Worky stuff

Hello again!

I have yesterday and today off work as a kind of long weekend, so I'm taking the time to rest and catch up on all sorts of things I've not been doing, like updating this blog. Yesterday was lovely, as Dom had a day off too, and we had a nice lazy day in the house, involving a fry-up for lunch and some napping in the afternoon.

I've not been particularly well lately, just one thing after another for about a month. I started coming up in massive patches of nettle rash, about 10cm in diameter and extremely itchy, so I went to see the doctor and she says it's cholinergic urticaria caused by any of the following: stress, exercise, illness, generally being too hot, spicy food, etc etc. She gave me stronger antihistamines (fexofenadine), and told me to take them with ranitidine, which is an anti-heartburn drug, but it apparently works in conjunction with the fexofenadine as an antihistamine. Bizzare, but it works. It's mostly settled down now but I still have to take the tablets every day or it comes up again.

I also got a cold sore, which I haven't had for aaaaages, just in time to go up to Birmingham for the IBMS Congress last week. Brilliant timing. And then on Tuesday, my ear started aching, and so I have otitis externa again. I think I must just be run-down and tired, so I took yesterday and today off to relax and recharge my batteries. I feel much much better than I did, though, so I must be doing something right!

Tuesday was my Specialist Diploma assessment, at long last. That's what I was all stressed about. I don't know anyone else who's done it (I know OF a couple, but not to talk to personally), so I had a pretty distorted view of how hard it was going to be, i.e. I thought it was going to be next to impossible to pass it. Needless to say it wasn't, though it wasn't really a walk in the park either, and both me and Sue, who did it on the same day, passed and apparently did very well. Phew! So I need to wait til January now to upgrade my membership of the IBMS to Member (I'm currently a Licentiate, and need to have been that for two years before I can be a Member), and probably after my IPR, which should be in the next couple of weeks, I'll start the Higher Specialist Diploma, which is the entry qualification for Fellowship.

Congress was really good - a really tiring couple of days, like any conference, but very interesting. I was a bit disappointed with the hotel though - it was a Novotel, which is a chain of 4* hotels, but they were so full they put me in a smoking room, which was pretty disgusting, as the smell was ingrained in the carpet (which looked like it needed a bloody good shampoo). Stupid, as well, as I later found out one of our party was in a non-smoking room, and she smokes! It was a bit late to do anything about it by then though, as we were only there for one night. They had a really good breakfast though. We went out for dinner on the Tuesday evening, and I discovered panna cotta. Wow, yum! Unfortunately sometimes it's not vegetarian...bloody gelatine! I wonder how difficult it'd be to make a vegetarian one?

That's all I can think of just now, so I'm going to sort out the laundry and make a cup of tea.

Happiness

I'm not very good at keeping this updated, am I? Life gets in the way of me writing about it, I suppose. So, what's happened in the past three months?

I got a car! It's a Renault Clio, dark grey, excellent specs and very good condition, and I'm really pleased with it so far (I've been driving it for a whole seven weeks, though for some reason it seems like I've been driving it forever). I've seen a lot of muppets on the road though, and to think it took me two years to get my licence...I wonder if some of the drivers I've encountered have ever had lessons! However, it's made a huge difference to our lives, particularly mine, as I get an extra 15 minutes in the house in the morning, and I don't have to catch the train to work any more, which is lovely. No more arriving at work soaking wet and having to wear clown trousers (the departmental scrubs, which are XXL size) while my own trousers dry on the windowsill!

I am also very close to finishing my Specialist Diploma, and hopefully by the end of the summer I'll have had my assessment. I'll be straight on to studying for the Higher Specialist Diploma after this, though - no rest for the wicked! I love it though, the studying and learning, since I love my work and the field I work in, and everything new I learn about it. Good thing, really, because it's a legal requirement that I do the studying - not necessarily the formal diplomas, but I need to prove I'm up to date in my field in order to keep my job, and I see the diplomas as the best way to do that, and they're also the only way to progress in the job as well.

The diet has not been going quite so well the past few weeks. I got to the magic half a stone point (actually, I lost 8 lb), and got a bit complacent, in addition to not walking 20 miles a week any more (4 miles a day to and from work, which obviously I don't do now I'm driving). I've put on three pounds, so not quite as bad as it could have been. I still have a net loss! I let myself eat all the junk I wanted at the weekend though, and I'm back on the diet today. I need to get some exercise done as well, it's just getting into the habit.

I intended to do some when I had a week off (not last week but the week before). Me and Dom had the week off together for our birthdays (28!), and it was such a lovely week - we both really needed the break and the time to spend together, but as per my usual fabulous timing, I came down with a cold on Dom's birthday, and spent the whole week sniffling and sneezing. I did dose up on sinutab, though, and managed to avoid the usual sinuses full of hot lead and the two-hour-long nocturnal coughing fits, which I was delighted at. I feel much better now :)

We went shopping on Dom's birthday to get each other's presents, and it was actually a really good day, which I was a bit surprised at - I didn't expect it to be bad, or anything, but Dom's not really a 'browsing the shops' sort of guy, and we went into Southampton city centre, which was fairly busy. We both had a good time though.

It was roasting the whole week we were off, as well - official heatwave weather. It was so hot sometimes we had all the windows in the house open and were dressed in the lightest, loosest clothes possible, and we were still too hot to do anything! I even slept without a duvet several nights, which is impressive for me, who is usually freezing ;)

I am re-reading the entire Harry Potter series, in preparation for HBP coming out this week. We're not sure when to go and see it - I want to avoid the cinema being full of kids and teenagers, but the schools are due to break up for summer soon, and I haven't got any weekdays off before then. We shall sort something out though. I'm quite excited about it, the trailers look good, and I'm hoping not too much has been cut this time - a lot was lost from OotP. I am currently just under halfway through GoF.

Stuffed pasta for dinner tonight (spinach and ricotta tortelloni/tortellini - I don't know which!), which both me and Dom love. We eat it plain, though I have a little drizzle of olive oil on mine, and it's so good! Especially as it takes three minutes to cook and there's minimal washing up involved! We need an early night tonight, as we ended up going to bed at 11.30 last night. We were watching a very weird film (Wanted), and we do not know what happened to the time.

I just have to say, though, it's been a bit of an up-and-down time, the past year and a half or so, and we've had some big changes, me and Dom, but things are settling down and evening out, and I am hoping it's showing - I feel very happy and content with my life now. I'm proud of us, that we've bounced along on these turbulent currents, firmly fastened together, and now have come out the other side of it. It bodes well for the future :)

Numbers

Do you know what? I so can't count! Ten years ago, I was about to FINISH my first year of uni, not start it, lol!

In other news, my tulips are out, and they are looovely. Really need to get the grass cut though, it's getting a bit unruly.

Also, why is car insurance so expensive? I know as a new driver I'm high risk, but surely not that flipping high risk? All I can say is I'm glad I'm not a 17-year-old boy!

Bangers and mash tonight (cauldron sausages for me, of course), with gravy, and some 24, and a good old sleep...I'm halfway through my working week, roll on Thursday night! There's so much possibility attached to the night you come home before a weekend or a holiday...same as waking up on Saturday morning and having the whole weekend stretching out before you. It goes so quickly though!

Revelation

Well, a couple of people have asked about my status message on Facebook a few days ago, so I thought I'd explain myself.

The status message in question was that I have 'had a small but important revelation, and am very happy about it, thank you'. What was it in relation to?

Well, I sit here occasionally and get frustrated with the way something or other in my life is going, usually how slow the progression is at work, and how much time you are required to sit 'idle' before commencing the next step, the next challenge. Not being used to it, as I've always been in situations where I've needed to learn and achieve as much as possible as quickly as possible, it gets on my nerves to have to endlessly WAIT and, most of all, I think, having other people dictate the pace and the targets to me.

So I thought about it for a while, and I have come to a conclusion. I am 27 years old now, shortly to be 28. Ten years ago I was a couple of months away from leaving school, about to sit my last batch of Highers (and a CSYS, now obsolete, how's that for making me feel old!), and looking forward to starting university in the autumn.

Since that point, I have achieved far more than I, or, quite frankly, anyone else, ever expected of me. I started university, made several mistakes and learned from them, worked my arse off, and got a first class honours degree in a subject I love (and there's the first time I exceeded expectations - my advisor came up to me at the graduation ball and said 'well done, you never know who's going to get the firsts, do you?' - nice backhanded compliment there, huh?).

Having given up all my university holidays to working in a petrol station and as a chambermaid (and later in the reception of the halls of residence), I decided towards the end of uni that I wanted a bit of time out, as I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with myself. So, naturally, I signed up for a three-month expedition to Borneo. Not what anyone would have expected me to do. Anyone who knows me knows I am very much about the creature comforts - warm duvets, hot tea, and lots of books, and I don't like being dirty. I also don't like being rained on, I'm not fond of insects, and I can't climb a stepladder without getting dizzy.

So a three month stint in the jungle, sleeping under a tarp, and with four pairs of knickers and two t-shirts doesn't seem like my kind of thing, does it? Well, I raised the money to go, I got fit, went on the first aeroplane journey of my life (Manchester to Kota Kinabalu via Kuala Lumpur and Brunei), and I'm not saying it was easy, but I kicked ass. I really did. There were things I struggled with - I wasn't as physically strong and didn't have the stamina of some of my expedition-mates, but I put in my best. I dealt with the cockroaches and leeches and mosquitoes and spiders the size of saucers (eating grasshoppers in the toilets, eww), I dealt with getting soaked once or twice a day, I dealt with being perpetually sweaty and grubby, and I dealt with a three month diet of soya curry and noodles.

I also climbed a very steep hill by way of a rickety set of steps and ladders to see a cave of bats and ancient tombs, I carved part of an ironwood pole with a chisel, and helped build a boathouse. I trekked through jungle while carrying a pack that weighed as much as I did (or maybe more, it was very heavy), while helping to construct a usable trail, and I built my own bed, and I helped bring one of the leaders back to camp when he hurt his feet and could barely walk, even though it meant several more hours of trekking. I waded through rivers, I picked my way along a precipice in the dark. I helped build a nature trail, I saw wild orang-utans breakfasting where we camped, I did experiments for the Royal Society and got other people interested in the work too. What I think was probably the best thing, though, was that I led a small group of my fellow volunteers up Mount Kinabalu. Half the height of Everest. In the dark. It was amazing. As one of the 'weaker' members of my group, in fact probably the weakest, that was an incredible responsibility to be trusted with, and I'm glad to say I did it well. I will always be grateful to Andy and Dave for letting me do that.

On returning home, I had a bit of a rest (I was knackered, covered in mosquito bites, suffering from a GI infection, and had some strange paraesthesias in my feet because of them being wet all the time), and then applied for a PhD.

I got an interview, so travelled to Leeds, had a great time talking to my prospective supervisor, and was offered the studentship a couple of days later. I spent the next three years in a state of alternate agony, frustration, and elation as I got to grips with running a very large project. I managed all the time given to me, and was described by one of the people I worked with, a very experienced and talented microscopist, as the most organised person he'd ever met. I knew exactly what I had to do and when and (usually) why. I worked in two labs, as my project spanned two disciplines, and one of the labs, my main lab, was seen by certain other labs as a waste of space, working on trivial projects. It was a small lab, but the work done in it was of the highest quality. My supervisor is swimming against the current, both institutionally and in terms of her theories, and I admire her grit and persistence.

During those three years, I was part of a small team teaching dissection, gross anatomy, and histology to medical, science, and allied health students. This was both terrifying and absolutely brilliant. I started each term convinced I couldn't teach any more, wondering who'd decided this was a good idea. The medical classes were by far the best, as they were the ones who got to do the dissection, so it was a much more interactive style of teaching than some of the others. I was perpetually thinking on my feet, cajoling the lazy ones and the coasters, trying to help the strugglers and stragglers, and trying to dispel the myth that anatomy is boring. It's bloody not! I always had good feedback, and one of my students was awarded a prize for coming top in anatomy through the year, and while that was mostly to do with her, of course, if she'd had a poor teacher she'd not have done it. It was a great feeling to see the lightbulb suddenly come on above a student's head when they'd been struggling with a concept, and know I was the one who'd sorted the problem.

So, I had a deadline to finish the research, because my funding was running out, and I wanted to come down to Hampshire and be with Dom, who I'd been in a long-distance relationship with for almost three years, and it was torture being away from him. The summer of 2006, any idea of free time or rest went out the window, and I worked and worked and worked. I have never worked so hard in my life. I did it. I was only a couple of days past the deadline, owing to a broken electron microscope. The earliest entries in this journal are from that period.

Moving in with Dom was brilliant, as I knew it would be. I continued writing up my thesis, while studying on a biomedical science course at Portsmouth University one day a week. I paid for that myself, using up the money I'd saved from teaching. As if that wasn't enough, I spent a day a week in a hospital histology lab getting experience (and a foot in the door), working for free. Running low on money, I got a job in a bookshop (which I loved - best ever Saturday job!). There was a little while I had no free time, between writing up, studying, and the work experience and paid work I was doing.

It paid off in the end, though, as I got a full-time job in the lab I'd worked for free in, and I passed the BMS course, and finally submitted my thesis two months before the deadline. The viva rolled around, and to my utter shock and amazement, I passed it with no corrections to be made to my thesis. This is very VERY rare. I didn't even entertain the thought of being that lucky.

From there, I've become a qualified biomedical scientist, I'm about to submit two papers for publication in academic journals, and maybe what I seriously doubted I'd ever achieve, I've passed my driving test.

I think that's pretty damn good for ten years, my first ten years of adulthood, and if I've done all that in the past ten years, surprising myself (I'm certainly flipping surprised at how long this post is!) and everyone else, those who think I'm not up to much and a bit stupid and naive, then what can I do in the next ten years? Who is anyone to dictate my pace and my targets?

My intention isn't arrogance here, it isn't to say 'look how brilliant I am', or anything along those lines...but for some reason, maybe down to myself, I don't know - I probably give off an air of not being sure of myself, of not being confident, whatever, and maybe that makes people read me wrong. Maybe it undermines how I actually am and makes people see me as still a child, with very little ambition or experience or knowledge of the world and how it works, and through thinking about why I get frustrated, I've proved to myself that it isn't so, by deliberately setting out to take the hardest option, the biggest challenge, and succeeding with it. This post is mainly a way of reminding myself that there is more to me than most people, including myself, realise most of the time, and if I have successfully proved myself more capable than expected in the past, I will do it again, and I will do it on my terms.

In the words of John Locke, "Don't tell me what I can't do", and quoting the advice of Dave Habgood, who let me lead, "Don't say you can't do anything again".

And that was my revelation, and I'm still very happy with it, thank you.

Guess what?

I PASSED, I PASSED I PASSED I PASSED! I had my driving test on Tuesday morning, and was terrified, but ended up with only 4 minor faults (you can get 15 and still pass), so I'm very pleased with myself! The faults in question were: wrongly identifying the brake fluid reservoir under the bonnet (I mixed it up with the engine coolant reservoir, oops!), twice hesitating a bit too long at junctions before emerging and turning right, and turning a little too late during the reverse bay park at the end, meaning I had to pull forward a bit to correct my position in the bay. No big deal at all, and only two actually happened on the road. I'm going to take the Pass Plus course before I buy a car, though, as some insurers give a discount for that, and the course covers things like motorway driving, that I'm not willing to learn on my own.

Other than that, I've had a pretty busy week - I had a training review at work on Wednesday, which showed I'm pretty close to finishing my specialist portfolio, so that's excellent, as I get a promotion when I pass the assessment for that.

Yesterday I went to London, for the 6th Annual Schools Science Conference at Kensington Town Hall. It's part of National Science and Engineering Week, which coincides with Healthcare Science Awareness Week, and the aim is to get schoolkids (14-16 years old, i.e. thinking about subject choices and possible careers) to realise that science in the real world isn't really like the science they do at school, and that it is in fact relevant to their lives and that most importantly of all, you can have fun doing it! So, I was there as a representative of the IBMS, my professional body, and my main job was to help facilitate a discussion group on the pros and cons of screening programmes. My groups were talking about breast screening, and it was really interesting that some of the kids really thought about all the problems and benefits involved, some with no prompting at all, they were pulling these questions out that I really hadn't expected (would YOU expect a 15-year-old boy to think of the potential difficulty a woman might have feeding her baby if she'd had breast surgery?). Some of the kids weren't so engaged, but the others, WOW. There is hope for the next generation of scientists yet! It was a great day, and I got to see the others that I did this with last year, so that was really nice. I hope to be able to do it again next year.

I'm also going to sign up to STEMNET, which is a network of 'ambassadors' for science, technology, engineering and medicine, and it involves work like that in the science conference, plus some public engagement type stuff, so it's the kind of stuff I'm already involved in.

I'm glad it's the weekend though, but for some reason my left wrist is in agony and I have no idea what I've done to it. As a result I'm typing one-handed, so apologies for any typos that may have crept in.

If only time-turners were real...

So then, I failed my driving test again.

BUT.

It was a stupid mistake I made because I was a bit put out about some rude bin-men trying to wave me round their rubbish-lorry, when I couldn't see past it and it was parked in the middle of the road. It led to me getting flustered and forgetting to 'creep and peep' at the junction at the end of the road, and there was a car to my right, which I didn't really get near, but my moving out made it slow down a bit, and then when I pulled in to the side to let it past, it inexplicably stopped behind me O.o. Anyway, that was the only thing I failed for, only 4 minor faults, none of which were any sort of big deal, and I'd already proved that I can do the creep and peep thing on the test.

So, I can pass this stupid thing, I was just unlucky this morning. It doesn't stop me wanting to kick my own arse into next week though, because I was FIVE MINUTES from the end of the test, and would have passed if not for that.

And my instructor says that I did really well, considering, and just to get on the internet and book another test. I know my previous instructor said that a year ago, but I think we've established he was talking out of his arse, and that I've come on a long way since then. I was in no way ready to take any tests last year, hence I shouldn't have done them, as I had no hope of passing.

The upshot of this is that I have been ordered to completely discount the first three attempts, under my old instructor, and to consider today's attempt, with my current instructor, as my first go. This is fine by me.

I have my next (second!) test booked, and I WILL NOT be telling anyone but Dom and my parents when it is, as I did think 'oh sod it' and told whoever asked when today's was. Oops.

So...second time lucky? I hope so!

Okay, maybe winter is still here then ;)

IT'S SNOWING!