New skills

I now know how to dissect a cockroach brain.

Disrespect

I acknowledge that as a female who looks like a teenager and works in a STEM Science/Technology/Engineering/Mathematics) position, I can expect to come across a degree of sexist behaviour in my career. However, acknowledgement and acceptance are two very different things and it doesn't make it less jarring when it happens!

And it happened this week when I was invited to meet a collaborator to learn how to use their instrument, which is used to automate some experimental steps. When I asked if it was possible to use the attached computer while the system was being run, the collaborator unbelievably replied to my question with, "A computer is not a toy".

THE FUCK IS THAT?!?!?!

Luckily while conversing with my boss later about the device, he said he had also noted that that specific collaborator seems to be the type to dismiss women in research. While I'm glad he mentioned it without me having to say anything, it definitely makes me not want to use that instrument and to look for better collaborators!

Random food on my desk.

So I've been having a bit of a difficult time at work lately and to cheer me up, one of my colleagues left food on my desk with this sweet note. There was a bit of confusion as to who actually did it - I'm not really used to randomly receiving unsolicited food - but we figured out who the champion/culprit  was and I was thrilled!

Thanks Everyone's Sunshine! It was delicious!

In other news...

I am now writing as a blogger for a science magazine. Given that this is published under my real name, I am hesitant to provide a link here. 

If you're interested in reading these entries, please send me a message. 

Change has come.

I think I'm pretty social but I know that in a profession that has many, well...special people, this is not always the case. I'm not the only new arrival in my current department and it was decided that a few of us would go out to dinner together and then have some drinks as a welcome and get to know each other kind of deal. However, I was a bit surprised to find out from not one, but two of the guys who came along that in the entire time that they had both been in the department - a duration of about two years, the lab had NEVER gone out socially. Like, what the hell? I mean, it's not necessary to be best friends with everyone at work, but given the amount of time we have to spend together and the number of people who move to Munich to join the group, the least that can be done is to take them out and show them around! I have sworn that these lonely days group days will be no more and that we would continue this new tradition fortnightly if necessary.

Maybe my new boss will grow to hate me for this, but the group will sure appreciate it! ;)

Crankypants

This past weekend, I ended up working what is considered an extra days' work outside of working hours. How did this happen, do you ask? I was asked on Friday lunch time to complete some powerpoint slides for my new (current) boss...and he wanted them by Tuesday. That doesn't seem like too short a time frame except that I hadn't completed the analysis he wanted for the slides and there was no way I would have been able to do it that day. The only solution was to do as much as possible on Friday night. But I also had to finish a manuscript as quickly as possible and send it to the other authors before the start of the weekend. Better do that after I finish the slides. And then I had to finish a project report for my old group, despite the fact that, you know, I don't work for them anymore. By Sunday afternoon, with the progress report open on my laptop and the sun shining outside...I felt like throwing my computer out the window because I was working on a stupid report while the sun was shining outside!

Luckily for me, a friend was able to answer my call of distress and we went to a biergarten to calm my nerves with alcohol.

But !%$king hell, I've still got to finish that report >.<

Data!!!!

I'm not going to say what it is, only that it is interesting and promising :D

Yeah.

I really hate that colleague of mine.

On Monday I discovered something that had been requested for them had not been carried out and then yesterday morning I found evidence that it was because they had cancelled the request. This annoyed me because they had neglected to inform me, despite the fact that I am the person responsible for this. When I discovered this, I immediately fired off an email asking for confirmation that this had indeed been cancelled. I received no reply for the entire day despite seeing that they had clearly read the message. I waited today to see if they would reply in the morning. Nothing. I'm flying to Run/Fun/Yumdon this evening and will therefore leave work early. The especially shit thing about waiting for confirmation is that since I will be on vacay (wooh!), I have to then organise someone else to take care of this while I'm gone (boo!). So this isn't just inconveniencing me, it's now going to affect someone else!

Tummy ache :/

This post-Easter week has been quite busy and I haven't been able to do my usual 'Cook at home/ eat leftover at work' schtick, and so I've had to eat at our notoriously bad mensa for the past few days. Maybe that's why I ended up with a tummy ache today. I decided to go home early rather than risk having to eat mensa food again for the third day running and risk dying.

And that's how I ended up at home making some childhood comfort food - macaroni in chicken broth with carrots and spring onions.

Exactly not what my granny would have made for me - she would have made me congee. 

Swag!

In happier work news, I attended a scientific trade fair this week. I love trade fairs. I love goodies and freebies as companies try to woo us into buying their things. This is also helped along by my general shamelessness in asking for more and more freebies. After a slow start to the day - Markus and I actually had been tasked with talking to different companies about the possibility of purchasing a new piece of equipment - here's most of what I collected! 

Booyeh.

Not pictured are the edible freebies such as the bag of popcorn and fairy floss that I had, and the FREE BEER from the bar in the Sarstedt stall. But there was something there that I really regret not getting which wasn't the best pipette in the world from Thermo. A person at Eppendorf was wearing a lab coat that said ' Your expert in cell culture' or something like that. Markus, who had been fairly low key about the swag-grabbing and a bit taken aback at my general excitement at being the trade fair at this point actually said to me that if I could score the coat, he would wear it in the lab everyday. Alas, it was not to be and the Eppendorf people were a bit shocked when I asked for it. Ah well. 

 Here's a few other photos from our day out!

With the Thermo chameleon...

and the Metabion cow. Metabion were giving out stressballs shaped like cows but I really wanted the cows that came dressed in tracht. Alas, they were only free if you bought over €100 worth of primers. Dang. 

My boss has no words...

So after a bit of consultation with my boss (by email) and the dangling of publication carrots regarding yesterday's email, she and I came to a compromise in which I would breed the animals, with the concession that the colleague would have to aid me in the work but not need to do any of the handling.

When informed of this decision by email, this colleague refused to provide this aid. His reply also excluded our boss. Her response was that she was gobsmacked and will talk to him in person on Monday.

I'm looking forward to this!

I have no words...

I don't like to bitch about work here, but I can't hold back about this.

At the start of this year, I had to take over a colleague's mouse colony because he claimed that doing animal handling was giving him 'psychological problems', and that if I didn't want any of them myself, he would cull the colony. Today he sent me a two line email requesting that I produce 20 of these mice at P14 for his experiments. I should also mention that he sits perhaps a metre or less away from me.

THA !"$% DO YOU GET AWAY WRITING AN EMAIL LIKE THIS TO ME?!?!

Another manuscript?

For the last...year...Nicki and I have been trying to get labelling for a particular class of cells to work. This involved different antibodies and even emailing people I didn't know from other parts of the world for advice. This advice turned out to be fruitful and it finally worked in the last few weeks. The final step in what I hoped would be the closing of another project, when discussing the outlook with someone else involved in the project (after an absence of communication for a few months), we have decided to change tack, and I'm now writing another collaborative manuscript. This time however, we're angling for just a short communication with a 1500 word and 10 paper citation limit.

As Markus pointed out, with those low numbers, I could probably finish a first draft of the manuscript in less than a week...except I won't because I'm flying to London tomorrow! MUHAHAHAHA!!!!

Another paper online!

I'm equal first (listed second), and it's that crazy paper that I was writing back in August. The paper was actually accepted a couple of days before Christmas (Merry Christmas!) but it's only just been posted online now. The good thing is that this paper is my third first author paper in 3 years, and second from this position. The really good thing is that this paper is from a collaboration between myself and the group I'll be joining later this year, so we all know that we can work productively together. The great thing is that I now know that with the right project, I can complete a study from initial experiments to online publication in SIX MONTHS (and write a full manuscript in 2 weeks). Current boss says this is the record she knows of!

Well, that was quick.

Two weeks into the new year and one of my resolutions is already kaputt! And it's not the one about speaking more languages! What matters is that I tried :D

Work finally works!

I can't say what it is but I am happy with what I've got. 

Present for me!

Check out this awesomely appropriately nerdy advent calendar from New England Biolabs!

Nicki came into the lab to show it to me...and then gave it to me since she already had one from Eppendorf! And even better - the reverse proclaimed that it was filled with Ritter sport chocolate! Since I'm only here for half of Advent, I'm generously sharing it with Markus who won't be here for the first half. Win-win!

Gossip girls

I  had lunch with a former colleague who many other colleagues hadn't met before because he left two years ago. We had a merry discussion about a paper on which we're co-authors. But this then caused my day to day colleagues to freak out because they thought I was having a date.

A DATE.
AT WORK.
AT OUR NOTORIOUSLY BAD CAFETERIA.

Damn people, give me some credit!

Grainau - Day 2

Following the standard breakfast buffet, work commenced with us again taking a walk around Grainau and forest at the base of the mountain. Unlike the previous day, it was sunny and actually quite warm.

It was mighty tempting to sit down and soak up the rays on this pig bench!

But instead we continued through the forest where the light gently spilled through the trees,

And onto the lake,

Landing perfectly onto this bench by the lake.

Oh hello! As we stood by the lake, all these ducks and (I think) trout came over, ready to be fed! I could have fed myself on them :D

Awesomely clear blue skies...

If you compare these photos from the ones from the previous entry, you'll see that the snow has visibly receded! Hurrah!

God, it's so disgustingly pretty

Anyway! After another morning's session of science, we settled into our last gourmet lunch. The lunch entree was a salad with mushrooms but I forgot to photograph it. The lunch main was another story altogether. 

YES. RABBIT WITH BROAD BEANS AND SCALLOPED POTATOES. IT WAS WORTH IT!

Eventually, we all rolled out onto the Autobahn back to Munich. At some point, I noticed that despite the fact that we were a large (and full) vehicle, we seemed to be overtaking everyone. Leaning over (I was in the front seat), I saw that Markus was driving at...180kmh!!! When I mentioned the speed, he said, "We'll get back to Munich faster!" Unfortunately, there was a traffic jam near Donnersbergerbruecke so we didn't really.

But I did get to take this lovely photo of the moon near Grosshadern.

Grainau day 1

So yeah, a few days after arriving back from North Rhine-Westphalia, I was packing my bags again to head off to Grainau, right in the south of Bavaria at the foot of the Wetterstein Alps, for a work retreat. As you know, I'm a notorious outdoors-hater and with our hotel set at the base of Waxenstein, everyone was joking that I'd be forced to climb the mountain. But you know what?

Damn me if it wasn't totally beautiful!

Like, really! All that snow I complained about last week was doing it's thang.

And the mountain range was just sitting there going "Hell yeah!"

Also, this was the view from my room. Yep.

Walking into our hotel, I noticed that the hotel...is listed in the Michelin guide?!?! Were we going to be receiving awesome food? Yes we did!

Creamy mushroon soup made from locally picked mushrooms. I wished that bowl was larger.

Grilled salmon with crispy potato crust. Very nice.

Following lunch, we were supposed to get to work in various workshop groups but...we decided instead to hike around the forest!

And admire the mountain again.

Argh! It's almost too much!!!

 

When I asked Markus what the piles of stones meant, he said it was probably something city people did to confuse other city people.

If you look carefully, the side parts of the seat on the porch of this hut are shaped like people!

Autumn colours being pretty.

You don't really want to know about what work things we talked about (I got some good feedback though); you really want to know what we ate for dinner!

The green stuff = herbed butter. The grey stuff = SCHMALZ!!!

Appetiser = beetroot soup.

Entree of speck-wrapped plums with celery, citrus, and pear salad and roasted almonds.

Main of angus beef fillet (medium rare) with root vegetables and red wine jus. Yes.

Dessert of banana in caramel sauce with sorbet. To be honest, I was disappointed in this. Reading the description, I thought the banana was going to be caramelised :(

We then reconvened to the hotel bar and drank schnapps and port wine, hijacking the sound system to play music from our phones (seriously, bad hotel bar music), while the staff wondered how it was possible for scientists to be raucous drunks and waited for us to go to bed so they could go home :D