Meep meep!!!

Just in case you were wondering:


a) I'm still alive
b) I've got LOTS to share
c) I've turned into the Road Runner.


It's been an incredibly busy week. The invigorating thing about working overseas is how intensely you work, and how hard you play. At the time, it can be exhausting, adrenalising, stressful and even depressing, but once you adjust to feeling like a walnut in a mixmaster, and to the sleep deprivation, you kind of get that rush you feel when you pop out of the bottom of a waterslide: wow, that was freaky scary, insane, and unpredictable, and I now have water up my nose, but it was FUN. Let's do it again!


Last Friday seems like a year ago, but it's where I should take up my tale.


Graduate students (that's postgraduate students to us Aussies) in the U.S.A. have to jump through a lot of hoops, relative to what I experienced as an Australian PhD student. They have to fight for funding  or fellowships, they have to undertake "pre-qualifying" exams, they have to take classes, and fulfill a whole bunch of paper-chase requirements. Oh, and do some research and write a thesis (or "dissertation", as you prefer).


Last Friday the grad students in Marc's lab were jumping through a hoop called the UCSC Graduate Research Symposium. This is essentially a university show-and-tell at which students from the entire university can either give an oral presentation or present a poster. It's intended to give the students experience at conference presentations in a low-stress environment, and give the various departments a chance to strut their stuff.


To lend solidarity to our lab's cause, I went along and check out Val's, Dan's and Kate's posters. I didn't realise there would be benefits extending beyond the sharing of knowledge. There was an awesome buffet involving something called "Lemon Bars". These are effectively a lemon meringue-style slice without the meringue, and they're rather yummy.

We got to eat our lemon bars alfresco on a sunny Santa Cruz Friday afternoon, while listening to a band. Tough stuff, this.

That evening, there was a shindig at Dan's where we played a lot of Band Hero. "Living on a Prayer" got a good belting, as did "Losing My Religion", more commonly remembered as Brenda and Dylan's breakup anthem for a generation of "Beverly Hills, 90210" fans. Let's hope the neighbours enjoyed our crucifixion of rock as much as we did.


Dan diligently manned the George Foreman and cooked us up a batch of gourmet sausages, while Mike looked after Val and I in style with the following creation:

It involved guava amongst its miscellany of magical ingredients, and it was rather tasty.


My contribution was an apricot tarte that I'd purchased earlier in the evening. I'd had a mild lapse in concentration when I went to pay for it with an Australian $20 note. Luckily I realised that something about the situation wasn't quite right before I handed over the bright orange, plastic note (especially since the Aussie dollar is kicking greenback arse for the first time in forever!!)