• Oncogene is an old friend from my grad school days. They don’t seem to have moved on much in the intervening years, and I don’t see them very often, but when I do it’s always nice to catch up and reminisce.

Is this normal, or have I developed a very specific form of synesthesia?

I just posted the following on Facebook, and thought I’d share it here, too – the wider the news that this is a hoax is disseminated, the better for everyone.

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I’ve seen a Facebook post about cancer circulating among various completely separate groups of friends in the last few days. The information in the post claims to be from the Johns Hopkins cancer center, but it is most definitely a hoax. I was actually riled up enough to want to write a point-by-point refutation of the contents of the post, but fortunately Johns Hopkins have already done an absolutely stellar debunking job.

This kind of misinformation makes me SO MAD. It twists the available evidence that a healthy diet can reduce (NOT eliminate) the risk of developing cancer into statements that eating or avoiding very specific foods or groups of foods will prevent cancer. This in turn cultivates a culture of victim blaming, in which someone’s response to hearing that someone they know has been diagnosed is often “well, he/she eats [whatever], so of course they got cancer. I don’t eat that, so I won’t”. In fact, outside of some very strongly correlated exceptions (e.g. smoking as a risk factor for lung cancer, some genetic predispositions), it’s next to impossible to blame any individual’s diagnosis on any one factor – it’s a mix of your genes, your diet, your stress levels, your socioeconomic status, your hormones, your environmental exposure, and plain old luck of the draw.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing a book about the causes of cancer, to help the newly diagnosed and their loved ones understand what’s going on. Hoaxes like this serve as a kick in the pants to get myself organised and actually do it.

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End rant. But AAARRRGGGHHH!

The Rock Paper Cynic comic titled “That Awkward Zombie Apocalypse Survival Moment When…” would soooo happen to me.

I really am awful; I usually need to meet a new person at least two or three times, within a short period of time, before I can guarantee that I’ll remember their name. Running into a brand new acquaintance, or someone I only see once or twice a year, will often cause me to go completely blank. Luckily (?), Mr E Man has the exact same problem; this means we both quickly recognise the signs that one of us is desperately trying not to have to introduce the other to someone, and will just introduce ourselves in the hope of eliciting the other person’s name in return. When I’m not with Mr E Man and am desperately trying not to have to introduce the person whose name I really should know to a friend or colleague who doesn’t instantly recognise my problem, things often end very awkwardly indeed. It’s really very embarrassing.

There may be hope, though – not that I can suddenly magically learn to remember names, but that a simple linguistic shift could mitigate my embarrassment.

You see, I was listening to an old episode of the excellent A Way With Words podcast recently, in which the presenters and listeners were contributing words from other languages and English dialects that don’t have an equivalent in standard English, but that really should because they’re so incredibly useful. One such word was tartle, defined as follows by Urban Dictionary:

A common Scottish term to insert at the awkward moment when you temporarily forget someone’s name. Useful to avoid that occasional embarrassment.

Steve: Hi, Susan!
Susan: Hi . . . uhhhhhh . . . Steve! Sorry, I tartled there for a moment.

Now, I lived in Glasgow for three and a half years and never heard this word once, but hey, let’s ignore that inconvenient little fact (not to mention the unsavoury Irish definition at the same link) and work on a strategy to get the Scottish definition into common usage in every English-speaking country. Having a universally understood term specific to this problem would make it so much more socially acceptable; “sorry, I’m tartling” just seems so much more understandable and less disrespectful – something that could and does happen to anyone! – than “sorry, I just can’t remember your name”.

Joining my campaign might even save your life in the event of a zombie apocalypse…

UPDATE: it has been decreed that the online version shall heretoforth be known as Twartling

It’s ten forty-five

Six iPhones buzz with one voice

Time for our meeting!

Gotta love those synchronised calendars…

Comments in haiku form only, please!

I started writing this as part of a RBO Work Stuff post, but it got way too long so I’m making it into a stand-alone item. I’ll post the rest of the stuff tomorrow… probably…

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I’m taking a great course called Coaching Out of the Box, to help me with my work with our trainees.  Coaching is, at essence, a structured way of asking open, “clean” (i.e. free of bias and judgement) questions that will guide someone towards identifying their own solutions to their work or personal problems. I find it very intense – it’s a very different way of thinking, and I think we’re all finding it difficult to really, truly listen to what the coachee is saying while simultaneously thinking about the structure of the process and coming up with the next question – but very rewarding. It’s fascinating to me how some people come in with a very specific problem, which you expand wide open before focusing back in on what the real problem is (sometimes very different to the one stated at the beginning) and what to do about it, while others start with a very nebulous, ill-defined issue that you then focus back down in a similar way.

The structure of the course is two full day classroom courses, two weeks apart (which I finished last week), followed by four 90-minute practice sessions in a group of three students and one teacher (I’ve completed two sessions so far). The highlights of the classroom sessions for me were:

1. when they made a bunch of Canadians be purposefully rude to each other, to demonstrate the right and wrong way to listen to someone (everyone apologised to each other profusely afterwards);
2. the experience of coaching someone who’s a novice in something at which you’re an expert, so you have to constantly fight the temptation to just tell them what you know. This is something I experience almost every time I’m asked to help a trainee with the contents of the training expectations / career goals sections of their proposals, so it was great to get a chance to practice; and
3. the fun I had during the second session when I was handed someone’s list of pet peeves (we’d all written them down as part of a get-to-know-you session at the beginning of the first day, then forgot all about them) and had to ask him for coaching on an issue that, unbeknownst to him, deliberately triggered his pet peeves. It was hilarious – he got all red in the face and kept saying “I don’t know what to tell you, because if you knew me, there is NO WAY you would EVER come to me with THIS PROBLEM!!!” We had a good laugh at the end, when I handed him the list of pet peeves he’d written down…

The course is run by the Provincial Health Services Authority, and I was one of only a handful of people in my session who came from the research side of their operations. The other participants I met were paramedics, ambulance dispatchers and dispatch managers, corporate HR staff, nurses and nurse managers, physicians, psychiatrists, family liaison, and others I can’t even remember – a diverse mix, and I really enjoyed hearing about their work. My “triad” for our extra practice sessions contains one other researcher and one HR person. Colleagues who’d taken the course before said that the composition of your triad can really make or break the whole experience – one person had someone quit and said the other member of the group just wasn’t very committed – but I’ve been very lucky and have a great group.

One of the most valuable lessons from the first classroom session was that even though we’re just learning how to coach, we can still be enormously helpful to someone – I’ve already received and given coaching on several real-life work and other scenarios that really has got me unstuck on a couple of things, and the people I’ve practiced with have said that I helped them in a similar way. It was really great at the second classroom session, and at my second triad sessions, when people sought their previous practice partners out to proudly report what progress they’ve made since and to reiterate how helpful the coaching had been.

Since starting my new job I’ve really come to appreciate the difference it makes when your managers (and their managers) have taken this kind of course and have also put a lot of thought into other aspects of how a team works, how to foster team members’ individual career goals etc. I’m therefore very happy to have had the chance to learn some of these skills that have benefited me, so I can help our trainees in a similar way. I know this sounds very uncharacteristically touch-feely for one of my posts, but it really is a very powerful skill and something I’m really enjoying.

Lots of things going on, but nothing substantial enough for a stand-alone post. So here are some bullets!

• Having read numerous articles about how bad it is for you to sit all day, even if you’re very active at other times, I’ve decided that I want a standing desk. Well, what I really want is one of those adjustable desks that moves up and down – standing all day isn’t very good for you either – but they’re ridiculously expensive. When I’m at home I sometimes take my laptop into the kitchen and prop it up on a stack of books on the kitchen counter, but I don’t have an equivalent at work, and we just don’t have the budget for adjustable desks. So, a few weeks ago, I cleared a section of a shelf on our team’s bookcase, and now use it as a desk whenever I have any hard-copy reading, editing, or drafting to do. It’s not ideal, and I’m only spending around 5% of my time there (yes I track things like that) because so much of my work requires me to be at my computer, but it’s better than nothing!

Bookcase, as seen from my desk

Post-it self-portrait

• On a related note, a colleague has had a genius idea to get more people to be active during the work day. This is the same guy who runs all the work sports pools, and this initiative is along similar lines – everyone who wants to play puts in $5 and grants permission for their card swipes to be logged, and then for every day in March that you take the stairs from the ground floor to either the 5th or 6th floor, you get one entry into a draw to win the whole pot. (We share the building with another organisation, so we only have access to some floors, and have to swipe in (on the way up) and then out (except on the ground floor) of the stairwell). I think there’s about $400 at stake by now, and people are getting really into it – there’s even a side competition for the fastest climb to the 6th floor. I haven’t entered that one (my shiny new asthma’s still bugging me – yes, it has become chronic), but I did log my natural pace time at the beginning of March and will see if I get any faster by the end of the month. I was taking the stairs a lot before I got the cold that gave me asthma, but had been using the elevators since then, so this was a nice motivation to get back into better habits!
• I have a notebook that I take with me into every meeting to jot down useful information, action items for transfer onto my to-do list, silly stuff that might make a good blog post, etc. When I first started my job, I wrote down every little thing that sounded like it might be important, so there’s a LOT of potentially very useful information in there – but I’m terrible at finding it amid all the other crap. So I’ve started spending 15 minutes a day transferring the important contents of the notebook into an Excel spreadsheet, with different tabs for different projects then different codes for different topics within the project, so that I have a searchable archive. I just type in the very basics, but specify the corresponding date and page number in the notebook so I can easily find more details. It’s already coming in very handy, to the extent that my supervisor has noticed and says he’s going to start doing the same thing. I get through about two weeks worth of notes in 15 minutes, so I’ll soon be caught up and will start just adding that week’s notes at the end of the day every Friday. I highly recommend this approach, and just wish I’d thought of it sooner!
• I’m really very excited by the two papers in last week’s Nature describing circular RNAs with regulatory function. As with the recent discoveries of chromothripsis, RNA editing, and epigenetic modifications of RNA, it makes me wonder what other Big Deal phenomena are out there to be discovered. I’m also very curious to learn how long it takes other labs to jump onto this kind of discovery – the member of my team responsible for fielding sequencing requests from other institutes says she hasn’t had any specific epitranscriptome or circular RNA sequencing requests yet, but will let me know when she does. Methinks it won’t be long for either…
• The birthday card I got from my colleagues last month is a) very apt and b) very useful:

• I’ve taken it down now, but keep it in a drawer for easy access; my primary work drinking partner sits diagonally opposite me, separated by a divider, so I can wave the card over the top of the divider to discreetly invite her out for after-work drinks without disturbing anyone else. Her birthday card has a glass of wine on it, so she can reciprocate in kind.
• Work is fun!

Last Saturday was my second time at Vancouver Change Camp and, just like the first time, it was a day full of very thought-provoking sessions about how ordinary people can change their world for the better.

The last event took place right at the peak of the Occupy movement. Although I didn’t go to any of the sessions led by people involved with Occupy Vancouver, they did tend to dominate the overall theme of the day. This year’s event was more diverse (I even pitched and led a session myself – a last minute decision, of which more later, possibly at Occam’s Corner rather than here!), with no overall theme. However, I chose to attend sessions along a personal theme: politics. I met people involved in an organisation called PlaceSpeak (a platform that anyone can use to state their thoughts on any aspect of local politics, and that politicians can use to assess public opinion); someone running for office in the upcoming Provincial election; and tons of other interesting people. I participated in conversations about public consultation; making politicians accountable; how to contact, influence, and help your representatives; electoral reform; and how to encourage longer-term thinking in politics.

We covered more ground than I can get into in a single blog post (selected thoughts of mine and others are still visible on Twitter though), so I’ll leave you with the most awesome thing I saw all day: a video made by Frances Ramsay, a local high school student who went to several of the same sessions as me, sporting a most excellent “Future Climate-Change Voter” button. Frances had some great suggestions about engaging young people via better education about the political system, and having lived here as a non-citizen for seven years (and getting my citizenship ten days after the last Provincial election. GAAH!), I completely understand her frustration at not having a vote when you’re surrounded by people who don’t care and don’t bother.

Enjoy! And remember – if you have a vote, you have a responsibility, too.

One of the themes of the last year or so is that a lot of my traditionally solitary pursuits suddenly seem to have become much more social. The biggest difference is my job, but my evenings and weekends are also busier, with a greater diversity of social events than before.

Mr E Man’s seven-week stay in Montreal last summer really initiated the whole thing. Almost all of my own friends are people I know from my current or previous jobs – all of which have been located within a few blocks of each other – which means that our socialising is very much based on quick drinks at local pubs immediately after work; the friends we spend most of our time with on weekends and evenings were originally Mr E Man’s friends, and with a few exceptions they’re just not really in the habit of calling me rather than him when they’re planning a night out. So while Mr E Man was away, I became much more proactive about seeking out other opportunities to socialise.

Science. I was already going to geeky events like Cafe Scientifique and Science Online Vancouver, but wasn’t making a huge effort to go every single time; with Mr E Man away, I started being much more diligent about adding the events to my calendar (and also about fighting the lure of my lovely comfy couch after a long day at work). As a result I now know more of the other regulars than I did before, and I’ve continued to go to as many events as I can – sometimes bringing friends and colleagues with me.

I also tried Skeptics in the Pub once while Mr E Man was away, but while I met some nice, interesting people (some of whom I recognised from Cafe Scientifique) and everyone was very welcoming, it just wasn’t really my thing. I think I’d just rather base new friendships on something tangible in common, rather than joining a group for people who don’t collect stamps or a team of people who don’t play lacrosse.

Writing. Thanks to Bean-Mom’s recent post and the email conversations that followed, I’m joining an online (blog- and possibly Google Hangout-based) writing group. I think it’s going to really help to motivate myself to write even on days when I come home from work feeling tired and there’s a Canucks game on and there’s a cat on my laptop and it’s just so much easier not to write.

Stories. I’m a big fan of spoken word podcasts, especially those that involve storytelling – The Moth is the granddaddy of them all, Story Collider is a science-specific version, and there are an increasing number of other similar shows available from all over North America. I listen in the morning after Mr E Man leaves for work, while doing laundry and other boring chores, at the gym, and on transit – this, to me, was therefore the epitome of a solitary pursuit. However, that changed when a friend from my last job* asked if I wanted to go with him to see the This American Life live show, which was being simulcast at a local cinema.

I didn’t really know what to expect, but the event was AMAZING. Watching and listening as part of a big crowd of fellow fans, and joining in the musical number via a Guitar Hero-type interface on the screen and a specially created musical iPhone app, just made the whole experience so much better. Since then I’ve discovered that Vancouver has two live storytelling shows of its own – Rain City Chronicles and The Flame (the latter is a Facebook link – they don’t seem to have any other website). I’ve now been to The Flame once and Rain City Chronicles twice, absolutely loved it, and am already starting to recognise regulars at RCC. RCC is the better known and the more polished and professional of the two (with the result that it’s sometimes hard to get tickets – we squeaked in via the waiting list last time), but both feature a mix of funny and serious stories, good music, and beer.

Oh, and I also went to Interesting Vancouver while Mr E Man was away, which doesn’t have a podcast but certainly lived up to its name. I met someone there who I now see at both of the other storytelling events in the city.

Sadly, I couldn’t use my ticket to the Vinyl Cafe live show in December because I had such a bad cough I’d have ruined the event for everyone, and I’m not even going to try to get into TED when it moves to Vancouver next year ($7,500 and you have to write an essay to get in?! I’ll just keep watching the videos online, thanks). But live storytelling is now one of my favourite things, and a permanent feature of my social calendar!

And finally… a shocking abuse of the work email system took place last week:

Figure 1:

The pilot study will commence in three weeks… very exciting! I will report back…

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*This was a new-ish guy who I thought was super grumpy and unfriendly, until we went on a work trip together. We realised during a big group dinner that we had tons in common (and I realised that he wasn’t grumpy at all), but sadly he moved to Australia just as we were becoming friends. Science SUCKS, reason #281.