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Tuesday 27 August 2013

Day 7: Singing and Sarazin

I think that the blog posts I write during the week will be pretty brief, or bundled together in to multi-day posts when nothing really happens. As a breather from the lengthy weekend posts a few days ago, this will be brief and more serve as a sales-pitch for a friend, and a message of "I'm still alive" to those who may ask.

I've settled nicely in to the work routine, leaving the flat around 08:00 to catch the subway in to Manhattan. Some days it is hectic and busy, other days it is dead. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to this but I'm not complaining. I worry when it's too quiet that I've missed the last stop, or a bomb warning, or a madman on the loose or anything really. And then I worry when its too busy that I'm going to suffocate, or not be able to get off at my stop, or even be able to see if it's my stop, or that someones' going through my back-pack, or anything really. It's nice that the universe mixes it up for me.

The work day came to an early finish yesterday when the top floors of the building (8th till 13th, I'm on 9th) lost power and was running on batteries. I had plans for the evening, so this was a welcome disruption as it meant that I could get home, check in with people back home, and get some dinner before heading out.

I mentioned a few days ago that I  ended up at Pete's Candy Shop two days too early for the Robert Sarazin Blake gig. No such problems last night, although, a crap sense of direction on my part helped me lose my way to the bar. I eventually got there around half an hour before Robert was going to play, so I sat at the bar (checking with the bar man that he was definitely playing tonight) and had a drink.

I've played a good number of shows with Robert back in Scotland, with some of my earliest favourite gigs being at the TransEurope Cafe in Glasgow with him. Pete's Candy Shop isn't actually all that different in style to the TransEurope, except with a better bar and a PA for the minuscule stage. I heard the door open and in he walked, immediately recognising me and coming over to say hi. After pleasantries were exchanged, and the usual explanation of why I find myself in the States, he introduced me to Thomas who would be playing Trumpet and Saxaphone during his set. Not at the same time, I might add.

We went through to the venue area to watch the support act who was just about to start her set. The venue as a whole listed as having a capacity of 90, but in reality the small stage area has a capacity of around 30 and the main, seperate, bar area closer to 60. The style throughout the venue is 1940s, with fabric wall paper, a heavy pine bar and wooden bar stools. The lighting is dark but warm, and the drinks are affordable compared to Manhattan.

The support act didn't do much for me, who was a typical singer-songwriter of songs of love, and love songs. I finished my beer to early during her set, but out of politeness couldn't get up to go and get another. Finally, there was a short break while Robert and Thomas set up and so I could make a hidden trip to the bar.

They brought with them a small crowd of around 20 people, making the venue area feel very busy for the gig. Robert has just finished recording a new album in Brooklyn, and the audience was made up of a few friends and musicians who played on it. He started off his set with three new tracks from this record, the first being a tribute to getting old but remaining to be an independent, but respected, artist despite the lack of 'fame'. It was a barnstomper, with Robert on hollow-bodied electric and Thomas on saxaphone. Some moments were quite jazzy, then kicking it up to a Jungleland like solo towards an almost whispered middle section before a final chorus. It was amazing.
He only had a forty minute set, which didn't give much time for many songs. When he plays, it sometimes feels like he's making the songs up as he goes, with spoken intros given over finger picked guitars before he's segued in to the first verse of a song. The middle section of his set was full of older material, with Thomas switched on to muted trumpet.

For his final song, he had two of his audience members (who played on the album) get up and join Thomas and him for a last, unplugged song. I've grown a bit tired of acoustic acts unplugging for their last song, but this had a completely different feel. It sounded like music that was written in a barn, or around a camp fire with no audience in mind. Or, if there was an audience, it was written in the distant years gone by such that everyone knew it but hadn't learnt it. Like "This land is your land", or "Wild Rover" or, well, you get the idea.

The two of them had played a folk festival the previous night alongside Pete Seeger, and this inspired this sing-a-long to close the proceedings. The chorus is simple, and a good place to end this post too.

"Isn't it amazing what they're doing with plastic, I could have sworn it was made out of wood.
The world is changing, I know that it scares you, and I know that you'd change it,
If only you could"

Sunday 25 August 2013

Day 6: Walking and Williamsburg

I'm having a day of resting in my apartment today. I have a blister the size of a marble on one foot, and a smaller one on the other foot. I'll get to the cause of these in a moment. Today is spent watching as much Parks and Recreation as possible. I'm a relative newcomer to the series, and I have access to American Netflix here, so the moons have aligned.

Yesterday was a day of exploring, mostly on foot, a small portion of the city. I left my apartment at 11am and took a slightly elongated route through the neighbourhood that I'm living in towards the subway station to catch the J train towards Manhattan.

The J train runs on an elevated train track from Jamaica Centre to Manhattan, taking around 35 minutes from my stop (Crescent St) to my work stop (Fulton St). From my bedroom window, I can see the silver, usually graffiti'd, trains making their way above the roof tops of the neighbourhood. The tracks run along, and 40foot above, the main road roads of their routes, on rusty iron supports. When you are sitting next to a window as the train takes a sharp turn, it is very much like being on a Wild Mouse roller coaster ride.

Trains are usually busy, due to the route being one of the main ways to get from JFK Airport to Manhattan. The areas that I see as I travel to work, excluding Manhattan, range from beatdown to, well, not-so beat down. The fun fact regarding the J train (and the express Z) is that the rapper JayZ took his name from them because he grew up near Marcy Avenue. This is the second last stop before crossing the Williamsburg bridge in to Manhattan.

My original plan was to get off at Marcy and walk up to the Williamsburg bridge then over in to Manhattan, get food and then the train back to Williamsburg for a drink in the evening. I must have been travelling on auto-pilot because I, as I do when going to work, switched from the J train to the A train at Broadway Junction. This is a time saver I use when commuting because the A train is, mostly, an express service. I left the subway at the Hoyt station, checked a map and found that I was miles south of where I wanted to be, so, I started walking north.

I passed through Livingston Street, filled with shoppers and many recognisable shops (Gap, Starbucks, Macys) and several cheaper shops selling hats, shoes and toys. It could really have been any metropolitan street in any city around the world, such is globalisation. As I kept walking, I passed the NYC College of Technology and found myself at a small park at the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge. Checking my map, I gave up any hope of being able to walk to Williamsburg, and decided to change my plans for the day.

Manhattan bridge is a very long bridge, perhaps equalling that of the Erskine Bridge back in Scotland. There are all modes of transport using the bridge. There is a foot andcycle path either side of the central section which has sections for cars and other motor vehicles, and the J/Z subway line. It's a very noisy walk, filled with car horns, engines, police sirens, and subway trains clacketing away slowly.  When I was half way across the bridge, paramedics were dealing with a motorcyclist who had been hit by a taxi. It didn't look good for the guy, and the taxi driver had an ashen face as he stood by his vehicle alone.

It took me around 20 minutes to walk the length of the bridge, arriving in the China Town area of Manhattan on the east side. By this time it was getting to 1pm and the temperatures were reaching their peaks. My choice of flatcap and checked shirt over a t-shirt was starting to be a bit silly, but truth be told, I thought I was going to Williamsburg and wanted to fit in. Nonetheless, I decided to walk north along Bowery with a view to getting to the Willamsburg Bridge to cross back in to Brooklyn.

I was distracted by the sheer crazyness of the city on a Saturday and missed Delaney St, which passes over the bridge. I ended up in the Lower East Side, in parkland next to the East river. The bridge towered above me, kids were playing softball and the pathway was filled with joggers and cyclists. I sat on a bench for a moment, sweat pouring out of me and hunger starting to call for lunch. I had walked past a few Diners on my route, including the world famous Katz's Deli from When Harry Met Sally, and so, I decided to walk back over that area to get something to eat.

East Houston St has a large number of diners and deli's on offer. Katz deli is a run down, sixties building, crowded by 40 year old Nora Ephron fans and tourists. Knowing that this wouldn't be my scene,  I wandered to the next block and found a classical looking American diner. I was eating on my own, so the waitress gave me a seat at the counter and poured me a glass of water. After checking the large options on offer in the menu, I ordered a coke, and a burger with blue cheese and mushrooms.
I had two american men sitting either side of me, one chatting away loudly on his mobile phone, then other chatting up the waitress. The general noise and decor of the diner added to the all American experience. I don't think I've heard the phrase "Thank You VERY Much" as often as I did in the hour I spent in this diner. After leaving the diner, with a very full stomach due to huge portion sizes, I decided to wander around the Lower East Side for a while.

The Lower east side is quite similar to the West Village, but with a lower class, more friendly feel to it. There are many more dive bars and ale houses (including one called McSorely's), gig venues and food places here. It's definitely an area that I'll start to return to after work for a beer and something to eat.  I guess it has very strong parallels with Camden in London, but also reminded me quite a bit of Byres Road and Partick in Glasgow.

My feet were starting to really hurt by this time, and with it approaching four o'clock, I decided to get the Subway back to the apartment to rest for a few hours. My evening plans was to go to a bar on Lorimer St in Williamsburg to see an old friend, Robert Sarazin Blake, play a gig in Pete's Candy Store. This turns out to be a bar, and not a candy store venue hybrid.

There's a Lorimer St station on the J line, which made me think that this would be an easy enough trip to the bar and back. Arriving at Lorimer St, the first thing I notice is that it is set amongst some New York City housing association high rises, and that it's getting dark. Pete's is at 709 Lorimer St, so I start walking. And walking. The subway that I got off at is roughly 200 Lorimer St. As I walk up the street, I pass a few 7Elevens and a couple of bars. All in all it is a very quite and run down street with few people hanging around. Until I see, down one of the side streets, a proper NYC block party in full swing.

There was a proper stage, lighting rig, loud PA rig and perhaps 500 people enjoying themselves to a backdrop of heavy rap music. Rather than impressing them with my dancing, I continued up Lorimer St and found another Lorimer St Subway station, for the L line. It's starting to make sense now, and I find the bar on the next block.

On arriving at the bar, there is an acoustic gig going on in the back room with a small audience of around 30 people. I pull up a seat at the bar, order a Brooklyn Lager (very nice) and chat with the barman. It turns out Blake is playing on Monday rather than Saturday, I'll return for that. I got chatting with a guy at the bar who was from Philadelphia but staying in Brooklyn for work, and who was a fan of Franz Nicolay and sure that he'd encountered Mischief Brew.

This was most definitely a hipster bar in Williamsburg. The guy's all wore thick rimmed glasses, checked shirts, cut-off jeans, sensible shoes and discussed the merits of Weezers early albums compared with the careers of various members of the Smiths. On my other side at the bar, there was a girl trying to write into a leather note book. She was a writer (although she works in an office during the day) for various blogs and also freelances for a few reputable newspapers. I think I had found the Brooklyn equivalent of one of my close friends back home, and that helped.

Once I had finished my daily budget, I walked out in to the night and caught the L train to the J train back to my apartment and collapsed, with sore feet and blisters, in to my bed.

Right, back to Parks and Recreation.



Saturday 24 August 2013

Days 3-5: Dive bars and Distractions

I have decided to cut down the regularity that I'm going to post things here, prevents me from embarrassing myself every day through poor grammar.  It will probably mean that the posts will get longer. If bad grammar isn't your thing, you can always choose not to read these.

My phone is becoming full of photographs from this trip, as well as being eye candy for the blog, they are helpful to me for remembering what I've been up to over the last few days, it's like a slower paced version of the film Memento. I've been trying to keep my loneliness at bay through distraction and this has meant exhausting myself through immersion.

Typically I have been leaving work around 6pm and going for a long wander around the city until I find a bar to have a few beers.  The sheer size of the city astounds me: you can walk for hours and still only see the smallest part of the city. The city's size is also impressive when you look at it vertically, buildings tower over you in all parts of the city and dwarf others that would form the taller parts of the Glasgow skyline.

Wednesday


If ever there was a good way of experiencing the size of the city, it is by trying to get from Cypress Hill's to Newark Airport to meet up with my band's drummer, Woody. He was heading home after a long holiday in Florida and had a long lay-over at Newark. It took two and a half hours of public transport, comprising three subway trains and a NJ Transit train. We met up and had a coffee in the Marriot hotel before I had to head back to the city and get to work (taking a half day on my second day, smooth).
I've had this phone for over a year, and still can't
remember where the camera lens is.
I have found a bar around the corner from my office called The Iron Horse. It's a dark and grimy epitome of a 'Dive bar but it plays decent music, the beer is cheap during happy hour ($2 PBR, rising to $3 after happy hour) and the regulars, that I've met sitting at the bar, have been friendly and talkative. Each night that I've been in the has been raucous, on a par with the best nights at Cerberus in Dundee. There's a swing above the bar that people, typically drunk tourists or birthday partys, can use in return for a free shot of liquor. Then, the swing is removed and the bar staff dance loudly on the bar to rock'd up country music.

From the gents room in The Iron Horse

It's not the type of place I'd ever picture myself hanging out in, but the people I've chatted with through the evenings have helped me adjust to the surroundings. It's been useful for learning about the tipping culture, the various "Canoe Sex" USA Beers, and the strong "Noo Yoik" accent. A conversation moves very slowly when a drunk Glaswegian is chatting to a drunk Brooklyn guy, with drunken line dancing occurring on the bar, with tackity cowboy boots and loud music. Don't worry, I have a yet to get up on the bar.

Jet lag has still been flooring me around 11pm each night, at which time I bid fair well to the bar and catch the late night Subway back to Cypress Hills. Any fears that I had about the areas have been unfounded, it has shown itself to be a quiet and peaceful area.


Thursday

On Thursday I had planned on going to an open mic night in the Greenwich Village, but after walking by the place a few times (hello Social Anxiety), I decided against its muted atmosphere and and coffee drinking audience. Instead, I bided my time with another long walk from the West Village right down to Fulton St (where I work) via a couple of bars in the Lower West-but-kinda-east-central-Village. This was a financial mistake.

The area is very trendy (a real estate agent that I met in the bar told me a typical 2 bedroom apartment would cost around $1m in the area) and the soulless bars on the main street reflect this. A 'pint' of normal beer, during happy hour, was $6 in one place and a bottle of IPA was $8 in another. In order to force my body to adjust to the timezone, I decided to head back to the Iron Horse.

This night will be forever etched in my mind as "The night I heard a guy use the phrase 'I didn't choose the thug life, the thug life chose me'" when trying to chat up a girl.

No, it wasn't me.

Friday

There are strangely named parks and
streets all over the city.
On Friday I decided to retrace my footsteps from the previous night in order to find, and take a photograph, of a specific building that I had seen. My phone had died quite early on in the previous night and damned if I wasn't going to show people that I work around the corner from the fucking Ghostbuster's HQ! It isn't an exaggeration to say that there are times when walking around NYC feels like walking through a film set. This lends a degree of familiarity to the city, but also a slight disjointness from reality and life back home.

After I had achieved my goal, and photograph, I decided to keep walking uptown towards Lafayette and Broadway to find a bar that I had visited in 2007. I had to do a bit of internet sleuthing to work out exactly where the bar was since my memory of the night 6 years prior is a bit hazy. I finally found the bar, Puck Fair just off East Houston St. It's an Irish bar specialising in craft beers and american food. Much more pricey than I remember, and so, while I am waiting on pay-day, I only had a bite to eat (Buffalo Chicken Wrap) and a couple of drinks.

My tactic for going in to these bars on my own is to walk directly up to the bar, ask about happy hour deals (none in this case - fancy), order a beer and grab a seat. After the beer is delivered, I take my phone out of my pocket, find the free wifi and try and relax. I'm becoming well versed in the "pay for the beer plus leave a dollar on the bar as a tip" routine. After I've relaxed enough, I find that its usually about 5-10 minutes before someone next to me at the bar says "hey" and a conversation begins. I find this much easier than in Glasgow, where I can sit for a whole night in a bar and never say nor hear a word to anyone.

This city, thankfully, likes to make the first move.
My brother and I had this, but
in a plastic toy form

Tuesday 20 August 2013

Day Two; Science and Supermarkets

I couldn't face being a "Blogger In a NY Coffee Shop" (tm) again tomorrow, so I figured that I would write an evening blog instead. I've just finished the second day (I'm sure these blogs will start to be post less and less when I start to get in to a routine) and I'm still pretty optimistic about this whole trip. Only downside I have noticed is the poor quality internet on offer at 90% of the WiFi hotspots I've encountered.

After I finished with my bagel and coffee this morning, I took the subway from W14th St to Fulton, and then walked the short (2 minutes) to the office building. It's in a narrow street, with skyscrapers and other tall office blocks on each side. Street level is dark due to the high sides of the buildings, and it's very hot and humid due to the air being pretty stale and the traffic.

Street that I work on, note how dark it is despite the blue sky.
From the front door of the office block you can see the upper parts of the new One World Trade Centre tower (I've been calling it Freedom One Tower, but apparently it's been renamed). This really gave me a sense of how close all workers in the area, and not just the WTC office workers, were to the events that unfolded in September of 2001.
One World Trade Centre, from the door of my building
I met one of my new colleagues today, a nice guy who also lives in Brooklyn (but nearer the city, in Prospect Park). The idea of going to some micro-breweries has been raised by him, so I think he's a good guy. I was given a tour of the laboratories and the various experiments and work that is going on there, all very cool stuff with a high degree of confidentiality so I won't say much more. This is a travelogue more than anything anyways. 

However, I have been given a lovely office with a big window. The window is slightly useless though as all I can see is the neighbouring office workers, and neither the pavement below nor the sky above.
My Michael Douglas in Wall St style office.
One thing that is very different to working in this research laboratory and back home is the provisions they put on for staff. There is a constant stream of filter coffee, a fridge full of milk, juice (fruit and fizzy), oatmeal, breakfast bars, bread, biscuits, and fruit for the staff. There doesn't seem to be a concept of a "milk kitty" either. Maybe it's a ploy to stop the workers going out for lunch? We didn't go out for lunch today, instead, they ordered in Cuban food (I had a cuban port sandwich which was ace), as a welcome lunch for me.
A stocked fridge for the workers. 'MURICA!
After work, I took the subway to Cypress Hills and got the keys to my apartment. It's a large room I'm renting that has two large windows and an air conditioning unit. There's a shared kitchen and bathroom/shower between three bedrooms, but I've yet to meet any of the other tenants. Area seems quiet enough, and the subway stop is only a 4 minute walk away which takes 30 minutes to get to my office. 
My home for the next two and a half months.
It reminds me of when I lived in Maryhill in Glasgow during my first uni days. It's a very similiar setup with the shared facilities and the landlord living with his family on the ground floor. Very similiar area aswell, but much better weather.


I've also experienced my first American supermarket. Western Beef is just around the corner from the apartment and has all the tinned and boxed foods that I could want. It has a few fresh products on sale, but there is a massive price hike between the two. Case in point: 2L of Grape Soda is $0.89, 2L of Fresh Orange Juice is $2.39.  I love Grape Soda, so obviously I've bought both.

I think I've bought enough food to last the next week or so, and from this I can see that the cost of living in the states is much lower than back home. The prices are more or less the same numbers, but the currency is Dollar and running around two thirds of the pound.

Oh, and finally for today, meet my new pal who lives in the apartment.

Day 1

It's six am at the start of my second day in NY, and the first day of going to the office. A combination of jetlag and temperature/humidity has meant that I've woken up so early and covered in sweat. The hotel room I had for the night has a fan and an air conditioning unit, neither seem to be much use or have any effect. They did, however, provide a complimentary litre bottle of water which helped.

Saying bye bye to the Uk
It was a long day of travel yesterday, waking up at 4am to get to the airport for 5, to get a plane for 7, to get to London for 8 to get my Transatlantic flight for 10. Landing sometime around 1pm (6pm back home).  During my flight, I read Flower's for Algernon for the first time and really enjoyed. I think it'll be a book I return to time and time again.
I also watched a really, really good film called "A Late Quartet" about a string quartet trying to deal with the cello player (Christopher Walken) being diagnosed with Parkinsons. Then, to kill the last two hours, I found that they had the full of Series 5 of Parks and Recreation on the TV, so I managed to get through four episodes of that.
Saying hello to a humid, hazy and warm NYC.

An hour long train ride later (in which I fucked up my travel-card plans) and I was in the centre of Manhattan, lugging a heavy and badly designed suitcase down to the meat packing district to find my hotel, The Jane. 

After checking in to the hotel, and checking in with family back home using the free WiFi, I went for a wee walk around the West Village up to Midtown on 5th Avenue. Starting to get hungry, I found a diner on 8th Avenue, called "The Diner", where I had my first proper Cheeseburger of the trip (and a beer, since I felt that I deserved it).

Bliss
After eating, there's the issue of tipping the waitress to deal with. In this diner, the bill has a section at the bottom saying "10% is this much, 15% this much, 20% this much...".  The waitress had circled the 20% section which at first I thought was a bit presumptive, but then was ok with for a number of reasons: the food was good, the service fast and friendly, and the waitress (who was my first experience of a diner waitress on this trip) reminded me of the ones that Springsteen sings about on the Magic Album. I doubt her name was Shaniqua, and I didn't have coffee, but, if I did, she would have asked "fill?".

At the end the waitress gave me the wrong change, giving me a $20, rather than a $10, which my Scottish gut wouldn't allow me to take and leave - she seemed really shocked that I brought it up. Sorting that out and walking back down to the hotel, I took a trip down to the Hudson (which my hotel overlooks) and saw the NJ skyline to end my day.

New Jersey, from New York
Today is a busy day. First, I need to go to the laboratory that I'm carrying out my Sabbatical at, then head along to Cypress Hills to get keys to my apartment. I really don't know what to expect from the area I have rented a flat in. I asked, through a thread on the Brooklyn sub-reddit, for things to do in and around Brooklyn and was told how sketchy the area could be and that I should reconsider my accommodation plans. Other replies said that it was probably no sketchier than some areas of Glasgow.

Right now though, it's time to check out of the hotel and find some breakfast on my walk to work.

Have some pictures...

Meatpacking District

Heading up to Midtown
Washington Square overlooking One Freedom Tower. 'MURICA!

Walking up 5th Avenue towards Empire State Building

"Going crazy over that New York Scene on 7th Avenue"

One Freedom Tower from the banks of The Hudson, as taken by a 2MP Potato


Thursday 15 August 2013

Faith in open source software tested to the limit.

I'm a big supporter of open source software, I've used linux as my main operating system for the last 10 years (if not more). At work, as a scientist, I've made use of the large catalogue of scientific software and tools on offer to Linux users. I've always been a staunch supporter of open source over propriety software, recommending people seek out the alternatives before parting with cash for mainstream solutions.

However, over the last few years I've been noticing an increasing problem that I think needs addressed before there is mainstream adoption of Linux as a desktop solution. Namely: Brilliant software ruined by less than optimal upgrade cycles. More regularly than I would like, I update my system and then find that software that I base my work (and hobby) life on no longer works.

Scilab

Scilab is a mathematical software package. I've used it since I was an undergraduate physics student (graduating in 2005) as an alternative to Matlab. It formed the basis of my PhD thesis work in to signal processing and analysis, and I even delved in to controlling hardware with it's SciCos modules. Now however, I need to find an alternative because, after updating my system, Scilab's push to a new underlying API has been at the expense of being able to plot data on intel hardware!

No longer can I read simple data in and plot graphs. This is the simplest use of Scilab, and one that formed the basis of many images in my thesis and papers. I could understand if it was obscure hardware that the graphical library didn't work with, but seriously, Intel!??!? 


Mendeley

Mendeley is a wonderful tool for sorting out academic papers and keeping a track of citations. In a lot of ways, I would still recommend it. However, today, while trying to make headway in writing a few articles, I have found a very serious bug that makes it all but useless for its task: Mendeley is unable to insert citations in to OpenOffice. 

The developers have known about this bug since April, other updates and bugfixes have been issues, but this seems to be less than urgent from their point of view. From an academic point of view, I am no longer able to keep a dynamically updated bibliography section at the bottom of my paper as I write it. I can't even edit the existing reference list.

JackD

Ah Jack, the godsend for Linux Audio, which worked brilliantly for a good number of ages before some bright spark decided that it should go the same was as Pulse Audio (ugh), and upgrade to JackD2. Without warning, the wonderful multitrack studio software studio Ardour is unable to export audio without disabling all audio plugins (EQ, reverb, compressers etc). Fine if you want to render dull, unmixed studio audio, but that then misses the whole point of what a Studio environment is for.

Why?

It seems that developers of high profile open source software want to be seen to be staying ahead of competition, and by making use of the free nature of the upgrade cycles afforded by open source, rush out these upgrades without any proper testing. "The audience will test it" seems to be the mantra, forgetting that there is a reason that the community should make use of Nightly Builds (new stuff, not tested), and Stable builds (more stable than nightly, but needs more testing), and Release Candidate (stable as fuck, as good as the existing sofware but with new and WORKING features). 

Unfortunately, we are unwittingly being upgraded to Stable builds rather than Release Candidates and these problems arise.

Right, I'm away to find alternatives, until they break too.

Monday 12 August 2013

One week to go...

At this time next week I will have just gotten off my first flight (Glasgow to Heathrow) and be waiting to board the transatlantic leg of my journey. At the moment, I'm starting to get the fear that I've not done everything that I need to for the trip.

I've got a plane ticket, accommodation is finally sorted (seriously, this was the hardest part), and I've convinced myself that I only need an ESTA rather than a full visa (backed up by a letter from the Insistution who is hosting me). I'm trying to organise last minute drinks and dinner with people who I want to see before I go (mainly my support network - buzz word used by my therapist), and above all trying to put off laundry and packing.

Due to a cock-up with booking the accommodation by the University, I have had to book myself in to a hotel for the first night. I found myself a cool hotel called The Jane, which describes itself as "a boutique hotel located at 505-507 West Street, with its main entrance at 113 Jane Street in the West Village section of the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan,New York City.". It's only a couple of blocks away from where I'll be working, so should fit nicely.

After my first day of work, I then head to the room that I'm renting for the duration of my stay in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. I've been reading up on the area, and while not the most up-market of places, I think that my experiences of living in Gallowhill in Paisley, Govan in Glasgow and St Obswell on the Tay in Dundee have more than prepared me

The main task for this week is working out medicines and other health related worries for when I'm over. Have a meeting with my GP tomorrow to arrange Asthma inhalers and eczema steroid creams, a meeting with my "Doing Well" councillor on Thursday, and throughout the week trying to track down the latest line of university bureaucracy to sort out travel insurance.&nbsp

Friday 2 August 2013

Six months on.

Last post here was when I wrote about getting my new job. I'm now 6 months in to the position and things are going really well. I've been given a lot of independence on my research, responsibility for a laboratory area, students and confidence to apply for funding and seek out collaborations.

In general, my field is high frequency ultrasound. I find myself doing a lot of imaging  with the probes we're developing and fabricating, mainly of dental samples with a view to detecting and measuring acid erosion at high frequency. I still do a little bit of manipulation of cells, but not as much as I would like to.

Career changes

A couple of weeks ago I visited my PhD supervisor, and informal mentor during my last Post-doc position, to have a chat about work and how things have panned out for me since leaving Dundee. We both agree that leaving was the best thing I could have done for my career (and mental well being, but more about that at a later date).

The research group I now work in is a very small group, with two PhD students, myself as a Post-doc RF, a deputy Group leader/lecturer and my line manager who is also the group leader. The recession hasn't been kind to non-red-brick universities in the UK, and as such there has been a lull over the last few years for research funding at UWS. Ultimately, my position was created to re-start biomedical ultrasound imaging at UWS with a view to bring in funding to increase the group. No pressure then.

Suffice to say, the last year at Dundee University was the worst period of my adult life, and one that I'm in no rush to repeat. However, I did meet a few new friends who got me through it and kept me sane/alive. I owe them more than I could possibly say.

NYC

The major event in my work calendar, and one that has been looming since April, is a two and a half month visit to New York to do research with a leading Ultrasound group. In the first month of this new job, my boss recommended that I apply through SUPA for a travel grant to collaborate. In my last position, these opportunities were never brought forward. While I was allowed to travel a bit, my boss was of the opinion that he would deal with grants and funding, we do the work. His work. Looking back, this is not a healthy way to train young scientists who want a career in Research.

Writing a grant application for the first time is a daunting experience. Project costs, times, aims, goals, outcomes, targets have to be designed and, most importantly, sold to the judging committee. I'm not that good at 'blowing my own trumpet', something that comes from my Scottish genetics, and also from three years of having my confidence in my academic abilities pummelled in to the ground as an RA at Dundee.

Anyway's, it turns out that my application was better than I thought it was and I leave in a couple of weeks. I will be staying in Brooklyn and working in Mid-town Manhattan. I'm equal part excited and terrified.

Excitement versus terror

Excitement comes from working in a highly regarded laboratory, in one of the busiest cities in the world, meeting new people, and living in a different country for the first time in my life. Terror comes from much the same places, and the added fear that comes with being separated from my family and support network for a prolonged period of time. My wife is able to visit for 3 weeks in September, but for the other 8 weeks, I'll be flying solo in to the unknown.

I promise to post regular updates here during my visit, hopefully using it as an academic travelogue.