Still Here

It's been more than two months since my last post.

All is well. We have renewed our lease on this old Queenslander near the railroad tracks, complete with rats. We continue to pay off of the debt incurred when we sold our house in the U.S. for less than what we owed the bank. Classes are over and I have just one final exam to mark next week. The honours students are done. I'm nearly finished with a chapter for an edited volume that has been terribly difficult to write. And Will has been teaching us about the six white boomers that pull Santa's sleigh. It's nearly summer, and I can hardly wait.

What an Entrance

Against the Clock

Some spam that I received today, obviously in response to the hard work of my alter-ego:

Dear Dr. Vanman,

WHO has declared H1N1 pandemic on June 11, 2009. You are probably working against the clock to create effective vaccines and discover the infection mechanisms. You do not have to fight against the pandemic alone; GenScript is at your side to help accelerate your projects. In fact, we have already delivered over a dozen custom services for the H1N1 research community and prominent pharmaceutical companies.

Please Visit http://www.genscript.com/H1N1.html for more information.

As a leading Biology CRO, here are selected services/products GenScript can offer to speed up your race to understand the infection and to prevent its spreading:

Synthesis of H1N1 specific genes: http://www.genscript.com/gene_synthesis.html
—hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase (NA), matrix 1 (M1), polymerase PB1 (PB1), polymerase PB1 (PB2), etc.

Molecular biology services: http://www.genscript.com/molecular_biology_service.html
—gene synthesis, knock-In and knock-out vector construction, PCR cloning and subcloning, mutagenesis and custom siRNA to prepare seed virus, especially when reverse genetics method is used.

Antibody service: http://www.genscript.com/antibody.html
—produce reference reagent used to validate the identity and potency of the reference virus strain (seed virus).

Stable cell line: http://www.genscript.com/stable_cell_line.html
—attractive alternative to egg-based H1N1 vaccine production technology

Please visit http://www.genscript.com/H1N1.html for more information, and our customer service representatives are available to assist you 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday.


Yours sincerely,

Maggie Li
Account Manager
GenScript USA Inc.
120 Centennial Avenue
Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA

Lagging

It's 4:41 am in Rockford, Illinois. It's very early dawn, and I am listening to a lovely concerto of  North American birds singing outside the window. I've been awake for about three hours--ever since Will started playing with my toes at the end of the bed. I responded by lying down next to him until he fell asleep an hour later. Then I was too wide awake, so I came out to my brother's living room to surf the web. Our trip across the world on Thursday was very long. Our plane in Brisbane was delayed nearly an hour. Then our plane from Los Angeles to Chicago was delayed two hours due to a mechanical problem.  Will was excellent for the largest part of the 20 hours we travelled. He spent a lot of time watching the in-flight entertainment system, and he slept (on me) for nearly six hours during the first flight, and another two during the second. We couldn't sit together as a family on either flight because both planes were full and something happened to our original seat assignments. We finally got to Rockford at 10:30, but didn't go to bed until 1 am. All three of us slept until 11:30 the next day (yesterday).

That's a lot of detail about sleep. You can see what's on my mind. In fact, I'm suddenly tired, so I'm going to try to go back to bed before there's too much daylight.  Good night or good morning or whatever suits.

Rainy Day

I'm working in my office, utterly paralys(z)ed with the prospect of all sorts of tasks that are long overdue. Brisbane is enjoying a long, hard rain today, and I love it. I'm listening to Jean-Yves Thibaudet's soundtrack for "Pride and Prejudice" while I work on my office computer. It's all a bit melancholy here, really. I am going through another bout of missing my friends and family. I am not even sure which friends I miss exactly, as I have left quite a few behind after each of the many moves that I have made. I should really stay put for once.

Maybe I'll just go home early and watch Keira wander through those beautiful English fields...

Naughty, Naughty

I'm sorry that I have been such a lame blogger lately. I've been trying to focus harder on my work, which means that I suddenly see my life as not very blog-worthy. I will try to jig the balance a bit. In the meantime, enjoy this video from a Brisbane band called Blame Ringo.  It was shot at the famous "zebra crossing" near Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles posed for their album cover. I made a similar tourist stop (with a silly photo) years ago.

A Deposit on the Future

V. and I are looking at some houses to rent today. Our son will start Prep (the equivalent of kindergarten in the U.S.) in two years, so we are also thinking about where he would go to primary school. It's a strange thing, planning for the future. We have no idea where we will be in 10 years, five years, or even two years from now. We might go back to the U.S. or end up staying here permanently. We don't really know. Yet, because we have a young child, we must consider some sort of vague plan. In fact, I just sent $375 to Brisbane Grammar School, a private school for boys that has a very good reputation, so that Will can be on the waiting list for the Year 6 class that will enter in 2017. Yes, that's more than eight years away, but we may already be too late to guarantee his admission! Of course, we are not at all certain that we will want him to go there or whether he would even want to attend it when he's older, but we didn't want to eliminate the chance of his going if we did decided in 2016 that it was the best option. 

But now it's time to figure out what we're going to have for lunch.

Catching Up

The last two weeks were, as you know, very busy for me. Because I didn't blog much about what was going on at the time, here's a brief recap:

I spent 24 hours in Newcastle, New South Wales. I went to the University of Newcastle to give a talk at the School of Psychology, and spent most of the rest of the time with two social psychologists who live there. I visited Newcastle once before, in 2001. It is the largest coal port in the world. At dinner at a wonderful restaurant along the harbour, my hosts and I watched large ships with Chinese flags lining up to fill their holds with Australian coal. Australia's economic boom in the past decade has been largely due to China being a hungry customer for its natural resources. Any downturn in China's economy will in turn have an impact here.

Last weekend we took an early Saturday morning ferry to Stradbroke Island, which is about 40 km due east of our home. I was attending a cognitive neuroscience workshop, made up of researchers at UQ, at the university's marine research station. Meanwhile, V. and Will spent the time over at Point Lookout with my colleagues' families. We stayed at a small resort that had a kitchen and washer/drier, etc. for two nights, and then left early Monday morning so that we could get back to work and Will could go to day care. What a great place! The beaches are huge, sandy, and beautiful. And they were nearly empty. The 40-minute ferry ride was easy for us and fun for Will. It's becoming increasingly clear why so many SE Queenslanders stay in the area during the holidays. We live in paradise!

In the midst of this traveling I was also marking (grading) thirteen 40+ page honours theses. In Australia the mark on an honours thesis has nearly the same importance as GRE scores in the U.S. At UQ a score of 80 or higher indicates the thesis is 'first-class,' which, as long as their coursework is also first-class, means that a psychology student can get a scholarship to become a Ph.D. student, or it could also mean that they are admitted to a clinical psychology program. Thus, I felt great pressure to be fair and accurate in my marks, as I was (partially) determining the future of the 13 students whom I was marking. Of those 13, my marking partner and I gave three a first-class designation.  

I had also scheduled to take my four honours students to dinner this week as a way to celebrate the intense year we had been through. Unfortunately, on the day before the dinner, the co-ordinator of the honours program announced that we could tell our students their final marks (by the way, supervisors do not mark their own students' theses). I had planned to tell my students the day after the dinner, so that we could enjoy our meal in peace, but that plan was disrupted when I began receiving email messages such as "my friend just found out her thesis mark, can you tell me mine?" I was able to hold off the announcement of those marks until the next day, much to the disappointment of a couple of my students. Then, I had the 'pleasant' task of giving the news the next day. Some were more disappointed than others, but no one ended up with an especially tragic mark.

On Thursday afternoon I received a call from the U.S. Consulate in Sydney.  My first thought when the caller identified herself was, "how did they find me?" It turned out that I wasn't in any trouble. Instead, the Consulate invited me to speak on Friday to a group of 30 Australian students who will be going to the U.S. for study abroad in January. I was asked to address certain points (e.g., the grading system, living on campus, the drinking age), but the students themselves asked questions that were more specific for the particular university they were going to (e.g., "can I list my friend as my preferred roommate?", "does it cost money to use the gym?").

Then, of course, the whole week was overshadowed by the election in the States. At work a large group of department staff and students spent several hours in one classroom watching the returns. I heard one Canadian grumble, "our election last month didn't receive this kind of attention." The other Canadian responded, "there was an election last month?" As I hinted in an earlier post, Australians are overjoyed with Obama's election. (Unlike some of my relatives, who think that Obama's secret socialist, Muslim-based, Black conspiracy will now ruin the country).

Now, as the temperature starts to go up, there's a short lull before I have to mark 250 exams next weekend. Right now we are trying to sort out whether we want to move to a house with a yard in a more suburban locale. 

Stay tuned.  

The Shopping List

I am flying to the U.S. in less than two weeks, so I am preparing a shopping list. Our fantasies of me wandering the aisles of Walgreens, Target, Baby Gap, the Apple Store, Kohls, or Borders ignore the reality of the greatly depreciated Australian dollar. Despite the depressing exchange rate, there are still plenty of things that are far cheaper or only available back in the States. Here's a preliminary list of things I'll be putting in my extra suitcase:

• peanut butter (Jif or Skippy Extra Crunchy)
  
• fabric dryer sheets (last year's supply is nearly exhausted)
  
• clothes for Will
  
• clothes for me (esp. shirts that can be put in the dryer)
  
• Merrell shoes for V.
  
• shoes for me
  
• children's (and adult) vitamins
  
• some recent novels (I haven't read a Grisham in a couple of years)
  
• plastic bibs, forks, sippy cups and knives for Will
  
• dental tape
  
• a melon baller (?)
  
• an EMS travel bag
  
• a DVD boxed set of some old TV show (maybe)

Video Directions

I just got back from spending a wonderful day at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales. We leave tomorrow for a two-night stay on Stradbroke Island.  AND I have yet to finish marking those honours theses.  

Check out the following video, made by one of my colleagues when she should have been marking theses as well.  This must be a first-of-a-kind way of giving directions to someone's house!

Look Down Here!

I'm here.  That's me, sitting at the bottom of an enormous pile of work that threatens to topple over at any moment.  While trying to stay focused on reading all these honours theses, I also find myself absorbed with the machinations of the presidential elections back in the States, worried about the consequences of this economic disaster for everyone I know, and more protective of my little family here in Toowong.  It's a great comfort knowing that my friends and family in California, Iowa, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Illinois, Georgia, and Australia are still checking in at my blog.  Things should lighten up in another week and I hope then to resume blogging more regularly.

I saw a t-shirt last night that I would love to get:  Procrastinators: Leaders of Tomorrow. 

Awesome

Can you figure out what this is?

Thanks to a tip from Dan, this is one of several amazing photos of the sun found in this article at Boston.com, the home of the Boston Globe. The caption reads:

Image of an active solar region taken on July 24, 2002 near the eastern limb of the Sun. The image highlights the three-dimensional nature of the photosphere when seen at these large angles. The structures in the dark sunspots in the upper central area of the image show distinct elevation above the dark "floor" of the sunspot. The height of the structures has been estimated by Dr. Bruce Lites of the High Altitude Observatory to be between 200 and 450 km. The smallest resolvable features in the image are about 70 km in size. There are also numerous bright "faculae" visible on the edges of granules that face towards the observer. (Prof. Goran Scharmer/Dr. Mats G. Löfdahl/Institute for Solar Physics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences)

Here's another.  Be sure to check out all 21 pictures on the site.

A Good Week for Voting

I have had a pretty good week:  one of my manuscripts was accepted for publication, I got my first Australian research grant, and my PhD student, Michael, was 'confirmed' with flying colours. And the cherry on top was being able to mail our U.S. election ballots this morning. And it's only Thursday! 

Goofus

If you're feeling bored (reading this a good sign that you are), you might give this website a try.  You too can discover the real you with a little photo manipulation.

Self-Promotion

I recently received a group email invitation from a professor that he sent to a discussion list, announcing his plans to publish an edited volume in an area of psychology in which I work.  The email (sent to several hundred people) stated "Your area of research will fit well in this edited volume." Of course, despite the fact that this flattery was entirely anonymous, I took the bait and explored the invitation more fully.  It turned out that, if my chapter were accepted for this book, it would be published by this professor's small university press in his small European country.  That means that it would probably not appear on anyone's radar nor in any major library.  What's more, I discovered that this professor (who apparently works in my area, but was previously unknown to me) engages in a type of self-promotion that I found rather curious.  For example, going to his web page, a pop-up window announced that he received the 2007 Professor of the Year Award from "Cambridge, UK."  That sounds prestigious until you learn that this award comes from one of those Who's Who-type ego-scams, which begins with an announcement that "You have been selected for a prestigious award," but which requires $475 to pay for the award to be sent to you, and another $500 to attend the awards ceremony.  How foolish I was to believe that any award that I received should actually involve me receiving something at no cost!  In addition, my would-be editor also has his own Wikipedia entry that touts his many contributions to my field.  Again, I never knew he even existed before he sent that email, so I am impressed by his rather bold pronouncements about his contributions to psychology.  

Perhaps this professor's actions should serve as a model of how I could raise my own visibility.  I could start by sending $500 to Cambridge, UK to get one of those prestigious awards and then writing a glowing Wikipedia entry about myself that mentions my receiving the Cambridge award.  Maybe I could host a conference in my name ("The Eric Vanman Symposium on All Things Important") or start a charitable organisation named for my son.  Maybe I could even commission The Veronicas to write a song about me.  There are so many possibilities...

Not So Unique

Thanks to my settings on Google Alerts, I am notified the moment my name newly appears on a web page.  I set this up a few weeks ago, and didn't receive any notices for days.  But then, last week, I was notified that my name had just appeared on Classmates.com.  That's not such a big surprise, as I get messages from that site all the time.  However, it turned out that the Eric Vanman newly appearing on the site was ANOTHER Eric Vanman, who is a high school student in Canada.  Yes, there is another "me" out there and he still has nearly his entire adult life ahead of him!  I've spent my life believing that I was the only person in the world with my name, but it turns out that it was an illusion.  Still, this other Eric Vanman must be a distant relative.  I will have to investigate.

A Whole of Lot BIRGing Going On

One of the many strategies we all have to boost and maintain our self-esteem is Basking in the Reflected Glory of others, or, as it's known in social psychology, BIRGing. We can do this on an individual level ("my friend just won a gold medal") or as part of the group ("my football team won this weekend!"). One of the puzzling aspects of this phenomenon is that the person doing the BIRGing has usually done nothing to assist the other person with the success or good fortune, but somehow finds pleasure in knowing that they are connected to this successful person in some way. By the way, the opposite of BIRGing is CORFing (cutting off reflected failure). One famous social psychology study found that Ohio State students were much more likely than normal to wear their OSU apparel on Mondays following a win by their football team, but they were also less likely to wear such clothes on Mondays following a loss. Both BIRGing and CORFing have a very public element associated with them--our friend (or team's) success (or failure) has special value when it is broadcast to others. Well, what follows is a bit of such broadcasting, but I am going to stick to BIRGing for now...

Over the years I have been guilty of BIRGing along two general categories--my friends' connections to the famous and my friend's noteworthy successes. As examples of the former category, my friends have included (a) a relative of Allen Ginsburg, (b) the target of a pick-up by Tori Spelling (my friend refused her advances, btw), (c) someone who was employed to be a "friend" of the daughter of a famous billionaire, (d) the daughter of a Hollywood film director, and (e) someone who lives in Kevin Bacon's building (which gives me all sort of "six degrees" connections!). The other BIRG category is probably more impressive, as they include a friend who is a successful TV and film actor, the bass guitarist for a great '80s/'90s band, many highly productive academics, a top journalist, a successful artist, and several friends who are now department chairs or deans. Today I can add another high school classmate to the list--Dan Gesmer, who runs a successful skateboard business and is a performance artist. Dan invented a style of freestyle skateboarding that you can see in this video. What's more, he was recently asked by Cirque de Soleil to become part of their winter show, Wintuk, in New York City. This is the first Cirque show to feature skateboarding, and it looks like they specifically recruited Dan to perform based on some of the videos he has made.

Wow! I know someone who has performed with Cirque de Soleil!! I'm on BIRG overload today!!

The Rebel American

Today I lectured for nearly six hours, which, at my ripe old age, is physically exhausting.  At the end of my day I took the CityCat boat from the university to our neighbourhood landing, and then I walked from there through the Toowong Village Shopping Centre on my way home.  Tired and worn out, I found my tolerance for slow walkers in some of the narrower passageways had disintegrated.  During my last few turns in the Centre I was overcome with the urge to resist walking on the left (as one does in Australia) and instead started WALKING ON THE RIGHT SIDE--much to the chagrin of several Aussies coming from the opposite direction.  Oh, how sweet it was to walk on "my side" once again, even if it was for a few brief moments.  I believe a little rebellion every once in a while can do the soul good.

Status Update

It's never seems to be boring in our home here in Toowong. Just as V. started to rise from her bed rest with a more manageable back, Will came down with some miserable virus. The poor guy has been running a fever and won't eat much. After 3-4 days of dramatic refusals of nearly anything we offer him, I'm really hoping this morning he'll wake up back and be his old self. V. will return to work on Monday. She's still taking a painkiller and can't sit easily on a regular chair, but we are staying optimistic that it's all going to get better. And maybe a little boring...at last.

Some Perspective

I should be marking student papers, but I got distracted thinking about the following "little" exercise. Most of my information came from the ever-helpful Wikipedia. Note that I pretty much had to stop after the age of 50, but I will try to add more in the next month.

How Old Are You?

• If you’re 13, you’re the same age as Michael Jackson the year he and the rest of the Jackson 5 had four number one hits, including “ABC.”
• If you’re 14, you’re the same age as Miley Cyrus when her debut album “Hannah Montana” went triple platinum.
• If you’re 15, you’re the same age as Tenzin Gyatso when he was enthroned as Tibet’s 14th (and current) Dalai Lama.
• If you’re 16, you’re the same age as Neil Patrick Harris when Doogie Howser, M.D. first aired.
• If you’re 17, you’re the same age as Martina Hingis when she held the No.1 ranking in both singles and doubles women’s tennis.
• If you’re 18, you’re the same age as RIngo Starr when The Beatles released “Love Me Do.”
• If you’re 19, you’re the same age as John Tyler Hammons in 2008 when he was elected mayor of Muskogee, Oklahoma, a city of 38,000.
• If you’re 20, you’re the same age as Bill Gates when he founded Micro-soft in 1975 (the hyphen was dropped shortly after).
• If you’re 21, you’re the same age as Mick Jagger when he recorded “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” with the Rolling Stones.
• If you’re 22, you’re the same age as Jayde Nicole, the 2008 Playboy Playmate of the Year.
• If you’re 23, you’re the same age as Tiger Woods when he won his last four starts, including the PGA championship, and finished the season with eight wins—a feat not achieved in the past 25 years.
• If you’re 24, you’re the same age as Lee Harvey Oswald when he assassinated John F. Kennedy.
• If you’re 25, you’re the same age as Steve Jobs when he and Steve Wozniak released the Apple II computer.
• If you’re 26, you’re the same age as Albert Einstein when he published his paper stating that e=mc2.
• If you’re 27, you’re the same age as Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, when he killed himself.
• If you’re 28, you’re the same age as Julie Andrews when she appeared in "Mary Poppins."
• If you’re 29, you’re the same age as Olivia Newton-John when she played Sandy in “Grease.”
• If you’re 30, you’re the same age as Schubert when he died of typhoid fever (after writing nine symphonies and hundreds of other pieces of music).
• If you’re 31, you’re the same age as John Lennon when he wrote “Imagine.”
• If you’re 32, you’re the same age as Thomas Edison when he invented the electric light bulb.
• If you’re 33, you’re the same age as Matt Groening when his first series of shorts called “The Simpsons” debuted on The Tracy Ullman Show.
• If you’re 34, you’re the same age as Harper Lee when her To Kill a Mockingbird was first published.
• If you’re 35, you’re the same age as Harrison Ford when he appeared in the first “Star Wars” movie.
• If you’re 36, you’re the same age as Ann Bancroft when she played Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate.”
• If you’re 37, you’re the same age as Frances Crick when he, James D. Watson, and Maurice Wilkins co-discovered the double helix structure of DNA.
• If you’re 38, you’re the same age as (Sherpa) Tenzing Norgay when he and Sir Edmund Hillary became the first people known to have reached the summit of Mount Everest.
• If you’re 39, you’re the same age as Martin Luther King, Jr., when he was assassinated.
• If you’re 40, you’re the same age as Isabel Allende when her first novel, The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espiritus), was published.
• If you’re 41, you’re the same age as Ernest Hemingway when he published For Whom the Bell Tolls.
• If you’re 42, you’re the same age as Elvis Presley when he died.
• If you’re 43, you’re the same age as Tony Blair when he became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• If you’re 44, you’re the same age as Jerry Seinfeld when “Seinfeld” debuted its final episode.
• If you’re 45, you’re the same age as Nelson Mandela when he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 for his involvement with the African National Congress.
• If you’re 46, you’re the same age as O.J. Simpson when his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were murdered.
• If you’re 47, you’re the same age as Barack Obama when he won the nomination for the Democratic candidacy for the U.S. presidency in August 2008.
• If you’re 48, you’re the same age as Jeannie Longo, the greatest female cyclist of all time, when she won her 14th French Road Race.
• If you’re 49, you’re the same age as Gandhi when he led his first protests against the British in India in 1918.
• If you’re 50, you’re the same age as Charles Darwin when he published The Origin of Species, the first time his theory of evolution appeared in print.
• If you’re 61, you’re the same age as Abraham Lincoln when he was elected president.