Fuckwit
There's a moth trying to fly through my window from the inside. If I weren't totally naked and quite comforable, I'd go help it. Ah well, it'll still be there when I drag myself out of bed, I suppose.
Halloween/ birthday party las night. Got a bit drunk and did something predictably stupid. Fool, fool. Trying to keep some sort of postgraduate mystique while surrounded by pesky, relentless undergrads. Instead, got drunkdrunkdrunk and snogged my academic mother. Not technically meant to have academic parents, but being new apparently makes me fair game. Then panicked, lost sense of a) perspective and b) humour and got locked into that old "it's very simple; either you find me attractive, or you don't" debate, which is always a sure sign you're about to upset someone (why give a peson only one way out of a situation? It's just mean) AHH. I think, at one point, she told me that I was trying too hard to be a psychologist.
Bollocks
Maybe I'll go for my academic dad next time. Just for giggles.
And mymymy, aren't undergrads strange beasts? It's the force of their personalities that's so hard to deal with. They thrust their identities in front of them like some sort of physical barrier such that you can't actually see who they are for all the information they broadcast.
I'm sureI was the same. I know I was. It's weird to get a handle on whatl me and all my friends must have been like, though.
Spandrel
All alone in my lab for a moment. The only other guy who's here today has just left the room. Presumably the building too. I suspect a cig break, but you never can tell.
Went to a big "how to teach undergraduates the stuff" thing today. Spent the hours until lunch (free, yey!) sitting in groups talking about the dangers and triumphs inherent in small group teaching. Fun fun. Was in a group with 2 physicists and a mathematician. Nice guys, but it seemed beyond them to conceive of a subject where tutorials do not involve students preparing answers to complex mathematical questions. Ah, how I sneer at other disciplines.
Anyway. Had the free lunch, then decided I really couldn't stand being there for another 3 hours, cut my losses and ran. Have been sitting in my lab ever since. Doing sort of... nothing. Well, I ran some analyses, read a paper or two. Sent a gazillion emails to a variety of people. Now am... searching for distraction.
Might go home shortly. Have dinner. Go find beer.
Walking past a group of people on saturday night. One guy leans in close to his chums, eyeing me as I walk past, and says "hey, there's that guy from..." . The people I was with heard him too. Very strange. I'm not "from" anything, in particular. Unless he meant London. But that would be kind of odd.
Bizarre.
All sixes and sevens
You know, I can really recomend 'Crispy Chicken in a Sticky Chilli Sauce' from Tesco. Tasty good.
Spent today making faces. Not, like, gurning. I mean with a computer. Have left it chugging away in my office while I escape homewards for dinner (see above) and sitting. Mmm. Now I want beer. Bugger.
Today I was given my very own project student. My lab mate says he makes her blush because he's just too cool. He is too, got dreds and a faint little beard. Good lad, though. So, apparently, I have to steer him through his project so that he can get a degree. Or something. He wants to do a project on assortative mating... but he'll probably end up doing some dog work on dominance. Ho ho.
Gotta dash. Off to movies with PhD chumleys.
Yes, Crispy Chicken.
You know it makes sense.
The pancakes of nostalgia.
Raining.
That's the thing about Scotland, I suppose. Fucking cold, too. I am assured it's just gonna get colder.
My school has started its own version of Friends Reunited. 'tis crazy. I've registered myself and now have to wait for them to email me so I can look at the site properly. Madness. Allegedly it allows me to catch up with old friends, attend alumni events and "even book tickets online". Tickets? Tickets for what?
There were some security questions to answer too. "What was the name of the school's panckake toss?" was one. I suppose that's one way of ensuring that I actually went to the place. Most, most odd.
So, I'll wait until my membership is up and running and then favour you with delightful snapshots of what my contemporaries are up to.
...
Work moves on apace. Gotta get experiements going, learning how to use all the new software. It's very exciting. Went to a seminar on the evolution of language today. Talking about the Baldwin effect and niche formation and stuff. Towards the end, he spoke about a trait (here language) undergoing a selective process itself in order to spread through a groupf. Tailouring itself for spread in our brains. Sounded memetic to me, although he called it soft something. Soft adaptation? Can't remember. Things to think about.
Crap. Am tired. Got heinously gibbered with a group of undergraduates last night. Being undergrads, none of them have hangovers today. Fuckers, with their fast metabolisms. As for me, I have been suffering all day.
Mind you, my housemates (who are otherwise totally lovely) have a tendency to wake up in the morning ang giggle. Giggle at the post, the stairs, the weather, eachother... apparently everything.
Want my funding to come through so I can buy a cool little statue I saw today.
Oho, the Alumni website will email me once they have reviewed my information.
Excellent.
Fearsome growl.
Right.
So.
Working in the lab today, going to construct another set of stimulus faces. Looking for relevent faces in the files "uh, can't seem to find these id numbers in the files..." lots of humming and hah-ing from my labmates. One of them suggests that maybe they were recoded to let undergrads look at them without being able to tell how many people their friends had slept with. My brain hums into life and my blood goes cold.
I check. Sure enough, one of my datasets is a duplicate of the other, albeit with a smaller number of people in it.
Why does this matter?
Becasuse I'd got all excited about a new effect I'd found in two seperate datasets.
Only their not seperate, are they?
Cock.
Hmph.
In the interests of clarity
Well... that took a while.
So. I've been here now for, let's see, a week and a half? Something like that. It feels as if I've been here for 6 months. Since my arrival I have; decided I hated my halls and locked wits with the accomodation office to let me live somewhere else, run an experiment on pheromone detection, discovered something no one else knew in 4 different data sets (can I get a whoop-whoop?), seen Coolio perform (yes, Coolio. Don't ask), moved into this lovely house here and auditioned for a film.
It's nuts.
At least I'm busy.
The experiment thing was particularly weird. I walked in to my lab on the morning after I arrived to meet my supervisor. He said, "Hello, hello, come sit down... no , actually come sit down over here" There was I assuming that I was gonna get a sort of 'hey. welcome, have some tea, this is the place, these are the guys, no rush... just get going when you're ready". But no. He went to a fridge and came back not with milk for my tea (as yet unmanifest) but with little bottles. "These are pheromones" he said. There then proceeded the most surreal half hour of my life to date, where I was repeatedly asked for predictions, ideas, comments. It finished up with me being teamed up with one of my new colleagues to design and implement a questionnaire and pheromone based experiment for a lecture theatre full of 1st year undergrads. 2 hrs later and I was rushing round the theatre, passing bottles and sying "yeah, just write it in there". 3 hrs later and I was crunching numbers.
Madness.
Anyway, it's brilliant.
The town is small but perfectly formed. The sea is fantastic. I am hungry.
Gonna go remedy this situation. Also do some washing, put some socks on, maybe have some coffee.
Grin.,
