Beyond the Drawbridge

M’very good friend, let’s call her Brunhilde, was having trouble with senescence last week.

More specifically, her cells were sick, and there were black lumpy bits in the media. So I gave her some of my cells, and after a few days they started to have black lumpy bits, too. I suggested she changed serum supplier, and gave her some more of my babies (although, in her own words her recent record suggests DOCS should be called). As Brunhilde was not around when I split them, I secreted a fully labelled flask in the incubator in the IC lab cell culture room.

You know when you’ve done something wrong, don’t you?

Apparently there was mass hysteria in the IC lab at this strange flask that was, to hear it, oozing bugs and viruses and mycoplasma everywhere (let’s forget that, all modesty aside, I probably have the best aseptic technique in the building). I didn’t know this at the time; it wasn’t until I caught up with Brunhilde and DH that the full story unfolded.

Turns out that our very own aggressive-passive-aggressive emailer, Mr Kidd, was the one getting upset. But that’s OK, we said; he’s German. And a very German German at that. Thence the conversation deteriorated somewhat. We talked about How Strange the Dutch Are (and Especially the Southern Dutch), about Belgium (how it exists purely as somewhere for Europe to fight its wars), various theories about second generation immigrants to Australia (look, just don’t ask, OK?) and back to Germans. I told the joke (second time around I got it right) about Germans and debating societies and wars, and how I had persuaded one particular student in Cambridge to stop telling me how they used to do it in Germany.

We all agreed that while individual Germans can be very personable, they do have a peculiar tendency to, ah, organize things. Especially when multiple.

And then DH said,

“How on earth did they ever manage to lose the war?”

Laugh? I nearly bought a round.

I’ve wibbled about the Honours talks, and the reaction to them (also here, for those of you who don’t know about it). In that post I mention something darkly.

Last year there were a couple of proposal talks where I distinctly remember thinking something like ‘What the fuck are you thinking?’. More precisely — what was the supervisor thinking? My reservations were borne out by the end of Honours talks, in which the killing (although the student, under instruction from the supervisor, probably said they were ‘sacrificed’. As if that makes it better. Or true) of several dozens of pigs and mice were described to zero scientific benefit. This year, although I attended possibly less than half of all the talks (if only because I am fed to the back teeth with LIM domains), one talk sticks out as being particularly whisky tango foxtrot.

The student actually seemed a fairly smart guy, which makes the project even more of a travesty.

So this guy’s project is to take stool — no, let’s say it, shit — samples, shake (some of) them in broth to grow the facultative aerobes, and then streak them on arbitrary antibiotics to see to what they’re resistant. And then repeat this at some undefined timepoint (from the same shitters) to see if it (i.e. the antibiotic resistance) changes. In this way he will see if the population of the tiny proportion of shit that is aerobic changes.

Never mind that this is a stupid assay. Never mind that he’s only going to start with 4 shitters and if any of them has to take antibiotics in the time period their shit is unusable, never mind that the effect of a stonkingly good curry is going to fuck this up good and proper (thanks, m’good friend pippadog) and the hundred and one scientific reasons that this sucks; what kind of introduction to the doing of science is this?

I have my own theories. I think the supervisor in question wants to do this (because she’s a fruitcase) and won’t — or can’t — give it to any one more senior in the lab (because they would tell her to fuck right off). I think she’s stuck in the 18th century and is trying to turn shit into gold. I think a lot of things, but I’m getting incoherent, and frankly, I can understand and would happily defend why points one and two came up.

It is a crappy project, and it stinks, and I am really really sorry anyone has to put up with this.

It is my pleasure, most mornings, to take coffee with the Black Queen in the common room. We like to get there early and steal the biscuits. On occasion, work intrudes and we get there a little late, to find that all the nice ones are gone and we’re left with scabby teddy bears or dried arrowroot. All the good seats have gone by this time, and we are forced to sit with — by definition, almost — unpopular people.

This happened a couple of weeks ago. One table only had space, and two of the chairs were taken. One of them was occupied by PR, who for reasons unknown seems to believe that he and I are the only two people in the department who use Macs. I have come to this conclusion because every time he sees me at coffee he asks me a Mac-related question. Every time.

This in itself would not be so bad, except they are quite — how shall I put it? — singular questions. In other words, it is quite possible that no one else has these problems, or more to the point, no one else in the world would have initiated the sequence of events that inevitably led to this particular problem. I tend to begin by saying “Well, I don’t do it quite like that” or similar, but he never seems to get the hint.

On this particular occasion the script started to unfold as usual, and BQ started talking to someone on my other side. Can’t blame her, but my heart sank when I realized I was going to have to spend my coffee break listening to this drivel. But hope flared in my heart when the incomparable MS walked into the common room, and headed towards our table. Surely, I thought, she’ll have something interesting to say, and deliver me from this?

But no. MS, bless her, obviously thought our conversation was too important to interrupt, and sat down out of hope’s reach.

Twenty minutes later, when MS rose to leave and I was about to gnaw my own leg off, I saw my chance, made an excuse and caught up with her at the stairwell.

“M,” I said, “next time you see PR talking at me, please, please please please, rescue me.”

A creak, and a slam. Behind you, the portcullis bars your exit. In front, the Black Knight has a glint in his eye. . .

Many things may be written about life in an academic laboratory in the Colonies. This is the place for what remains.