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 :) 

Well, the bad news was that this December 25 was only the second green Christmas in my 28 years of Haliburton Christmases.  Last year I shoveled three feet of snow (plus a half inch crust) off my parents' roof - suffice it to say that at the end of the day, no ladder was required to get up on the roof (just walk up the snowbank, no worries).  This year... not a flake.  Of course, it was 21C here in Boston yesterday, so I guess in relative terms I can still talk about my Christmas in "arctic" Canada.   On the other hand, one of my friends from my small group rang in the New Year ice fishing in Flin Flon (????), so perhaps I should be careful about claiming such northern hardships.

Other than that though, Christmas was excellent.  I returned over two days (didn't even get out of Boston until 6PM) via Kingston to visit an old professor who gave me my first lab job (made and broke 1628 cooled beams of asphalt for a summer... yes, a glamorous beginning to my scientific career).  I also made it back for the annual Christmas service in an old church just down the road from us - it's been decommissioned for years but has been maintained by the local community and makes for an absolutely fantastic venue for a Christmas Eve service (I actually maintain a website for the church here if you're interested... not updated for '07 yet, but forgive me).  The service is always the last Sunday in December, which means I am often not home yet to attend, so it was good to be there.  Christmas Day was much quieter than usual since my sister had to work (you'd think the sick people would take the day off to let health care professionals have a holiday too, but noooo...)  As a result, our official "Christmas Day" didn't happen until just before new year's when we were all able to be there, which is the way it should be regardless of the calendar.  I did manage to open one gift on the 25th though - my 1580 piece 3D puzzle of Venice.  It had to be done to carry on a Christmas Day tradition in which I have assembled something (Lego or a puzzle) every year for as long as I can remember.  I think it is a solid effort, as you can see:

(By the way, I actually brought the puzzle to Boston so I could enjoy it, which meant that a mini-skyline of Venice was sitting, highly visibly, in my back seat while crossing the border.  Potential border agent conversation:

Border Agent: "Anything to declare?"
Me: "Two islands of Venice"
Border Agent: "Huh?"

Fortunately, my border guy was totally uninterested in life, so I didn't have to explain).

So, what this means now is that I will actually have to go to Venice to get my now traditional real-foam comparison picture - rough assignment I am sure, but somebody's got to do it.  Italy is at the top of my "must-visit" list, so hopefully that "real" shot won't take too much longer to acquire.  My other two most interesting gifts were a DVD recorder (excited to try that out - it's actually way cheaper than VCR tapes to do recording, I was quite surprised) and the "power drill that ate all other power drills" from my sister....18V of pure battery-powered drilling action (I feel like grunting like Tim Allen in Home Improvement but have no idea how to communicate that sound via text).  Now if only I had any home improvement skills, I could really use that baby!  To be fair though, I did do a highly successful install of a new paper towel rack in my parents' kitchen, and not just any power tool idiot can do that (right?  RIGHT????).  The other highlight of the holiday was cleaning my sister's clock in our traditional new year's Monopoly game.  I think this is about our eighth year of playing Monopoly (not all consecutive, but still) and I think this is the seventh year I have won.  We actually played 3 games this year since the first two were done so early - all glorious victories, the most glorious of which was Game 1 when I had roughly half the properties she had but still won by building hotels on Mediterranean and Baltic (talk about losing by a thousand cuts). 

I swung back via Hamilton to say hello once again (motto: how can you miss me if I never actually am away for more than one month at a time?) before heading back to Boston on Thursday, arriving one half hour before... a three hour worship team practice.  Oh well, suffice it to say that Friday was not my most alert and productive day in the lab, but the important thing is that no rats were harmed by my general dopiness.  I'm actually kind of looking forward to getting back to work - I kind of had a lot of wind in my sails before the break in terms of research progress, so I hope that keeps going.

Hope you all had a great Christmas - all the best for your 2007!  

PS - This is the type of news story I think we need to see way more often - a nice little reminder to view the glass as half full a bit more often in this new year.

PS2 - Sad but true fact - TSN streaming of the World Junior Hockey Championship is available only to Canadian computers... I am sure the American rights holder was sighing in relief that the three people in this country who actually cared weren't getting any renegade footage.