{"id":146,"date":"2008-03-17T13:56:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-17T13:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/03\/17\/the-ghosts-of-st-patricks-days-past\/"},"modified":"2008-03-17T13:56:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-17T13:56:00","slug":"the-ghosts-of-st-patricks-days-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/03\/17\/the-ghosts-of-st-patricks-days-past\/","title":{"rendered":"The ghosts of St Patrick’s Days past"},"content":{"rendered":"

1997<\/span><\/strong>. I\u2019m an undergrad in Newcastle. The lunchtime pints of green Caffrey\u2019s. The late arrival at a small group seminar in a darkened room. The realisation that the only chairs left are stacked up at the back of the room. The knocking over of said stack of chairs by my drunken friend. The giggling. The staring. The sudden improvement in our street cred.<\/p>\n

1999<\/span><\/strong>. I\u2019m doing my PhD in Glasgow. The realisation that it\u2019s much harder to get away with a hangover when doing lab work rather than attending lectures. The group decision to make an exception to the weeknight drunkenness ban. The massive party. The epic hangover shared by all students in all labs in the department. The rolling of many PIs\u2019 eyes at this dreadful behaviour. The shaking of my friend\u2019s hands as he tried to pipette into teeny tiny PCR tubes. The dropping of my CAT assay thin layer chromatography plates into the tank of solvent. The CAT assay that, instead of looking like this,<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

looked like a frog. The legendary response of my supervisor, who\u2019d had a few hangovers in his day: \u201cWell, that\u2019s not much use to me. Maybe you could submit it to the Tate\u201d.<\/p>\n

2003<\/span><\/strong>. I\u2019m a recent immigrant to Canada. The confusion at the different manner of celebrating St Patrick\u2019s over here. The \u201cfamily-friendly\u201d parade downtown (WTF? St Patrick\u2019s is not supposed to be family friendly). The bar. The arrival of the kilted Scottish bagpipe band. The realisation that when in Rome\u2026<\/p>\n

2008<\/span><\/strong>. It\u2019s Monday. It\u2019s not fair. I\u2019m too old for such bad behaviour these days. I did celebrate a Patrick\u2019s 40th birthday on Friday, and I\u2019ll have a glass of Jameson\u2019s Irish Whiskey tonight. That\u2019ll have to do. I\u2019m only half Irish after all.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Happy St Patrick’s Day! <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
p.s. another conspiracy theory <\/a>and some actual peer-reviewed science <\/a>on my Nature blog.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1997. I\u2019m an undergrad in Newcastle. The lunchtime pints of green Caffrey\u2019s. The late arrival at a small group seminar in a darkened room. The realisation that the only chairs left are stacked up at the back of the room. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14,19,3,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drunkenness","category-education","category-personal","category-science","category-silliness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}