There is that...

So, seeing as I apparently received zero page hits the last three days thanks to the ever-popular blog.com view counter, perhaps it is time to post an update (if only to validate that I indeed do still have friends :).  As opposed to the typical scenario, when I do not post because I am lazy, I haven't posted for a while because I feel I have nothing terribly exciting to share.  The "routine" of Boston life has really set in this month, which is not a complaint at all (indeed, I quite like the routine) but has limited the potential for exciting news.  But, here it goes anyway:

- Probably the most exciting thing that happened was that I was responsible for giving the lab seminar last week.  Typically in academia, lab seminars are cosy little gatherings of 10 people or so; however, in our lab-on-steriods, they are fully catered extravaganzas in a lecture hall with a crowd of 70-80 people, including my "official" boss, who will probably win a Nobel Prize in the next 5-10 years (he's won every precursor prize to the big one).  Since I have arrived at MIT, I have talked to this "official" boss for a sum total of approximately 3 minutes - 1 minute complimenting his four-storey beachhouse in Cape Cod, 1 minute about the weather, and 1 minute over approximately six sightings exchanging pleasantries in the hallway or in the bathroom (sidenote: don't you hate meeting people whom you know in some sort of supervisor-employee relationship in public bathrooms?  It is just a weird vibe for some reason).  So, it was kind of nice to force him to listen to me talk for 50 minutes for a change.  However, "listen" may be a strong word - I think I had his full attention for around 2-3 minutes, with the rest of the time being devoted to Blackberrying (sidenote 2: perhaps the most socially destructive device ever designed by mankind) and getting up and down from the Mexican buffet table to fill and empty his plate.  Although that sounds quite unimpressive in terms of my allure as a seminar speaker, 2-3 minutes is approximately 1-2 minutes more than he typically listens to seminars, so I was pretty happy with that.   The better news is that I got a ton of questions and interest after the seminar and I think I earned some more respect in the lab.  The grad students in particular are fairly snobbish about universities (i.e. if you didn't come from an Ivy League school or some place like Johns Hopkins, they assume you are an inferior intellect), so it was good to inject some McMaster propaganda into the mix.  The other fun thing about the seminar was that the seminar organizer is also a Canadian (and a very proud Canadian at that).  As a result, the promotion e-mail he circulated regarding my seminar included the phrase "although I would much rather listen to a talk about the impact of recent NHL rule changes and the importance of maple syrup on national security, the actual topic of the talk will be...."  So, not being one to let a perfectly good Canadian propaganda setup pass me by, I opined at the outset of my seminar that I felt the new NHL 4-on-4 overtime rules had added some much-needed pace and excitement to the extra frame and shared that my uncles actually make maple syrup in the sugar bush around our house every year and have yet to be convicted of a crime, so it seems to work just as well as anything (sidenote 3: I only barely managed to avoid mentioning the Iraq war and how it could have been prevented by maple syrup - still a little bit of a touchy topic around the U.S. of A. :)   I also enjoyed that the guy responsible for ordering food intentionally ordered Mexican because, seeing as we had a Canadian seminar speaker at an American school, Mexican food was required to fulfil NAFTA requirements.

- I have also just hired two MIT undergrads (one materials engineering freshman and one biology junior) to be my slaves, er, I mean "academic collaborators" (must be more careful with this whole terminology thing).  I interviewed 7 people for two positions and learned four interesting things in the process: (1) MIT undergrads have the most ridiculous resumes I have ever seen - not only are they top of their class in high school but they were also swim team captain, chess club captain, yearbook editor, student council president, and moonlighted as district school superintendant  (2) about half of my interviewees had a total absence of social skills to accompany these resumes  (3) I eventually found out that I didn't care a whit about their answers to my questions but learned a lot from their questions about my ramblings - definitely a useful interviewing technique for the future when I actually have to pay the people I choose  (4) I got the feeling that most of the people I interviewed didn't really know why they were there - that is, they didn't seem to be particularly passionate about not only the research but also their entire courses of study, more or less going through the motions of padding resumes.  I think I picked out two pretty good ones from the unch (I am really excited about my freshman hire actually - very impressive interview) but it was a much more difficult process than I was anticipating.  I will be spending most of my next two weeks training my recruits (also known as "ensuring that they don't break things or at least avoid breaking things to a non-fixable level") and, after that, hopefully they will ease some of my workload.  I now have seven projects I am working on, which means since I started working in the lab in late August, I am picking up an average of 1.4 projects per month.  I'm no business analyst, but I am guessing that is an unsustainable pace (otherwise, by the time my post-doc is done, I will personally be involved in every biomaterials project now underway on the planet).  The good part about it is that it is hard for me to get too bored because there are always hundreds of different things to do, so I can't complain in the least.

- After my informal rabbit wrestling match pre-Christmas, I got to do my formal "rabbit handling training" to extend my animal portfolio from its firm rodent base (even though it must be said that rabbits are technically not rodents, which surprised me for some reason).  As you might expect, rabbits are a little more interesting to handle than rats or mice and are actually very poorly designed animals - you can apparently break a rabbit's spine very easily by picking it up by the scruff of the neck (the proper way to lift a rabbit) but failing to support its disproporationately heavy rear end.  The things you never thought you would know....  However, I was at least happy that we don't work with these rabbits - one kick from those guys and it may be emergency room for you :)

- I've also had a chance to do a bunch of little fun things.  I was at a New England Patriots playoff party last Sunday when they played the Colts for a trip to the Super Bowl.  Two observations: (1) it is very weird for me to attend or watch a sporting event where everybody there except me was very passionate about the outcome.  I typically have some emotional connection to the result of the game I'm watching (i.e. either a Toronto team is involved and/or one of my fantasy baseball pitchers is starting).  However, although I do legitimately like the Patriots, I also like Peyton Manning and the Colts, so I got more of a chance to be an "interested observer" instead of rabid fan (or as "rabid" as I get anyway)  (2) if you ever need to get popular fast, buy a digital projector.  Everybody loves them, nobody (except me I guess) has one - it's the magic of "big screen, big sound".  I ask you: how else would you have crammed 16 people into my tiny apartment in Hamilton for, of all things, a Canadian election party?????  (sidenote: visuals of Peter Mansbridge on a big screen lay waste to the claim that "bigger is always better").  Unfortunately, the Patriots lost in a very exciting game, so the Super Bowl next week won't be nearly as fun to watch as it would have been otherwise.  I also went to a free Boston Symphony Orchestra string quartet concert today (very nice) and caught the Raptors game when they were in town at the strangely named TD Banknorth Garden (yep, that is TD as in Toronto Dominion... you can't really ever leave home I guess).  I think I was one of approximately 3 Raptors fans in the entire arena, but they won and I was not pummeled by psychotic Celtics fans, so things worked out quite nicely there.

- Interesting, totally random, and probably useless to you fact: if I was a Japanese citizen living in Sweden, I could purchase Canadian mutual funds; however, if I am a Canadian citizen living on a temporary visa in the United States, I cannot do so.  Why?  Nobody seems to know, except that "those are the rules" (I love it when people tell me that :)