The State of the Art Laboratory

So as it stands at the moment, as of today November 10th the year 2006 A.D., about 6 months after we have occupied the Brand New State of the Art Laboratory, we are still working in a space that more closely resembles M*A*S*H*4077 rather than a functional laboratory.

After spending my morning waiting for the electrician who was an hour late, then waiting for another 2 hours while he replaced a light switch, only to discover that he had forgotten to purchase the actual switch unit and intended to have me wait another hour and half, I finally decided to hell with it and left him my keys so I could go to work. I had nothing to eat at my apartment, so I walk expectantly into the kitchen/lunchroom at work to get my food out of the fridge and discover there is no fridge. In fact the only things remaining in the room are dust bunnies on the floor. I shrug, rather nonplussed to discover yet another major upheaval in the daily routine and walk back into the lab to announce, "Where's the kitchen?" The brand new kitchen has lovely blue flooring and clean white-washed walls, but oddly enough someone has forgotten to tell them to put a sink in. That's right, there’s a microwave, coffeemaker, water-boiling appliance, toaster oven and even a little hotplate to fry up some goodies if you’re so inspired but I can merely guess for what reasons the kitchen sink was not installed. I imagine that the wrong sink was initially installed and rather than finding a substitute fixture, we were left completely sans sink. Instead, we are using the sink inside the women's room that functions at the John for the entire floor including wandering students from the floors above and below. While washing my coffee cup I now have the pleasure of enjoying a gastrointestinal musical concerto free of charge. I did move to France in part for the cultural experiences, right? It’s got a lovely ambiance too with the brown crud floating in the soap dispenser which hangs on by a tenuous attachment on only one side of the apparatus, without paper towels or a functional hand-dryer (forcing me to use my hair as a towel).

On the way to the new kitchen in the afternoon, I decide to exit the far door of the lab in order to avoid the dark area in the hall where I nearly ran into someone earlier and was put into a state of utter hilarity by pushing two light switches. After pushing the first button about ten times, I begin to giggle uncontrollably at because it regulates the lights about 50 feet away. The riotous eruption of breathless giggles give way to howling fits of hiccup-laced laughter as I push the adjacent button that's actually on a piece of wall that's detached (is still a wall if it's detached? Nevermind) that has a functional button (amazingly enough) to illuminate the lights at the complete opposite end of the hall while the region above my head remains dark. I finally started howling when I look up and realize there are no light bulbs above my head. Seriously, if it didn't occur to any of our electricians that we required lights in the middle of the hallway, what does that say about the state of the electrical engineering for the entire laboratory? Great green googlies, are we in for some grandiose surprises in the lab, I think!

As I attempt to exit via the door on the far end, I discover that it is locked and my key won't open it. Well, that's supremely useful. I wonder how long that will take to fix, considering there are so many other things that are "more of a priority" according to my boss. Like having a "functional tissue culture". I heartily agree that updating our tissue culture facilities is of the utmost importance, but as I regularly check the progress in that room and I have yet to see the installation of any sinks, benchtops, or even any duct work: obviously an integral part of any system which uses suction and air circulation; I'm quite certain that someone could find the time to work on one of any great number of things that are still lacking in our workspace. For instance, the heating could work. Or the large trenches under the windows that routinely let in gusts of cold air when the wind blows outside could be filled in with some insulating material as it's currently mid-November and Parisiens are happily bundled in french-style scarves, hats and gloves. Or someone might install the drawers that I need to hold the zillions of tubes and bits of this and that which are necessary for the many different kinds of experiments that I do (or rather, would do more efficiently if I could FIND the god-dammned stuff that I need); some shelving would be useful to keep stock solutions on too. We have a technician who can make solutions for us, but no common stock area at the moment, as there's literally nowhere to put the bottles of 4 Molar NaCl. There's no common refrigerator either, so if you need a kit you'd better know who's doing what in the lab so you can ask them if they have it. Or just order one of everything you need yourself, and hope that it all will fit in your tiny dorm-sized fridge.

For several months there was a giant wooden clip holding the ice machine door closed that I would eye like Jimmy Stewart eyes that balustrade ornament in "It's a Wonderful Life". Remember the wooden ball that comes off in his hand every single night when he goes upstairs? At one point in the film, it comes off in his hand yet again for the upteenth million time and he eyes it with pure hatred, threatening to throw it across the room. I can tell you I've come mighty close to throwing that wooden clip and seeing how far it can fly across the Mighty State of the Art Laboratory.

I feel a bit like Tom Hanks in "The Money Pit" from time to time too. Especially at times like this morning as I look at the secretary with a dead-pan blank stare when she tells me that none of the shared printers work and I’m in that scene where I open the medicine cabinet to ask the workmen to hand me my birth control pills. I feel a small measure of satisfaction when I find a shared printer which I can reinstall without searching for a driver or an IP address, but then I grin widely as the other co-director realizes that the computer techs who are arriving today to re-establish printer connectivity will have a tough job ahead of them since the IP ports for the printers are not active. I walk triumphantly into the lab with the receipt for my e-ticket to England for the weekend, blissfully content to be leaving all of this behind me, at least for a few days.

They finally turned the heat on today, but it's not able to out compete the cold air coming through the shoddily installed windows. One day they’ll fix the holes under the windows and I’ll play Tom again when they install the stairway and he just giggles gleefully, racing up and down the stairs about thirty times. Neigh on fifty times in the film Tom asks, “How long until he work is finished”? “Two weeks. We should have it all done in two weeks.”