Row Row Row Your Boat

The recent string of PhD comics (http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php) about being deported from London Heathrow reminds me of a similar thing that happened to a friend a long time ago. Perhaps you know the story. The memory made me smile.

Where would I be if someone important in my life just disappeared this senselessly? Me, who spent most of the last 48 hours madly working on an exam, shut in from the world, stopping mostly to eat, sleep, and have brief conversations with a select few people. It's an impossible balance to walk I think, the "live as if there is no tomorrow" and the sacrifices we make in search of a greater good, a better future. And if anyone understands those sacrifices and those moments and hours spent not with loved ones but with essays and equations and late nights in the library, its students headed into exams.

Oddly enough though, today hasn't left me asking myself "what would I wish I'd done if I were to suddenly die?" but rather, "what would I wish I had done if I lost someone that close?". Among the victims of this tragedy are the survivors, the mothers and boyfriends and roommates who maybe didn't say something nice thismorning, who have to live with their last words to a person very dear to them being "will you shut off your f***ing alarm clock".

I have no way of knowing and no evidence of this, but I like to believe that the people who didn't go home from school today at Virginia Tech are in a place where they know they are loved and missed. Maybe even a place where you can go to school knowing you will make it through the day.


I would wish I had given them a hug.

Its almost like arranged marriage - its not so bad if you are expecting it your whole life, but if someone springs it on you when you are a teenager it takes a lot to absorb it. Karen said that Dan wasn't expecting to have to go through everything first, that he had an older brother to make the mistakes so he could learn from them. But then one day he didnt and he's doing it alone. I guess I never thought about the challenges of being the first sibling to do things - but I've been the oldest for almost 23 years now so I have a lot more precedent for "normal". How do you teach someone to experience something that has just been part of your consciousness since you HAD consciousness?
....
...
Found :)

In happy news, Jason is in Alexandria and alive and well. Such an amazing adventure - not just Africa but the whole Journey that led to it. I really know some amazing people...

The conference this weekend was in itself interesting, but moreso was the time i spent with individual people. It really struck me the distinction between people you have conversations with and people you really connect with. I felt like there were two people I connected with in a way that has potential to last.

So when I say intellectual soulmates for an instant its the feeling that someone youve just met is really in the same place in their life as you and is really experiencing the changes in a way that you understand each other. Which isnt as common as you might think. The challenges of living and working in a foreign country are something that is common among the students I met over the weekend, but the experience of aloneness is unique. It has a lot to do with what you have left behind, what you are returning to, and the question of whether what you go back to can be the same. For me there is a basis in the fact that this so neatly separates a transition between cities, between seeing people every day and never seeing them again, and trying to create relationships out of that. I am leaving. One person I met is being left behind. and there is some sort of understanding that I really can't define.

So this one makes me happy. or at least amused. if there is anything wrong with your head, be it nerve damage, sinus cold, need a dentist, need a psychologist, ears are too big, skin cancer on your face, cant see, need a haircut (ok not the haircut) you go to somewhere called a Kopfklinik. Literally, Head Clinic. So what if you have something wrong with your throat? does that count? yet to be determined.

The good news is i got floss threaders. its amazing the things you dont realize were always around until you run out.

This weekend is the Heidelberg RISE conference, going to stay in the hostel in my current home town for 2 nights. Weird...

Joel sent me a text last night that he was waiting for a Mozart slash Strauss concert. In Vienna. I want to go to vienna now! :)

Heehee, so Joel and I checking into the hostel in Munich (which was the least nice hostel ive been in but still pretty good) and we will out our info cards, name, birthdate, etc etc. I'm doing all the talking asking about assorted hostel details and because we are talking in german joel is sitting there in a bit of a daze. At one point joel asks if we are making fun of him and I promise that no, we arent. So then we give our info cards to the reception guy who is probably about 22 or 23, and he looks at them and then asks (still in german) if joel is joking about his birthdate. Basically he doesnt believe that joel could possibly be older than me ('ok Joel, now we ARE making fun of you'). I thought this was hilarious.

Munich was great, the main strip after germany won bronze was insane, like the red mile for you calgary folk only bigger and with teh realization that every city in the country has the same thing.

Dachau was an incredible experience and raised a lot of difficult questions. The Deutches museum was pretty good, some cool airplanes but a disappointing chemistry section. good pharmacy section though. The Olyympic park was also pretty cool, as was the english garden.

but the highlight of the trip is still that joel is younger than me :P

Time to rant. Ive been here over a month working and I still havent been paid. Which pisses me off and makes me bitter and makes everything more complicated and expensive since i still have to use my canadian account.

Ive learned that German efficiency means that nothing is ever f***ing open. I have been trying to pay my rent since last thursday but I have to deposit cash in someones account because I cant do a money transfer from a canadian account (see above) but they dont open til 9, close for 2 hours at lunch, and then are closed at 4. so how does a normal german person ever go to the bank if they have to, say, work? The banks are also closed all weekend. Along with everything else closed sunday. Which is fun when you need a pharmacy in an emergency.

So the conclusion is, the only place where anyone works more than 5 hours per day is my lab. So the real question is, why am I so dumb as to work longer hours than anyone else in this entire country when I dont even seem to be getting paid?

So I've now been inducted into the group of chemists who have dropped a product into the rotovap. For those of you who know what that means, you will also understand the additional sigh because that product had just come off a column and it was the flatest product line I've ever made in a column.

For those of you who understood none of the previous paragraph, suffice to say that its and important rite of passage where you make really nice chemicals and then drop them in dirty water. You then get to breathe lots of volatile chemically things to recover your nice chemicals because they are so much more valuable than you or your time. I thought the most likely place to get high in Europe was Amsterdam. (Went there this weekend, more on that in a later entry)

The plus side is that when it happens to younger students in the future you get to shake your head knowingly at them :P

Wheee....

Bingen was amazing. A lot of great jazz, a guy with a washboard chestplate that needs to be given to the next reincarnation of sir robins minstrel, some heavy frank zappa stuff, some acappella with all the good things (ie harmony) about boy bands without all the bad things (like everything else) including a countertenor and whatever the thing below the lowest name for a musical thing you can think of is. highlight of the weekend though was definitely a performance of louis armstrongs what a wonderful world, complete with really good gravel and a german accent :) Joel has it recorded when he puts it on line ill post the link.

Back to work now for 4 days before heading to Amsterdam. Saw michelle last night which was great - you dont realize when you are travelling how much you really do miss people from home.

Joel did my laundry today and even got up early so he could get it done. He is wonderful. (I havent seen the colour of my clothes yet, but the damage to my white things has already been done by me!)

(*Warning – some of this stuff will be out of chronological order since I didn’t update during any of Wurzburg, Luxembourg, Marseilles, most of pre-work Heidelberg, Prague, Karlsruhe*)

The first weekend here I was on the train to Wurzburg to see Matt, Adam, and Mark, and really excited to get to speak in English again. I was pretty happy with how much I’d managed in German (although it did result in me missing my transfer on the way to Heidelberg and all kinds of other fun stuff) but its mentally exhausting to think and talk in a foreign language all day, and I was ready for some good solid English. And a hug. (As a note, I still find the German exhausting though it is getting easier, and I read English books like a Dune Fremen drinks available water because they let my brain rest).

So I was sitting waiting for my connection and thinking about this, and how I only had about an hour and a half more to wait. Then a girl on the platform tried to ask me something, and as I tried to tell her I was a traveler and didn’t know (my general response when I also don’t understand :P), I realized she was deaf.

It turns out we crowded onto the same train, which like a lot of trains I’ve been on was overcrowded and so we sat on our packs in the doorway and said “Entschuldigung” to everyone who got on or off. As it turns out Bahia (we spelled our names for each other in 2 handed letters since I don’t know sign language other than i,j, u, v, and x) is Greek by birth but lives in Germany now, and has been traveling around the entire country for several months. She was stopping in at one of the little places along the way to see her boyfriend. For both of us it was stories in maps and passports (with some good laughs at the pictures), old train tickets, and menus from good restaurants we’d tried the cheapest item at.

The amazing thing – this was the best conversation I’d had since I got to Germany and I’d met a decent number of travelers who spoke English. When my new friend got off the train I stood in the door and waved to her and her boyfriend because I’d never waved at anyone out a train window before and she said I should try it.