Just a quick one today, partially because life day to day life can be quite dull and sometimes there just isn’t all that much to report on. Today this is only partially the case. Today is mostly a case of being absolutely knackered.
The travel, the new life, the not being able to sleep properly for a few months through workload and/or stress is starting to mount up a bit. Several people have asked if I took a break between the PhD (which most in the know actively acknowledge as the most stressful time in one’s life) and moving on out to Israel. When I reply that there was only 10 days between the PhD defense and me starting here, they look at me like I’m mad. When I then point out that 1 of those was hang over recovery, 1 was sorting out corrections, 2 were spent getting my life into bags and others were spent attempting corrections or stressing out over the ensuing move. Seems, what everyone else with a shred of sanity does is take a couple of weeks, disappears off grid somewhere on holiday and recharges.
Pfft! Cowards! I haven’t stopped yet.
It hasn’t caught up with me yet. But I can tell that it’s going to. Maybe not now. Maybe not for a month. Maybe even 6. But there’s a nagging sensation that when I crash, I’m going to crash out. I don’t want to go as far as nervous breakdown – but I’ve seen others go that way.
Still I almost entirely slept through last night. No weird bed sensations. No rude mosquito awakenings. I did step at to the loo at 4, only to hear the Indian housemate’s alarm clock going off. Presumably he was already lost his marbles. But at that point, I couldn’t care less and going back to bed was more important. I was just grateful for the lack of new mosquito bites, though the 2 day old bug bites are now at the point of supreme itchiness.
The work itself today was pretty dull. Mainly my own tiredness was a big obstacle to get past. But it’s the start of a new project and that usually involves a huge amount of reading. Reading a whole couple of trees worth of dry, dry, so terribly dry material. Research papers from 20 years ago, previous Masters kids’ theses, etc., etc.. In this case, the Masters thesis in question, whilst the content is reasonably enough the presentation is some of the worst I’ve ever seen. The bad English is forgiveable when it’s not someone’s first language, but when you print out from MS Word, and the figures aren’t in focus or have 6 different fonts in different sizes and non of the colours match I want to force-feed the paper back to the guy.
Anyway, it seems that most in the lab were in a similar mood, as today’s topics of conversation included the Witch of Endor, the French revolution, how societies (Roman/Greek/Persian/French and now America) only last ~200 years for the wealth divide ends in revolution and of course the new Apple Mac update.
Still at least with a bit of science, and more specifically talk of protein structure and proteins interacting with stuff I felt a little less of a fraud for being here. I was also reminded of the money and luxury that comes with being at a research institute. The Masters kid was talking about protein production and purification in a trivial manner – which I found odd for a physicist. That was until I looked at the methods section for all this impressive biochemistry.
All samples provided by [technician] or Weizmann proteomics lab
Yep, that’s right. The technician started the project, at which point the phone was picked up and protein was delivered 2 weeks later. I can pick up the phone here, sit on my arse and do nothing for 2 weeks and achieve the same amount as I did with 2 and half years in Norwich.
And who said that money can’t accelerate things?
Still I had to bail early (gone 6) from work to get to the supermarket. See, yesterday, I bought enough for a day or two to keep me ticking over. Completely forgetting that the entire country shuts down at 5 o’clock Friday night for pretty much 36 hours. No shops, no public transport, nothing. Which is fine, cos I was planning on doing nothing more than a few more of these PhD corrections over the weekend. But, a guy has gotta eat.
So this time at the supermarket I walk out with almost 3 times as much as yesterday, yet somehow coming to almost the same price. Unfortunately, dinner was terrible as I have only a single saucepan, and apparently the Israelis can mess up pesto. Not sure how they can make it bitter enough for me to require sprinkling sugar on top of pasta….
Oh, and having researched it a bit. All coffee here is terrible. Instant Nescafe is about as good as it gets. The locals simply refer to it as “mud”. These same locals advised me against tasting Israeli chocolate for a few weeks yet until I’m used to Israeli flavours.
Still, at least work feels like work. Which means I can survive most of the day without crushing loneliness and depression of throwing my life away. That, typically is reserved for the space between getting out of bed and having breakfast (including showering under a showerhead that does a fantastic job of irrigating my naval) and the space between leaving work and sitting here writing this. Something terribly therapeutic about consolidating the thought process into a string of consciousness rather than running around in circles of panic.
Let’s hope the thesis corrections are enough to distract me from my first weekend alone in years.
By
