From far and wide, O Canada

One of my oldest and best Vancouver friends…

  • who was a grad student in my postdoc department…
  • who I first met (properly) at a house party in early 2002…
  • who turned up with a huge group of friends…
  • who the party’s host told me I should definitely meet, because she was dating (now married to) a local guy with tons of single male friends…
  • at whose home I met one of said friends for the first (and second) time…
  • who picked me up and drove me, my Dad, and my sister to the resulting wedding when no local taxi firm would take an advance booking, and when they were then all 100% occupied by a double cruise ship arrival when I called back later as instructed…
  • who has worked insanely hard for years to convert her professional qualification into something that is recognised in Canada…

is going to become a citizen less than 2 weeks after I do!

We’re planning a combined party in celebration of this momentous event. 100% Canadian food, booze, and music.

Pretty awesome, eh?!

Posted in Canada, personal | 18 Comments

Silver linings

There’s one good thing about the Canucks being out of the playoffs.

Before:


After:


(Explanation for non-hockey fans)

Posted in photos, silliness, sport | 7 Comments

Thanks, Auntie Mermaid!

Your present for Saba

was most gratefully received!

Posted in furry friends, photos | 6 Comments

If in doubt, PANIC!

email sent: 11.45 pm on Tuesday

email read: 8.03 am on Wednesday

email content*: “Cath, please make sure we have the project ready for the extremely important meeting with external collaborators at 8.30 am, thanks”

my existing knowledge of said project: 0%

panic level: extreme

time of resolution of problem: 8.17 am

resolution of problem: “I wonder if he meant projector?”

meeting: awesome. Seriously**. I really, really love my job sometimes! Science rocks!

——————-

*paraphrased for blog reader comprehension
** the completely unrelated afternoon meeting was distinctly un-awesome

Posted in career, silliness | 9 Comments

This just gave me chills

And it’s a commercial!

Posted in music, videos | 7 Comments

Grant wranglers of the world, unite!

I’m in the early stages of submitting a pre-application to a new (to me) funding organisation, which involves finding and summarising a lot of information from their website.
I was impressed by the following option:
The PI also may provide permission to an individual in his/her organization to [...] assist in preparing the application
Wow! A funding body that acknowledges that people like me exist! And that lets me sign in using my own username and password, which I can control! I usually have to get the PI’s login details out of him or her, which is never ideal and occasionally causes significant delays when a password is forgotten or changed without my knowledge.
The website also provided a moment of amusement:
To save a copy of the forms above, right-click on the name and select from the pop-up menu that is displayed either "Save Target As..." (for Internet Explorer), or "Save Link As..." (for Netscape), or something similar in your browser.
Methinks helpdesk is sick of trying to track new browser trends, and is quite rightly encouraging those pesky Safari/Firefox/Chrome users to fend for themselves1.
1) Jealous? Me? Nah, I love my IE7 and wouldn’t change it even if I was allowed2.
2) not true

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

How dumb am I?

Important things I forgot to mention in my last post:

  • I’ve had a chat with my boss, and I’m now much more confident about keeping my job when my contract runs out in November! The exact source of my salary – and therefore my job description – is still to be decided, but my boss and other PIs have seen enough benefit from having me around that they want to keep me. I won’t truly believe I’m safe until I’ve seen a new contract* and/or the first paycheque after the end of my original contract, but I’m feeling a lot more secure right now.
  • It was my two year blogiversary on Saturday! I only figured this out about 10 minutes ago, when I had to read my first-ever post for actual valid work-related reasons.

——————-

*I need to re-read the original contract to figure out whether I’ll need to sign a new one, or just keep on working away with no need for documentation.

Posted in career, meta, personal | 16 Comments

Good week!

In the last 7 days:

  • I found out that I passed my citizenship test, and I have a date for my ceremony! I’ll become a Canadian citizen* on May 29th. This means that I’ll miss out on voting in the BC election by a couple of weeks, but after 7 years of dealing with various flavours of immigration hassle, I’m not complaining!
  • I finally tracked down the cheque I was supposed to get in January, for some overtime I put in on a massive grant that had a budget for such things. Turns out they’d tried to just cut me a regular cheque, not realising that I was an employee and not a freelancer, and it got stalled when a different office found a match for my name in the employee list, but couldn’t find my email address. Now they know who I am, they’re going to add the amount to my next pay-cheque instead.
  • Another cheque is in the post! It’s the first of the royalties from a long and difficult freelance highschool textbook writing project that ended in January 2008. I’ll try to find out how much I’m allowed to blog about this 😉

So, yeah, I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself. Neither cheque is very large, but it’s a great start, and means I get to write off all kinds of interesting things on my next tax return. And becoming Canadian is very important to me, so that’s hugely exciting, not to mention a massive relief!

So, seeing as it’s the weekend, let’s have some fun!

We can haz captions?



—————————
*well, dual British-Canadian citizen. Just like Mr E Man! I wouldn’t have applied for Canadian citizenship if I’d had to give up my British.

Posted in Canada, career, freelancing, furry friends, personal, photos | 28 Comments

Hygiene hypothesis

The clinical building at my institute has always been very conscientious about infection control. They’ve had hand sanitiser dispensers for years, but in the last few months (before swine flu!) they’ve begun to supplement them with large numbers of new signs exhorting people to “stop the spread!”.
They’re also using a series of new stickers. Here’s the one on the outside of the ladies’ loo next to a seminar room:

I’d noticed that this number did not increase during the week since I was last in the building, a rather surprising turn of events given the amount of caffeine required to get through some seminars. But it was my colleagues who noticed that something much more sinister seems to be going on. As soon as I heard, I immediately dashed in there, personal safety be damned and iPhone in hand, to document these shenanigans for the benefit of my readers.
[cont]

Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 31 Comments

Hobbits ‘are a separate species’

So says the BBC.
For someone like me, who’s aware of the context (and hasn’t read the latest issue of Nature yet), this phrase made perfect sense. But you have to wonder how the average BBC website reader reacted to seeing that headline on the front page…

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments