A different way of doing things

So it comes to that time again where I have now been in the country long enough that I no longer feel particularly like the new guy, despite being the youngest and newest in the lab. I now have my very own NMR license so I can book time on the NMR and run samples as and when I like without supervision. I more or less set up my own reactions and run them, making the right and wrong (quite often the latter...) choices about what to do. I set up, use and shut down Schlenk lines entirely off my own back. Quickly the scary things from undergrad labs are becoming tame. Even the scare stories from demonstrators are not quite as intimidating... HF was being used in the lab the last few days with those using it wearing nitrile gloves. This is one of the few times even nitriles are worn in labs... This is just a whole different ethos to York. In York they hold your hand throughout and enforce lab coats, specs and safety gloves at all times. Specs are an obvious yes, lab coats seem semi optional here although technically it should not but gloves are frowned upon. The attitude in the labs is that if you are spilling things on your hands you are a bad chemist and shouldn't be using things so gloves are only brought out for the nastiest of chemicals. This makes sense in so far as gloves were unwieldy and more often than not contributed to the spillages during undergrad labs, but the whole on your back be it attitude is something that was quite a change.

The whole taking responsibility for yourself thing is a big step, arguably as big a step up as from a level to degree chemistry. Research labs are a different beast to the labs with which we are familiar. I've been given a topic and it is my responsibility to run with it. I have to find my references and sources. I have to decide what experiments I'm going to do. If I do nothing I will look stupid, and really, that is the only real incentive to hard graft. Thankfully I enjoy it so have been working fairly hard and I'm glad as enjoyment is probably the thing keeping that effort as there is no obligation to keep to a structured week. The autonomous nature of my new study is both daunting and liberating, for now I am following moderately standard syntheses to make the ligands for my later complexes, but awkwardly when I come to my project proper, so my catalytic activity assays the catalyst which I have to synthesise is not yet reported in the literature - I have to devise an effective synthesis for it. There are a few potential routes to it but as of yet none have really been successfully tried with any vigour. But I have plenty of literature for how analogous compounds do what I want so hopefully I will get some joy out of it, and in the true style of the department - maybe even a paper. Looking at it from a cynical perspective however the chance for failure with this project is very high. Que sera, sera.

Other things that have been happening involve an improvement in badminton although it is still a less than ideal situation. I've now been watched and am viewed as someone that is not terrible, so I am invited into much better games (the jump in quality being similar to that of the York club to B/A team standard for those whom that might mean something) which is refreshing, you always play better against people of a higher standard and in general the games are more fun. So there is light in the club after all. The big bug bear for me however is that the club is not in the least bit social. Maybe a third of the members at the club if that are actually affiliated with the uni and of those that are quite a few are staff. As a result it's quite an insular community on top of what is already a cliquey and difficult to broach club with the issue that middle aged Chinese men with only broken English tend to avoid playing with people they have to speak English to. In one game there was even issues as someone on court did not understand enough English to comprehend the score. This leaves me rather jealous of this years York badminton club who seem to be having a rave time in my absence, still, I knew what I was leaving behind. Another interesting thing is that the club neglected to tell a significant number of those that go that Wednesdays playing night had been cancelled in lieu of some campus boxing/80s disco event, something for which I would not have expected sartorial elegance was of particular consequence however as I left for home somewhat disappointed, I was amused if only for a second, on overhearing someone in full cocktail dress with tuxedo-ed boyfriend at arm say "are we over-dressed for this, loads of people are wearing thongs [flip flops]." That boxing should be an event that requires dressing up confuses me but apparently this is something acutely Australian - certain events that are not particularly classy are fashionable and thus people dress up for them despite the inherent incongruity....

I have come to the unsurprising, if possibly not objective conclusion, that all Australian beer is rubbish. Some beers are passable but even then you are kicked in the teeth by the silly measures. Drinking more than 3 schooners (just over 2 pints) seems to elicit terrible hangovers the next day despite these quantities being pitiful. The same cannot be said for the wine however, I took the advice of Ant, my supervisor's lab deputy to buy a bottle of red Wynns Coonawarra Estate for the bring your own at the Italian we went to for Jess' 24th birthday last Friday, and was pleasantly surprised, maybe not all screw cap wines are cheap and nasty... I shall report back when I've had more opportunity to drink around further, but for now that bottle of wine if slightly pricey, would appear to be a safe bet.

On a side note that is not at all worthy of being sidelined, one of my worst fears in coming over here was realised last night when I learned of the ill health, and potentially terminal from what I understand, of a family friend Joe Reynolds. This has cast a bit of a shadow over my day as Joe is a wonderful and enlightened person who is the epitome of the adage 'you're only as old as you think you are.' If it is the case that I have in fact seen Joe for the last time, I wish him all the best. I'm not terribly well informed of what is happening and I do hope I'm jumping the gun, but if it is only a short time he has left I wish him all the best and hope that he enjoys whatever he has left. I suppose it has to happen to us all at some point and in Joe's case he certainly has made the most of it, but it is scary that we're all on borrowed time.

Apologies for the melancholy ending but was just something I felt I need to get off my chest, it is the things like that which bring on the homesickness, and I can definitely feel a little bit of it starting. Lets hope the extra vitamin d helps pick me up. And maybe Wales taking Australia in the third place play off tomorrow for a little bit of coffee time bragging rights.


PS something largely insignificant and very Australian that has been winding me up a lot recently, as such things often do, is the use of the word heaps. So for the phrase 'that sounds really fun', a typical Australian would say 'that sounds heaps fun'. Please tell me you would find that grating as well...