Pucker up

The eskimo's rub noses, the Japanese bow and the Dutch...well, we kiss. Not one, not two, but THREE ferm ones you get: 1x left, 1x right and 1x left again (or vice versa so you wish). I've always found this greeting ritual a bit excessive. Especially if you have a room full of people to work your way through, it's very tedious to have to kiss everybody three times.

Here in England I have quickly abandoned the 'triple X' practice. I haven't quite been able to work out what the local custom is though. It seems to be something in between one and two kisses, with a kind of semi-hug thrown in for closer friends. Most of the time I get it right these days and I don't usually end up sending kisses into thin air anymore.

This weekend, though, I've had some culturally confused encounters. None of the people I met up with are Dutch funnily enough, but they all know that I am and are clearly familiar with the ritual. So when we exchanged greetings and I moved away after the first kiss there was instant confusion. The receiving parties were fully expecting all three! In one case the confusion got such that when I then leaned back in to offer up the remaining smooches, the other person was just turning away; limbs got in the way and the glass I was holding was sent crashing to the floor. Admittedly, as far as culture clashes go this is not a very serious one. Nonetheless, I feel a universal greeting ritual is in order.

Blowing out the candles

Well, that's it: only 364 more days separating me from the big three-oh...!

Thank you all for the emails, cards and other messages I got from you yesterday. I loved them. I celebrated my birthday on the weekend already as obviously Mondays are not the best days for partying. First, on Friday I went out for a nice lunch with some of my classmates and then on Saturday there was dinner and lots more partying. It was maybe a bit weird that most of the people I celebrated with this year are people that I didn't yet know on my previous birthday but it was great fun nonetheless. It makes me feel like I am starting to settle in here somewhat.

Turning 29 doesn't affect me much but in all honesty: I am not really looking forward to the next one. I know I am being silly about it, it's just a number, but I can't help it. Maybe it's being back in student life but I can't come to grips yet with the fact that my twenties are quickly fading away. When did we get to be old enough for that?! I could swear I have already even spotted my first grey hair. How scary is that? At least I have the next 364 days to get used to the idea...

Slaying the dragons

Today we had to give the 'elevator pitch' for the Business Plan Competition. I want to thank those of you who have been so kind to send me their ideas. It was great fun to see how some of you really got into it. Unfortunately most of the ideas did not turn out to be feasible for us, mainly for lack of the right expertise or the connections to pull it off.

Eventually we ended up staying close to home for me. I was so caught up in the novelty of my life here that I temporarily forgot that I still have a nice network to deploy back in Holland. Just last week it finally dawned on me that I actually knew somebody who could help us out. A few e-mails and phone calls later I found myself going over a highly promising patent application straight out of the Gorlaeus. And it gets better. The inventors are two very familiar faces; they work only one floor up (Gilles and Erik)! Although I have managed to stay away from their soil dwelling bugs in my Metprot years we are now actually writing a business plan to exploit just that technology. You can run but you can't hide!

I obviously can't divulge here exactly what our plan is since this is all patent pending but even more importantly; the university is actually looking to get clients for this patent. This means that our business plan is more than just a paper excercise. Whatever we produce, the university may use to attract interested parties meaning we better do our job properly. This real dimension of it makes it all the more interesting to us as well.

Since we only got the patent this Monday, we have been working very hard this whole week to get an initial feeling for what we are dealing with. Today we got to pitch the preliminary plan to our lecturers. It was a smash hit! I believe the exact words were "outstanding" and "fantastic job" and we have been shortlisted as candidates to win the big competition in 3 weeks time. I didn't expect I would like this part of my course but I am in fact very excited now. Although personally I don't intend to set up any business and for me it's all hypothetical, some people have already expressed a serious interest in the whole idea. I love it when a plan comes together.

Down memory lane - Part 2

Seeing some of my old teachers again at my reunion brought back some long forgotten memories of things I used to know. Latin conjugations, French vocabulary, geometry... wow, so much information has passed through my brain and so little of it stuck!

Sunday I decided it was time to give my old room in my mum's house a good clear out. The thing about that room is that I pretty much left everything behind when I moved out. So all the stuff I accumulated in my teenage years and even before has been mummifying in there for years. A real trip down memory lane! I found old 'avondvierdaagse' medals, a hideous clay pot made for Mother's day (how appropriate to unearth that again on Mother's day!), 3 old Sony walkmans but most of all: piles and piles of school notes. Every note book since my first year in high school has been preserved. Treasures of knowledge. Had it not been for the fact I recognise my own hand writing I wouldn't have believed that I once actually knew all that. I am in awe of high school me and feel very ashamed that all that knowledge has gone right out the window. The crown on my cleaning excercise was the discovery of every single one of my old high school exams, safely tucked away together in a big envelope: the ultimate shrine to knowledge long-forgotten . Here are some of the things I used to know back in 1996:

Mathematics (wiskunde B)
See the Figure and:
- calculate the distance between point C and the line AD
- calculate the volume of the body

Latin
Laocoon ardens summa decurrit ab arce
et procul "o miseri, quae tanta insania, cives?
creditis avectos hostes? aut ulla putatis
dona carere dolis Danaum? sic notus Ulixes?
aut hoc inclusi ligno occultantur Achivi
aut haec in nostros fabricata est machina muros,
..."

-Translate and indicate (scan) the metrical pattern

Physics
The isotope ⁸₃Li decays with emittance of a b-particle to form ⁸₄Be which then splits into 2 a-particles, according to:


-Calculate the speed with which the a-particles are emitted, assuming the ⁸₄Be-core had zero velocity.

Errr, right... anyone?

Down memory lane - Part 1

For reasons obvious from my last post I spent this weekend back in Holland. By sheer chance my trip coincided with the reunion of my old high school, the Johan van Oldebarnevelt gymnasium. I didn't attend the previous reunion some years ago. It was too soon and I was far too absorbed in my life as a student to care what my former classmates were up to. However, I graduated in 1996 so it's been over 10 years by now. Enough time to start getting at least a bit curious. Since I was around any way, why not go and find out..?

Reunions are all about showing off what you have accomplished since high school (degrees, jobs, wedding rings, babies; the usual suspects). But after you have exhausted those topics, there is not much left other then repeat to each other how you all haven't changed a bit. It's actually true though, you know; that last statement. People hadn't changed a bit. Within minutes all the old cliques had regrouped and despite some changed hairdo's and a few extra kilos here and there, everybody was essentially still exactly the same as 10 years ago. Unfortunately not so many of my old classmates had shown up. Of the people in the picture (class 2C, 1991!) only 2 other people showed. There were a few more from the parallel classes but still not that many. Maybe another 10 years need to pass first before everybody else gets curious enough.

I don't recollect my high school years with any great fondness. To illustrate, not long after this picture was taken I got my first pair of glasses and I would be wearing orthodontic braces for several more years. Not a happy combination when you're 14 years old! Throughout the 6 years of high school I was cyclically and frustratingly falling in and out of love with the same poor guy (yes, he's in the picture), sometimes also with others. Teenage anxieties reigned freely. I had plenty of people I used to hang out with but considering there are only two people from all those years that I still occasionally talk to, I didn't make many friends for life there. To be honest, I much preferred my years at university. When are we having the next ACD reunion?

Apple off the family tree

Today it is exactly 5 years ago since my mum, my brother and I suffered the hardest day of our lives when my dad suddenly died. Now, five years later, I still miss him every bit as much as I did then but life does go on and so do we. I was still in the first year of my Ph.D. back then and I used to go home at least every other weekend. A lot has changed since. I obtained my doctorate, decided bioscience was not the place for me and moved to the UK to do a degree in Health Management, a discipline right at the crossroads of what my mum does and what my dad did.

I discuss a lot of what I learn on my course with my mum. She has the practical experience from the medical world and can tell me how all of my wonderful text book theories work out in the real world. But I also so would have loved to discuss these things with my dad and hear his thoughts from a manager's perspective. I am sure he too would have had some things to say about some of what I am being taught. In some regards my dad was quite 'old school'. For instance, he didn't like slick slide presentations at all. He much preferred using flip charts to draw his diagrams on. Maybe he would have eventually come around and learned how to work PowerPoint. Who knows?

I don't know how he would have felt about my career change. I think he would have supported it though. Although I am constantly being told I look the spitting image of my mother, I think that in character I take after my father quite a lot. I'd like to believe that in what ever career lies ahead of me in the near future, I will be able to combine the best of both my parents.

My golden ticket

It's been a while since I gave an update on my plans for life after I finish my degree. Mostly that's because with all the assignments and exams going on I simply haven't had much occasion to think about it, let alone take any action. Well, the lecture & exam part of my course is behind me so it's time to start focusing on the future. And it looks like that future will involve me hanging around in London for another while.

I have mentioned before that over the summer I will be working on a really interesting and exciting project for my final thesis. In a nutshell, we'll be looking at the resource allocation (techno-speak for spending money) on combating tuberculosis in parts of Central Asia. I won't be doing this all by myself obviously as it involves a lot of work and, even more importantly, requires some real serious experience. The work will be part of the ongoing research at the College. The whole project will also most likely take substantially more time than the three months I have to do my thesis work in. Which is why my time here in London will be stretched out.

My supervisor on this project has invited me to stay on in his group for a while so that I can gain some relevant experience and further build my resume. He is a real authority in his field and this is a great opportunity for me. Naturally I am taking him up on his offer. We'll be working on some other projects as well. My position in the group will more or less be that of an intern. I will not be directly employed by the University but I will be getting some sort of pay. I haven't even asked how much or for how long. The opportunity is too good to let such 'trivial details' matter. ;-) The idea is that with the added experience and his contacts doors will open for me that without are much harder to crack. I will have to prove myself of course but at least I am getting the best leg up I could possibly hope for. Now it's up to me to climb that wall to my dream job.

Six degrees of separation

Do you know that game called "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon"? The challenge of the game is to take any actor or actress and link that person to Kevin Bacon through no more than 6 consecutive people who have worked together. Within the tight-knit world of Hollywood the question is probably not whether or not the trail exists but more whether you can find it. There is also a more general theory, however, that suggests the '6 degrees of separation' rule applies universally; that we are all connected to each other through only 6 people or less. I find this a bit hard to believe. Even with the highly varied and international circle of friends that I have, I can't think of any way to connect me to that shepherd on the steppes of inner-Mongolia or the medicine man in the jungle of Brazil.

It seems though that since coming to Imperial College my 6-step network has had some interesting new additions. At the moment I am taking a class in Entrepreneurship; how to go about when you want to start up your own business. A crucial element in any such endeavour involves who you know or how you can get to know the right people. Yes, that most intangible of skills called networking! The staff and alumni of the College offer a rich source of contacts. Even if you don't feel very entrepreneurial such a network is a valuable asset for life. After this week's lecture, for instance, I have learned that I am just 3 small steps removed from Borat and only 4 from Mr. Microsoft himself! Just imagine where I could get within those next couple of steps...

These boots aren't made for walking

When I first moved to London, I made a rookie mistake. In my 32 kg suitcase I carried one pair of chic high heeled shoes, a pair of even higher heeled boots and my second pair of boots was on my feet since that was easier than trying to cram both pairs into my suitcase and wearing sensible shoes. I figured that being in business school meant having to dress a bit more businesslike and so I didn’t pack any of my sturdy, yet inelegant flats.

It didn’t take me very long to come to regret that decision. London is a city where you walk & walk & then walk some more. In Holland, you just cycle everywhere but here: you walk. For women like my mum, who walk around in heels 24/7, that is not a problem but I am not one of those Sex & the City women. In my opinion heels are great for when you need to look fab but they are not meant for all this power walking! Within days my feet were in miserable shape, aching with every step. I needed a pair of new shoes and I needed them immediately. You know how whenever you know exactly what you are looking for, you can never find it? That’s exactly what happened to me. In the end I decided I would just buy the first pair of comfortable flats available in my midget size that wouldn’t look totally ridiculous. The shoes I bought were actually not too bad. Simple brown and white trainers. Not really my style but honestly, not that bad. They have served me well these past 7 months. They have carried me all over the city. But now their time has come. I have worn them out to their very last breath. The soles are cracked and the fabric looks ragged. May they rest in peace. They’ve earned it.

Enter the dragon's den

Okay guys, I am going to need your help. I know there is a bunch of you brilliant minds out there reading this blog and I need to pick those big brains of yours!

My course has now moved on to the final assignment before our individual research projects: The Business Plan Competition. As the name suggests we have to spawn a new business idea and then develop it into a full blown business proposal. The second part is what the course has been training us for so I won't ask you to be bothered about that. The first part is where I can really use your help though. Any suggestions, no matter how wacky, are welcome. Of course I personally am most interested in anything health or (bio)science related but anything outside of that is good too. (Just keep in mind I have to get up in front of a panel of judges and sell the idea to them so please don't make me look like a total fool...) Ever thought the world could really use that new gadget you thought up? Ever felt your scientific results deserved to be converted into a real product? Tell me now.

The only thing at stake here is the glory (& a good mark for me) so I can't promise you a cut in any future profits. There won't be any. The best I can do is get your name on the credits. I know that isn't much but the main prize is my eternal appreciation... We need to present our "elevator pitch" on Friday next week so please start sending me those suggestions as soon as they pop into your heads. I'll keep you updated!


P.S.: I understand there is such a thing is corporate confidentiality and I wouldn't want anyone to get in trouble for 'selling off' their trade secrets. The Business Plan Competition is strictly an internal affair though and your secrets will be save with me. Maybe e-mail them to me rather than post them here if you have any concerns.