I was reminded this morning on the Metro why I am thankful this Thanksgiving day.
My boyfriend and I are going to our respective workplaces this morning when a head-scarfed woman asks where is St. Lazare in a heavy accent. My significant other did not understand her, but since all of my friends in this country are non-native Americans, my ears are well-tuned for this sort of application. I translate for him, as it's his neighborhood. He tells her that it's in the direction we are going.
We all three pile into the last car as the buzzer chimes for the doors to close, with me slightly worried that we'll be chopped in two, or at least temporarily lodged in a precarious position. Not this morning it turned out, and we share our peaceful morning moment holding hands and tête a tête . We arrive at St. Lazare and the woman searches our faces plaintively, and asks "St Lazare?". "Oui, descende ici." my love responds, though the sign to the right clearly indicates the stop. I question. Why would she ask for the stop? Why did she need someone to tell her which direction to take? Realization dawns as the feeling of receiving bad news.
"Oh god, she can't read. She can't read".
"She can... what?"
I enunciate more clearly this time in English, "She can not read".
"Ah yes, and she has something on her face".
It is true, she is sporting what looks like a shiner.
And I am immediately chastened. My throat tightens. How lucky I am to be a woman born into a Western culture where I am valued enough to be taught to read and my upbringing would never allow me to tolerate being beaten. I take a few slow breaths and thank whatever god of this universe has blessed me.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
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.”
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.”
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
More tales of science in a strange land
Another daily accounting of why perhaps it's really best not to even consider doing ANY science in France, unless you have a totally capable bi-lingual secretary with the patience of Mother Theresa.
I need a price for 2 items from Roche. We can't just plug in our customer # on the Internet to obtain the price for our institution, because our funding source, Inserm, is afraid that we would leap to internet ordering which is strictly forbidden. They can't keep track of how much money we spend on what by using their infuriating "Product Categorization" system. This system by the way, requires a special ordering form and an addendum of an "Inserm category number" to each product that is ordered. I have to look up what this friggin number is every time I place an order. So I decide to speak in English when I call to get the prices. Why waste my brainpower speaking French, it's an international company, right? It should be no problem.
"Bonjour, Hello. I need to get the price for 2 items, please".
The operator transfers me without so much as a "Merci". The next person asks me where I am from, and transfers me to the Paris representative. I think I get transferred again at this point and the next person who answers has absolutely no clue why I am looking for prices, she's in the marketing department. My thoughts are that they kept transferring 'cuz they didn't want to speak English. I hang up.
I call back. "Bonjour, j'ai besoin de les prix pour deux produits, SVP." She asks for the product. "DIG washing and blocking set", I say, in English. I am NOT saying "wash-eeng ee bloc-ayh" with a French accent, I sound stupid. She says in French that she doesn't understand. I ask her if I can give her the product number (in french this time). "Oui". Ok, we have an accord.
I recite the number American-style, one number at a time, rather than saying the french four twenties plus nineteen (which equals 99 by the way) because I make my own head hurt for a 12-digit number like that. She zings off the price at a lighting pace, and the gals behind me are yakking in French and I can't understand a bloody thing. I ask her to please repeat it slowly for me, which she does, but rather than saying 179 Euros and 79 cents, she says "comma" in french and I don't know that word so I am yet again confused and have to ask her to repeat it for me one more time. Incredible.
And I should add that she couldn't find the second thing because the website had an old catalog # listed, so this was yet another 5 minutes while I searched around the website with her still on the line. There was no way I was going to call back and go through the whole painful process yet again. Evidently that would have been just too much for her to figure out the new # for me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today I am in the animal room doing my thing- trying to get out of the tiny, windowless, smelly room as quickly as humanly possible and I hear a huge bang, what sounds like a cannon being shot off inside of the fucking building. Good god! Either we're being bombed or one of the construction workers has just lit a cigarette and ignited some flammable material in the lab and everyone is engulfed in flame. Sweet Jesus have mercy!
I peek out the window in the adjoining room and see that it's become foggy outside. Wait! That's smoke, and the streets are filled with.... firefighters? Zillions of them. All in uniform, and quite pissed-off I might add, with some of them carrying flares, all of them shouting completely unintelligible angry-firfefighterman-french things. I make my way upstairs and the building is now reverberating with the explosions like we're being shelled. How the fuck am I supposed to dissect organs from this 4 day old mouse with this nonsense? As everyone in the lab is acting like it's a fucking circus coming down the street, replete with pink elephants and ponies on tricycles, I decide to take a peek out the window even though I am beginning to spew smoke from my ears and shouting things like, "How is anyone supposed to work with all of this god-damned noise?". I see that across the street the fire hydrant is gushing water all over the street and the pavement in front of the hospital is like a scene out of "Blackhawk down"- a roiling mass of very imposing-looking dudes who are now increasingly turning towards the hospital to shout towards the building at people gawking out the windows, I suppose. BOOM! I never did see what the hell they were using to make all of that noise, but how is that a part of PeACeFulL demonstration, pray tell?
I rub my temples, wishing desperately for at least the tenth time in 2 weeks that there were enough room in the tiny dorm-sized fridge for a six pack, or better yet a flask of 140-proof whiskey to hide itself. I decide to update my website while all of this is going on, as it's clear I won't be able to actually work. I would have gone to the library or another lab, but the only functional area is on the side of the building facing the brouhaha. A few minutes elapse and out of my peripheral vision I notice a strange face peering at me from the other side of the cubicle/shelf above my desk. What the hell? I get up and see a fireman in full regalia (ok minus the hat) hanging out the window. What is he doing? Taking pictures with his digital camera. Yep. A circus all right. Then the lab is flooded by at least a dozen fireman proceeding towards the widows to get a birds-eye view of the scene of mayhem below and appreciate their handiwork fully. By this point I am out of my chair and possessively tromping round the lab, they outnumber us scientists in the lab, and some of them are really quite large men. I am pretty certain that I have a mix of surprise, shock, incredulity, and a good portion of amusement written on my face at this point, and my jaw is gaping open quite noticeably. I am now saying things (in English of course, I default back to the mother tongue in emotional moments) like "Does anyone find this to be NORMAL behavior?", to no one in particular, but secretly hoping that some fireman will get the hint and get the hell out of MY lab!
After about 90 seconds of us staring at them and them hanging out the windows and shouting and waving like Charles Lindbergh were passing in the street below and this was merely a ticker-tape parade; they began to file out. I am more amused than shocked now, because, I mean, come ON- I get to write about this in my blog-man! I am mocked by a fireman who mimics my face as he smilingly parades out of the lab, and I realize that none of my friends in the States will believe what it's like to do science in France because the lab doesn't yet have a digital camera for me to document these moments; the moments of our lives.
I need a price for 2 items from Roche. We can't just plug in our customer # on the Internet to obtain the price for our institution, because our funding source, Inserm, is afraid that we would leap to internet ordering which is strictly forbidden. They can't keep track of how much money we spend on what by using their infuriating "Product Categorization" system. This system by the way, requires a special ordering form and an addendum of an "Inserm category number" to each product that is ordered. I have to look up what this friggin number is every time I place an order. So I decide to speak in English when I call to get the prices. Why waste my brainpower speaking French, it's an international company, right? It should be no problem.
"Bonjour, Hello. I need to get the price for 2 items, please".
The operator transfers me without so much as a "Merci". The next person asks me where I am from, and transfers me to the Paris representative. I think I get transferred again at this point and the next person who answers has absolutely no clue why I am looking for prices, she's in the marketing department. My thoughts are that they kept transferring 'cuz they didn't want to speak English. I hang up.
I call back. "Bonjour, j'ai besoin de les prix pour deux produits, SVP." She asks for the product. "DIG washing and blocking set", I say, in English. I am NOT saying "wash-eeng ee bloc-ayh" with a French accent, I sound stupid. She says in French that she doesn't understand. I ask her if I can give her the product number (in french this time). "Oui". Ok, we have an accord.
I recite the number American-style, one number at a time, rather than saying the french four twenties plus nineteen (which equals 99 by the way) because I make my own head hurt for a 12-digit number like that. She zings off the price at a lighting pace, and the gals behind me are yakking in French and I can't understand a bloody thing. I ask her to please repeat it slowly for me, which she does, but rather than saying 179 Euros and 79 cents, she says "comma" in french and I don't know that word so I am yet again confused and have to ask her to repeat it for me one more time. Incredible.
And I should add that she couldn't find the second thing because the website had an old catalog # listed, so this was yet another 5 minutes while I searched around the website with her still on the line. There was no way I was going to call back and go through the whole painful process yet again. Evidently that would have been just too much for her to figure out the new # for me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today I am in the animal room doing my thing- trying to get out of the tiny, windowless, smelly room as quickly as humanly possible and I hear a huge bang, what sounds like a cannon being shot off inside of the fucking building. Good god! Either we're being bombed or one of the construction workers has just lit a cigarette and ignited some flammable material in the lab and everyone is engulfed in flame. Sweet Jesus have mercy!
I peek out the window in the adjoining room and see that it's become foggy outside. Wait! That's smoke, and the streets are filled with.... firefighters? Zillions of them. All in uniform, and quite pissed-off I might add, with some of them carrying flares, all of them shouting completely unintelligible angry-firfefighterman-french things. I make my way upstairs and the building is now reverberating with the explosions like we're being shelled. How the fuck am I supposed to dissect organs from this 4 day old mouse with this nonsense? As everyone in the lab is acting like it's a fucking circus coming down the street, replete with pink elephants and ponies on tricycles, I decide to take a peek out the window even though I am beginning to spew smoke from my ears and shouting things like, "How is anyone supposed to work with all of this god-damned noise?". I see that across the street the fire hydrant is gushing water all over the street and the pavement in front of the hospital is like a scene out of "Blackhawk down"- a roiling mass of very imposing-looking dudes who are now increasingly turning towards the hospital to shout towards the building at people gawking out the windows, I suppose. BOOM! I never did see what the hell they were using to make all of that noise, but how is that a part of PeACeFulL demonstration, pray tell?
I rub my temples, wishing desperately for at least the tenth time in 2 weeks that there were enough room in the tiny dorm-sized fridge for a six pack, or better yet a flask of 140-proof whiskey to hide itself. I decide to update my website while all of this is going on, as it's clear I won't be able to actually work. I would have gone to the library or another lab, but the only functional area is on the side of the building facing the brouhaha. A few minutes elapse and out of my peripheral vision I notice a strange face peering at me from the other side of the cubicle/shelf above my desk. What the hell? I get up and see a fireman in full regalia (ok minus the hat) hanging out the window. What is he doing? Taking pictures with his digital camera. Yep. A circus all right. Then the lab is flooded by at least a dozen fireman proceeding towards the widows to get a birds-eye view of the scene of mayhem below and appreciate their handiwork fully. By this point I am out of my chair and possessively tromping round the lab, they outnumber us scientists in the lab, and some of them are really quite large men. I am pretty certain that I have a mix of surprise, shock, incredulity, and a good portion of amusement written on my face at this point, and my jaw is gaping open quite noticeably. I am now saying things (in English of course, I default back to the mother tongue in emotional moments) like "Does anyone find this to be NORMAL behavior?", to no one in particular, but secretly hoping that some fireman will get the hint and get the hell out of MY lab!
After about 90 seconds of us staring at them and them hanging out the windows and shouting and waving like Charles Lindbergh were passing in the street below and this was merely a ticker-tape parade; they began to file out. I am more amused than shocked now, because, I mean, come ON- I get to write about this in my blog-man! I am mocked by a fireman who mimics my face as he smilingly parades out of the lab, and I realize that none of my friends in the States will believe what it's like to do science in France because the lab doesn't yet have a digital camera for me to document these moments; the moments of our lives.
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